“It is only a scratch!” Hafez insisted.

“-and the most important woman in my life right now, Dr. Nina Wilde.”

Shala gave Chase a look of delight. “You are married?”

“No!” Nina gasped.

“Bloody hell, could you say that any quicker?” Chase said with mock offense before turning back to Shala. “No, I’m her bodyguard. And God, her body needs a lot of guarding.”

“And you want to take her to Failak Hajjar?” asked Shala. “It will need even more.”

“I don’t want to take her to him, we only just escaped from the bugger’s mates. But he’s kidnapped my boss. We need to rescue her.”

“It will take an hour to get there,” Shala said. “Perhaps longer. I have a radio scanner in the van; there is a lot of police and military activity. Your doing?”

“Uh, yeah.” Chase rubbed his neck. “I sort of… crashed a train. Or two.”

“Oh, Eddie!” She batted a fist against his arm. “You are a wonderful man, and I appreciate everything you have done for my family-but do you have to destroy huge parts of my country every time you come here?”

“Hey, no civvies got hurt!” he protested. “Probably. I’m pretty sure the other driver bailed out okay…”

Shala shook her head in irritation, then looked at Nina. “Everything he touches is destroyed! He is ten years older than me, and he behaves like my little brother with his toys!”

“Mm-hmm,” Nina replied, nodding in agreement. Her tone became mischievous. “So how do you know Eddie? He keeps claiming that he’s never been to Iran. Officially, that is.”

“My family is, shall we say, no friend of the current regime,” Shala answered. “So we have provided help to undercover operations carried out by…” she smiled at Chase and Castille, “certain gentlemen.”

“Such as sabotaging the heavy water plant at Arak,” said Castille, smiling back.

Chase let out a series of loud fake coughs. “Classified!” he hacked. Castille’s smile became a sheepish grin. “Anyway,” Chase said impatiently, “we need to get moving. Hugo, you and the doc put Hafez in the back of the van. Did you bring the medical kit?” Shala nodded. “Great. We’ll patch him up on the move. Don’t suppose you’re the medical kind of doc, Doc?”

“No, and please stop calling me that.”

“Whatever you say, Dr. Wilde.”

“Better.”

“If you two are not married… you should be,” Shala said with a smile, stunning them both into silence as Castille and Hafez burst out laughing.

Kari looked up as another guard, armed with an MP-5 submachine gun, arrived. “Hajjar wants them.”

The bearded guard grinned at Kari through the bars. “If you’re lucky, maybe Hajjar will let you go to the toilet. I’m sure he’d love to help you with your clothes!”

She didn’t deign to respond, waiting impassively as they unlocked the door.

Shala pulled the van over at the side of a mountain road. “There,” she said, pointing.

Chase craned his neck to look. “Wow. That’s not what I expected.”

Nina followed his gaze. Up on the top of a steep rocky slope was a very incongruous building. “God, who designed that? Walt Disney?”

“The shah had it built,” said Shala. “It was one of his summer palaces, but he only visited it a few times before the revolution. After that, the mullahs used it as a retreat, until Hajjar bought it from the government.”

“It looks like a cartoon,” Nina observed. The building was practically a parody of a Persian palace, its upper levels crammed with minarets and domes. “I guess the shah didn’t have much taste.”

“I was going to say I thought it looked cool,” Chase remarked, “but I won’t bother now.” He surveyed the fortress through binoculars. “How do you get up to it?”

“From the outside, you can only get there up the access road or by helicopter,” said Shala. Castille let out a muted groan at the last word.

“No cable car?” asked Chase.

“No.”

“Shame. I always wanted to re-create Where Eagles Dare.”

“The access road is guarded, I assume,” Castille said.

Shala nodded. “Yes. There is a gate at the bottom, and there are television cameras along the road with another gate at the top. We have been watching Hajjar for some time; he usually has at least four men on guard. There is also an electric fence.”

Chase turned the binoculars to the surrounding hills. “Don’t suppose we could just blow up a power line and cut off the electricity, could we?”

“There you go again! And no, the fortress has its own generators.”

“Thought it might.” He lowered the binoculars, thinking. “You said from outside there’s only those two ways in. There’s something inside?”

“There is another way, yes.” Shala looked over her shoulder. “Dr. Wilde, please can you pass me the blue rucksack?” Nina complied, pulling it from among the other bundles in the van’s rear bed. Shala rifled through its contents, taking out a set of architectural blueprints. “My father obtained these before the revolution. He hoped to use them to get into the fortress and assassinate the shah, but unfortunately the revolution happened first.”

Nina frowned, confused. “Wasn’t the revolution supposed to get rid of the shah?”

“Different revolutionaries,” said Chase enigmatically.

“He decided to keep them in case the ayatollah stayed here, but he never did. Maybe they can help you, though.” Shala tapped a fingernail on the blueprint’s bottom corner. “There is a shaft up to the service basement level of the fortress. It was built for access to the sewage outflow that leads to the river.”

Nina wrinkled her nose. “Ew. They just pump it right into the river?”

“Literally crapping on the people,” said Chase. “But this shaft, we can get to it from the outflow pipe?”

“Yes. But there is one problem…”

Castille clapped a hand to his forehead. “Ah, of course there is.”

“The pipe,” said Shala, “it is… quite small. Too small for you to fit into, Eddie. And you too, Hugo, I am afraid.”

“No need to apologize,” Castille replied. “Crawling through a pipe full of merde? I have, as the saying goes, been there, done that… ruined the T-shirt.”

“So, too small for me and Hugo, eh?” said Chase. “Hafez isn’t in any state for it either, and we can’t exactly send you and the sprog…” A sly grin slowly appeared on his face. “Dr. Wilde…”

“Yes?” It struck Nina a moment too late exactly why he was smiling. Everyone looked expectantly back at her. “No!”

The upper levels of Hajjar’s home were as ostentatious and overblown as its exterior, Kari saw as she and Volgan were brought from the cells. The illicit trade in ancient Persian treasures had clearly been a highly profitable one, and it appeared Hajjar spent a good proportion of his profits on decorations and fittings made of gold. Unlike her own family, in this case wealth did not denote taste.

Hajjar’s office was a circular room in the highest domed tower. The click of her heels on the polished marble floor echoed through the open space. Hajjar himself was seated behind a huge semicircular desk, itself marble-topped and trimmed in gold. On the wall behind him was a massive plasma screen, and Kari noticed the black shark eye of a video camera in its lower bezel.

“Ms. Frost! Yuri!” Hajjar boomed with utterly insincere heartiness. “So glad you could make it!”

“Don’t waste my time, Hajjar,” said Kari coldly. “Just tell me what you want.”

Hajjar looked mildly offended. “Very well. I am about to have a videoconference call with your father, and I wanted you to be here so I can assure him of my… intent. He is a very hard man to get hold of, by the way. I was becoming impatient.”