on.
* * *
• • •
And as soon as he placed a Threema call, Annika, Moises, and Yanis all sat up straighter in the moving truck three blocks away, and they scrambled to put on their headphones.
After several rings the call was answered. “Hello?”
“Babak?”
“Yes.”
“Hello, brother,” Mirza said. “It’s me. We have a green light for today.”
There was a long pause. “What? I thought we were to stand down.”
“New orders.”
A long pause. “What . . . what is the target?”
“The embassy. Pariser Platz. Five p.m. There is a change to the Marine guard force then, and it is also when many embassy staff are leaving work.”
Mirza could only hear breathing over the phone for several seconds. Finally, the other man said, “We don’t stand a chance, Haz.”
“We will throw our bodies on the barbed wire so others can cross over us.”
A pause, then, “What does that mean?”
“I am saying that we will die in our attack, for certain, brother. I will not lie. But we will, by our actions, cause an uprising in the West.”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
Mirza stood from his bed, began pacing around his room. “What don’t you know? You don’t know if you will follow an order from Tehran? You don’t know if you will follow an order from your leader? What don’t you know?”
The phone clicked off. “Babak? Babak? Coward!” he muttered to himself before hanging up.
He dialed the next man.
* * *
• • •
As soon as Yanis relayed the conversation in full to Dittenhofer, she exited the van and stormed south on the gritty street, in the opposite direction of Mirza’s flat and in the direction of the streetcar stop. She yanked out her own phone and initiated her own end-to-end-encryption app as she walked at a brisk, almost frantic pace.
She dialed Spangler, who was by now used to hearing from his star employee multiple times in an hour.
Dittenhofer spoke softly. “Haz Mirza has been told to stand down.”
“You told me that.”
“Ja. But he is going ahead anyway. He is planning an attack on the American embassy.”
“When?”
“Five p.m. It seems he’s having some problems getting his personnel together, as usual, but he’s a zealot. He’ll do it alone if he has to.”
Spangler said, “I understand.” He thought a moment.
“Say something! What is there to consider? We have to notify the Americans.”
“No, we have to notify our client. He will take the necessary steps.”
“We don’t have time for that.”
“Annika. Darling. Just trust me. Our client is here in Berlin. I will be speaking with him in moments.”
Dittenhofer stopped walking, right in front of a Thai massage parlor and a low-end coffee shop. “Why is he here in Berlin?”
“For a meeting with me.”
“Was the meeting planned before the Rajavi assassination?”
“Yes. He told me the day before yesterday.”
She gasped. “Our client knew about the hit on Rajavi. Obviously.”
“Nein, Annika. Our contract is drawing to a close; he wanted to come and wrap things up. That’s all.”
She continued like she didn’t hear him. “But the client is Israeli, not American. Right?”
“We don’t know that.”
“Bullshit, Rudy. We now have actionable intelligence about an imminent terror attack hours from now, one that will be carried out by a cell we have under surveillance.”
“And our client will stop that attack, I assure you. Now, I’m just getting to the meeting. I will call you after lunch.” Spangler hung up, but not before Annika heard some background noise. It sounded like a car door shutting, and then she heard other street sounds in the background.
She hung up the phone, walked with it in her hand for a moment, then decided on a course of action.
Quickly she placed another call.
* * *
• • •
Court had been surprised to see Dittenhofer through the grimy café window, but he’d simply looked down at his coffee cup after doing so, counting off seconds in his head. When he reached ten, he stood, turned for the door, and exited fifty yards behind his target.
She’d made a relatively short stop at the surveillance vehicle, less than a half hour, but Court didn’t know the significance of that, nor did he really care. He wanted a quiet place to snatch her off the street, but he didn’t see an opportunity now, so he just followed.
The woman headed over to Fritz-Reuter-Allee, her phone to her ear, and Court assumed she was returning to the streetcar stop. But instead Court watched as she tried to flag down a taxi. It passed her by, but she immediately began looking for another.
Shit. Court