Close Quarters. Don Pendleton

      Hemmati scratched his chin and considered the request, although he already knew he could refuse his mullah nothing. This was an opportunity he’d not considered before, and Hemmati realized that Shahbazi had a side to his personality that hadn’t surfaced until now. Hemmati could only call it as he saw it: his mullah was as devious a bastard as he was wise.

      “You can depend on me, Mullah.”

      “It’s settled, then. Now I need to discuss with you another matter. One of great importance.”

      * * *

      HIS PARENTS NAMED HIM Ronald but to his few friends in the Company he went by Jester.

      It had little to do with Ron Abney’s sense of humor, as most might have thought; rather it was his way of behaving around others when he felt uncomfortable. As one of his companions at Langley attested, “You start pulling that court-jester routine.” So the name stuck and in some small way Abney didn’t really mind. He only afforded the moniker to others within the Company, however, and they never spoke it in the company of outsiders since it ended up being his code name among the CIA walls of power in Wonderland.

      “Hey, Jester,” Stephen Poppas said as he walked through the door of their run-down apartment on Tehran’s west side.

      The place didn’t really qualify for the name, being more of a shithole than much else, but it was what Abney and Poppas liked to call home. Both of them had arrived in Tehran about the same time and fast developed a friendship that could only evolve naturally being all but stranded together in a very inhospitable, if somewhat exotic, locale. Abney was new to fieldwork, having only spent about two years abroad, but Poppas—who had to be somewhere on the order of fifteen years Abney’s senior—had been country hopping for the Company since he was “out of diapers” was the expression Poppas favored.

      “Yo, Pops,” Abney called back, using Poppas’s nickname, “find anything decent to eat?”

      Poppas dropped a greasy paper bag on the small counter that adjoined the kitchenette and replied, “Look for yourself, bro. I ain’t your mother.”

      Abney grunted and got up from his position in front of what appeared to be a shortwave radio. The antiquated box was actually a high-tech frequency receiver and transmitter capable of sending encoded voice and data messages to an orbiting Joint Intelligence Task Force satellite. It provided the sole means of communication between the men and their contact they referred to simply as Mother.

      “You weren’t followed?” Abney asked as he peeked in the bag and withdrew two paper cartons filled with squared portions of fried dough ladled with a local concoction that was half sweet, half spicy. Really it amounted to little more than a box of greasy bread, but it was better than much of the food served by the vendors on this side of town and a damn sight tastier. It also didn’t have any of the more popular spices in much of the local cuisine.

      “You ask me that every time, Jester, and every time I give you the same answer.”

      “Okay, don’t be a grump-ass,” Abney said. “You know I have to ask. There’s a system of checks and balances in this business. You taught me that. Remember?”

      “That’s only one-way, plebe,” Poppas said. While his expression soured, his tone implied he was doing nothing more than some good-natured ribbing. “We ain’t the frigging Congress here.”

      The banter dispensed with, the pair sat at the small table near the silent radio and dug into the food. They ate silently, mechanically, only taking breaks between bites to wash down the Iranian dumplings with bottled water. Nothing but bottled water—that was the rule, and at least one bottle from every grouping had to be sampled for poisons. It was quite a life case officers had to live, particularly in Middle Eastern and African countries, where for the most part they were unwanted. Abney had once asked Poppas, a happily married man of twenty years, if he’d ever told his wife about his experiences, to which Poppas had replied, “Fuck no.”

      That had put an end to the conversation and Abney never asked him another personal question.

      “So what’s the plan for today, Jester?”

      Around a cheek filled with chewy dough, Abney replied, “I haven’t actually checked the book yet but I think—”

      A soft rap sounded at the door.

      The two men looked at the door, each other and back again before they got to their feet simultaneously and withdrew their pistols. Neither of them said a word. They weren’t accustomed to talking loudly and Abney hoped whoever stood on the other side hadn’t heard them conversing. It wasn’t the landlord. The guy worked a day job and he tended to mind his own business, especially with two Americans who paid rent four times the rate. Frankly, the pair could have been making bombs and the landlord couldn’t have cared less.

      Another rap came, this one a bit more insistent.

      Poppas made a couple of standard gestures, held his pistol high and level, and then nodded for Abney to open the door. As soon as he did, Poppas reached out, hauled the dark-skinned man inside and tossed him practically the length of the room—not difficult given the size of the place. Before the visitor knew it, he had two pistols trained on him a few inches from his face. He looked frightened at first, holding his hands high, but eventually he smiled and produced a chuckle.

      “Damn it, Farzad!” Poppas said. “How many times have I told you never to come here?”

      “Sorry, sorry…but it was important.”

      “Important enough to break protocol?” Abney said.

      “Screw protocol,” Poppas interjected. He waved the muzzle of his pistol skyward and said to Hemmati, “Was it important enough for you to risk getting your head blown off?”

      “It may very well be that important, yes.”

      Poppas and Abney exchanged surprised glances for the second time that day, then helped Hemmati to his feet. They pushed him onto a dirty, disused couch. It wasn’t outside the rules of the playbook for the Company to recruit local informants if the need arose, and Hemmati had proved useful in the past. If he’d risk coming here, there had to be a pretty good reason for it.

      “All right,” Poppas said, taking a chair and fishing a cigarette from his pocket. He offered Hemmati one, who declined. “Sorry. I forgot you’re one of the few Iranians I know who doesn’t smoke.”

      While Poppas lit a smoke, Abney asked, “Okay, so what’s going on?”

      “I’ve come by information that I think will be of great value to you.”

      “It better be,” Poppas said. “Now quit trying to build suspense and spill it already.”

      “Recently you had an incident that took place in Paraguay.”

      “There a lot of incidents in Paraguay, Farzad, in fact, all over the world. You want to be more specific?”

      “I don’t have many details but it’s something about Peace Corps volunteers taken hostage by armed men who could not be identified.”

      Poppas looked at Abney, who shrugged. He didn’t have any information about it. In fact, this was first he’d heard of it and the same was true for Poppas, given the older man’s expression. It could’ve been Hemmati was simply looking to dangle a carrot that might not pan out to be anything, but then it might also be the biggest thing to hit the intelligence community since the end of the Cold War. Case officers got junk information all the time from operators on the payroll—many of them working as double agents—which they usually referred to as “soap flakes.” Every so often, however, they hit a gem.

      “So what about it?” Poppas said, not willing to let on they knew nothing about what Hemmati was telling them.

      Internally, Poppas’s textbook approach amused Abney.

      “I know who these men are.”

      Poppas took a drag of his smoke before saying,