“Crap,” I said, and dropped the battery, which vanished without a trace. All I heard was a dull plop as it landed in the subterranean muck.
Before I turned to go into the store I scratched the tip of my nose with my forefinger. I was sure they’d see that, too.
Chapter Three
Starbox Coffee
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 7:39 a.m.
I went into the Starbox and ordered my coffee.
The waitress, a slim gal with a blue headscarf, glanced at my hands, which were visibly shaking. “Decaf?” she asked.
I screwed a smile into place and tried to make a joke. It fell flat. I repeated my drink order in a low mumble, paid for it and a French edition of the Tehran Daily News, and took them with me to a table where I could watch the street. It was pretty early, so the place was empty. There were two leather chairs in a corner and I took one, aware that there was no place in the cafe where a shooter with a good scope couldn’t find me.
Last year I’d been in a coffee shop when a strike team tried to take me out. You’d think I’d have learned by now. My best friend and shrink, Dr. Rudy Sanchez, constantly tells me that I drink too much coffee. He says, “Caffeine will kill you,” all the time. He’ll be delighted to hear me admit that he was very nearly right.
I crossed my legs as if that would offer my groin any real protection from a high-velocity sniper bullet and tried to read the paper.
Apparently America is still the Great Satan. What a surprise.
The main headline was about last week’s assassination attempt on the nation’s Rahbare Mo’azzame Enghelab-the Supreme Leader. A man dressed as a Shia cleric had attended a prayer session at Mashhad, which is the second largest city in Iran and one of the holiest cities in the Shia Muslim world, over five hundred miles east of Tehran, near the borders of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.