Killer Instinct (Instinct #2)(71)

It’s not every day that an Iranian takes sides with Israel. In fact, it’s barely any day. “How do you know?” I asked.

“Because my father warned me.”

“He could’ve been wrong. The Israelis were convinced he was leading the Iranian nuclear program. They desperately wanted him dead.”

“Not as desperately as his own government,” she said. “That so-called evidence Iran presented at the UN, the pictures that implicated the Israelis? They were fake.”

“Back to my original question,” I said. “How do you know?”

“The same way I know that Darvish was feeding the CIA bad information while working ever closer to developing the bomb. His allegiance was always to his homeland.” She paused. “Just like mine would appear to be.”

It wasn’t just the pause. It was the words and the way she said them. Just like mine would appear to be.

Sadira Yavari was telling me that she was a double agent of her own. Quite literally. She answered to Iranian intelligence, but she was working on her own, for her own reasons.

“For how long?” I asked. How long had she been working against her own government?

“Since they first came to me after my father’s murder to convince me it was the Mossad,” she said. “Exactly as my father warned me they would. He said the counterintelligence arm would then try to recruit me.”

“And as far as they know, they succeeded.”

“Exactly,” she said. “I’m an Iranian spy.”

Only she wasn’t. Sadira Yavari was an Iranian spy who had gone rogue. Seriously, dangerously, altruistically, full-on Machiavellianly rogue.

I knew there was more to her than met the eye …





CHAPTER 101


SADIRA WALKED me through it all. Her recruitment. How she seduced a member of the Iranian government and stole files from him revealing the work of Darvish and the other nuclear physicist she tracked down in London. Even the origin of her fake last name, which she used to become a US citizen. Yavari’s had been an ice cream shop in Tehran that her father used to take her to as a child.

The Iranian government had tried to leverage her presumed rage against Israel and the West, and she had them convinced they’d pulled it off. But she had her own motive. A deeply personal one. In the name of her father, Sadira had become a one-woman army to prevent what he feared most. That Iran would possess a nuclear weapon.

“So what now?” I asked.

“Now I kill you,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“Remember how you asked how I knew you’d worked for the CIA?”

“Yes. Who told you?”

“The same person who told me I had to kill you tonight.”

The one and only. “The Mudir,” I said.

“I figured he was on your radar. You’re certainly on his.”

“If you’ve had access to him, then—”

“I didn’t know in advance about Times Square, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

It was. “So you’re not in one of his cells?”

“No. I volunteered to be a courier for him after the attack. I told my handler with the Ministry of Intelligence that I wanted to help with the next one.”

“In order to stop it.”

“Yes,” she said. “To stop it and to stop the Mudir. I want him dead. But first we need to convince him that you’re dead.”

“How do you propose we do that?”

“I have an idea,” she answered. “But first, do you think maybe you could pull up your pants?”

I glanced down. Smiled. “Why? You don’t like my boxers?”

After pulling up my pants, I walked over to Sadira and picked up her gun. She and I had come a long way in a very short period of time. But believing her was one thing. Trusting her was another. We weren’t there yet.

The way she described it, neither was the Mudir.

She’d been a courier, delivering fake passports to him that had been generated back in Iran. Now he wanted her help with an impending attack.

But he needed to know first if he could trust her. Especially when he discovered that I’d orchestrated my jury duty introduction to her at the courthouse. It was obviously a major red flag for him. It was also, though, an opportunity. He wanted me dead, but there was a risk in coming after me. He knew I’d be waiting for him. But I wouldn’t necessarily suspect Sadira. If she could eliminate me, she could be trusted. Two birds with one stone-cold killer in heels.

“What do you know about this next attack?” I asked.

“Not much,” she said. “My getting any details is contingent on your being dead. The Mudir did let one thing slip, though. Something about it being safer to fly that day.”

“It’s Penn Station,” I said. “That’s the target.”

I suddenly didn’t have to wonder if everything Sadira had told me was true. Her reaction, the look of horror that crossed her face, could never have been faked.

“The fact that you know,” she said. “It means you’re already prepared to stop it before it happens, right?”

“That’s the plan,” I said. “Now tell me about yours. How do we convince the Mudir that I’m dead?”