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Authors: Michael Walsh

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C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN
Bandar Anzali, Iran
After she'd returned home to Kensington Park Gardens in London, home to that awful empty house, home to that place where she was monitored by
him
at all times, with nowhere in that vast house, one of the finest in London, to run, to escape, to forget. With nothing to do but heal and think and ponder and plot her revenge. In those moments she had become the Black Widow: just like the Cray supercomputer that saw everything and heard everything and knew everything, the creature that gave the Americans and their National Security Agency an advantage—that gave Skorzeny's mortal enemy an advantage.
An advantage Amanda Harrington now turned to her advantage.
“Maryam, can you hear me?” she whispered in the hold of the ship, the
Izbavitel.
The beautiful dark-haired Iranian woman lying tied up before her didn't move. Didn't open her eyes. She might have been dead, but Amanda knew she wasn't. Not if she was going through what she herself had gone through. Paralyzed, her breath almost nonexistent, her body wracked by pain but her face unable to show it. The poison was dreadful, and he had long since mastered the art of administering it in a dose just this side of lethal. To all outward appearance, Maryam was dead.
Which did not mean Amanda could not communicate with her.
Amanda knew she was playing a dangerous game, but it was worth it. No matter what happened, it was worth it. After what he had done to her, raped her, nearly killed her, caused her lover's death and the loss of her most precious possession, anything she did to him in return was nothing. A normal human being would have suspected her loyalties, but not him. His monstrous ego, bolstered by his immense wealth and his utter self-assurance, prevented it. It was his weakness, his Achilles' heel, and she was determined to use it against him.
“Can you hear me, Maryam?” she repeated. When the situation had been reversed, when she had been sitting there in that double prison—the prison of Clairvaux and the prison of her own body—the best Maryam could do was give her a searching, sympathetic look. Amanda could not know then that her rescue was already under way.
And now she held the cards. “Can you hear me, Maryam?” she whispered again.
The boat heaved from side to side. The Caspian was far from the roughest of seas, not at all like the Channel, but Amanda had never liked the water, never wished to be a sailor. She struggled to control herself as the ship tossed, then righted itself. The monster Skorzeny had booked her back by private car from Bandar Anzali, one of the very few things for which she was grateful to him.
Not that she intended to use it.
Almost imperceptibly, Maryam's eyelids fluttered. Anyone else would have missed it, but Amanda was looking for it. Good enough: she could hear.
“I'm getting you out of here. But you must do exactly as I tell you. No deviation. No thinking for yourself. You must trust me.”
Amanda looked again for some telltale motion, but this time there was nothing. No matter—she knew. She knew she knew.
There was no real antidote for severe tetrodotoxin poisoning, that she knew from personal experience. Each year in Japan, half a dozen or so sushi fanciers died from ingesting an imperfectly sliced fugu fish, and in the old days, the sushi chef was obligated to kill himself from the shame. But a nonlethal dose was different. It mimicked death as perfectly as any poison could, but in this case, Amanda knew, the dose would not have been as high as it was in her case. After all, Skorzeny did not want to kill Maryam, he wanted to sell her—to use her as a bargaining chip, the way he had been using human beings ever since he was a boy in the collapsing Third Reich.
She placed the oxygen mask over Maryam's face and opened the tank. Fugu poisoning shut down the body's organs, especially the respiratory system, so it was crucial to keep her supplied with oxygen on the voyage. In fact, Skorzeny himself had insisted on it. He always liked to get his money's worth. All Amanda was doing was protecting his investment by spending a little more of his money.
The eyelids flickered again. Good.
“Maryam, listen to me. You're with a friend. We both know who and what he is.”
The motion subsided. She was losing her.
Another shot of oxygen. Another shot of life.
“Stay with me. I've been there. You saw me. You saved me. Now let me help you.”
Amanda put her head on Maryam's breast. Faintly, faintly, she could hear her breathing. She was still with her.
“Listen . . .”
The
Izbavitel
docked without incident. Amanda Harrington's papers were in order, as were the shipping documents for what she was bringing with her. The panel truck was right where it was supposed to be.
There would be almost no time. Everything had to go perfectly. Everything
would
go perfectly.
She had not worked with Emanuel Skorzeny for so long without learning something about secrecy, speed, and efficiency. As head of the Skorzeny Foundation, she had watched funds rocket around the world, moving them like chess pieces, always to the precise spot where they were most needed and could do him the most good. The sheer size of his fortune brought with it an aura of intimidation, and he used it as a blunt instrument on rivals and whole nations. He was the master of the tactical surprise, as well as the strategic plan.
Their banking relationships in the Islamic Republic were first-rate, both with Bank Melli and the Saderat Bank. The whole notion of banking was, at root, un-Islamic, but the Iranians needed an interface with the West, as well as a way to transfer funds quickly to some of their most favored proxies. Naturally, Skorzeny was not averse to doing business with them.
The two men who met her and her cargo at the port were not at all what she first expected. She had expected big gruff true believers; what she got were a couple of kids who looked like they would be equally at home in London or Los Angeles. Then she remembered that Iran was almost entirely a country of young people, brimming with ill-concealed resentment against the fundamentalism of the mullahs: you could practically smell the coming revolution.
Of course, they both spoke English.
“I am Habib,” said the first one, a curly-haired boy of about twenty. “And this is my brother, Mehrdad.” They were practically indistinguishable.
They loaded Amanda's cargo, which had cleared customs easily, into the back of the truck. They treated it carefully and with great respect.
They should. It was a coffin. Nobody said anything as they loaded it into the rear of the panel truck and closed the doors.
“Where you want to sit, miss?” asked Habib.
It was not an idle question. Here, at the port, there was an international mixture of Persians, Russians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Turks, but in Tehran itself an unveiled Western woman, riding with two unrelated men, might be an object for scrutiny. “I'll sit in the back,” she said.
“At your service, miss,” smiled Mehrdad, and off they went.
Amanda looked at the time on her secure BlackBerry, the one he had given her especially for this trip. With it, she was supposed to check in at pre-arranged intervals, reporting on their progress by means of short transmission bursts. He knew she would be monitored wherever she went, and so had arranged for a direct satellite uplink relay; even if the mullahs shut down the entire Internet and the wireless services, she'd still be able to get signals in and out.
The two boys in the front seat were laughing and joking a mile a minute in Farsi. She liked the Shiites, Amanda reflected. To her mind, they were far preferable to the Sunnis, consumed by tribalism and with nothing to show for thousands of years of existence except their faith and the oil the West had found for them. The Sunnis, mostly Pakistanis, dominated London's Muslim society, and were busily transforming old Industrial Revolution backwaters like Leeds and Birmingham into Pakistani colonies—the colonial chickens coming home to roost. The visiting Arabs from the Kingdom and Emirates knew how to throw money around on opulence and women, but she had always found them charmless, overbearing, and desperately embarrassingly horny.
The Shiites were different, especially the Persians. This part of Iran wasn't much to look at, but as the car sped southeast toward the capital, the landscape began to change and you really could imagine yourself going back in time—not to the time of the Islamic conquest but before, to the Sassanid Empire.
Someday,
she thought.
Someday . . .
“If you don't mind my asking, who has died, miss?” inquired Mehrdad, turning around to look at her. “Not a relative, I hope.”
“No,” she replied. “A native, going home.”
“I am very sorry to hear of this,” said Habib, “but it is good that she has come back.”
She? Did they know something? What message had Skorzeny passed to them, if any? Were they someone's sons, someone who owed him a favor? Or were they sent to dispose both of Maryam and of her?
No, that could not be. It made precisely no sense for Skorzeny to trust her after what had happened, and yet it made perfect sense. She was the old fool's one human weakness, the one person on the planet he trusted for the simple reason that he ought not to trust her, so convinced was he of his power over her, and of his own magnetism. Her freedom, however temporary, was both the ultimate compliment and the ultimate insult.
“How do you like Iran, miss?”
“I like Iran very much, thank you, Mehrdad.” She had almost no Farsi, but she knew that Mehrdad meant “gift of the sun,” and was a highly prized first name among Persian boys.
“I would be most delighted to show you the sights if you are willing,” he said, switching to English.
“Thank you. I shall certainly consider your generous offer after my business in Tehran is settled,” she said, “but only if your most handsome and charming brother accompanies us.”
She smiled and dropped her eyes demurely, a signal for Mehrdad to turn back around and leave her alone. It was time to think about money. Lots of money.
Which is exactly what she had access to. For years, she had been skimming from Skorzeny, ever so slightly, but even a little skim off the top of the immense sums of money laundered through the Foundation added up to a lot, and she had stashed it at private banks all over the world, hidden in plain sight among the Foundation's legitimate assets, until such time as she really needed it.
This was such a time.
Near Ghazvin they stopped for petrol. This was the moment she had been waiting for. “Habib?” she said. “Would you and your brother mind giving me a spot of privacy? I'd like to change into something more modest.”
“Of course, miss,” said Habib with only the slightest trace of a leer. Amanda was well aware that even the bestintentioned young Muslim men could not help but view a Western woman as both a Madonna and a whore, a prize to be wooed and won, and then kicked to the curb. “We come back quick.”
“No,” she said. “Take your time. I'm a slow undresser.” This time they both smiled.
Now
.
She got the coffin open. The breathing mask was right where it should be, the oxygen tank nestled under Maryam's right arm. The woman looked as if she were sleeping, although Amanda knew from bitter personal experience that she had probably been awake the whole time she was in her own grave.
“Maryam, can you hear me?” Once again, the eyelids fluttered. “Good. Now listen very, very carefully. I am going to give you a much stronger dose of oxygen and an adrenaline injection. You're going to wake up. You're going to feel terrible, but you'll be functional. The dose he gave you was nowhere near as strong as the one he gave me.”
She didn't tell Maryam just why that was, although she supposed she could guess. Skorzeny had a special use in mind for Maryam, and damaged goods would not have served his purpose. That would work to their advantage.
Amanda turned up the oxygen and sank the needle into a vein in Maryam's chest. Almost instantly, her eyes shot open and she struggled to get up.
“No, stay still. I'm going to have to keep you right here, but don't worry. I'll be with you the whole time. You will not be out of my sight.”
For the first time, Maryam tried to speak. Amanda brought water to her parched lips. She knew Maryam would be desperately thirsty, but she had to control her water intake, so she wouldn't drown herself.
Inside the coffin were several bottles of water with a feeding straw attached to each. The straw would control the flow, so that Maryam could hydrate herself while shut away in the darkness. She was probably going to have to wet herself, but that couldn't be helped. In any case, that was the least of their worries.
“Why?” she croaked.
“Because you saved my life once,” replied Amanda, stripping off fast and climbing into a modest dress. Before the revolution, Iranian women had been among the most stylish in the world and such a look was still not entirely out of place, especially for a foreigner.

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