SUNDAY, MAY 1, 2011
AZAD Ashani held two tickets in his hand.
Though the printouts weighed just ounces, the paper stock felt unnaturally heavy in his fingers. Perhaps it was because the weight of his life and that of his family rested on which ticket Ashani decided to use.
“Excuse me, is this seat taken?”
For a facility located in the capital city of a nation that had been in a near-constant state of war for decades, the airport was a busy place. The complex now boasted a recently opened international terminal, and upward of three hundred passengers a day made use of the multiple airlines that frequented Kabul International Airport. This meant that the seating areas were surprisingly full.
This morning was no exception.
Though he’d been to Kabul many times, Ashani was always struck by the diversity of passengers. Yes, many of the men wore the white Islamic Taqiyah skullcaps or the Afghan pakol hat, but many more were bareheaded. In the same manner, Western-style shirts, jeans, and sneakers rivaled for primacy with the flowing tunic-style Perahan shirts and the loose tunban pants. The woman by and large dressed more conservatively, but a fair amount of leggings, jeans, and modest blouses competed with the more traditional long dresses and hijab head covering.
The person addressing Ashani was male, clean-shaven, and decidedly Western in his sport coat, button-down shirt, jeans, and brown loafers. He could have been a businessman, journalist, or an employee for one of the legions of nongovernmental organizations that plied their trade in Afghanistan.
Or something else entirely.
“No,” Ashani said, “feel free.”
He replied in English since that was the language the questioner had used, but judging by the man’s accent, Ashani didn’t think that was his native tongue. The questioner was Caucasian, but his diction and pronunciation suggested a hint of a French accent. Ashani’s heart rate began to accelerate as the man settled into the seat next to him. Looking over the man’s shoulder, Ashani consulted the large analog clock mounted to the wall.
Nine a.m.
Fourteen hours past the time when he and Mitch Rapp were to have met.
While the profession of espionage was not by any means an exact science, there were certain aspects of the trade that were absolutes. One of these was the window of time in which a handler was scheduled to meet with his asset. These windows were structured around gaps—gaps in surveillance, gaps in schedule, and in its most literal sense, gaps between buildings. Moments in which two people could talk privately and exchange vital information.
Ashani had purposefully chosen his meet time with Rapp to occur after he’d finished his summit with Iran’s new operational partners and before his trip to the airport. A period in which a normal person would be expected to fall off the radar as they took in the city, slept, packed bags, checked for flight delays, caught up on last-minute emails, or made a few before-travel calls.
In other words, the perfect explainable gap.
A gap that Rapp had not filled.
The businessman seated next to Ashani shifted in his seat and withdrew a newspaper from his leather satchel. The movement was slight and perfectly explainable.
Ashani prepared himself for what was coming next.
As an intelligence officer who’d plied his trade for three decades, Ashani knew that clandestine contact could occur in any number of ways. Old-school tradecraft would have dictated a few surreptitiously whispered words, a note dropped in Ashani’s pocket, or perhaps instructions scribbled in the margins of a newspaper left on the man’s seat after he departed.
Then again, since this was the twenty-first century, contact could have just as easily been made digitally via an air-dropped text, image, or website link. In either case, Ashani’s role remained the same.
Wait for contact.
But Ashani’s window was closing.
The clock on the wall clicked as the minute hand lunged forward.
Five minutes.
Ashani had five minutes to decide which ticket to use. One routed through several countries before eventually terminating in Paris, where his wife and daughters waited. The other, the one his government was expecting him to use, was a flight to Islamabad.
Ashani felt his lungs quiver, but for the first time, the spasm didn’t prompt a hacking cough. His ever-present scarlet handkerchief still rested in his right front pocket, but the material was dry. Ashani wanted to believe that this was because his immune system was rallying and had fought the cancer devouring his lungs to a standstill.
In his heart, he knew this wasn’t true.
A far more likely explanation was that the tumors had destroyed enough of the healthy tissue that Ashani had nothing left to hack up. The act of walking now winded him, to say nothing of climbing stairs. He didn’t know how much lung capacity he had remaining or when his blood oxygen would plummet to levels too low to sustain consciousness, but Ashani understood that he was on borrowed time. The question was whether he should rendezvous with his family and enact his fallback plan or continue to push his operational luck and travel to Islamabad.
The answer all came down to Rapp.
Without help from the American, Ashani knew that the odds of successfully evacuating his family from France were slim. The information he possessed about the looming Iranian operation in Afghanistan was Ashani’s currency. While there was a possibility that Ashani could exchange this currency at the American embassy in Paris, this would be a final act of desperation. The Iranian MOIS was a competent intelligence service. He would be burned the moment he entered the embassy, which meant the elegant solution he’d imagined for his disappearance would no longer be possible. To place his family forever beyond the clutches of his former comrades or, worse, the Quds Force lunatics, he needed Rapp.
But Rapp was nowhere to be found.
A gate agent’s voice echoed through the terminal, announcing that the flight terminating in Paris was now boarding. A couple seated to Ashani’s right struggled to their feet. The father was loaded down with his family’s carry-on luggage as well as a diaper bag. The mother had a baby in a carrier strapped to her chest and two toddlers gripping each hand. A final little girl, perhaps six, rounded out the crew. She was old enough to pull her own tiny carry-on and she fearlessly led the family toward the gate.
Ashani teared up as the procession marched past him. His emotions had been a roller coaster since he’d received his terminal diagnosis. Some days he raged against the injustice of dying before he could experience the joy of holding grandchildren on his lap. Other days he found himself overwhelmed with gratitude for the life he’d been so fortunate to live.
Ashani fought the urge to call out to the parents as they trudged past. He hadn’t been as present as he could have been when his girls had been that little, but he’d told more than his fair share of bedtime stories and relished in lively dinner chatter. He wanted to place a hand on the father’s shoulder and entreat him to savor the moments when his little girls wanted to dance around the living room with Daddy. He wanted to hug the mother and tell her that the dark days of nighttime feedings and cranky toddlers would soon end.
More than anything, Ashani wanted to wrap his arms around his lovely Samira and listen as his girls talked and laughed together. His raven-haired beauties were now twenty-three, twenty, and eighteen. Many years had passed since he had carried diaper bags while Samira herded the girls, but in that instant, those years seemed just a whisper away.
The businessman seated next to Ashani joined the exodus.
He did not leave his paper.
Ashani checked his pockets and glanced at his phone even though he knew what he’d find.
Nothing.
