Ultimatum, page 8
Karim Zamani clenched his hands behind his back and began to pace around the dining room. Anger built within him. What was wrong with him that his own wife was flying in the face of his wishes? With his fellow officers in the Pasdaran, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, he was feared, respected, honoured and decorated, but here within their family home on Hafez Street he felt his authority slipping away, like sand through his fingers. He had married above him. That had been the trouble all along, of course. All that money and influence her family had. That, and her breathtaking beauty, the way she would look up at him so coyly from behind that fringe of hair. He had been smitten back then, no question about it. Everything about this woman had impressed him. But now? Now he wished he’d married the carpenter’s daughter from Shemshak, the village he had grown up in. At least then he could have counted on total loyalty and obedience.
‘Do you understand,’ he addressed his wife, putting his face close to hers and still speaking deliberately slowly, as if to a very small child, ‘that every time you cross the Persian Gulf to the Arab side those people are monitoring you? Documenting your movements? Noting where you go? I’m telling you, Forouz, they have spies everywhere. Have you forgotten who you’re married to?’ He scowled at her, willing her to back down and abandon her crazy plan to go traipsing round art galleries in Abu Dhabi at this time of tension.
Forouz shrugged and gave him a hollow laugh. ‘So what if they are? Let them follow us. We have nothing to hide. Maybe we’ll leave them the bill and they can pay for our cappuccinos at the hotel!’ She turned away from him, picked up a cut segment of pomegranate and began to scoop out the succulent seeds with a spoon.
With sudden, blinding ferocity, Karim Zamani snapped. He lunged forward and knocked the fruit out of her hand, sending the spoon clattering to the floor and splashing the crimson seeds across the top of her dress, like a spray of blood. His wife screamed once, then clamped her hand to her mouth. She stared at the table in silence.
‘Forouz!’ He shouted her name, facing her square on. ‘You think all this is amusing? You think my job is some kind of a joke? You don’t stop to consider for a moment how this makes me look? My wife and my daughter running around abroad, flirting with strangers, while I’m working day and night here to defend the Revolution?’ He opened his arms wide and looked up at the ceiling, as if to ask: Oh, God, what have I done to deserve this?
‘We would never dishonour you,’ she whispered.
‘What?’ he shouted back. ‘Say it louder!’
‘I said, we would never do anything to dishonour you.’ When she raised her eyes to meet his he could see they were wet with tears. He found this curiously calming.
‘Very well,’ he continued, quieter now. ‘I have to go to Qom for a few days so, tell me, who’s going to look after Parviz while you’re away?’
‘He’ll stay with my parents in Elahieh, I’ve already made the arrangements. They will spoil him, as they always do.’ He could see her attempting a smile. It was pitiful, really, and he chose not to return it.
From the kitchen next door came the ceramic clatter of plates being rinsed under a tap, and from outside in the street, the evening call to prayer floated over the rooftops, gentle and melodic, rising above the crash and din of Tehran’s traffic. In the house of Second Brigadier General Karim Zamani, senior officer in the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, nobody spoke any more that evening.
Chapter 20
Garni Temple, Armenia
SOAKED THROUGH, TEETH chattering, eyes darting to left and right, Luke Carlton was already on full alert when he heard his name called in the dark. He braced, about to duck back into the rock-strewn ravine. Those bastards. Armenian security must have worked out that this was exactly where he’d run to, the only shelter for miles around. Of course it was. You bloody idiot, Carlton, what were you thinking?
A split second later, he recognized the voice. It was Elise! What the hell? Was he delirious? Was he imagining this? What was she doing out here? Hadn’t he left her safe and warm in a hotel room back in Yerevan?
‘Luke!’ There it was again, her voice, urgent, insistent. He scanned the darkness ahead of him until he saw her, a shapeless form moving uncertainly towards him, a pencil torch in her hand. He flinched instinctively as she rushed the last few feet and flung her arms around his neck, then held on tight. On the run for hours, he still felt very much the hunted prey.
‘Elise,’ he murmured, when they had caught their breath. ‘How did you find me?’
‘Tracker. The embassy was monitoring your movements.’ She put the palm of her hand on his chest. ‘Christ, you’re soaked through! Let’s get you into the car.’
‘Wait. What car?’ He stood his ground.
‘The embassy one – they brought me here,’ she replied, pulling at his jacket. ‘Come on, we don’t have time for this.’
They picked their way across the stony ground, Elise leading. Somewhere in the darkness a dog barked. Through a gap in a wall and out the other side and they reached an empty car park. Empty, except for a solitary vehicle with its engine running. A Range Rover. Well, that’s not obvious, Luke thought. Why not fly a bloody great Union Jack from the aerial and play the National Anthem while you’re about it? In the faint glow from its tail-lights he could see the red-and-white number plates, with a D. Diplomatic plates. Would it get them through the checkpoints? They’d soon find out.
‘You’re down here,’ Elise said briskly, holding open the back door for Luke and pushing him gently in. ‘Going to need you to lie flat, then I’ll put this over you.’ She reached into the back for a coarse woollen blanket as Luke lay down and struggled to contort his six-foot frame into the gap behind the front seats. This was bloody uncomfortable but he wasn’t complaining. For the first time in hours he wasn’t freezing, and it was dry. Safe? Too soon to tell. He felt the front seat compress next to his head as Elise got in and closed the door behind her. They moved off immediately and he hadn’t even had a chance to see who was driving.
Luke’s mouth was full of dust from the blanket but he had so many questions he just couldn’t stay silent. ‘’Lise? Fill me in. What’s the situation?’
‘The situation …’ She was smiling, he could tell. He knew her voice so well. ‘The situation is that you seem to have caused an almighty shit storm! The Armenians are going berserk. The embassy is going to have to get us out under diplomatic cover.’ He felt her hand reach round behind the seat and touch his shoulder.
‘Checkpoint ahead.’ Another disembodied voice, a man’s this time, the driver’s. Luke laid his head sideways, flat against the thinly carpeted chassis, and pulled the blanket tighter over him. He could hear the Range Rover changing down and slowing to a stop, the sound of an electric window winding down and an exchange in Armenian, interspersed with the word ‘diplomat’. Luke held his breath and kept very still as a torch beam flickered briefly round the interior of the car. He heard a lengthy rattling sound as something was dragged across the tarmac – a chain spike barrier? More exchanges in Armenian and then the engine revved once more. They were through.
‘So, how did you know?’ Luke turned to look at her. Beyond the round Perspex window, the lights of Yerevan receded beneath them.
Elise took a sip of vodka. ‘How did I know what?’
‘That I wasn’t going to make it back by five.’
‘Ah. Just a hunch.’ Elise looked up at the Polish stewardess and held up her glass for a refill. Seated side by side in business class on the 04.40 Lot Airlines from Yerevan to Warsaw, they were possibly the only passengers still awake.
‘That’s bollocks, ’Lise. How did you know?’
‘I didn’t,’ she replied. ‘Not until a woman from the embassy told me. She came and found me in the art gallery and we drove straight from there. I think they must have been monitoring the police channels or something. So …’ She rested her hand on his arm and moved her face closer to his. Amazing. They had gone through all this and still she had that delicious fragrance about her. But Elise’s expression was serious now. ‘Do you want to tell me what went on up there in that monastery?’
Oh, sure. I found my agent with his throat slit from ear to ear, then fought for my life with two thugs in a mountain cave. I ended up driving a pen into a man’s brain. More vodka?
‘Not really, no,’ Luke replied, wiping the tiredness from his eyes. ‘We’ve got thirteen hours to kill in Warsaw before our connection. Let’s leave it till then.’
Elise nodded, put her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.
Thirteen hours to kill in Warsaw. He knew exactly what was coming next. There’d be the initial debrief with the Head of Poland Station, the obligatory ‘interview without coffee’, the encrypted report flashed back to Vauxhall with snide personal observations. ‘Subject displays no remorse for what’s happened. Recommend further psych profiling and a period of compulsory leave’, etc., etc. Then the summons into Vauxhall and more debriefs. Various figures would express their disappointment. Perhaps there’d be a pitying look from Angela before the dreaded word: reassignment.
But what did he expect? A simple agent debrief had turned into a bloodbath. Three dead bodies and not an ounce of intel to show for it. That was a pretty crap scoreboard by anyone’s reckoning. No, whichever way you cut it, this op had turned into a complete and utter fuck-up. Perhaps, after all, it was time to consider an alternative career in investment management.
Chapter 21
Tehran
ON THE ROOF of the Shahrbani Palace a flurry of snowflakes swirled around the red, white and green flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran. With each blast of icy wind that blew straight off the Elburz Mountains it twitched like a living thing. It was a grand, imposing building that dated from the 1930s, long before the Islamic Revolution. It had columns and balustrades, tall trees outside, a glittering interior within, and now it housed the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
But today its grandeur was lost on Morteza Hosseini as he took the entrance steps two at a time, stealing a glance at his watch as he reached the top. He was late. He was a small, neat man in his early forties who liked to keep impeccable timing. As Deputy for Legal and International Affairs at the Foreign Ministry, he knew this meeting could not begin without him. With his degree in political science from a US university, his internship at a bank in the City of London and his fluency in English, Arabic and German, there were few people in the ministry with a skillset to match his. And while of course, as everyone knew, the final decision would always rest with the Supreme Leader, aided by his closest advisers, Hosseini’s input was vital. Like many of those he worked with at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he would be considered by outsiders as ‘a moderate’, a pragmatist, eager to see Iran regain its rightful place on the world map, old enmities forgotten, new alliances forged. The hardliners hated him.
‘So the question we have to address today,’ he told them in the meeting room, ‘is do we need good relations with Britain?’ There were murmurs and glances. To some sitting at that ornate carved table, Britain was, and always would be, the Little Satan, the junior partner in crime to that most enduring of Iran’s foes: America, the Great Satan. The role of MI6 and the CIA in overthrowing Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister in 1953, and helping the Shah to power, would never be forgotten or forgiven. Others saw it differently.
‘Let us consider this question carefully,’ the Deputy continued. ‘Because remember, my friends, Britain is leaving the EU and our friends are in Europe. For example, I have more than two hundred applications for lines from European banks sitting in my computer.’ Those who knew Hosseini could recognize that he was playing devil’s advocate. To some he had confided that his years spent in London as a young man were some of the happiest of his life – he had even developed a fondness for English Breakfast tea, thick-cut Oxford marmalade and watching soap operas like EastEnders. His friends liked to tease him that he was practically an Anglophile. His enemies saw that as a weakness to be exploited.
‘Why am I asking this question?’ He looked around the room, one eyebrow raised inquisitively. ‘Because we have been approached by the British Embassy with an interesting offer. Something that could provide us with an opportunity to extend our reach across the Persian Gulf and dilute the Western alliance with those Gulf sheikhdoms.’ He pronounced the last two words dismissively, as if Iran’s oil-rich Arab neighbours were just a temporary annoyance.
‘My friends,’ he continued, ‘I will not pretend that this doesn’t come with its own dangers, and we must keep our eyes open at all times to the machinations of those who would do this great country harm.’
They waited expectantly for him to finish but Hosseini paused while a glass of water was fetched.
‘Gentlemen,’ he resumed, dabbing his mouth with a napkin, ‘it has been suggested that we host a visit from Britain’s Foreign Secretary.’
Immediately he registered the murmurs of surprise and a few scowls of disapproval. He had been expecting that. There would be many, he knew, who would say this was surely not the time for such a visit. But he held up his hand for silence. ‘As I say, the final decision rests with the Supreme Leader and, as always, he will do what is best for our country. But I must tell you that, in the interests of progress, of modernity, and of strengthening Iran’s position in the world, I am going to recommend that we approve this visit.’
The meeting broke up with those present dividing themselves into two factions. Hosseini stood near the door, accepting the handshakes and congratulations of some, while others gave him only the most cursory of nods as they filed out into the corridor. He ticked off the names of the dissenters in his head and found they matched exactly the list he had had in mind. No surprises there: Iranian politics could be confusing to outsiders, but if you knew your way around them, some things were reassuringly predictable.
Outside the ministry the temperature was hovering just below zero – Tehran’s climate tended towards scorching in summer and freezing in winter. In the icy breeze that swirled around the courtyard there was no one to notice a muffled figure as he walked quickly to a secluded corner. He was one of those who had declined to shake Hosseini’s hand after the meeting broke up. Checking first that no one was peering down at him from the windows of the Foreign Ministry, he dialled a number in Qom, eighty miles to the south. The man at the other end of the line was intrigued to hear what he had to say and thanked him. The Circle, the Dayere, had expected to be kept up to date with every development. This was important and worrying news.
Chapter 22
Qom, Iran
AS THE CAR sped southwards down the Persian Gulf Highway from Tehran to Qom, the spiritual heartland of Iran’s all-powerful clergy, Karim Zamani felt a deep contentment. He was leaving behind all his domestic troubles and drawing closer to this holy city of domes, minarets and boundless wisdom. Qom always felt like an all-embracing mother to him. Zamani was a military man, not a religious one, but as a guardian of his nation’s Islamic Revolution he drew strength from the religious convictions of the ayatollahs and other clerics in Qom. He had always admired their wisdom and piety. He knew that their profound knowledge must come from long hours spent hunched over texts in seminaries, sitting cross-legged in poor light, reading centuries-old curling, yellowed pages through thick-lensed spectacles. That was dedication, that was devotion, and that was something he, Karim Zamani, could personally identify with.
His appointment was in an unremarkable building, constructed in the post-Shah era, with pale, austere walls and dark, smoked-glass windows. It stood slightly apart from the others in the street and was surrounded by an imposing ten-foot-high wall, topped with razor wire and interrupted only by a steel grille gate. High up on the wall a camera swivelled towards the chauffeured car as it drew up to the gate, which, seconds later, swung open. The raised barrier behind them was lowered and Zamani’s car was ushered into the inner courtyard.
Just three days had passed since the unfortunate events across the border up in Armenia, three days in which Zamani and his immediate circle had had to come to terms with the loss of two of their finest, most trusted covert operatives, men who had killed across three countries with impunity, vanishing into the ether afterwards. They had carried out their duty with honour, silencing the filthy traitor who was about to spill the country’s innermost secrets to its enemies, and they had paid for it with their lives. That can happen when you put together a rushed operation like this. But the worrying question was, who had dispatched his men in that cave? Yes, there was much to discuss today, Zamani told himself, as he stood up, straightened his tunic and headed for the ground-floor entrance.
The hall was bare, save for a large portrait of the Supreme Leader. Two men, in well-cut suits, got up as he walked in and nodded respectfully. They knew exactly who he was, but that did not exempt Karim Zamani from the security protocols. Jacket off, passed through the scanner, then a thorough body search and finally his mobile phone taken from him. Zamani made no objections: he had personally insisted on these measures. No electronic device was to be allowed into the building, absolutely nothing that might be prone to hacking and eavesdropping by those scheming bastards in America’s National Security Agency. Memories of the damage done to Iran’s nuclear industry by their Stuxnet virus were still fresh. The waves of paranoia it had set off had yet to subside. Hence today’s meeting of the Dayere was being held under absolute secrecy – in fact, even the group’s existence was known only to a very few. Its members assumed that it had been quietly sanctioned by the Office of the Supreme Leader. Karim Zamani knew that not to have been the case.
Upstairs in the meeting room on the second floor the heating was on and the windows were grey with condensation. The eight men – no women – sat expectantly around the table. No notes were to be taken, no recordings made. The eight began with a prayer for divine guidance in their mission, delivered by one of their number, a black-turbaned mullah, and also for divine justice to be meted out on those who stood in their way. The next to speak was a man who, like most of them, wore a dark suit over a white, collarless shirt. Wire-framed glasses and no tie. Ever since the Islamic Revolution of ’79, ties had been frowned on as symbols of Western imperialism. He was blessed with one of the more creative and innovative brains in the intelligence wing of the IRGC, a division that by 2018 had almost completely eclipsed Iran’s official Ministry of Intelligence and Security, the Ettela’at.
