FORTY-THREE
Quds Force sleeper operative Haz Mirza climbed out of the Westphalweg U-Bahn station in Berlin’s southern Mariendorf neighborhood, looked up at a low gray sky, and wondered how soon he would die.
It was only eight a.m., but Mirza had been up since five, when he’d received an encrypted text from a cousin in Tehran, telling him to check the news. Any news.
The twenty-four-year-old opened Twitter, and the first tweet he saw described the death of General Rajavi, no doubt at the hands of the Americans and the Jews. There were photos from the scene, and it was brutal. One close-in shot of the debris showed a severed arm at the end of which a graying hand wore Rajavi’s distinctive watch.
Haz was an angry young man already; this, he knew instantly, would send him over the edge.
And over the edge was exactly where he’d wanted to go for some time.
As a sixteen-year-old boy he’d been trained by the Iranian military; he’d shown special aptitude and unique intelligence, so he left the infantry and moved into special operations. He fought in Yemen and Syria and Libya as a Quds Force paramilitary fighter.
Mirza had been recalled to Tehran three years earlier, shortly after his twenty-first birthday, and ordered to study German. Day and night, month after month. In addition to his studies, he also met with higher-level Quds operatives, and they taught him tradecraft, more advanced weapons, and technology.
When he was twenty-two, he was no longer a zealous war fighter. He was a highly trained operative. Yet he remained as fervent as ever. When he was deemed ready by his masters, he was secreted into Europe, given the papers he needed to find residence and work, and told to recruit a cell.
And then, this done, he was told to wait.
Mirza had been proud to serve on the vanguard of Iranian interests as a spy, but he became disillusioned with the work when there was no work to do. He got a job driving a truck, the men he recruited mostly worked in the trucking industry, and they all lived very normal, if very boring, lives here in Berlin.
Mirza wanted to serve, he wanted to martyr himself, and he wanted a mission so the men he led would not grow lazy and weak and become nonbelievers, like regular Germans.
In the last few months, Mirza himself began to question his own resolve. He felt himself softening by the day.
But no longer. First thing this morning, after the shock left him, he felt as if he’d been pumped full of a powerful drug.
He would seek his jihad now, there was no doubt about it. He’d drawn up plans years ago, before Germany and much of the rest of the EU relaxed their sanctions on Iran, and he merely had to receive his orders from Tehran. He and his men would no longer be told to remain in place, to abide by all local laws, and to wait for the day when they would be activated.
No, today he would be activated, he had no doubt. He just needed the call.
One of his plans was an attack against American interests here in the city. As he was certain America was the culprit in the death of the general, he expected this plan to be the one his orders centered on.
Yes, Germany and the rest of the EU had relaxed their sanctions, but Mirza didn’t care about sanctions; he didn’t care about politics; he didn’t care about anything other than doing his job. And his job was that of an agent provocateur.
The West would call him a terrorist, but he knew that though his martyrdom would result in the death and destruction of many Americans here in Germany, he could never in a million years cause the terror that his people had undergone at the hands of the United States and its proxy dogs.
Today, though his brain raced, his mission was simple, because this was what he had trained for. He would reconnect with his team, make sure they were instilled with the fervency needed to act at a moment’s notice. He would do this physically, as he almost always did, in order to avoid phones or e-mails, which could often be traced. He would reach out to each man at his home, or his place of work, or his place of worship, and remind him of his duties, tell him that the time for complacency and safety had passed, and that the reason they’d all been chosen and trained would, at long last, soon be realized.
After this, Haz and a couple of the others would jump into a car, then journey to his weapons cache outside of town, where they would load several duffel bags of equipment into their vehicle and return to the capital.
Haz Mirza was certain that, at long last, real action was imminent.
And he’d be ready.
Shortly before eight a.m., a man in a dark gray sport coat over a collared and starched dress shirt climbed out of a taxi in front of the Hotel Adlon Kempinski, pulled his sunglasses off, and waited for the driver to pull his roll-aboard out of the trunk. He paid the man, slipped his wallet back into his linen slacks, and wheeled his bag under the long red awning and into the lobby. He found the front desk and was beckoned forward by the polite staff member.
He provided a Canadian passport under the name Darrin Patch and made small talk in English with the desk clerk, mentioning he’d just climbed off a flight from Budapest and was happy he’d been able to book an early arrival time at the hotel. He was also hoping to get a room on the fourth floor, he said, because his wife would be joining him later in the day, and they’d stayed in room 407 for a few nights on their honeymoon years earlier.
With a proud smile the clerk confirmed to Mr. Patch that suite 407 was available and ready.
A minute later the man stepped into an elevator crowded with a family of six, all of whom were coming back up from breakfast. The father pressed the button for the fourth floor, and then asked the lone man which floor he was staying on.
“I’m on four, too. Thanks,” he said, then looked around at the children.
The kids’ ages ranged from four to twelve, and the man in the sport coat looked straight ahead while the parents began a conversation about visiting a museum later in the day.
The elevator stopped on the fourth floor, everyone stepped out and turned to the right, and the man with the rolling luggage followed behind the family towards the end of the hall.
Inside suite 401, Anya Bolichova spun around to Inna and Maksim, who were both watching local news, following the story of a murder the evening before at the edge of the Tiergarten. While they did this, Semyon was putting luggage in their car in the underground garage two blocks away.
Anya said, “The family in 403 is back, but there’s another guy with them.”
Inna rushed over and watched the man on camera. “He’s not with them. He’s got his own key card in his hand.”
The family entered the door just to the left of Zakharova’s suite at the end of the hall, and the man held the card over the lock of the door directly to the right of her suite, and then he disappeared inside.
“Did you get an image of his face?”
“Not much of one. He looks like he’s just a guest.”
Inna kept her eyes on the screen. “Look him up. Suite 407. What’s his name? When did he book?” Inna turned to Maksim, who wasn’t paying attention to the new arrival at all. She said, “Make sure you use the full suppressor, not the short version. The family in 403 is back from breakfast, and there is a new man in 407.”
Akulov looked up from the couch. “You are telling me how to prepare my gun, Inna?”
Bolichova tapped keys on one of the laptops. After a moment she saw the booking. “He made the reservation online at one forty-five a.m. Darrin Patch, from Windsor, Ontario, Canada.” The image on the screen from the passport scanned by the hotel showed a man in his late thirties or early forties with short hair, a beard, and glasses. He looked to all of them like some sort of plain businessman.
“Check open source,” Inna commanded, and Bolichova searched for the man’s LinkedIn listing. She found it, and saw that he was a food and beverage consultant. He had an Instagram page, as well, with lots of pictures of restaurants, food, and spirits. Interspersed were just a few pictures of himself with a family, and a few more that showed images of camping and fishing.
Bolichova said, “Either he’s legit, or his cover is very well backstopped.”
Inna thought it over a moment. “Okay. We can’t discount him as a threat, even though it looks like he checks out. Semyon will go right behind Maksim, run rear security just inside the doorway to the suite. Anya and I will watch the cameras for any movement at all in the hall.”
She looked to Maksim, expecting some pushback, but instead he just nodded his assent and headed back into the bedroom.
Zoya returned to her suite at eight twenty, energized from her swim and her workout in the health club. Before she even showered she placed an order with room service for enough food and coffee for herself, Moises, and Yanis: a cheese omelet for her, and two baskets of croissants, jelly, and butter for the men. She added a large flask of both orange and apple juice and a full pot of coffee.
At eight thirty-five a.m. she stepped into the shower, taking her SIG pistol with her and placing it on the soap ledge.
Even when she didn’t know, without question, that hit men had tracked her down, she still kept a firearm in or near her shower when she bathed. She’d been trained to never be caught without a weapon, and though that concept was an ideal and not totally realistic, she did everything she could to be certain she kept a firearm or two within reach.
The new guest in room 407 sat on the edge of the bed, his eyes fixed on the wall in front of him, his mind on what lay beyond it.
He could hear the shower running, and he could picture Zoya Zakharova. The image simultaneously filled him with love, lust, and terror.
There were powerful emotions running through Court Gentry’s mind, but for now he didn’t act; he only sat there and took long, slow breaths. There was also medication running through him that made him more alert, more focused, and gave him energy, and for this he was thankful right now.
He’d used a CIA-backstopped passport to reserve the room, but he found this to be an acceptable risk. He knew the Agency could easily monitor guests here at the hotel; sitting right next to the U.S. embassy, it would be the height of malfeasance not to, but the legend wasn’t tied to Court personally, since Hanley had it made for someone else and then gave it to Court.
The face on the passport looked something like Court, but the passport photo showed a bearded man, while Court was now clean-shaven. But it was not actually Court’s photo, nor were the images on social media of Court, either.
He had decided, without doubt, to make contact with Zoya the evening before while he was at Dr. Kaya’s getting treatment. He couldn’t trust Brewer to run Zoya safely, and he couldn’t trust Brewer or Hanley to tell him about the danger she might be in. The moment he worked out that this operation was more important to Hanley than Zoya’s life, he told himself that it was up to him to be certain both goals were accomplished. And then, when he found out that the men from Venezuela had somehow tracked him here, he thought his proximity to Zoya might only put her in further danger.
He wanted to get her out of here. After that, he would stay and do whatever Hanley wanted of him.
He also knew he needed to make contact with her today without anyone from Shrike Group, anyone from Russia, anyone from the CIA, or anyone from German intelligence realizing he was doing so. Knocking on her door was out. He had to assume that someone would be monitoring the hallway cameras for visitors.
This left the window. Climbing along the outside of the building might have been the surest way to avoid surveillance, but it was certainly not the safest. He’d have to shimmy out his window, move laterally along a narrow ledge, and then somehow make entry to her suite. She didn’t have a balcony, per se, but in her living room, just like in Court’s room, she had large floor-to-ceiling double windows that opened inward like doors, with a metal railing in front of them. He decided this would be the easiest place to enter, although it was also much farther away than the first access point he’d come to on the ledge, which, according to his research on the layout of the suite, would be the bedroom window.
Court knew Zoya’s senses would be on full alert, which didn’t really scare him once she knew he was the one in her hotel room, but he did worry about that moment when he passed in front of her window. Someone trained, someone who was already anticipating an assassination attempt, who saw a figure outside, might well shoot him off the ledge right through the glass.
There were other drawbacks to Court’s plan, as well, the main one being that he would have to execute this move on the fourth floor, which, in typical European fashion, meant it was five stories above the street. He would be in full view of anyone looking up from Unter den Linden, so he knew he’d have to be quick to avoid unwanted attention, and lucky to not catch any wandering eyes.
Still, scooting over to the next suite’s window beat standing under the hallway cameras when he already knew German intelligence was surveilling her.
He listened to the running shower through the wall and drummed his fingers on the bed. Brewer had said Zoya told her that her colleagues were to arrive at ten a.m., and it wasn’t even nine. He had time to get her out of here; he just needed to act.
Soon enough he climbed off the bed, threw his luggage on a table, and unzipped his roll-aboard. Seconds later he was changing out of his businessman clothes as he prepared to get down to his real business.