What he was about to ask would be said in an off-the-hand way. But getting the answer to this one question had been the actual goal of all the months of subtle psychological attack. A lot of time, effort and money had been spent setting the Hamas man up for this question, and if Marfazda refused to answer or lied to them now, it would have all been in vain.
Donaldson covered his mouth and yawned. “We know Russell James is somewhere in the Middle East,” he said, still speaking in English. “And we know he’s no longer using that name. What we need confirmation on is his exact whereabouts and the name he’s using now.” The CIA man yawned again as he waited for Marfazda’s dulled brain to respond. Watching the man out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the terrorist hadn’t picked up on the fact that the question was considerably different than the mere confirmation he had mentioned earlier. And all of the hints that the American bureaucracy moved with maddening slowness had told Marfazda that he could give Donaldson what he asked for, be released and still have time to get a warning to James before they closed in on him.
In Marfazda’s eyes, Wes Donaldson saw the exact moment the man decided to answer the question. A brightness flickered into the heretofore glazed eyes as the terrorist suddenly came to believe that he had both outlasted and outsmarted the weak Americans.
“Russell James is using his real name again,” Marfazda said, forgetting himself and answering in English. “It is Anton Sobor. I cannot tell you where he is now. But before I was captured, he was working out of Tehran. He had been there for almost a year.”
To his side, Donaldson saw Coffman make a show of taking a business card out of the inside pocket of his jacket. With a frown on his face, he studied the back of the card. A moment later he looked up at Donaldson, nodded, and said, “Checks out. So far, at least.”
Donaldson kept the smile off his face. He’d seen that same business card of Coffman’s earlier in the day when his fellow CIA agent had used it to write down the name and phone number of a beautiful Lebanese woman who had served them breakfast at a nearby café.
“I believe you are telling me the truth,” Donaldson said, turning his attention back to Marfazda. “One last bit of confirmation, and I will have a driver drop you off any place in Beirut you would like to go.” Again, giving the terrorist time to process the thought but not think beyond it, he said, “Confirm the address in Tehran and you will be free to go.”
Shuaib Marfazda recited a street address and smiled.
Donaldson smiled back as he drew a tiny, sound-suppressed .22-caliber Beretta pistol from under his coat. Without ceremony he leaned across the table, pressed the muzzle into Marfazda’s forehead and pulled the trigger.
Rays of crimson shot out of the terrorist’s forehead like red sun rays. But the small bore bullet didn’t exit the skull. Shuaib Marfazda sat back against the chair, his eyes still open, as Donaldson pulled the gun back to reveal the solitary star-shaped hole between the man’s eyes.
Donaldson stood. “Let’s get that information back to Langley,” he said as he and Coffman left the room. “According to them, the Man himself has been on their butts to get it.”
CHAPTER ONE
There was simply no way he could pass himself off as an Iranian.
First off, he was far too tall. He might claim to have come from one of the Elburz Mountain tribes; their men often grew to well over six feet. But he would still be noticed, and it would require explanation. And the fact that he didn’t speak the language pretty much put a damper on explanations of kind.
Besides, his size wasn’t the only discrepancy that would acquire justification. While he was dark-skinned, he wasn’t dark enough, and he had no other Arabic or Persian features to offset that fact. What it boiled down to was that he looked exactly like what he was—an American of mixed descent, primarily Eastern European. So if he intended to operate in Tehran, he would have to play on that theme, and the best cover story he could come up with was that he was one of the many Russians who had found their way to Iran after the iron curtain ceased to exist. His size and face would suggest such a background. And the long gray overcoat and black Russian rabbit hat he wore would aid him.
Mack Bolan, a.k.a. the Executioner, kept his eyes in front of him as he walked casually down the sidewalk of Iran’s capital city. No, he thought as he neared a stand where a bearded man was hawking pottery, trying to infiltrate Tehran, especially Tehran’s underground, as a native would have been a big mistake. As he passed the stand, the man called out to him.
The Executioner smiled, shrugged, pointed to his lips and shook his head. “Nyet Farsi,” he said in a Russian accent.
The thick odor of curried rice and boiled lamb drifted out from a doorway just past the pottery stand and Bolan glanced inside as he passed. Two men stood behind a counter spooning food into white cardboard containers. One had the dark hair and skin that was common to the natives. But the other looked as Caucasian as Bolan did.
The Executioner smiled as he moved away from the small restaurant. Up and down the street, in any direction he looked, he saw men and women of obvious Persian and Arabic descent. But scattered among the brown faces and raven hair were others of lighter skin. Some, Bolan knew, were Persians themselves—exhibiting the Aryan genes that had mixed with Turks and Arabs to create a new race long ago. He had considered trying to pass as one of these men, but the fact that he had no knowledge of the language had stopped him once again.
The Executioner walked on. Far more often than the last time he’d been in Iran, he saw men and women in more Western dresses. The women wore no veils, and here and there even a baseball cap and T-shirt could be seen. While the country had hardly returned to the openness of free trade and travel it had enjoyed before the Islamic revolution of the late 1970s, the country was beginning to emerge from the shroud of oppression.
As long as he kept pretending to be Russian, a part he had played many times over the years—he should have no problem locating the address circled on the map of the city in his overcoat pocket.
As Bolan stepped around several children playing on the sidewalk a light snow began to fall. Ahead of him, above the buildings, he could see the white-capped mountains that seemed to stand guard over the city. At their peak was the cone—shaped Mount Demavend, a mysterious sight that seemed to appear in the distant corner of his vision no matter where he looked.
Stopping at the next corner, the Executioner pulled the map from inside his coat. He glanced down at it, then up at the street signs. The apartment he was looking for should be in the next block. Returning the map to his coat, he stuck his left hand into the hand-warmer pocket at his side. His right slipped into the other coat pocket, the fingers curling around the grip of a Smith & Wesson 625-10.
Bolan walked on, his index finger slipping inside the guard but staying away from the trigger for the moment. He had chosen the Scandium .45 ACP revolver to accompany his usual pistols for two reasons. First, it was so light it could be carried in a pocket without creating a telltale sag. But the other reason was just as important. Half of the two-inch barrel was inside the frame, leaving only one inch sticking out of the front. Not just a snub nose, the 625-10 was almost a no-nose. It fit neatly in the pocket and could be gripped, aimed and even shot through the coat if necessary without an adversary even knowing it was there.
The Executioner’s thumb ran along the smooth back of the hammer where the spur had been ground off. The 625-10 had been altered to double-action only. There would be no cocking it to single action for precise shooting. But precise shooting wasn’t why the big-bore wheelgun had accompanied the Executioner to Iran. He was far more concerned with the weapon snagging on the draw or the hammer getting caught in the lining if he had to fire with the gun still in his coat.
Bolan crossed the street and walked on, passing another sidewalk stand selling miniature paintings. Yet another peddled intricately inlaid wood crafts. Like so many other housing areas in Iran’s capital city, a brownstone wall ran along the