Isfahan International Airport, Iran
Instead of feeling self-conscious about wearing traditional Muslim dress, Dre felt oddly comforted. At the embassy in Athens, Dre had been given a new identity—and a new wardrobe.
She was now Chantal Homayouni, a twenty-four-year-old Canadian, born and raised in Vancouver. She was traveling in the company of her mother, Lili, but this was her first trip to the country of her ancestors. She was unfamiliar with the language or the traditional Muslim dress.
The women in Athens dressed her in layers. A dress, called an abaya, followed by a hijab, or head scarf, followed by a chador, an overgarment similar to a cloak that had a hood and she could hold closed with her hands. In the end, the only things that showed were her face and her hands.
The layers gave her a feeling of anonymity that she so desperately wanted.
The customs line moved at a crawl, and the air in the customs area was stifling. Dre kept her eyes on the floor, her senses racing for any sign of danger. Although she had not slept a wink on the overnight flight from Athens to Istanbul to Isfahan, she was wide awake, her nerves on edge.
The line moved forward a few paces. Liz, perhaps sensing Dre felt overwhelmed, reached back for Dre’s hand, giving her a comforting squeeze before releasing her fingers. Dre wanted to hold on to her for dear life, but she just moved their roller bags forward. Their luggage was filled with typical clothes and personal effects that a mother and daughter from Vancouver, Canada, would travel with. There was a story with each item—where she’d bought it, how much it cost, who was in each picture in her wallet—that would stand up to at least first-level scrutiny.
Finally, they were called together by a mustachioed customs agent, a swarthy man with beady black eyes and a gruff manner. Liz spoke to him in a pleasant tone as she handed him both passports. Dre kept her eyes on the floor during the rapid-fire exchange in Farsi. The man said something directed to her and Dre choked down a wave of panic.
“Lift up your head, dear. Look into the camera,” Liz said to her softly in English.
Dre did as she was told. When she saw the flicker of the camera lens, she braced herself for the inevitable rush of armed guards to take her off to prison.
Nothing happened.
Liz said something to the customs agent that was clearly about Dre, and he laughed loudly as he handed back their stamped passports.
“What did you say to him?” she whispered to Liz as they walked through the crowded baggage-claim area.
“I told him you were a stupid girl here to see the land of her forefathers for the first time.”
The rental-car agency was called EuropCar. The brightly lighted, Kelly-green banner with English lettering seemed to Dre like a beacon of familiarity in a land of swirling Farsi script.
Liz’s pleasant demeanor was on display again as she spoke to the rental agent. He was a helpful man in his midthirties with a neatly trimmed beard and quick dark eyes.
“Do you require a GPS with your vehicle?” the man asked Liz.
“Yes, I am unfamiliar with this part of Iran,” Liz replied. Dre knew this was the coded phrase to establish bona fides.
“The mountains are beautiful this time of year,” the man said.
“Unfortunately, our time is short,” Liz said with a smile. “Maybe on our next trip.”
The agent nodded as he tapped away at his computer, barely acknowledging Liz’s response. He collected a set of keys and small black attaché case and escorted Liz and Dre to the far end of the parking lot. He opened the trunk of a late-model black Toyota sedan and stowed their luggage, then handed the case to Liz. Dre caught the word “GPS” in the chatter.
Liz navigated through the midmorning traffic on the highways on the outskirts of Isfahan. They were heading north, into the desert. After the first thirty minutes, the traffic thinned and they were on an open highway.
Liz checked the rearview mirror. “You can open the case now.”
Dre settled the case on her lap and snapped it open. Underneath the foam cover was a SIG Sauer P226 nine-millimeter handgun with a suppressor and two magazines, two knives in sheaths, and two earpieces. She found the tiny dip switches on the earpieces, turned them on, and paired them with the commercial satellite phones she and Liz carried. Their signals were bounced from their phone to the satellite to Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar. She handed one to Liz and slipped the other in her ear.
“Michael, can you hear me?” Dre said.
There was a long pause, making Dre think maybe she’d done something wrong; then Michael’s low voice sounded in her ear. “I got you five by five, Dre. Good to hear you again.”
A feeling of relief flooded through her at the familiar voice. She hadn’t realized how on edge she’d been for the last twelve hours, but this visceral reaction to Michael’s voice told her that she had not been fooling anyone—least of all herself.
“What’s the status, Liz?” Don’s voice.
“We’re on schedule. No issues.” Liz shot a glance at Dre and winked. “We’re just a couple of Muslim chicks headed to the holiest site in Iran for a working holiday.”
Dre laughed. The release felt good. Liz reached over and patted her knee.
“We’ve got another hour and a half, Dre,” Liz said. “Why don’t you take a nap.”
Dre eased her seat back a few notches. She turned her head toward the window and watched the countryside fly by. It was high desert here, undulating hills of dry brown soil broken only by the occasional shrub or tree or roadside stand. It reminded her of Sudan and the land around the Project Deliverance site.
She closed her eyes. She knew sleep would not come, but she needed to try.
When the dream came again, it was different. Dre wasn’t watching Janet. This time, she had taken Janet’s place. She could feel the hard, cold floor of the North Korean bunker under her body.
And she could not move.
Footfalls behind her. A shadow slipped over her body, but she was paralyzed. The muzzle of a gun appeared above her and slowly descended until it touched her forehead.
Dre startled awake.
“We’re here,” Liz said. “You okay?”
Dre straightened her seat. They were back in heavy city traffic. The scenery around her was filled with people and cars and buildings. Women, mostly dressed in black, but with a few splashes of color in the crowd, hurried along the streets, clutching bags in one hand, small children by the other. People in Western clothes mixed in with the pedestrians.
Liz made a turn and pointed through the windshield. “That’s the mosque.”
Dre tried not to gawk, but the building was magnificent. Two towering minarets flanked an elaborate tiled archway overlooking a vast marble plaza. Rising behind the entrance like a beautiful hot-air balloon, an enormous blue dome gleamed in the sun. On either side of the main mosque were two smaller golden domes with their own entrances.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“It’s reputed to be the mosque of the twelfth imam, the Mahdi, the one who would unite all Muslims under one true faith. That’s where the president will come tomorrow morning. Once he visits the mosque for noon prayers, he will cross the street”—Liz pointed to a brick building across the street—“to go to the conference center for lunch and deliver a speech.”
Liz found a parking lot. Under the cover of her chador, she secreted the handgun and the knife in pockets already sewn into her undergarments. She stowed the empty GPS case in the trunk.
“Bring your computer,” Liz said. “This is where you shine, daughter.”
Dre nodded, feeling the knots of tension ripple up her back as she shouldered her slim computer bag.
As they walked toward the glass-fronted entrance of the conference center, Liz seemed to transform before Dre’s eyes. The pleasant, agreeable Liz became haughty and imperious, a foreigner with a sense of entitlement. She strode through the front doors, making a direct line to the information desk. She rapped out an order to the young woman sitting behind the desk.
The young woman’s eyes widened. She snatched up a phone and spoke without taking her eyes off Liz. Dre hung back, watching her “mother” tap her foot impatiently. The girl at the desk handed them each a clip-on visitor badge with the seal of the conference center on it.
Moments later, another woman came rushing out. She was tall and thin and wearing a chador with a fashionable floral print. Liz eyed the woman’s garb with obvious distaste.
Liz switched to English. “I would like to include my daughter in the conversation. Do you speak English?”
The woman nodded.
“Good, that is important for my clients.” Liz lowered her voice. “Bill Gates might be attending this conference, so it needs to be perfect. Do you understand?”
“Please, this way.” Their guide showed them into a ballroom that was being set up with dozens of round tables. “The space is being set for the president’s visit tomorrow.”
Liz sniffed. “A little small, but this will do. Show me the kitchens.”
The guide took them into a service hall that ran along the length of the ballroom, ending in a set of double doors that opened into the kitchens. “Employees and staff all enter from the rear of the building. There is security screening in the back.”
“What about the facilities?” Liz demanded. “Air and water services.”
The woman pointed back toward the ballroom. “Those are on the other side of the building, along with security.”
“Show me.”
The woman marched them back through the ballroom and through a set of doors into an open area piled high with stacked chairs, tables, and carts full of linens. She pointed to a set of stairs leading up to a door in the high wall.
“All of the HVAC systems are up there in the mezzanine. The rest of the facilities are in the basement.”
Their guide walked with quick steps, constantly turning to watch Liz for signs that she was meeting her expectations. “The event tomorrow will have more than one thousand attendees,” she said. “Dignitaries from all over Iran.”
“Your security can handle that?” Liz walked slowly through the storage area, her eyes taking in every detail.
“We will have all staff members on duty, plus local police.” The guide pushed through a set of double doors back into the foyer. They had made a complete circuit of the facility.
The door to the security office was just off the foyer. A pair of uniformed men looked up when they entered. One was watching security monitors. The other one looked like a dispatch officer.
Their guide engaged in a long discussion with the dispatch officer, but her manner was timid. He shook his head. Liz stepped forward and took over, unleashing a furious diatribe at the man.
Finally, the guard got up from his desk and unlocked the door behind him using a ring of keys.
Dre squeezed past Liz into the room, and her heart dropped. Instead of the ancient Russian monitoring system she expected to find, there was a brand-new Chinese model. The server racks blinked at her as she pretended to inspect the system.
While Liz continued to harangue the guard, Dre slid her hand in her bag and extracted a wireless connection disguised as a dummy ethernet plug. She ducked behind the server rack, found an open ethernet connection, and slammed the plug in.
When she reappeared, the guard saw her and angrily spoke back to Liz.
“Tell him I was checking to make sure his hardware was up to date. Their hardware is excellent. We’re all good to go.”
Back in the foyer, Dre said to Liz, “I need to use the restroom, Mom.”
The restroom was empty. Dre locked the last stall and pulled out her laptop.
“Michael, are you there?” she whispered.
“I’m here, Dre.” His voice sounded so close.
“Change in plans, buddy. They have a state-of-the-art BingCheng model. I went to plan B.”
“You know what that means, right?”
“Yup.” Dre found the boot-up sequence for the video cameras and inserted a short program.
“Are you sure about this?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
Dre found the server software code base and added two lines of code. She hit the Enter key.
“I gave it five minutes,” she said.
“Dre, what if it doesn’t come back on?”
“Then we go to plan C.”
She walked out of the bathroom holding her belly. “I think I’d like to go to the hotel now, Mother.”
When they got back to the car, Liz eyed her. “Well?”
“Give it a minute. I had to force a restart of their system to gain access for Michael.”
Liz frowned. “Was that the plan?”
“Nope, but it was necessary.”
Minutes ticked by.
“Michael?”
“Still nothing, Dre.”
It was ten more minutes before he spoke again. Relief flooded his tone.
“We’re in.”