Free Tom Clancy Under Fire by Grant Blackwood

tempted to ask for the same check on Seth, but he decided to hold off for now. “I’ve also got an e-mail for you to track.” He gave him the address for Ervaz. “Finally, I need you to run a license-plate trace. Can you do Iran?”
    “Might take a bit longer, but I think so.”
    Jack gave him the van’s plate number, as well as the partial wording on its side placard, then said, “Thanks. I’ll call you back.”
    Jack hung up, then went into the convenience store, bought a prepaid cell phone, then returned to Ysabel’s apartment to find her sitting at the dining table.
    Jack asked, “When did Seth give you Ervaz’s name and contact info?”
    “About a month ago.”
    This was about the same time Seth abandoned the Pardis condo, the one Spellman and Wellesley knew about, for the bolt-hole off Niavaran Park. “Did he say why he wanted you to have the name, when you should use it?”
    “No. His brain was always going a mile a minute. He’d jump from one subject to the next. Sometimes I could barely get a word in. Sometimes it was like I wasn’t even talking.”
    “That’s the ADHD,” Jack replied.
    “That explains a lot.”
    “Think back: Did his move to the bolt-hole coincide with something you gave him from your group?”
    “Well, the group met once a week and I reported to Seth after each one, so it’s hard to say. He never showed much reaction to anything I gave him.” After a moment of silence, Ysabel stood up and headed down the hallway toward the bedrooms. “I’m going to have a shower.”
    Jack removed his disposable cell phone from its blister pack, powered it up, then called Gavin and gave him the new number. Five minutes later the screen blinked with a text from Gavin: THIS NUMBER SWAPPED TO YOUR OLD NUMBER. Jack punched in Seth’s number and texted: IT’S JACK. CONTACT ME AT THIS NUMBER, ASAP.
    Next he jotted a list of follow-ups on the pad:
    —Make contact with others in network. Have Gavin track.
    —Look into Dr. Pezhman Abbasi? Name, VAJA point of contact?
    —License plate, van. Place of business?
    —Translate doc from Seth’s safe.
    —Info: David Weaver. Gun serial number?
    —Who owns: Spellman/Wellesley safe house; Seth’s apartments?
    —Spellman/Wellesley. Meet again? Confront?
    Of these last two items Jack was uncertain. Digging into the ownership of the safe house would probably reveal nothing but a front, and the probing wouldn’t go unnoticed. He decided to back-burner this.
    As for another meeting with Spellman and Wellesley, if in fact his kidnappers belonged to them, a second visit to the Zafaraniyeh district safe house might land him on the tarp again. Still, wanting to know if they’d heard from Seth was exactly what a friend would do.
    And it might be worth the risk to gauge their reaction to his injured face—and to an unexpected visit.
    •   •   •
    AFTER TRYING UNSUCCESSFULLY to leave Ysabel at her apartment, Jack gave in and they took her second car, a dark blue Range Rover, to a nearby men’s clothing store and Jack bought a few changes of clothing—khakis, button-down shirts, and a windbreaker—before heading to the Zafaraniyeh. Ysabel parked three blocks away from Wellesley’s apartment, under a blooming linden tree.
    Jack patted his side pocket and felt the reassuring heft of the nine-millimeter, then climbed out and shut the door.
    “Remember,” Ysabel said through the open side window, “one call and I’ll be there.”
    “Another drive-by strafing?”
    “I have my methods.”
    In a short eight hours Jack had learned that Ysabel Kashani was beautiful, smart, independent, and resourceful. As allies went, he couldn’t have hoped for more.
Too good to be true?
he wondered. If Ysabel wasn’t what she seemed, he hoped he would find out sooner rather than later.
    “Give me thirty minutes, then start calling. If I don’t answer, call this number”—Ysabel powered up her phone and Jack recited Gavin Biery’s cell-phone number—“and