Banquo's Ghosts (27 page)

Wallets and Marjorie made eye contact with one another, almost hiding their mirth. “We ran out of disc space,” Wallets said. “Anyway, pretty soon Sheik Kutmar will go on Farsi TV and tell the world you’ve been released. ‘On your own recognizance.’ And no, he
won’t
know where you went. Or words to that effect.”

Yossi clicked away the news stuff, and the Esfahan Manufacturing Facility came back. This time the image was real time—dark, as it was night outside. They saw no real shapes, just a sprinkling of lights. Wallets kept an eye on it. “So the Sheik gets to keep building his bomb, and we get to cover our backsides,” he sighed. Then found his eleventh cigarette, shaking it out of the soft pack and sticking it in his mouth. It bounced in his lips as he finally said, “Not what we hoped for.” A shrug. He paused to light up.

Suddenly Yossi became agitated. “Wait! Wait!” He began pointing at the screen. Wallets leaned over his shoulder, squinting at the screen. “There!” Faintly, they could see movement on an arterial road leading from the Esfahan complex. A convoy of trucks, four in all.

“East? West?”

“Looks west. Yes, west.”

Wallets, Marjorie, and Yossi huddled and clicked and pointed at the screen. Huddled and clicked and pointed some more. It went on for a long time with their backs to Johnson, and he started to feel left out. He tried to follow their discussion, the “what ifs” and the “yeah, buts”—eventually giving up and resisting the impulse to ask,
Well??

Bits of their conversation mingled with his thoughts of Yasmine, and his eyelids drooped, and he fell into a half-reverie. He saw her in a white lab coat standing over a stainless-steel drum at the Gonabad Complex, stirring methodically, incanting “Double, double, toil and trouble . . . ” Then Marge directed five dark words at him, awakening him again:

“Something wicked this way comes.”

Wallets confirmed. “I agree,” he said boldly. “Right friggin’ here to Kermanshah.” He paced away from the laptop, then back.

“How long would you say?” he asked Yossi.

“Tomorrow night, maybe day after tomorrow, in the morning.” Then, guessing: “To Piranshahr, right on the frontier.”

“Where’s Piranha?” Johnson asked meekly.

Wallets and Yossi the Turk ignored Johnson. They began busily hammering emails into the laptop. Wallets rattled off a list of contacts. “And don’t forget to cc Centcom; the way shit’s going, some martinet Major on staff in Florida will start playing ‘Red Light/Green Light’ with us, if they’re not in the loop.”

Marjorie came over to Johnson, seeing the questions on his bleary-eyed face:

“We think whatever’s in those trucks is heading right for us, from the Esfahan complex where they make the triggers. What we can’t see is the train from the Nantanz facility with mountains of gunk. Might have shipped already. Trucks meet trains.” She paused, when she saw the look of confusion on Johnson’s face. “Two separate sites, understand? The one you saw where the nuclear material is produced—which everyone says doesn’t exist. Then the second site, which you didn’t see. Some sort of trigger device from the most secure fabrication plant in Iran—which everyone says doesn’t build triggers. They bring them together and pack ’em like hot sausage. Right here in Kermanshah, end of the railroad line. Fully mated and loaded, back in the trucks they go. Next comes
Piranshahr
, not Piranha, the very last city before Iraq. Then up the mountains and over the river to Grandmother’s house we go.”

“Iraq?” Johnson asked, still trying to grasp what he was hearing.

“Sure. Most porous border in the world; once over the mountains they could have those trucks in Marseille in a week. Then container-shipped God knows where.”

“But . . .” he started slowly. “You don’t even know what’s in these trucks, right? Or if the train—if there’s a train—is already here. I saw the trucks, show me the train.”

Marjorie leveled him with a look. “You want to get a search warrant and go back to Dr. Evil’s Persian lair? No, I didn’t think so. Right now we’re four blind mice tapping along with our tin cups and maybe bumped into something. What’s
your
plan? Wait till we find out what’s in those trucks on the streets of San Francisco?”

Johnson had no answer.

“What we
do
know is that if they are moving something, this is the closest we’re ever going to get. With any luck we’ll track the trucks into Iraq, head them off at the pass, and nail them cold.”

“I see,” Johnson said, still skeptical.

Wallets’ voice broke through their argument. “No, Yossi, you tell that peckerhead
Loo
-tenant Colonel, I
want
that exact unit. 10
^th
Mountain Division, Second Battalion, Delta Company. No fucking substitutes, ’cause I know every Ringknocker’s résumé, every 201 there. And besides, the Hummers—a deuce-and-a-half. SITREP grids on site. If we get a target, we can bushwhack them down in the foothills. If it turns out they’re just smuggling Tupperware, we’ll let them know.”

Yossi became agitated again, this time with a touch of panic. “Hey!” The laptop screen began to flash with a red glow and beep an alarm. After two clicks the glowing stopped; the alarm died. The screen showed a street grid from Long Eye. A troop of men moving door to door in infrared outline. Body heat. They stopped in front of one place.

Yossi pointed to the screen: “Right next door here. Syrian Take-Out, Jabba’s,” Yossi explained. “Revolutionary Guards. They checking. Block to block.”

Long moments passed as everyone watched the view from space. The men were dragging patrons out of the restaurant. People being kicked, beaten. Interrogation. You could see the writhing bodies. Even without the sound, very ugly.

Abruptly, the screen went blank. Yossi jerked back and barked in frustration. Wallets hovered over him, really worried now. “Did we lose satellite feed?”

Yossi’s voice came back, this time scared. “No, satellite signal strong. See?” A slim field on the PC showed a satellite icon, bold green.

For the first time ever, Johnson saw Wallets at a loss.

The satellite image on the laptop suddenly flashed back. This time just with a message: “Data Loss. Stand By. We Apologize For Any Inconvenience.”

Yossi slammed his palm on the desk, disgusted. They’d been zonked. They all looked from face to face, silently, weighing their situation. Thinking the same thought. Leave now? Marjorie stole a cigarette.

A banging thump rang through the cavernous Burka Company. Someone pounding on the metal door. And not the downstairs door either. Everyone thought of the men outside Jabba’s. They’d been compromised. Three large bangs. Then a loud voice. Everyone froze. Four blind mice. Yossi got up. “Stay.”

Four terrible minutes. Johnson couldn’t take his eyes off Wallets and Marjorie. They’d gone deathly still. Wallets sitting up on his cot. Marjorie watching her cigarette burn. Their eyes strayed to the automatic weapons leaning against the wall, but made no move to touch them. Johnson’s feet throbbed as if to mock him. The sound of Yossi talking from the stairway door drifted back. Someone else talking. Then stopped. They heard the door clang shut; the bolt thrown. Yossi appeared in the glass-fronted office once again, mightily pleased with himself.

“Shit Mullah. I make
bigger
payoff. So he no go shrine. Forget holiday. He send girls back here Monday work. I lose no dollars.”

“What about the men in the street?” Johnson blurted.

Yossi glanced at the laptop. In the interim, the image of the nearby street had returned—sorry for the inconvenience. A single man in infrared was waving, gesticulating wildly at the drumhead justice gang. Yossi’s Mullah. The gang broke up. Yossi shrugged. “I ask Mullah what noise in street? I trying to work. Then give him more bribe. So he send assholes to make Shabbat, yell at them, ‘Go to Mosque! It way past sunset!’ ” And Yossi winked, “People here.
Very
holy.”

T
hey left the All-Iran Burka Company at dawn. In a curious way, Johnson felt sorry to leave. The place had been strangely comfortable, an unexpected refuge in a dangerous land. The cruddy food, the whiskey, watching Yossi’s laptop magic lantern show, the camaraderie—and what comrades. Wallets could simply reach out and demand the cavalry come and get them. The 10
^th
Mountain Division, Second Battalion, Delta Company. It made Johnson feel important to be with them, like he had made it past the velvet rope line of U.S. national security. Even the wormer didn’t seem to bother him.

He balked for a moment before descending the steel stairs on his swollen feet. But he managed to hobble along, gripping the railing for support. Marjorie promised this day’s travel would be easy, and he had no reason to doubt her. Tomorrow, she warned him, would be harder.

Wallets, Marjorie, and Johnson donned their head-to-toe burkas before passing through the metal door to the alley. Yossi waited for them in the car, the engine running. They all piled in. Back out the alley and into the streets of Kermanshah. Here on the outskirts of the city in the industrial district, the town was just coming awake. Buses belched black exhaust and paused for passengers, sitting by the curb at the start of their routes. Small street-corner cafés were already open, waiters or shop owners wiping off tables and setting up chairs, Saturday till sundown,
still Sabbath, a big coffee day. As they drove east toward a line of hills, the two-way street broadened to a four-lane highway, split by a concrete median. The Turk gunned the accelerator, and the car hurtled forward.

Inside his stifling black hood, Johnson tried to watch the passing scene. He had the impression of low stucco walls, satellite dishes, the occasional storied public housing project of poured concrete. But as his breath blew back in his face, the sights fled across his vision, and all he could think of was tearing off this ugly hood. How could anyone live like this? Why would anyone want to? Only out of fear, subservience, shame—all safe under a cloak of anonymity.

They sailed along for a bit, then pitched forward as the car squealed to a halt. Johnson tried to peer through the little slit, but Marjorie hissed at him, “Be still!” They had stopped at some kind of checkpoint, a traffic barrier across the road. Armed men barred the car from moving front and back. Marjorie’s voice again in a loud whisper, “Be ready to get out of the car.”

Sure enough, one of the armed guards at the driver’s side window began barking orders at Yossi, and before ten words were exchanged, the Turk grunted something in Farsi: “
Baleh! Baleh!
” like
Okay, okay, no problem!
Then turned to them in the back, ordering, “
Moshkeli nist!
” meaning, “Get out!” Clearly, the armed guards didn’t want to touch the “women,” holding the car door open for them and allowing them to stand in a small group beside the car while they searched it. Johnson saw Wallets shrink his height by bending his knees, and he tried to do likewise, wondering whether any of the men would notice it under the robes. So far none did, treating the women as if they didn’t exist.

A long stream of excuses came out of Yossi’s mouth. As the chief checkpoint guard ordered him around the vehicle, Yossi waved his hands plaintively, shuffling to the car’s trunk. Johnson had never seen the man so abject, but he understood the ruse: absolutely no point in trying to bully or shoot your way out of this. Better the goons take him for some grubby peddler.

Yossi popped the trunk, and the checkpoint guards clustered around it. Several made appreciative grunts, oohs and aahs. A half-dozen Fujitsu laptops sat in the trunk, still in their shiny factory boxes. And a hundred or so DVDs, the latest Hollywood movies. Baksheesh: bribery goods.
The checkpoint guards began to reach inside the trunk without waiting for an invitation, exclaiming their approval, impressed at the quality of the merchandise.

Yossi’s voice rose an octave as he haggled with the chief guard, begging him to spare a few laptops. But his pleading failed. In the end, they took every one. The Turk looked every bit the dejected, ruined merchant and barked the girls back into the car with a curt wave of the hand. Then slammed himself into the driver’s seat, placing his head on the steering wheel in despair.

The chief checkpoint thug slapped the roof of the car, telling them to stop wasting his time:
All right, already! Get a move on!
The Turk turned the key, the engine purred, and as if by magic, the traffic barrier opened before them as the other guards dragged it aside.

Two hundred yards up the road, free and clear, Yossi began to grin, first a chuckle, then stuttering hoots—
heh-heh-heh
.

“All right, what’s so bloody funny?” Johnson said behind his veil, his breath puffing back in his face.

“Our friend programs those laptops special,” Marjorie explained. “Once they’re in use for twenty-four hours, an irreversible sixty-second PowerPoint media show appears. Hormel Bacon advertisements, a gay male porn clip from a flick called
Harem Guards
, a couple of Danish Mohammed Cartoons, a Photoshopped pic of Ayatollah Gul in a yarmulke praying before the Wailing Wall, and the climax, a Windows Media Player File video of President Ahmadinejad being spanked by Dominatrix Madonna while she sings ‘Like a Virgin.’ The PCs work just fine, once you’ve watched the floor show.”