Mostofi was feeling good. Habib had raced in again with the news that Golzar was in DC.
‘He sent me a message. He’ll be sleeping most of the day. In the evening, he’ll check out the monument.’
The Quds commander had congratulated him and had leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his desk as he contemplated the ceiling.
It was done. The weapon was launched. It would detonate at the set time and only Golzar’s arrest could stop it.
Which isn’t possible. No one knows of him. All that remained was the oil which he would order tomorrow. In a week, America would be destroyed.
He smiled dreamily at the thought. Carter was still in the country, but for how long would he survive? His luck wouldn’t hold out forever.
When this went down, he would ask the Supreme Leader for a promotion. But what other role was there that was more powerful than his? He frowned and then his brow cleared. He would create one!
He sighed and looked at the stack of files on his desk. He wished he was torturing some prisoner but, alas, he had to deal with paperwork.
It could wait for a while, however.
‘Salman,’ he called the Finance Minister, ‘How are we looking?’
He winced and held the phone away from his ear when the man burst out. ‘Siavash, you met me just the other day! We went through this, then. Asking me every day isn’t going to change anything. We are ready. If there’s a run on the banks, we will move funds. There will be trouble on the streets, but I leave that to you to sort out. Financially, we will take a hit. I told you. But we can survive. Now, don’t trouble me again. I have enough work.’
Mostofi smiled unrepentantly and dialed another number. ‘Bijan, all set?’
‘Siavash, we agreed for tomorrow, not today!’
‘Yes, the Fourth. Is everything in place?’
‘This is oil, my friend. Nothing has to be in place. The pumping stations aren’t going to run away. I just need to give the order to Kharg and other terminals and the flow will increase.’
Mostofi hung up and rubbed his hands. He would meet the Supreme Leader later in the day and brief him. Until then, he would deal with the cursed files.
‘Dariush reached safely,’ Beth briefed Zarhagi, Yasaman and Syed in Naeem’s. The restaurant had turned into a safe meeting space for them. The activists’ network covered the restaurant and would warn the owner of approaching police or soldiers. That would give Zeb and his team enough time to escape, along with Zarhagi.
The rebel leader had shown them another route as well. Down through a loose floorboard, into a cellar, through a tunnel, opening several streets away.
Zarhagi had arrived with his senior lieutenants when the younger twin had called for a meeting. Yasaman and Syed’s pinched faces relaxed when she gave them the news.
‘Where is he now?’ the tech expert asked.
‘We can’t tell you that. Not right now. This is him,’ she turned her screen and showed him a photograph of the student in an Amtrak train to DC, beaming, both thumbs up.
‘He’s going somewhere?’
‘Yes.’
‘He has security around him,’ Zeb explained. ‘You can’t see them in that picture. He will be well-protected.’
Zarhagi nodded thoughtfully. A small smile appeared on his lips. ‘You could have told us that over the burner phones.’
‘We have one more favor to ask,’ Beth searched his face and went quiet while he sized them up.
‘Something will go down. Soon,’ the leader said finally. ‘I can sense it in you.’
Zeb wasn’t surprised by his intuition. He’s a soldier himself. He’s a survivor. He must have picked up on something in us.
‘We can’t tell you that—’
‘You come to us asking for help,’ Yasaman burst out, ‘but you can’t—’
She stopped when Zarhagi looked at her. Just the one glance.
‘I am sorry,’ she mumbled. ‘Mehdi’s death, Dariush leaving us … it got to me.’
Zeb forced his hands to stay unclenched. They are kids. They should be enjoying university life. Instead, they are fighting for their country, knowing many of them will die.
‘Khanom,’ he told her gently. ‘Don’t ever be sorry for what you feel.’
‘What do you need from us?’
‘We want you to place something in MUT. Several packages. Either tonight or tomorrow.’
‘What’s in them? No, don’t reply,’ Yasaman smiled, her anger a thing of the past. ‘Do they have to be there by some particular time?’
‘By afternoon.’
‘We can place them in the morning. Tomorrow. That will look better. It will be noticeable if any of us return to the university today.’
‘Do you know of any safe place for them?’ Meghan asked the student.
‘Yes,’ she grinned. ‘The women’s bathrooms. No one comes in there. We know several loose panels in the ceiling. We can stow – how big are they?’
‘Smaller than a building brick.’ She, Beth and Chloe brought out several polythene-wrapped objects and slid them across the table.
Meghan grinned when Yasaman looked disappointed when she tried to see through the packing, felt them with her fingers but couldn’t identify them. ‘It’s for your safety. You shouldn’t know what’s inside.’
Zarhagi’s chair squeaked when he shifted. He looked at Yasaman and Syed and back to the twins.
‘Bombs?’
‘No. You have our assurance on that. However,’ Beth looked at Zeb who shrugged at her. We might as well tell them. ‘They will do something to evacuate the university.’
‘That’s what you want? To empty MUT?’
‘Yes.’
‘We’ll place that,’ Syed declared. ‘Whatever it is. Where Yasaman said.’
‘You have more women students?’
‘We have many.’
‘We don’t want you to be suspected.’
‘Even activists use the bathrooms. We’ll message you on Largess’s phone when we are done.’
‘I can think of only one reason you would want MUT evacuated,’ Zarhagi murmured to Zeb when they were leaving.
‘Your guess might be right.’ He stopped when they were in the garbage dump. The rebel leader’s hair shone in the fading light of the day. He seemed to know what Zeb was going to say.
‘We won’t see you again,’ Zarhagi stated.
‘Never is a long time, agha,’ Bwana said respectfully. ‘We might be back again.’
‘I might not be around then. He knows,’ the leader nodded in Zeb’s direction, ‘something about wanting to die. I can see it in his eyes.’
He hugged them close and patted them on the back. Kissed the twins and Chloe on the cheeks. ‘You are the lights in their lives. Don’t dim.’
Zarhagi was right. They never saw him again.
They had one last stop.
A closed-off space which contained a hangar in Mehrabad International Airport. It was located well away from the main terminal and the runway and had its own biometric access from a turn-off on Fath Highway.
Scott Rubin greeted them when Meghan buzzed the gate.
‘I was wondering if I would hear from you. This,’ he waved expansively as he led them inside the hangar, ‘is my office.’
Center-piece was the Black Hawk, gleaming underneath the night lights.
‘Fueled up and ready to go.’
‘I don’t see any weapons,’ Bear circled it and came round to them.
‘No point in attaching them right now. That would attract attention.’ He went to a forklift which was to one side and drove it to the rear of the hangar. Punched a keycode in what looked like a wall-mounted phone. He bent over the concrete flooring where the forklift had been and with a grunt, pushed back a concrete slab. It slid smoothly after initial resistance and more blocks joined it to reveal a large opening.
‘Voila!’ he gestured grandly.
Zeb stared at the cache of weapons. Hellfires. Stingers. Canons.
‘Yeah, I know what y’all are thinking,’ Rubin laughed. ‘It’s right beneath the noses of airport inspectors.’