Callsign: Bishop (Erik Somers) (Chesspocalypse #5)

Bishop snorted. “This isn’t Law and Order. What’s the real reason?”


CJ looked back at him via the rearview mirror and laughed. “All right, you got me. The reason we don’t take him down is that we like Dawoud Abbasi right where he is. As long as he doesn’t suspect that we’re wise to him, we can completely monitor his operations and keep tabs on every new terrorist he recruits. We’ve been able to neutralize quite a few potential threats with this information. Just last year a finger of Al Quaeda was planning another series of hijackings, but because we were able to stay on top of the people involved and put a stop to it. Probably saved thousands of lives. We—”

“All right,” Bishop said. “I get the picture. Abbasi is more valuable out here than behind bars.”

“You better believe it.”

“What about…” Bishop found the word difficult, but he spat it out anyway, “…my mother. What about her?”

“She’s clean, as near as we can tell. Dawoud has nine other wives, several of which are actively involved in his recruiting processes—record keeping, contacting families, that sort of thing—but Faiza stays clear of it. She seems to dislike that side of her husband a great deal, and contrary to the accepted norms of Iranian society, she has voiced her displeasure with her husband’s work many times. To be honest, we aren’t sure why Dawoud keeps her around at all.”

“Why he doesn’t kill her, you mean,” Bishop stated.

CJ nodded. “Exactly.” He sped through a red light, earning a chorus of honks from irritated drivers as he passed. He stuck his hand out the driver’s side window and gave them a gesture that made them honk even more, though Bishop couldn’t see it from his seat. “His personal life would be a lot simpler without her in the picture.”

“Other children?”

“Dawoud has plenty, but Faiza only had one.”

“Me.”

“Yup. You.” CJ nodded, then laid on the horn and stuck his head out the window to swear at another driver in perfect Persian. The other driver said something back, and CJ called him an asshole—in English—and withdrew his head. “You’re his first, too. The eldest son. The heir to his empire, so to speak.”

“His empire?”

“Didn’t I tell you? The Abbasis are rich. Worth over half a billion dollars.”

Bishop’s eyebrows rose. “That’s a lot of money.”

“Damn straight.”

“How’d you find all this out?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

They rode on in silence for a while. Bishop watched CJ dart and honk his way through Tehran traffic until they left the city limits, then he steered the car onto Freeway 7.

“Are we going to Qom?” Bishop asked, referring to the large city about a hundred miles south of Tehran.

“No, just heading south. Our plane is waiting for us in a hangar about 20 minutes outside of Tehran.”

“You’ve arranged it already?”

“I knew you’d be coming.”

“Because of my parents?” The word felt strange on his tongue, like trying to pick up a quarter while wearing gloves. “They’re in Shiraz, not Tehran.”

“Because of Manifold,” CJ replied. “The best place to fly in to get close to the Kavir is Tehran, unless you want to pretend you’re making a holy pilgrimage to Qom. You’re not a Shi’a Muslim, though.”

“I’m not Muslim at all.”

“Exactly, which is why I knew you’d pick Tehran. And Imam Khomeini is the biggest airport in the city for international flights, so I figured you’d come there if you were flying commercial.”

“What if I’d flown military?”

“Then I’d still be waiting, wouldn’t I?”

Bishop shrugged. CJ had guessed commercial and knew to check Imam Khomeini over the other airports in Tehran. That was probably how the other men had found him, too. They were probably part of the same terrorist group that had taken over the Manifold site. Most likely, they had placed agents at all four of Tehran’s major airports to watch for him. That would explain why the men were there waiting. But one question bothered him more than how well they predicted his arrival: how did they know he’d be coming?

The question hung in his mind as CJ exited Freeway 7 and turned onto a small access road headed east. In the distance, Bishop saw the mountains that bordered the Kavir Desert, or Dasht-e Kavir, as it was known in Iran. In the US, people usually pictured large, ever changing sand dunes when they imagined a desert, but that wasn’t always the case. People often forgot that the entire continent of Antarctica is actually classified as a desert.