Fault Line Read Free Page B

IPO, the firm's share would be worth a fortune. And Hilzoy would never forget who got him there. All the legal work afterward, and all the billing for it, would be Alex's and his alone. His name would be indelibly linked with Obsidian, he would be the lawyer who represented the hottest company of the year, maybe the decade, and then the David Osbornes of the world would be begging for the crumbs from his table.
    Assuming Hilzoy hadn't already blown it for them. Did he understand just how busy these VCs were, how many proposals were pitched at them every single day, how few they actually followed up on? You get one shot for these people's attention, Alex had told him, just one shot.
    If Hilzoy screwed this up, Alex was going to kill him.

    Chapter 3 A SIMPLE UNDERSTANDING
    Ben Treven sat motionless at the edge of a wooden chair at the Hotel Park Istanbul, watching the rainy afternoon street two stories below through tattered gauze curtains. The room was small and spartan, but its size and furnishings couldn't have mattered less to him. The window was open a few inches, and from time to time the interior quiet was broken by the sounds of the city without: car tires thumping over the antique cobblestone streets and splashing through potholes; the practiced touts of rug merchants calling out to passing tourists from in front of their small shops; the haunting notes of the muezzin, entreating the faithful to prayer five times daily between dawn and dusk.
    In addition to letting in the sounds of the street, the open window kept the room cold. When the moment arrived, he would need to move quickly, and he was already wearing deerskin gloves, a wool cap, and a fleece-lined, waterproof jacket. His hair was naturally blond, but the false beard he wore was black. With the hat on, no one would notice the discrepancy.
    The warm clothing would be useful in the rain and against the December chill, of course, but that was only part of it. The gloves prevented prints. The hat obscured his features. The jacket concealed a suppressed Glock 17 in a cross-draw holster on his left side.
    On the coffee table next to him was a backpack containing clothes, two sandwiches, a bottle of water, a first-aid kit, ammunition, false travel papers, and a few other essentials. Other than the backpack, there was no trace of the room's occupant, nor would there be when he was gone.
    He was there to kill two Iranian nuclear scientists, Omid Jafari and Ali Kazemi. Ben knew a lot about the men: their real names, the names they were traveling under, the details of their itineraries. He knew they were in Istanbul for a meeting with a Russian counterpart. He knew they were staying at the Sultanahmet Four Seasons, which is why he had taken this room at the Park, directly across the street. He had copies of their passport photos and had recognized them immediately when they arrived from the airport in one of the hotel's BMW limousines three days earlier. He knew the two men who accompanied them at all times were with VAVAK, Iran's feared secret service, and that the VAVAK people, in addition to being well trained, would be motivated. If one of the scientists were kidnapped or assassinated, or if one of them defected, as Ali Reza Asgari, the Iranian general and former deputy defense minister, had done not so long before, the man who let it happen could expect to be executed.
    He knew considerably less about the Russian: not much more than a real name, Rolan Vasilyev-which he probably wasn't traveling under anyway-and that he was coming to Istanbul to meet the Iranians. Washington had been pressuring Moscow about Russian nuclear assistance to Tehran, and presumably the Kremlin had decided it was too risky to bring the Iranians to Russia, even under false names. Istanbul was a good neutral corner: about midway geographically, with good air links, and security services focused more on ethnic Kurds than on Russians or Iranians.
    Each morning since they had arrived, the