Under Fire Read online

  Key . . . what key? Jack thought. He sat back down and reached for his teacup. Sitting beside it was a bronze key.

  “What the hell was all that about?” he muttered to himself.

  Edinburgh, Scotland

  As the only member of her team to have spent time in the United Kingdom prior to the start of the job, Helen was unsurprised by the blitz of blinking lights and cacophony of voices filtering through the van’s half-open windows.

  Yegor braked hard and the van lurched to a stop as a young man and woman, clearly inebriated, stumbled past the front bumper. The woman raised two fingers at Yegor and called, “Tosser!”

  Helen saw Yegor’s jaw pulse with anger, but he did not respond, and instead waited for them to pass before easing the van forward. On either side of the street, similarly intoxicated youth staggered and weaved along the sidewalks. On the passenger side, outside Helen’s half-open window, a pub’s door burst open, issuing a stream of drunks and pulsing dance music.

  “What’s a tosser?” asked Yegor.

  Someone who desperately needs a girlfriend, Helen thought with a smile. “I’ll explain later,” she said.

  “This is amazing. What are all these places?”

  “Pubs,” Helen answered.

  “All of them?”

  “Pretty much. This is just one area. This is Rose,” Helen said. “It’s the most popular pub street for students.”

  “All of these people are students from the university?”

  “Most of them.”

  “How do they function in the morning?” asked Yegor. “Don’t they have lectures to attend?”

  Helen smiled at this. Ever the pragmatist, Yegor wasn’t so concerned about the immorality he was seeing but rather how it affected the revelers’ study habits.

  “Coffee,” she answered. “And other things, I suspect.”

  In the backseat, the other two members of the team, Roma and Olik, sat with their foreheads nearly pressed against the rear windows, their eyes agog. Where they came from, public displays like these were punishable by imprisonment. Or worse.

  Of course, Helen reminded herself, Roma and Olik were men, and sheltered ones at that. Most of their astonishment probably stemmed from the sea of exposed female skin passing before their eyes. Not to mention the physical intimacy couples showed each other on the street. Snogging was the term here. At home, neither of these were seen outside the bedroom of a husband and wife.

  Olik leaned over the front seat’s center console and said, “And this is an important school, you say?”

  “One of the most prestigious in the world,” Helen replied.

  There were a few seconds of silence. “And what exactly are the admission requirements?”

  Helen chuckled, as did Yegor, who said, “Get ahold of yourself, Olik.”

  Roma, however, muttered, “Whores, all of them. Every one of them. They should be whipped.”

  This comment didn’t surprise Helen. Of the three men on her team, Roma, a last-minute addition, had been the only one chafing under her leadership. He was a zealot, and he thought like one. Theirs was a business of dispassion; Roma didn’t understand that. The man bore watching. Sooner or later she would have to put him in his place.

  They drove for a few minutes before turning onto Castle Street. Here, too, the sidewalk was lined with pubs and restaurants, though these were more subdued, geared to those students who disliked the “meat markets,” she knew. Is that the correct term now, “meat markets”? she wondered. She would check. Standing out was a hazard to be avoided.

  “My contact says her favorite spot is called The Stable,” she said.

  “Like for horses?” asked Olik.

  “Like for university students,” Helen answered. “There it is, Yegor, ahead on the left.”

  “I see it. Olik, Roma, look for her car. A red Mini Cooper with white hood stripes.”

  “How does she afford such a vehicle?” asked Roma.

  A gift from Daddy, Helen thought but did not say. “Never mind that. Just keep your eyes open.”

  Yegor slowed the van. Moments later, from behind them came the impatient honking of car horns.

  “A little faster, Yegor,” Helen said, and he pressed the accelerator slightly. It wouldn’t do to be stopped by the police.

  “Wait, I think we just passed her car,” said Olik. “On the right.”

  Helen glanced in her side mirror. “Yes, that’s the one. Keep going, Yegor.”

  Yegor sped up, then turned left onto Frederick Street, where he found a parking space a block away from a petrol station. He put the van in park, shut off the engine, and checked his watch. “Now what?”

  “Now we wait,” replied Helen.

  Now we build a pattern.

  Parsian Hotel Azadi, Tehran

  JACK SAT BOLT UPRIGHT in bed and looked around. Just someone at your door, Jack. Relax. As much as he loved fieldwork, especially the high-adrenaline stuff, it did tend to put you in that zero-to-sixty mind-set.

  He exhaled and rolled his shoulders, then his neck. Hotel pillows never agreed with him.

  The knock on the door came again, polite but insistent. Jack checked the nightstand clock. Six in the morning. He rolled over, got to his feet, donned his terry-cloth robe, and headed for the door. “Who is it?”

  No answer, but another knock.

  “Who is it?” Jack repeated a little more firmly. There was no peephole. Isn’t that against fire code? It was in the United States, at least.

  “Mr. Jack Ryan?” The man’s accent was English.

  Jack didn’t respond.

  “Mr. Ryan, my name is Raymond Wellesley. May I speak to you for a few minutes?”

  “About what, Mr. Wellesley?”

  “Your friend Seth Gregory.”

  This got Jack’s attention.

  Wellesley said, “This is perhaps a matter best discussed in private.”

  Ease up, Jack. If by some fluke there had been a coup overnight and these were in fact the Shah’s SAVAK back from the dead, he was screwed anyway. Plus, that kind of visitor didn’t knock.

  Jack unlocked the dead bolt, swung the latch, and opened the door. Standing before him was a short, middle-aged man with thinning brown hair. He wore a tailored dark blue British-cut suit. Savile Row, Jack decided.

  “Mr. Jack Ryan, yes?” said Raymond Wellesley.

  “Yes, come in.”

  Wellesley stepped through the door and strode across Jack’s suite to the sitting area beside the balcony windows. He carefully lowered himself into one of the club chairs and looked around as though checking for cleanliness.

  Jack shut the door and walked over.

  “Apologies for the early hour,” Wellesley said. “Pressing matters, I’m afraid. Good heavens, I’m sorry, would you care to see some identification?”

  “Please,” Jack replied. Something told him he was about to be handed a nondescript business card.

  He was right. The card read:

  RAYMOND L. WELLESLEY

  FOREIGN & COMMONWEALTH OFFICE

  KING CHARLES STREET

  LONDON SW1A 2AH

  UNITED KINGDOM

  [email protected]

  44 20 7946 0690

  Though Britain wasn’t due to reopen its Tehran embassy for another few months, something told Jack that Raymond Wellesley wouldn’t be the type to have an address here anyway. Wellesley’s business card told him nothing except the man was probably not in fact an employee of the FCO.

  Jack slipped the card into the pocket of his robe and said, “You mentioned Seth Gregory. Is he okay?”

  “Curious word, okay. Lends itself to all manner of interpretation, doesn’t it?”

  Wellesley’s accent was not just British, Jack decided, but what he’d come to recognize as Received Pronunciation—RP or
BBC English. Nonregional and indistinct. Apparently, Jack thought, he’d absorbed something from meeting the panoply of British diplomats that had visited the White House during his dad’s first term. RP was standard dialect among higher-echelon people at the Secret Intelligence Service, an “old boy” tradition that hadn’t changed since the First World War.

  Wellesley added, “Whether Mr. Gregory is ‘okay’ is something I was hoping you could help me with.”

  Jack felt his heart quicken slightly. What the hell is going on?

  Jack said, “Answer my question, Mr. Wellesley.”

  “As far as we can tell, your friend is alive and well. You had lunch with Mr. Gregory yesterday, did you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know where he is now?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “What did you discuss during your lunch?”

  “How much I was hoping to get a predawn visit from the FCO. And here you are.”

  “I encourage you to take my questions seriously, Mr. Ryan. We’re affording you a courtesy we might not otherwise extend.”

  The message was clear, or at least he thought so: If he weren’t that Jack Ryan, this talk probably wouldn’t be even remotely cordial.

  Jack stepped around the club chair and took a seat opposite Wellesley.

  “Would you like some coffee?” he asked.

  “No, thank you. I can’t stay long.”

  “Mr. Wellesley, Seth is a friend of mine. We’ve known each other since high school. I’m here on business and I asked him if he’d like to have lunch and catch up.”

  “What did you discuss?”

  “Family, old times, Iran’s new government, and a bit about work.”

  “What kind of work does he do?”

  “He’s an engineer with Shell.”

  “Is that what he told you?”

  “Yes, that’s what he told me. You have reason to believe otherwise?”

  “I can’t discuss that.”

  “Why are you looking for him?”

  “I can’t discuss that, either, but if you can help us find him, we would be grateful.”

  “I’d trade gratitude for equity,” Jack said. “Give me a better idea what’s going on and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Raymond Wellesley pursed his lips and stared into space for a few seconds. “Very well. But not here. Are you free this afternoon?”

  Is Wellesley suggesting my room is bugged? Jack wondered. It seemed unlikely, but he’d learned early on to never mistake probability with possibility.

  “I can be.”

  Wellesley stood up and drew another business card from the breast pocket of his suit. With a silver pen he scribbled on the back of the card, then handed it to Jack.

  “Meet me there at two o’clock.”

  • • •

  AS HAD BEEN drummed into him by Ding Chavez, Hendley’s senior operations officer, Jack arrived by taxi an hour early for the meeting, then got out and walked the ground, familiarizing himself with the neighborhood around the address Wellesley had given him, the upscale Zafaraniyeh district in northern Tehran. Always know your egress—or, in Ding’s SpecFor-influenced vernacular, “Know your GTFO plan”: Get the Fuck Out.

  According to the travel websites Jack had consulted, Zafaraniyeh was home to mostly Iranian and expatriate millionaires. Behind tree-lined sidewalks, the apartment façades were done in Pahlavi style, a circa-1960s mix of traditional Persian and modern European.

  A light rain began to fall. Jack opened the umbrella the hotel’s concierge had suggested and continued down the damp sidewalk. The few passersby he saw, mostly Europeans in casual sport coats and trousers, offered him a perfunctory smile. The locals were a mix of men and women, the latter wearing no headscarves at all, simply nodding. No smiles. Neither friendly nor unfriendly. A good sign, Jack knew. He had chosen his attire in hopes of blending in.

  At one-fifty, Jack made his way to the correct address, an apartment fronted by granite columns and a line of neatly trimmed squared hedges. He climbed the steps into the tiled foyer and found the intercom panel. He pressed the button labeled VII. A moment later a voice said, “Come up, Mr. Ryan.”

  Good guess or foresight? Jack thought. Assume the latter, Jack.

  The foyer’s inner door let out a soft buzz. Jack opened it, stepped through, and followed the carpeted runner to the elevator, an old-style accordion-gated elevator that took him to the seventh floor and another tiled foyer. As the gate parted, a door across from him opened, revealing Raymond Wellesley.

  “Early is punctual,” he said. “A man after my own heart. Come in.”

  Jack followed Wellesley inside and down a short hallway to a spacious room decorated in what Jack could only describe as gray, with furniture and decor that were neither British nor Persian, neither colorless nor vibrant. A perfectly forgettable safe house with furnishings that came with the place, Jack thought.

  He stopped at the entrance of the room and looked around. To his left a pair of hallways led back to what he guessed were bedrooms; to his right was an alcove minibar. Standing beside a sectional couch area in front of the windows was a second man of medium height, with dark cropped hair and a heavy beard. His face was deeply tanned, as though he spent more time outdoors than he did indoors.

  Wellesley said, “Jack, may I introduce Matthew Spellman.”

  Spellman stepped around the couch and extended his hand. “Matt.”

  “Jack Ryan.”

  “Coffee, Mr. Ryan?” Wellesley asked.

  “Thanks.”

  They settled into the sitting room, Jack taking a wingback chair, Spellman on the couch opposite him. Wellesley poured Jack a cup of coffee from the carafe on the low table between them, then joined Spellman on the couch.

  Jack raised his mug in a half-toast. “To Anglo-American cooperation.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Wellesley replied.

  Having already guessed Wellesley was SIS, Jack surmised Spellman was CIA. Whatever Seth Gregory had done or was suspected of doing, his friend had attracted some powerful attention. Jack was tempted to take a hard line, to demand answers, but he knew it would get him nowhere, not yet. Moreover, aggression might only pique their interest in him. Better to let his hosts make some progress on their agenda.

  “Just so there’s no misunderstanding,” Spellman began, “we know who you are.”

  “And who am I?”

  “First Son of President Ryan.”

  “And if I wasn’t?”

  “Please, Mr. Ryan,” said Wellesley. “We’re not thugs. What’s your business in Iran?”

  “Market scouting. I’m with Hendley Associates. We do—”

  “We know what Hendley does. But why are you here, in Iran?”

  “I told you. Market scouting. President Farahani’s move toward moderation may open things up to foreign investment. If so, we want to get ahead of that.”

  “Makes sense. Heck, maybe I should get some stock tips from you,” Spellman said with a chuckle.

  “How long do you plan on being here?” This from Wellesley.

  Good cop, bad cop, Jack thought. Though Hollywood had made the technique a cliché, it was tried-and-true. Spellman and Wellesley were giving him a mild form of it now—affable cop, slightly testy British bobby.

  “It’s open-ended,” he replied.

  “How well do you know Seth Gregory?” asked Wellesley.

  “We’re old friends from high school.”

  “When was the last time you were in touch with each other?” Spellman asked.

  Intentionally covering already plowed ground, Jack thought. “Yesterday, at lunch. But you know that.”

  Wellesley said, “Before that, is what he means.”

  “E-mail, to set up the lunch.” You know that, too.

  The qu
estioning continued for another ten minutes, Wellesley probing and reprobing the nature and depth of Jack’s relationship with Seth. They were setting a baseline and looking for inconsistencies. Aside from interjecting bits of lighthearted humor to keep Jack on the roller coaster, Spellman said nothing, but simply sipped his coffee and studied Jack’s face.

  Finally he said, “Do you know where he is?”

  “Have you checked his apartment?”

  “Yes,” said Wellesley. “Have you been there?”

  “I don’t even know where it is.”

  “Pardis Condos, off Niayesh Expressway.”

  Jack recalled his still-spotty mental map of Tehran. The Niayesh Expressway was nowhere near Niavaran Park, where Seth had claimed his apartment was located. What the hell is going on?

  Jack shook his head. “I haven’t been there.”

  “I went there after our meeting this morning,” said Wellesley. “He’s not there. In fact, it looks like he hasn’t been there for quite some time.”

  “He travels for work.”

  “We know that,” Wellesley replied, with a tinge of exasperation in his voice.

  It sounded genuine. Perhaps a button Jack could push later if necessary.

  “Did you two talk about his work?” asked Spellman.

  “Only in passing. He consults for Shell.”

  Jack watched for a reaction from either man, but got nothing but impassive gazes. He said, “Guys, I don’t know what to tell you. You seem to know more than I do about what’s been going on with Seth. Are you going to explain what’s going on? Come on, give me something.”

  Wellesley let out a sigh. Spellman set his cup on the coffee table and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “We think Seth’s gotten himself into trouble. We want to help him.”

  “Listen, I don’t even know who you are, but I’ve read enough John le Carré novels to make a guess. You don’t have to tell me all your secrets, but if Seth’s in trouble, I need to know what’s going on.”

  “No, you don’t,” replied Wellesley. “I suggest you—”

  Spellman raised a hand to cut off his colleague. “Hang on a second, Raymond. Okay, Jack, that’s fair. I’m going to stick my neck out. Don’t chop it off, okay? I got kids to feed.” Spellman gave him a sheepish grin.