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  “That must hurt,” Kurshin said, moving his chair over so that he could look into Abbas’s eyes. Sweat had beaded on the American’s forehead. Kurshin hit him again with a short jolt.

  A thin, high-pitched wail came from Abbas, his eyes screwed shut. When he finally opened them he looked up at Kurshin with a violent, nearly out-of-control hatred.

  “Fuck you, too,” Kurshin said, and he joined the two plugs and left them together.

  Abbas’s body spasmed again and again, the keening wail from deep in his throat like a distant air raid siren, and still Kurshin did not unplug the cords until he began to smell the odor of burning flesh. He finally disconnected them.

  The American’s legs continued to jerk spasmodically and his chest rose and fell rapidly, but he appeared to be unconscious or at the very least, insensate.

  Kurshin went into the kitchen and poured a glass of cold water. He felt absolutely nothing about what he was doing to the man, although he knew that there were those who derived pleasure from such things.

  Abbas was merely a means to an end. The gold would be taken from under the Iranians’ noses, and the Americans would be blamed for it. It was the price he was paying to General Didenko in exchange for a clear shot at McGarvey.

  “Listen to me, Arkasha,” the general had said over the telephone. “These are merely the opening moves. There will be so much more for you and me to accomplish together. Ours will be the triumph of the century.”

  With the way things were going in the rodina, the nation was ripe for the emergence of a new despot: a Hitler, another Stalin. Didenko hoped to be such a force.

  Kurshin had to smile. Someday he would have to kill the general. The man was mad. But in the meantime there was work to be done.

  Abbas was just regaining consciousness when Kurshin came in and sat down in front of him.

  “Time for our little chat now, yes?” Kurshin said amiably.

  “I work for the CIA,” Abbas whispered. “So what? It’s common knowledge.”

  “Thank you,” Kurshin said. “You brought cold medicines home with you tonight, but you do not appear to be sick. Why?”

  Abbas said nothing.

  Languidly Kurshin reached down and picked up the two cords.

  “I’m not going to my office for the next few days. My excuse will be that I was ill.”

  “Yes? Why is this?”

  Again Abbas hesitated. Kurshin hit him with a very brief jolt. This time no sound came from the American’s throat, but for several seconds afterward he shivered violently, his eyes closed, his jaw clamped tightly shut, the veins bulging on his neck.

  “I was to drive south … to Bushehr … to meet the gold,” he said after a long time.

  “For what purpose?”

  “We believe there is a possibility that an Iranian army unit plans on hijacking the shipment.”

  “How were you to prevent this if it began to develop?”

  “I wasn’t supposed to prevent it. My orders were to observe the convoy. If something started to go down, I was to report what I saw.”

  “To whom? And how?”

  “To Langley by radio.”

  “Radio? What radio? I found nothing in this apartment.”

  “It’s a handie-talkie. In my car. Hidden.”

  “Not enough power.”

  “It’s set to the up-and-down-link frequencies of one of our satellites. Virtually undetectable by anything other than another handie-talkie.”

  “Yes, I see,” Kurshin said. It would be perfect for his plans. “Why were you ordered to baby-sit the shipment? Once the gold arrived on Iranian soil it is no longer the problem of the United States.”

  “It was thought that if the gold were to be hijacked here in Iran, no matter by whom, the Iranian government would blame America. We need a friend here. Especially now. We were willing to do whatever it takes to insure they got their gold. To Tehrn. No one wants another Iraq-Kuwait incident. Iran will be the watchdog once again.”

  Kurshin looked at Abbas. The man was pitiful. “No more torture tonight. Nor will there be any further need of such things if you continue to cooperate with me.”

  “Who are you?” Abbas croaked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kurshin said. “Believe me in this.”

  It was dawn by the time Kurshin was finished. Abbas had been good to his word and had cooperated with everything that had been done to him. In fact at one point he had even smiled slightly, a gesture Kurshin missed.

  “Hold very still now,” Kurshin said.

  Abbas, still strapped to the chair, held his head up and didn’t move as Kurshin cut the latex rubber in a long seam up from the back of his neck to the top of his head.

  Very carefully the Russian peeled the entire mask from Abbas’s face, and then stepped back. For just a moment or two Abbas was confused, until suddenly everything that had been done to him this night, everything that Kurshin had said, and this now, made a terrible sense to him, and he shivered.

  Kurshin had pushed the latex mask inside out so that Abbas was looking up at his own image. It was a life mask. Kurshin was his same general build. His English was good.

  If he’d had any doubts before, Abbas had none now. He knew for a fact that he was a dead man.

  35

  AT 9:00 A.M., Shahpur Naisir dialed Abbas’s apartment. The telephone rang three times, but instead of the expected recording with which he would have a prearranged conversation, the telephone rang a fourth time, and then a fifth, and kept ringing.

  After fifteen rings, Shahpur hung up and dialed again. It was possible, he told himself, that he had misdialed. The connection was made, with the same results.

  No one else in the office knew about the operation. An espionage team working in a country like Iran, with which there was no diplomatic relationship, had to compartmentalize so that no matter who might be arrested, they could not compromise the entire station.

  No matter who, that is, except for himself and Richard Abbas.

  Shahpur got up from his desk and went into Abbas’s office, closing and locking the door behind him. The shutters were closed against the glare of the early-morning sun, and the room was cool, the way Abbas liked it.

  With shaking hands he opened the safe, having to make two tries at the combination before he got it right. He took out a .380-caliber Beretta automatic, a clip of ammunition, which he loaded into the butt of the gun, and a silencer tube that he screwed onto the end of the barrel. He levered a round into the firing chamber, eased the hammer down, and stuffed the weapon into his belt beneath his jacket.

  Next he took out one of the satellite-frequency handie-talkies and put it in his jacket pocket. Abbas had one just like it.

  To be caught in Iran with the communications device, and especially with the pistol, meant death. There would be no appeal. No chances for a reprieve. No possibility of an exchange of spies.

  Locking the safe, he let himself out of Abbas’s office and told the receptionist that he would be out of the office for most of the morning.

  “Yes, sir,” the young man said. “But I’ve not seen Monsieur Abbas yet this morning.”

  “He’s been delayed,” Shahpur said. “In fact, I’m on my way over to see him now. Is there anything pressing?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Very well,” Shahpur said. “I should be back by noon. If something comes up in the meantime, it’ll hold.”

  Shahpur got his car from the back and made two circuits of the office building, coming in from the east the first time and from the west the second. He picked up no tail on either pass.

  This was his home … or it had been. He’d understood these people, their customs, their desires, their fears. He’d even understood why they hated America and Americans so vehemently, and it had nothing to do with what the mullahs told them. It had to do with the envy and raw hate that someone extremely poor had for someone extremely rich. The two came from different universes. There was no common language.

 
; But now he felt out of place. He felt as if he were in a foreign land. He no longer understood.

  He headed out past the university, traffic fairly light at this hour, so that it was easy for him to watch his back. Still no tail. No one was interested in him this morning. That in itself deepened his apprehension.

  There were drills for this sort of thing. They all knew that sooner or later their luck might run out. It would be one thing to be arrested as native-born Americans. But to be in the hands of SAVAK as Iranians who’d gone over to the infidel meant more than a simple firing squad. They would be held up as public examples, their deaths particularly long and painful as a warning to other would-be traitors.

  Rely on the three Cs, he’d been taught at the Farm. Remain Calm. Maintain a Clear head. And most important, stay within your established Cover identity.

  He worked for Richard Abbas at the offices of the Compagnie General de Picarde. His boss had not shown up for work, nor had he answered his telephone. As a concerned employee, Shahpur would naturally investigate.

  Such a fiction would immediately break down if the Iranian authorities decided to detain him and he was searched, or if Abbas himself had been arrested. But the entire station was in serious jeopardy at this point. Something had to be done. And he was the only one for the job.

  Passing the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare building, he turned left down a dusty dirt road that led to a complex of tall apartment buildings housing mostly foreigners. Depending upon the type of demonstration, the police would either lead the mobs down this road, or block their access to the area.

  This morning nothing moved, except for a jet taking off from the airport to the southwest. At that instant Shahpur sincerely wished he were aboard the airliner, no matter what its destination might be. Anywhere, he thought, would be preferable to here and now.

  He didn’t spot the Iranian surveillance team until he was practically on top of their gray Morris. They looked over at him as he passed, one of them recognizing him for sure. He parked about thirty feet away, and trying to act as nonchalant as possible, he went up the walk and entered the building. He half expected them to come after him, but they did not.

  An old woman wearing a chador came out of the stairwell as he approached the elevators. “Pardon, sir, but the machine is not working this morning,” she said in Farsi.

  “Thank you, mother,” Shahpur replied pleasantly. Farsi was a much prettier, much gentler language than English. Too bad, he thought, that it had been used to gloss over heinous crimes committed in the name of Islam.

  She left the building. Shahpur went back to the door and watched as she went down the walk. She headed past the two men in the gray Morris. They hadn’t moved, nor would they, he suspected, until Abbas left.

  Shahpur turned and looked at the stairwell door. Which meant Abbas was still here for some reason. Immediately he thought about the threat on the station chiefs life.

  Was it possible, he asked himself, that someone had come here last night and killed Abbas? This was Iran, and any act of violence was possible. Especially against Westerners and Western interests. He thanked heaven that his family had left Iran when he had. It was one lever that SAVAK would never be able to use against him.

  Entering the stairwell, he listened for a full minute before starting up. There wasn’t a sound. The lights were out, but someone had propped open the doors on each floor so that the corridor windows could provide some illumination.

  He had a very ominous feeling about this.

  He took out the pistol, cocked the hammer, and went the rest of the way up to the fifth floor, gingerly stepping through the doorway into the corridor.

  Again he stopped to listen, but there was absolutely no noise of any kind. The building could have been deserted. Or evacuated, the thought suddenly struck him. He looked back the way he had come. This could be an elaborate SAVAK trap to lure him and Abbas into some kind of a compromising situation.

  For a moment he hesitated, but then shook his head. He was here now and he would see it out. Abbas should be on his way down to Bushehr, and his answering machine should have been switched on.

  He went down the corridor and put his head to Abbas’s door. Did he hear something from within? Someone murmuring, perhaps. The sound of running water in the bathroom? A shuffling sound.

  Or nothing at all. Merely his imagination.

  The faint sounds stopped. Shahpur was about to knock, but then he took a key out of his pocket and let himself in. Either Abbas was gone, or he was in trouble. Either way, knocking on his door would do no good.

  Stepping into the apartment he was confused for a critical second or two, unable to understand exactly what it was he was seeing.

  Abbas, naked, was tied to a chair propped against the wall. But Abbas, in shirt-sleeves, stood at the bathroom door.

  “Why, hello, Shahpur,” the clothed Abbas said. “Why are you here?”

  There was something wrong with Abbas’s voice, and there was definitely something wrong with the question.

  All of that took no time at all. He saw the pistol in Abbas’s hand at the same moment the Abbas tied to the chair cried out.

  “Run … !”

  Shahpur raised his own pistol as a thunderclap burst in his head … .

  Kurshin hurried to the doorway. Nothing moved. Apparently no one had heard the single shot from his silenced pistol.

  Shahpur’s body had been flung half out into the corridor. Hurriedly Kurshin dragged it into the apartment, and getting a towel from the bathroom wiped up the blood from the corridor floor. He closed and relocked the door, then turned to Abbas.

  “There is something you forgot to tell me,” he said. “It has cost you your number two’s life. What is it?”

  Abbas was staring at Shahpur’s body.

  Kurshin went to the window and looked down at the gray sedan. It hadn’t moved. A figure in black was walking away down the road. He thought it was a woman.

  Turning, he went to Abbas. “Will you tell me, or will we have to go through the same procedure as last night? Frankly I don’t care one way or the other, you must understand this. But I will have your answer.”

  “I understand,” Abbas said, looking up at him.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s the answering machine. Attached to my telephone.”

  Kurshin glanced over at the machine. “What about it?”

  Again Abbas looked at Shahpur’s body. “I’m supposed to be out sick for the rest of the week. I’ve recorded several messages on my machine. Shahpur was to telephone here this morning and have a conversation with me. He was supposed to call again tomorrow and on Friday morning as well. I was scheduled to be back here Sunday evening.”

  “When he called this morning and there was no answer either by the machine or by you, he got suspicious.”

  “Yes,” Abbas said heavily.

  “By why?” Kurshin asked. “Unless you expect your telephone calls to be monitored. Is that it? Is SAVAK investigating you?”

  Abbas nodded.

  “Good,” Kurshin said, nodding. “That’s very good.”

  36

  PHIL CARRARA TRUDGED DOWN the stairs into the damp basement of the U.S. consulate on the rue St.-Florentin, his mood heavy despite the fact that the sun had come out this morning.

  He was met at the bottom by Carley Webb. “Could I have a word with you before we get started?” she asked.

  He was meeting with his abbreviated Paris staff on a twice-daily basis, at 10:00 A.M. and at 10:00 P.M. The others were already gathered in the basement conference room. It was still a few minutes before the hour.

  “What is it?” he asked coolly. He’d done nothing about what had happened at her apartment, though he could have had her arrested or, at the very least, fired. He still hadn’t worked it out in his own mind, but he suspected that she had saved his life.

  “It’s been a full thirty-six hours. I just checked the A.M.S. There’s been no word out of Lisbon.”

&
nbsp; “Maybe he didn’t go there after all. Maybe he was lying. Maybe he hasn’t gotten there yet. Maybe Don Sneade has got his hands full, or maybe he slipped by, or maybe he’s wiped out the entire station single-handed.”

  “Send me down there, Phil.”

  Carrara looked at her closely.“To do what, Carley?”

  “Find him.”

  “Warn him?”

  “No, dammit. Find him.”

  “If Don hasn’t run him to ground yet, what makes you so sure that you’ll be able to do it? We’ve got a lot of people out in the field looking for him.”

  “I’ll just have to show up. Make myself visible. Kirk will come to me.”

  “It’s over between you two, or was he lying about that as well?”

  Carley’s nostrils flared. “Do you want my resignation? Because if you do, I’ll give it to you right now and go down to Lisbon on my own.”

  Carrara turned away, but she grabbed him by his jacket sleeve and pulled him back.

  “Goddamnit, Phil, what do you think would have happened if I hadn’t interfered?”

  “I never thanked you for saving my life …”

  “No,” Carley cried. “Or maybe yes. I don’t know. But someone would have got hurt, I do know that. And I also know that he wouldn’t have fired the first shot.”

  “Then you were saving his life.”

  “Yes, Phil, because he’s innocent.”

  “You’re telling me that you believe his story about Arkady Kurshin?”

  “Why not?” she asked. “You do. You warned Sneade about it.”

  Again Carrara stared at her. “No,” he finally said.

  “No what?”

  “No, I don’t want your resignation, and no, I’m not sending you to Lisbon.”

  “What if I got down on my knees and begged you?” she said.

  “Don’t make me fire you,” Carrara replied coldly. He stepped a little closer to her and lowered his voice. “I hope to God it wasn’t Tom Lord who put you up to sleeping with McGarvey. I hope it was your idea alone. But since it’s happened, and you’ve admitted that you’re in love with him, don’t get hysterical on us. It’s bad for business, yours as well as ours.”