Page 139 of Grave Danger
He was seething, and the room was silent, except for the sound of his breathing. He took the gun from his belt but didn’t aim it at anyone.
Jack needed to rein him in and steer him in the right direction. “It’s time to give this up, Nouri.”
Nouri didn’t answer.
“Let’s call the FBI and tell them this is over.”
“You!” Nouri shouted, pointing at Zahra. “You’re on your own, Zahra. I’m not sticking my neck out another minute for you.”
“Let’s just stay calm and put away the gun,” said Jack.
Nouri looked at Jack, but he didn’t put the gun away. “You asked a question earlier, Jack. You asked me whose side I’m on.”
“Yes,” said Jack. “You said ZahraandAva’s. Stay on Ava’s side. No matter how you might feel about Zahra right now, stay on Ava’s side and put the gun away.”
Nouri shook his head. “No. Now I’m onmyside.”
Chapter 52
Andie and her partner were on the move. Grace had taken over the driving duties so that Andie could focus on her phone conversation with Isaac Underwood.
Andie knew Jack’s location, and they were heading up South Beach Road in that direction. But with SWAT in motion, showing up on-site unannounced would have been dangerous to Jack and everyone else inside, not to mention deadly to her career. Andie’s best bet was to find the mobile command center, appeal to the negotiating team, and get them to rein in the SWAT breach based on “information on the ground.” Having the support of an assistant director in Washington couldn’t hurt.
“The decision to breach was made much higher than me,” said Isaac.
“Someone outside the FBI?” asked Andie.
“Higher than me,” he said, giving her nothing more.
“It appears that someone would rather see Nouri Asmoun dead than keep my husband alive. That’s unacceptable.”
“No one wants anyone hurt. We simply can’t risk Nouri going public with what he knows about Ava Bazzi.”
“What does Nouri know?”
“Andie, I can’t.”
“I deserve an answer, Isaac.”
“Even if I told you what I know, it wouldn’t fill in all the pieces of the puzzle.”
“I’ll settle for a corner piece.”
Humor, however lame, had gotten Andie and Isaac through many a tense situation in Seattle, and her effort seemed to bring out a hint of the old Isaac, softening him a bit.
“The Iranians didn’t know what they had in Ava Bazzi,” he said.
“I already know about the text-message network. Ava kept text messages from women all over Iran about the opposition to the government.”
Isaac paused, and Andie hoped that he would be more forthcoming now that he knew she was already deep into the secret life of Ava Bazzi.
“What you need to understand is that Ava wasn’t collecting this information for a journalist or a human rights organization,” he said. “She was feeding real-time information about the protests to the CIA through Nouri Asmoun, who then passed on that information to Agent Guthrie. Ava was a key source of intelligence after the regime shut down the internet.”
“And the Iranians never found that out?”
“No. Farid found the thumb drives in their apartment after Ava was arrested.”
“He didn’t turn them over?”