The Leveling

Shirazi can stall the investigation until the Americans act.

I received word that matériel was moved from Natanz and Fordo yesterday. And I confirmed that Khorasani’s daughter will remain hidden until she completes her religious studies. It will not matter how many spies the Americans and the Israelis send to Kish. They will learn nothing.

Khorasani will be in your debt.

Yes, but he must never—

Ayatollah Bayat’s wife returned, and the conversation between the brothers ended.

Mark hadn’t understood much of what was said. He didn’t know who Hashemi was, nor Shirazi. He knew the mention of Natanz and Fordo were likely references to the nuclear facilities associated with those towns, but he didn’t know what it meant that matériel had been moved. He knew that a katsa probably referred to an Israeli intelligence officer, but had no idea what kind of link the Bayat brothers were talking about.

As a station chief, though, he’d rarely been able to see the whole picture—there were usually too many people, too many moving pieces, too many motives—and he’d grown used to operating with fragments of information. Men and governments were always plotting and scheming. Trying to understand it all was pointless.

To get anything done, he’d had to set aside all that he didn’t understand and focus on the tiny sliver that he did.

And what he now knew was that Ayatollah Bayat and his brother Amir were taking money from the Guoanbu in Turkmenistan and giving money to some Iranian named Hashemi, and that these actions were part of some larger scheme that was going on behind the back of their supreme leader—Ayatollah Khorasani.

In Iran, scheming behind the back of a man like Khorasani could lead to being shot by a firing squad and having your body dumped in an unmarked grave.

Or it could leave you vulnerable to blackmail.

“Turn around,” said Mark.

“Where are we going?”

They were going to find out once and for all whether Decker was alive, thought Mark. He doubted it—Decker wouldn’t have abandoned all his equipment if he hadn’t been in a hell of a pinch—but they’d come this far. Mark would see it through to the end.

“Ayatollah Bayat’s estate is going to be in lockdown mode,” he said. “So let’s go see if his brother Amir is home.”




Mark easily scaled the wall surrounding the modest two-story house and dropped silently into a back garden that was maybe fifteen feet wide by twenty feet long. He walked down a short gravel path, past a cracked birdbath and a dwarf orange tree.

In the back of the house was a sliding glass door. As he crow-barred it open, the wood frame snapped with a single loud crack. No alarm sounded.

“Going in.” He spoke to Daria over the cell phone connection they’d established; he wore an earpiece and had his phone in his pocket.

Stepping into the living room, he used a penlight to illuminate children’s toys scattered around a Persian carpet. There was a fuzzy rocking horse, a sit-and-spin baby minder, a foam soccer ball, little dolls of Muslim women wearing black headscarves, a plastic scimitar…

To his left was a modern kitchen, with stainless steel appliances arranged neatly on a white tile countertop. A tile mosaic depicting the martyrdom of Hussein—the prophet Muhammad’s grandson—hung on a far wall.

He placed Decker’s gear bag on the countertop and pulled out the digital recorder. Then he turned up the volume as high as it would go and pushed Play.

The voices of the Bayat brothers boomed out.

Khorasani suspects something.

Why do you say this?

The intelligence ministry is investigating Hashemi.

For what?

He purchased a new car. A Peugeot 405, and he paid in cash.

The fool.

He was told to wait to use the payments.

This is the problem with involving men like Hashemi.

But I had no choice. He was my only link to the Damascus—

Mark heard noises upstairs—a young boy calling out for his mother, and then Amir Bayat, whose voice Mark recognized because it was also playing on the digital recorder.

Shirazi can stall the investigation until the Americans act.

I received word that matériel was moved from Natanz and Fordo yesterday. And I confirmed that Khorasani’s daughter—

“Who is this! Who dares to violate my home!”

The words were spoken in Farsi, but loud enough for Daria to hear them over the cell phone connection. She translated them for Mark.

A flurry of footsteps sounded, as though the whole family were gathering at the top of the steps.

A woman, sounding confused, called down with a question that Mark couldn’t understand and Daria couldn’t hear.