The Natanz Directive Read online

  “Thanks.” I even smiled. But Karimi had no sooner crossed the threshold and closed the door than three things happened in as many seconds. First, I horse-collared him with one arm. Second, I pressed the barrel of my Mauser against his temple. And third, I said in the calmest voice he had ever heard, “Didn’t you get the message, Mr. Karimi? We were to meet alone. Not with a couple of your buddies hanging around.”

  “And so we are.” Karimi gagged on the words. “We are meeting, and I am alone. Just as you requested.”

  I had to give it to these Middle Eastern types: they really knew how to split hairs. “Have your friend come out, Mr. Karimi. Now.”

  The office was crammed with cheap desks covered by a jumble of desk lamps and open cardboard boxes. Computers ten years past their prime were tied together by extension cords and cables that snaked across the room in search of a functioning electrical outlet. Overhead, a row of fluorescent lamps buzzed and flickered and painted everything with an anemic, greenish cast.

  I pushed him through a doorway into an open bay. Car tires and cardboard boxes in various sizes were stacked on sagging plywood shelves. The place smelled of grease and grime like a neglected auto garage. I said: “We’re wasting time, Mr. Karimi.”

  I increased the pressure on his esophagus, and a single word squeezed from his vocal cords: “Aziz.”

  I didn’t suffer fools well. Never had. But in a voice as calm as a placid lake I said, “Your friend outside has been waylaid by my friends outside, so let’s quit playing games.”

  The man named Aziz stepped out from the shadow, his right hand holding a pistol at the ready. A Walther .380. Good gun. Enough to blast a hole through his partner, but probably not through me. Not that I would have bet my house on it.

  “Tell him,” I said to Karimi.

  “Put the gun down, Aziz. Let’s talk.”

  Aziz was a lanky, hard-looking man, maybe thirty or thirty-five if you gave him the benefit of the doubt. The gun dropped to his side. “On the counter,” I said, easing my gun away from the side of Karimi’s head.

  Aziz laid the Walther on the counter next to a toolbox. I loosened my grip on Karimi’s throat. “Hell of a way to get an operation started,” I said in English.

  “We needed to make sure that we could trust you,” Karimi answered.

  Smart thinking, weak execution.

  I pocketed the Mauser and picked up the Walther. I released the magazine and let it clatter to the floor. Racking the slide, I emptied the chamber. I tossed the pistol to the floor. “Okay, now you can trust me.”

  I pointed to a card table and four folding chairs. “Sit. Now that we’re acquainted, let’s get to business.” I took the chair with my back to the wall. Karimi and Aziz sat opposite me. Stacks of paper littered the table. I saw bills of lading, customs documents, and shipping manifests, all counterfeit of course. I got out my iPhone and shot Davy Johansen a coded text: Shipshape.

  Next, I dipped my hand into an interior coat pocket, withdrew an envelope containing fifty thousand euros, and tossed it in Karimi’s direction. “For your time.”

  He opened the flap and thumbed the bills in the envelope. He glanced at Aziz. Then he pushed the envelope inside his windbreaker. “That’s a lot of money. What does it buy?”

  “I have to get into Iran. I have to do it quickly, and I have to do it with absolutely secrecy. Who better than the MEK. We’ve worked together before. We’ve both benefited. Same deal.”

  His brow wrinkled. “When? Why?”

  “When is my business. Why is obvious. Regime change,” I said. Those were the magic words with the MEK. They harbored no shortage of hatred when it came to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mullahs on the Supreme Counsel. If the words mortal enemies ever applied, this was a perfect example.

  Karimi’s stare deepened. His face bunched into a tight knot. “Regime change. And you can make that happen?”

  “Hah!” His friend Aziz was disgusted. He jumped to his feet and threw his arms in the air.

  “Have your friend sit down.” I didn’t say this to Aziz. It was an ultimatum that I expected Karimi to use to reestablish his footing in the meeting.

  He said, “I wouldn’t presume to tell my friend how to express his indignation.”

  “Then tell Mr. Aziz he has two choices. He can sit, or I can help him sit. Please tell him that my definition of help and his definition may not be the same.”

  Karimi twisted his head in Aziz’s direction. He gave a classic Gallic shrug and opened his palms to his friend as if to say, You decide.

  Aziz stood his ground for three face-saving seconds, then trudged back to his chair and sat.

  “Thank you.” I was still looking at Karimi. “I need contacts. I need cover. I need transportation.”

  “Why come to me? If my sources are correct about you, you’re a phone call away from our leadership. Why come to me?” he asked again.

  “Because I respect the chain of command,” I said. I was lying, of course. I couldn’t have cared less about the MEK’s chain of command. What I respected was the fact that the guys on the ground—guys like these two sewer rats—were the ones in the know about every other sewer rat in Paris, and that’s what I needed.

  “Listen, Karimi, you want your country back, then we can’t play games. You have to trust me, and I have to trust you.” Total bullshit. I trusted this guy about as far as I could throw him. “Make a call to Amsterdam. Set up a meeting for me tomorrow. Noon. Tell them Mr. Green respects the MEK hierarchy.” I was making myself ill. “Tell them these are the most important times in the MEK’s history.”

  I paused and let the words linger. Karimi wasn’t stupid. He negotiated for a living, and he knew the negotiations weren’t complete. “And?” he said.

  “And I need the immediate whereabouts of one of your esteemed colleagues, Mr. Karimi. A complete and total waste of humanity named Reza Mahvi.”

  “Reza.” He couldn’t hold my eye. His gaze shifted to Aziz, who used the moment to inch to the very edge of his seat. Karimi drew a noisy breath, glanced back, and said, “Why?”

  “Because he’s peeing in my government’s cornflakes, that’s why,” I said. “And because he’s selling the information to your sworn enemy. Any other questions?”

  CHAPTER 4

  PARIS—DAY THREE

  It was a black night. Moonless. Ideal.

  Not that I had planned it that way.

  I’d been given the word. Mr. Elliot said the Iranian had to disappear. My mission depended on it. He didn’t say to wait for the perfect night.

  Disappear was one of the many euphemisms guys like Mr. Elliot used. You know, one of those words that’s maybe just a little less offensive or distasteful than coming right out and saying, Kill the bastard.

  Politicians love euphemisms. I guess we like them all right in our business, too. We used the term special ops when what we were really talking about was burning down unsavory governments, sabotaging narco-terrorist operations, torturing people who may or may not know things we needed to know, assassinating the rottenest apples in the barrel. Controlling a little war in Africa or a well-meaning skirmish in the Middle East. You get the picture.

  But this kind of thing was done neither haphazardly nor irreverently. Every operation, every assignment, every action was plotted with purpose and clarity. Some people might look upon sabotage or assassination or insurrection as indefensible, but nothing could be further from the truth. They were acts with a singular purpose, acts bent on defending the American way of life.

  I had no problem putting a gun in the face of a drug dealer suspected of blackmailing a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and I had no problem pulling the trigger. You play with fire you pay the price. But I did have a problem with a U.S. senator who lacked the pluck and the self-control to keep his cocaine problem behind closed doors. Now he was jeopardizing my mission, and now I was being asked to clean up his mess.

  The drug dealer’s name was Reza Mahvi. I’d
known him back when he worked as a captain in a swank restaurant on New York’s Upper East Side and owned a little piece of a crowded honky-tonk bar in the Village. Reza knew half the politicians in D.C. back then, and the senator from Massachusetts was just one of them. Reza had fixed up dozens of congressmen with expensive women and nearly as many with enough pot and blow to keep them high twenty-four hours a day.

  The last time I’d seen the Iranian, I was undercover in New York, and he was bragging about the women he dated as if half of them were movie stars and the other half were United Nations staffers instead of call girls and political wannabes. I remember his making a federal case about the orange Corvette he drove back then, as if he’d plunked down forty grand in cash for the thing instead of digging himself further and further into debt the way all his Iranian buddies did.

  Yeah, I’d known Reza Mahvi well enough. Did I like him? The truth was, liking him or disliking him wasn’t part of the job back then, even though I’d acted like he was my best buddy every time I went into the club. Reza wasn’t a big enough fish or a ballsy enough player to trade heavy in the hard stuff, but he knew the guys who did. Part of my job for the twenty-seven years I’d spent running black ops was to find them.

  Apparently, somewhere along the line, Reza had relocated to Paris and graduated from drugs and women to extortion and blackmail. The senator from Massachusetts had become one of his favorite targets. But now Reza wanted more than the senator’s money: he wanted the kind of information that only the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was privy to. I didn’t know which of them was more stupid or more careless, the guy doing the blackmailing or the guy with the target on his forehead. I had my opinion, but it didn’t mean much under the circumstances.

  When Mr. Elliot said that Reza Mahvi had to disappear, I knew immediately that the order had come from the highest level. No one had to say another word. I understood completely. Reza and his once benign dog-and-pony show had stepped over the line, and the most important mission of my career was in jeopardy. Wasn’t going to happen.

  I didn’t like carrying a gun in a foreign city, especially with a fake passport in my pocket. I didn’t like using MEK sewer rats for my source information. It also wouldn’t have been my first choice to make the hit on a street as busy as the Rue de Pantin, but I didn’t have the luxury of waiting for Reza to take a midnight stroll in the Luxembourg Gardens.

  The Iranian had taken up residence in a seventeenth-century apartment house within spitting distance of the Seine, but just far enough away to keep the rents reasonable. He was on a month-to-month lease. It was 11:30 P.M. when I cruised down the street the first time. I was driving a beat-up Renault that Davy Johansen assured me could not be traced. It was Thursday night, and I had the windows down. The fragrance off the Seine hinted of an early autumn, my favorite time of year in Paris. Too bad I wouldn’t be around long to enjoy it.

  Lights blazed from a dozen or more windows across the face of the complex. I heard music drifting down from a third-floor balcony, and I saw a half-dozen people with wineglasses in their hands. I made two more passes. Then I toured the parking lot out back and found the space reserved for unit 19, Reza Mahvi’s place. Cars filled half the other spaces, and most were newer models owned by twenty- and thirty-year-olds who probably saw themselves as “upwardly mobile.” Too bad Reza had given up his orange Corvette: it would have stood out like a sore thumb and told all his neighbors that an Iranian pimp lived in unit 19. These days he drove a white 1984 Mercedes convertible, as if that were less conspicuous.

  I got on the radio. Davy Johansen and his partner had taken up positions on either end of the block and were there mostly to see to it that Reza didn’t bolt. He wasn’t going to bolt.

  “Status,” I said. “Alpha?”

  “At the table,” Davy said. He was positioned east of the complex on Rue de Pantin, with eyes on every piece of transportation moving in my direction. “At the table” was typical tradecraft. We always spoke as if the target had a scanner with the capability of monitoring our conversation, no matter how long the odds were.

  “Bravo?”

  “Table clear,” the one posted at the intersection west of Reza’s place said. I didn’t know him. I didn’t want to know him. Just do the job and say good night.

  “Roger that,” I said.

  I didn’t want the Iranian using the visitors’ parking spaces out in front of the apartment house, and a dirtball like Reza wouldn’t think twice about doing that if he thought it would save him a dozen steps to his front door. Visibility out on the street was way too risky, especially with people hanging out on their balconies, so we’d filled the empty spaces with rental cars. Just in case.

  “Sit tight,” I said in a voice so calm you would have thought we were delivering a pizza. “Not a chance in the world this guy’ll miss dinner. Momma’s cooking up a classic. He’ll be here.” All this really meant was that I knew how Reza operated. I knew he was a creature of habit. And I knew he’d make an appearance eventually.

  There was something else I remembered about Reza Mahvi. He was nothing if not a big talker. He couldn’t wait to regale you with his puny exploits. If there was a name to drop, he dropped it—anything to put a fresh coat of paint on the image of a second-rate street hustler. Clearly, he’d taken a step up in the world. From hustling drugs and women for U.S. congressmen on the prowl to putting the squeeze on the very guys he used to pimp for. Give the guy credit.

  “Action!” Bravo called, his voice as cool as a mountain stream. He had Reza in his sights. “ETA thirty seconds. I’m putting a lid on it on this end.”

  “Likewise on my end,” Davy said.

  “Ten seconds to the table. Fifteen to the chair. Good luck,” Bravo said.

  “Roger that,” I said. And those were the last words we would ever say to each other.

  I saw the headlights before I saw the Mercedes. I was parked in the space reserved for unit 16, two cars away from Reza’s space. Naturally, Reza spun his wheels navigating the parking lot; he may have climbed the criminal ladder a rung or two, but he still conducted himself like a second-rate drug dealer.

  The Mauser 7.65 mm rested on my lap, and I gripped it loosely with a gloved hand. It was fitted out with an aluminum silencer and was untraceable.

  Mob-style. That’s how Mr. Elliot wanted it done. A clear message needed to be delivered to anyone else thinking about blackmailing an American official, and the 7.65 caliber, the silencer, and the parking lot—everything was designed to make it look like that.

  I opened my door, slipped the Mauser into the pocket of my jacket, and climbed silently out. I walked along the back of the cars to Reza’s Mercedes. The music inside the car was still blaring, and Reza was drumming the steering wheel, waiting for the song to end. I kept my back to the apartment house even though all the balconies faced the Seine. I walked without a sound between the Mercedes and a gray Citroën. I stopped next to the driver’s-side door and wrapped on the window with my left hand. Reza sat bolt upright at the sound, like a man fending off a blow. Then he saw my face, and the slow dawn of recognition caused his brow to furrow. I smiled, but the furrows only curled into lines of dark suspicion. I beat on the window again. He finally rolled it down, shaking his head and trying to look pissed off.

  “What the fuck? That you, Jake? What the hell you doing in Paris, man? You scared the shit out of me,” he said, sneering.

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” I said, easing the Mauser from my jacket pocket. “But we need to talk.”

  Reza shook his head; he was clearly partied out. “I got no blow on me, man. Nada. And besides, I’ve been out of that business for years.”

  “Do an old friend a favor and turn down the music, Reza,” I said calmly.

  Perturbed, Reza reached for the knob on the radio. I raised the Mauser. The end of the silencer came up next to his head, and I pulled the trigger. Two times in less than a second. The Iranian slumped sideways. I didn’t wait to see if he was dead. He
was.

  I launched the Mauser toward an overgrown hedgerow, turned, and walked with unhurried steps back to the Renault. I was opening the door on the driver’s side when two women came out the back door of the apartment house and started across the lot. I didn’t glance back and didn’t hurry. I slid behind the wheel but didn’t close the door until I saw the women duck inside a red Fiat parked a dozen spaces away. When I heard their doors slam, I closed mine. I waited until the Fiat was out of sight before turning over the engine.

  I wasn’t concerned. I’d be on a plane for Amsterdam in an hour. And by the time the French police identified the Iranian, I’d be headed for the most dangerous place on earth and Reza Mahvi would be the very least of my worries.

  CHAPTER 5

  AMSTERDAM—DAY FOUR

  I never forgot a name and never jettisoned a possible connection, including Arman DiCiccio.

  I entered the Merry Times café, a serious dump on a side street just off Warmoesstraat Boulevard. Pungent smoke clouded the air. A bunch of college-age kids crowded the closest table and shared hits on a bong. Most of the other tables were occupied by couples nursing lattes and puffing on joints. Glass cabinets sat atop the wooden counter along the back of the café. A chalkboard above the counter advertised prices for the café’s daily specials: Silver Haze, seven euros; Thai stick, six euros; Isolator hashish, eight euros. Ah, Amsterdam! No place on earth quite like it.

  I wore a tie-dyed hoodie with a tattered denim Jerry Garcia cap and mirrored sunglasses. I looked like an over-the-hill Dead Head and fit right in.

  I was here for a reason, and it had nothing to do with getting high. There was a link that everyone digging into Iran’s nuclear capabilities failed to make, and that was the funding that supported both their worldwide terrorist movement and their weapons research. A serious part of that funding came from their monopoly on opium production, and their influence stretched from Afghanistan and Turkey to Burma and Cambodia. It meant billions of dollars, and you can get a lot done with billions of dollars.