Rance hung up, slipped his phone back into his jacket pocket, and stepped into the old iron elevator of London’s Langham Hotel. The call to Meredith was his final duty before meeting Genevieve for dinner and then, God willing, heading right back up to his suite for some fun.
He’d ditched the rest of his colleagues back at the MOD building in Whitehall and taken the secure car service back to his hotel, feigning a headache. He was the only Agency person staying at the Langham—he’d made damn sure of that. He didn’t need any whispers of his liaisons making it back to his wife—or, worse, Dorsey.
He found the high-ceilinged, marble Victorian lobby bar and ordered a bourbon. It was all of four fifteen in the afternoon, but why not? That was how he and Genevieve did things.
London’s milky white daylight had a sparkling quality when viewed through the leaded-glass doors of the grand old Langham. Especially when Genevieve stood in front of them.
“There you are,” she said, glowing, running her hands over his shoulders, touching his chest. She was still dressed in business attire, which, for her, meant heels stacked high and skirts hemmed short.
“Where do you want to eat tonight?” Rance asked, smiling, arranging her usual seat.
He noticed the perfect shape of her thigh as it stretched across the oval of the leathery barstool. How he admired the shape of that leg.
Just then his phone buzzed. He reluctantly tore his eyes away to glance at the screen. His assistant calling, probably to help arrange his travel to Doha.
He suppressed a fresh wave of irritation. For heaven’s sake, he’d shot her an e-mail with all the necessary details not ten minutes ago. Why the hell was she calling him? He thought about sending her off to voice mail. But then again, he wanted an interruption-free evening.
He made his quick apologies to Genevieve and stepped into an alcove to take the call. Sure enough, it was a simple confirmation of his plans. He was back at the bar in under a minute.
“Where were we?” he asked, sliding his hand across the smooth knee.
She leaned in close, a touch of gin on her breath. “I’m just so sorry to have to tell you this, darling, but I’m going to be short on time tonight. No dinner for me, poor girl. A business trip just came up. I’m off to Tokyo on a midnight red-eye. BA. Haven’t even packed yet, if you can believe it. Probably just go there with the clothes on my back. Can we just finish this drink and rush up to the room to make the most of our time?” She squeezed his arm.
Dear God, Rance thought to himself, face flushed, could this relationship get any better? He slugged down what was left of his drink and giddily offered his elbow.
Less than an hour later, she exited the elevator on her way out of the hotel. Her face was grave as she thought about the vial of tranquilizer she’d dumped in his drink when Rance turned away to speak to his secretary. It was the heaviest dose she’d ever tried.
But worth it.
Twenty-two hundred miles to the southeast, John Dale stared at his hands. They hadn’t yet started to shake.
That was about the only thing going well.
Except for the ominous suited man with the Saddam Hussein mustache, the first two hours of the rail trip had been uneventful as they neared the last stop in Turkey, a small city called Kapikoy.
Still, by then, Dale had made the decision that he’d be getting off. He wasn’t comfortable entering Iran via the Iranian National Rail service—not with this serious creature lurking next to him. If he was indeed a tail, Dale figured he’d be able to lose him if he stepped off unexpectedly.
Then things had gotten worse.
While he pretended to lose himself in a Farsi newspaper he’d picked up in Van, Dale had kept his eye on the man, who sat an empty seat away, to Dale’s left. Twice the man had gotten up when his phone rang. Both times Dale could see him through the reflection of a far window. But standing in the free space between cars, the man didn’t speak through the phone. He just responded to the message by thumb-typing. Not good. The man was so concerned with whatever texted communication he was getting that he wasn’t comfortable reading it in front of Dale.
As they approached Kapikoy, Dale already pictured how he’d snag his pack and disappear into the Turkish town. After losing the tail, he’d wait a day or two to figure out some other route into Iran. Meth’s message had said there would be a four-day window over in Alut to meet Cerberus. He still had plenty of time.
But instead of slowing as it approached Kapikoy, the train had sped up. A number of passengers looked at one another, confused. The conductor announced over the PA that, unfortunately, the Kapikoy station would be closed to eastbound traffic due to unforeseen construction problems. Passengers wishing to depart could get off at the next available stop and double back, free of charge.
The next available stop was in Iran.
There it is, Dale thought.
Looking at his steady hands, examining his stubbed pinkie, he surmised what it really meant. The Russians knew about Cerberus based on the lead they’d picked up in Mumbai from Mrs. Rahimi. The Russians had managed to stay on Dale somehow, and they were giving the Iranians a heads-up. The man next to him was almost surely a MOIS officer, maybe Quds, though his disguise seemed too thin for that.
That left Dale with exactly one option: leap off the train. But how to do that with his adversary right next to him?
A trace of gray twilight spread across the dark, featureless desert outside the windows, a handful of lights winking in the distance. He’d be able to figure out a way forward if he could get to a little town of some sort. And at least he’d have the cover of darkness to work with.
Most of all, though, he needed to make sure he got his bag. It was his lifeline. Not only did it have his weapons and survival gear; it also had the IR reflector and the satphone. Without those, he had no way of completing the mission.
The train had Wi-Fi and a weak cell signal. Dale checked his phone as a muffled clackety-clack rattled on around him. Shifting to his right against the bulkhead to conceal his phone from mustache man, he studied Google Maps. They’d just crossed the Iranian border. They were now headed toward Razi, the official Iranian port of entry, moving along at about forty miles per hour.
That was, what? Ten minutes?
He slipped his phone back into a cargo pocket, smiled at the old Kurdish couple across from him, and stood up. For good measure, he asked them in very slow Farsi if they knew which way the restroom was, since he’d seen them get up a few times. The old man jerked a thumb that indicated it was over near the baggage area, the space between the cars.
As Dale moved out of the compartment, the suspicious man leaned his knees sideways, letting him pass. Dale attempted a glimpse down the man’s jacket toward his belt for something incriminating.
He found it: the hint of a black nylon strap running across a rib.
A hint, but Dale knew what it was—a shoulder holster. As he kept moving toward the passageway, he braced himself, waiting for the man to react.
Nothing happened.
Dale walked a few feet forward toward the luggage area, eyeing his bag. It was under another, stuffed into the chrome rails of a rack. But he’d be able to jerk it free pretty easily. The only person who could see him as he stood in the empty space between the cars, right near the small restroom door, was the mustached man.
In the privacy of the bathroom, Dale considered his options. The Glock was in his bag. He had to get to it, but how to do that without tipping mustache man? He thought quietly for a few moments to come up with something.
He removed his shirt and splashed water on his face, soaking his beard, wetting his hair. He ripped a small cloth towel free of the hand dryer and ran it under the tiny tap, like a washcloth. He opened the door, conspicuously facing the suspicious man, shirtless, wiping down his armpits.
Mustache man watched Dale, though he pretended not to. His eyes darted toward either side of the car and then back down to his lap. Dale continued to mime a sponge bath and then dropped to his knees, pulling his bag free, as though looking for a fresh shirt. The man didn’t get up, but Dale noticed that he’d pulled his feet beneath him, ready to spring.
Dale yanked his pack into the bathroom with him, setting it on the sink, shutting the door. The restroom was reasonably large, big enough for Dale to set the bag on the sink and riffle through it. First, he found his Glock and shoved it in his belt, cold and oily against his skin. Then he put his shirt back on, leaving it untucked. Finally, he found some minty gum and threw it in his mouth, chewing furiously.
The train made a loud crashing sound. They’d just entered a tunnel and the echoes of the squealing steel wheels created a racket. He could feel the shift in air pressure in his ears. Shadows strobed at the crack of the door.
He took the liter water jug off its carabiner on the pack. He drank down what was left of the water and stuffed the empty plastic bottle into a little spot above the mirror within easy reach. He tore off a bit of gum to make sure it wouldn’t bounce free.
That accomplished, he opened his phone’s camera app. He shoved the bottom of the phone into an outer pocket of his bag so that it stood up on its end with at least half the screen still visible to him.
With his hat pulled low over damp hair, Dale stepped out of the bathroom, back into the area between cars where they kept the luggage. Before he shut the door, he took the remainder of his gum and jammed it in the door latch to make sure it wouldn’t lock, though the eye-level bolt was still thrown. To an outsider it would look like the bathroom was occupied. Dale tested the door, staying out of sight. It worked. He stepped forward into the luggage area, now fully clothed, his ersatz toilet completed.
Through the window reflection, he saw the suited man watching, leaning forward, his hands ready to move. Dale calmly put his pack on the top rack with his back to the man. He subtly arranged his bag so that the exposed phone’s camera faced aft, into the passenger compartment. He made a show of closing up zippers, as any other traveler might.
Once the bag was in place, Dale stepped into the passageway. But instead of turning back toward his own compartment, he went forward— out of sight of the suited man.
The train burst forth out of the tunnel with a blast of air pressure. Dale turned the corner into the passageway of the next car, walking unsteadily against the sway of the tracks. After he’d made it to the next car, he entered a passenger compartment, turned, and pressed his back to the bulkhead.
His position meant he had to invade the space of some other passengers, but there was at least a vacant seat to work with. As Dale made himself flat against the wall, teetering with the rhythm of the train, the old Kurdish travelers looked up at him like he was nuts.
Dale ignored them. Through the reflection of an opposite window, he could see his phone, which was propped just so on his bag on the opposite bulkhead. Like a two-stage bank shot, the window reflection gave him a view of the screen, which then gave him a view of the suited man via the camera. He watched mustache man get up. When he came closer toward the space between the cars, the man’s hand went into his coat. He pulled out a short-barreled pistol, a Beretta from the looks of it. Wishing to look unarmed, the man kept his arm bent, the hand with the gun just inside his suit jacket.
All right, thought Dale. Threat confirmed. Right hand.
When he saw the man come abeam of the bathroom door, Dale spun on his heel around the bulkhead and leapt. He was springing into a disarming maneuver he’d been taught years ago, back at the Farm. Carried forward by his falling momentum in a right-knee lunge, Dale clamped his hands on the barrel and twisted. The Beretta dropped.
Propelled by gravity, Dale kept going, then shot up with the force of his own sprung leg, bringing the man’s wrist with him. He ratcheted his victim’s forearm into an ungainly twist, turning his hand in the wrong direction behind his back. Dale was now behind the man.
Instead of stopping there, as taught back at the Farm, Dale kept pulling, breaking the man’s arm, possibly his wrist. He felt a crack, heard the man’s gasp, a low growl. Needing to shut him up immediately, Dale stunned him with an immediate jab to back of his head. He then balled his fist and reached around to shove it in the man’s mouth. With his other hand, he pulled the lavatory door open and threw him in, stepping in behind. The entire episode occurred in under three seconds, out of view of other passengers.
Once in the lavatory, the man regained some of his senses and fought back. He bit Dale’s hand, ripped at his face, left a nasty scratch across his cheek. He tried a kick to Dale’s crotch, which partially connected. Dale felt the sickening tug of stung testicles in his gut. He ignored it.
The man was an inch taller than Dale and strong as a bull. He bucked Dale off, slamming him into the bulkhead. He threw an elbow back that took Dale’s wind. It was just enough of a letup that the man broke free, turned, punched Dale in the face.
Jesus, Dale thought, his head stinging senselessly. This isn’t going well.
Out of instinct, Dale hit back, landing a solid jab to the bridge of the other man’s thick nose. The man gasped. Dale thrust mustache man’s head down and smashed him with his rising knee, another shock to the big man’s nose.
The big Iranian threw Dale off, smashing him into the mirror, which cracked. He swung his burly arm and missed, hitting the wall. With his other hand, he was going for his gun, but he had little room to maneuver. Dale pushed him backward against the wall, trapping the man’s arm. With a little more space freed behind him now, Dale reached to pull the Glock free of his own waistband.
He swung the butt of it against the big guy’s mouth, drawing blood. He did it again and then grabbed the empty water jug from the spot by the mirror where he’d left it. He aimed his pistol through the bottle’s mouth and fired, putting a bullet through the man’s crown. It passed all the way through, embedding itself in the vinyl bulkhead.
The big man spasmed once with a flail of his arm and then crashed awkwardly against the wall, limp as a sack of seeds. The bottle had done its job as a makeshift silencer. While the shot had been deafening in the confines of the cloistered bathroom, Dale was confident it had been sufficiently masked against the loud ambient noise of the rolling train.
That was way too fucking close, he thought, breathing hard. Some blood had spattered up on his shirt, but because the shirt was black, it didn’t matter much. More gore was visible on the wall behind the toilet and the cut on his cheek was shiny. Dale went through the man’s pockets as his inert head rolled from side to side. He took a moment for himself to splash water on his face, removing blood. He glimpsed his own eye in the mirror.
The adrenaline had surged. His hands were shaking now. He forced himself to breathe deeply, pushing out what he could. He’d come very close to getting himself captured, likely killed. He went back to searching the body.
The gun was gone from the man’s holster. Dale remembered it lay just outside the door. He’d have to hide that quickly. He riffled further and found a black wallet, which he threw in his cargo pocket. Then he found the phone, a cheap Android.
Now that he knew the Iranians were onto him, he needed intel desperately. He stabbed the power button on the phone to light it up. Password locked. But there was an animated red arrow pointing down toward a silver circle at the bottom of the phone, a ring about the size of a dime.
Fingerprint sensor. Bingo.
Feeling ghoulish and shaking badly, Dale held the dead man’s stubby right index finger up to the phone. It opened. He went to the messages. He scrolled through with a trembling hand. Though the writing was in Farsi, Dale didn’t understand much of it, either because his language skills were too primitive or because the Iranians were using some kind of intraservice jargon. But after a lot of confusing headers, the last message read: Do not lose sight of suspect. Officers stationed for intercept at Razi.
Razi was the first Iranian point of entry fifteen miles farther down the track.
The previous message was full of gibberish, but there was an attachment. Dale opened it. It wasn’t the best quality, but he recognized himself. It was from the Van train station. There he stood, looking up toward the terminal signs with his black ball cap and the sunglasses on the visor. He’d been smiling.
God, what an idiot, he thought.
The shaking got worse; he noticed his own rapid breathing. The dead man slumped farther down, sliding in a pool of his own blood. Could there be others on the train? The phone didn’t indicate that, but Dale couldn’t discount the possibility. He had to get out of here now.
He had one last idea.
He looked through the sent messages. There was one from about a half hour back. Suspect sighted. Surveillance initiated on train. Others of a similar style. They’d started before he was even on the train, still back at the station.
On the dead man’s phone, Dale composed a message to send back to the headquarters of whatever organization this guy had worked for. He wrote: Have suspect in custody. Do not stop train at Razi as suspect may have ambush planned there. Go direct to Tehran. Repeat, do NOT stop train at Razi. Ambush. He had no idea if it would work.
He hit send, saw that the message went, and shoved the phone back into the man’s pocket.
He washed up as best he could and exited the bathroom, making sure the OCCUPIED sign was still displayed, held in place by the gum. He scanned the floor and saw the man’s Beretta. He shoved it deep into some suitcases, since he didn’t want the extra weight. He pulled his pack free and slung it over his shoulders, ratcheting down the straps. He then checked his pockets to make sure they were secure. He pulled his hat down tight and moved aft, walking between cars to the back of the train, nodding politely to the civilians who looked up at him from their seats. He hoped he wasn’t covered in blood. He’d done his best to clean up. He stuffed his hands in his pockets to hide the shaking.
He made it to the last car. He’d thought it might be empty. No such luck. There was another luggage compartment, like the one he’d used up forward. On this one, however, there were no passengers behind it and none facing it.
Dale stepped into it and examined the double train doors that would serve as the regular exit between the cars. Above it was an emergency-exit window that he could kick free. But he was sure that if he did that, the engineers would get an alarm and stop the train. He needed something else. Looking up at the ceiling, he saw a hatch with a padlock through a hasp. It would have to do.
He bent to one side to look out the windows. The train was curving now, arcing to the right. Dale could see lights up ahead. That would most likely be the town of Razi, he thought. That was where the Iranians would be waiting for him—unless his message had actually worked.
He wasn’t about to take the chance. To give himself a shield from the other passengers, he piled up a few roller bags, stacking them as a barrier. Then, when no one was looking, he aimed his pistol at the lock, through the water jug.
This was old-school stuff. At the Farm, the instructors had taught him once how to shoot a lock so that it came apart. Thank God they had. Dale pressed the barrel and the jug at the correct angle at the lock over his head. He fired. The lock broke into pieces.
He put his pistol back in his pocket and started restacking the bags, slamming them loudly, trying to make a similar sound. A few passengers had turned to look to see what all the noise was about. They saw that it was just the sloppy guy with the long hair and the baseball hat rearranging the luggage. He mimed an apology, and after a while, they all looked away.
Dale studied the hatch above him. He needed a foot or two more of height to work on it. He stepped onto a particularly beefy roller bag and put himself in a reasonable position. He threw the handle. The hatch opened an inch and then, grabbing the rushing air, slammed back with frightening speed, like a sprung mousetrap. If Dale had had his hand anywhere near the hinge, he would have lost another finger.
Cool evening air rushed by the open vent and a few stars shone through the aperture. He could envision jumping up, hooking an elbow, and getting through it to the roof of the train. But not with his pack on; it was too narrow for that. He had reached a point of no return. Again.
He took off his pack and jammed it up through the hole. The air caught it. Off his lifeline went, skittering somewhere into the night. Dale jumped up, hooked his elbow, and wriggled onto the roof of the train, which was moving at about forty miles per hour.
It was harder than he had thought it would be, but he was up there, lying on his stomach, facing forward, his T-shirt whipping across his back. It was horrendously loud both from the rush of the wind and screech of the wheels. He wanted to replace the hatch, but against this wind, it wasn’t easy. Yet it had to get done. It was just too obvious any other way. He wriggled to his side and forced the hatch up. It came down with a heavy clang.
He took a quick look around at the gray blur of land whizzing by. To the left, there seemed to be an incline, a bank. To the right, the ground went downhill. He reasoned that the incline would be the shorter fall. The wind ripped the ball cap from his head and sent it flying into the night.
Wither thou goest . . . , he thought.
He rose on one sore knee and peered out, thinking about how much jumping off the train was going to hurt. He was already in pain from the kick to the groin and the punch to the face. He didn’t have the luxury of searching for a soft landing. He’d just have to get lucky. But he’d always been lucky. Sort of.