Oath of Office

Dovzhenko scanned past Sassani, freezing at the face of a bald man behind the IRGC commander. His breath caught in his throat, enough that the IRGC man beside him gave him a quizzical look. Dovzhenko coughed to cover his sudden surprise. This was unexpected. General Vitaly Alov of the GRU. There had been no mention of the general coming to Tehran in the cables. With ostensibly the same goals, the SVR and the GRU often found themselves at cross-purposes, if only because of jealous turf wars. A visiting general from the military intelligence agency would surely have Dovzhenko’s chief of station up in arms, and yet he’d mentioned nothing about it. Curious indeed. Alov was in the open. It was difficult to miss his bald head shining in the rain among a sea of black hair and scarves.

Dovzhenko passed the binoculars to the IRGC thug on his right. They were good binoculars, fifteen-power. He’d had them for years, a present to himself on his first assignment to the Russian consulate in Los Angeles. But they were tainted now with the sights he’d just witnessed. He never wanted to look through them again.

“Where are you going?” the youngest IRGC thug asked.

“To mingle with the crowd,” Dovzhenko said. “Gather intelligence. That is what intelligence officers do.”

He smiled as if he were still a coconspirator in this idiocy, swallowed his disgust, and then wheeled, cursing in Russian under his breath as he pushed open the rooftop door. He used his forearm to wipe the rain from his eyes, feeling as if he couldn’t touch his face until he washed his hands. At times like this, there was only one person in the world who could make him feel human. Maryam Farhad was the most intelligent and tender woman he’d ever known. It was hardly fair for a man with his job to want to spend time with her. She was his lifeboat in this sea of shit — and he was dragging her under.

19

The killing would occur in the sand, less than a block away from where John Clark sat on Calle Adriano in the shadow of the great bullring of Seville. He was relaxed, sitting back in his chair, a folded edition of El País on the sidewalk café table. Jack sat across from him, not quite as accustomed to death, but experienced enough that he did not startle anymore. It was quiet here, reminding Clark of a side street in Manhattan or northern Virginia — except for the odor of bulls and horses.

El sol es el mejor torero,

Spaniards said: The sun is the best bullfighter. And they were right. Clark watched the Russians from the comfort of the shade, while the low sun shone directly across the street, all but blinding them. There was a new man at the table now. Clark couldn’t see his face, but hadn’t recognized him when he’d first come up to join the Russians with the long lip and the farmboy haircut. This new man was tall, paunchy, without much of a chin. Dirty-blond curls stuck out from beneath a tan beret. A powder-blue sweater draped over his shoulders, one sleeve tucked neatly into the tube of the other in front of his chest, the way Clark had seen men do in South America and Europe but rarely in the United States. The man carried himself like a local, sitting with his back to the sun so the Russians got the brunt of the blinding. He’d arrived twenty minutes earlier, greeting each Russian as if he’d been expected. Clark guessed that he’d probably picked the meeting spot — using the sun to put them off balance. It was much too early to eat dinner, but the café was a good place to link up and grab a drink before they went into the bullfight — where refreshments would cost double what they did outside.

Ding and Midas were a block away, nursing a couple of beers in front of the Hotel Adriano. Dom and Adara waited in reserve in an Irish bar around the corner, still staying out of sight to avoid being recognized by any of the Russians who might have seen them in Portugal.

Everyone was connected via their radios and earbuds, using push-to-talk switches rather than voice-activated, so they could chat among themselves without cluttering up the net. They could easily flip a switch on the radio itself and render the mics on their neck loops constantly hot, obviating the need to reach into their pockets and hit the PTT each time they wanted to transmit.