“I don’t know what Hashem has told you, but it is our honor to be here.” Steve had learned enough about ta’arouf, Iranian politesse, in his short time in Iran to appreciate that it was a competitive sport. Except that he truly felt grateful that these people were taking a chance by associating with him.
“You need to know up front that anyone who helps us may be in danger. I say that now so that you can change your mind if you wish.”
The two men smiled at him indulgently as if he was telling them the obvious. A low table was set with cups and pastries, and a domestic poured them all tea. Slices of watermelon were laid out on several plates. The two sashed elders motioned for everyone to sit around the table. Firuz was kept busy interpreting as the trip from Tehran was discussed, and the hosts went into some details on Tehran’s shortcomings as a city where no reasonable person would want to live, compared to Yazd.
The conversation was drifting toward the idiocy of the policies that originated in Tehran, and of the people who made them, when Fereydum began edging toward the door. Noticing, Steve said, “Perhaps we could talk about the future, the next step in our voyage.”
“We will talk about the future in the future,” Fereydum said. “For now, it is enough that you are safe. Jemshid will take care of you. Shæb bekheyr (good night).” He left the house and Steve heard a car start and drive away.
The women of the house led Kella and Farah away, and Jemshid said to Steve and Firuz who was still on translation duty, “I will show you to your room. We will talk tomorrow.”
On the way up the stairs, Steve asked, “Firuz, ask him how many people know about us. Fereydum said that this was a community decision? What does that mean?”
Jemshid nodded seriously at the question and said, “Fereydum and I are the elders of our Zoroastrian community in Yazd. I received Hashem’s request, but I needed Fereydum to also approve any action that would put our community at risk. No one else knows. The people in this house are family. My word that you are our honored guests is sufficient; they will not discuss your presence here with anyone outside.”
Jemshid led Firuz and Steve to a bedroom and said good night. While the downstairs had been reasonably cool, the temperature had risen with each step.
* **
Their second-floor bedroom was large enough for two but barely, with an armoire in one corner and two mattresses on the floor. There was an open bottle of water by each mattress. However, the water couldn’t alleviate the heat, made worse by the nearness of the walls to each other. The bathroom was outside, but they had a sink in the room. Steve reminded himself that a hotel room he could afford in the heart of Paris wouldn’t be any bigger.
Steve had looked forward to having a private word with Firuz, and he didn’t delay. As soon as they each put their backpacks down and Steve washed his face, he said, “You’re a good driver. Thanks. What happened to Hashem? You surprised me this morning. I’ve been waiting all day to have a frank talk with you.”
“My uncle said to tell you that it was impossible for him to leave Tehran right now. I shouldn’t either, but his absence would have had more consequences. I am considered a free spirit. Being from California has its pluses and minuses,” he grinned, and then explained, “and I can work at any time and I often wok irregular hours. I’ll go back in the morning. Hashem said he would call you tomorrow.”
Steve took his bottle of water and gulped a mouthful. “I don’t know if that’s a smart idea, using the telephone. The police must have every line tapped looking for us. Tell me, what do you know about all this, why we’re here, and where we’re going,” in a tone he hoped was the right mix of diplomacy and firmness.
Each was sitting on a mattress facing the other, perspiring in the unrelenting heat.
“Hashem told me everything.” “And you told him everything?”
“About what I do, you mean? Yeah. You know, my uncle, he’s something else. Smart guy. At the beginning, when I first got here, he asked no questions. Just talked about family stuff. But little by little, I had no one else to really talk to, openly I mean, about my work. So, even though my project is classified, I brought some issues to him. I decided that it was OK because he’s an important guy in the IRGC.”
Firuz took his shirt off. He got up to use a towel hanging near the sink to wipe the sweat from his chest and arms. “Working is different here—not as organized, as focused, as systematic as what I’m used to. No one’s ever heard of a business plan. Not that these aren’t smart people. Just very different.
“Then, I started to see that we were not all on the same page. That Russian, for example, Kozak. He’s getting mucho dinero and thinks that crippling the United States is just another chance to do what he failed to do the first time around. That guy smells like KGB a mile away.”
“So this cyber war idea is a KGB plan, something invented in Moscow? Is that what you’re saying?”
Firuz hung the towel on its hook and went back to his mattress. He picked it up and said, “I don’t know about you, but I think we’d be cooler on the roof. That’s where I slept last time I was here.”
“That idea definitely has my vote.”
Steve followed Firuz up where they laid their mattresses on the flat roof. It was late enough that few lights were visible, although Steve remembered that the car was going up a slight incline for the last few minutes of their trip and that the house must have a good view of the city.
“This election is a real watershed,” Firuz said. “You’re famous, you know that, right? Picture in the paper?”
“Yeah, I’ve been lucky so far. Thanks to you. Did you call my company in Canada by the way?” Steve, sitting on his mattress, took his shoes off wondering whether Hashem had revealed his true nationality.
“Yes, I did. I was starting to change my mind about what I was doing. Now that I think about it, when we met, I was unconsciously changing my mind, looking for someone to share my decision with. I still wasn’t sure that talking with my uncle was the right thing to do. You know, I didn’t want to create a problem for him, like, would he have to turn me in for not keeping my mouth shut? We played tennis and you seemed like a good guy. I thought that maybe I should tell somebody. Alert America, you know? The clincher was the election.”
“You could have gone to the U.S. Interest Section. You could have called me at the hotel.”
Firuz lay back on his mattress with his hands under his head looking toward Steve in the starlit darkness. “Yeah, right. I would have been in front of police interrogators within twenty-four hours. Anyway, I could talk to my uncle. So I opened up, and he could tell I was not happy with this project anymore. It’s one thing to play games with corporations like I did for good pay in California. It’s a challenge. I’m good at it. It’s another thing to cut America’s electronic lifeline. Did I sign up for that? Hell no!”
“What about sending the information you have by email to Washington?”
“It wouldn’t get through Iranian controls. I thought of sending the information to my former business partner in California and asking him to get it to somebody. Even if it got through Iranian Internet screens, I would have been identified as the source in a New York minute. I’m too young to die. My other option was you. So when Hashem asked me to drive you, that was my solution. I would give you the information. Hashem didn’t tell me everything by the way.”
Firuz smiled. “I don’t even know what ‘everything’ means. Well, here,” and he pulled a square plastic CD case from his bag. “I’m sure you can get these CDs to the right people.”
“What are they?” Steve asked hoping Firuz wanted to get the CDs to the proper authorities and not to a publisher or a DJ.
“All the attack codes and Trojan horses and viruses we’re preparing and that are more or less ready to go.”
Steve knew this was what he had come for. The information would help avoid a disaster much more harmful than Pearl Harbor or the 9/11 attacks.
“If I can get myself out of the c
ountry, I’ll make sure these reach the right people. Is there a date for this Armageddon cyberattack?”
“ASAP. That means around three weeks. We’re very close. We could pull the trigger now but it wouldn’t be perfect. I thought the other day that we were about to get the “Go” command. Recently, there was a near miss between an American ship and Iranian speedboats in the Gulf. I heard that the Iranian leadership is very frustrated at the U.S. naval presence in their Gulf, in the Persian Gulf. I wouldn’t be surprised if another confrontation causes the date to move up.”
They lay looking up at the stars in silence. Then Firuz said, “You know, Iran is not exactly what I had expected.” He paused, and Steve, whose eyes had begun to close, forced himself awake and waited for him to continue.
“The Iran I came to help is the Iran of Kurosh-e-Kabir, or Cyrus the Great, the leader of the world’s first superpower. The Persian Empire covered two million square miles, from Greece to India. He wasn’t just a military conqueror; he also invented tolerance, way back in the sixth century B.C.”
Steve said nothing but wondered if “tolerance” in the sixth century B.C. meant the same as it did now: “We’ll put up with you even though we know that you’re an inferior being who doesn’t belong here, until we change our minds.”
Firuz continued, “Persia was much superior to the culture brought here with the Arab invasions, and still is. Look at our poets, Jalaladin Rumi and Hafez for example. The Shah made many mistakes but he was Iranian; he cared for the country. The more I learn, the more I believe that the Revolution justified some ways for the excesses and the corruption, became an excuse to destroy the state of Iran and replace it with a platform from which to spread Islam throughout the world.”
Fighting sleep, Steve tried to listen as Firuz went on, “It’s funny. Both the Shah and Khomeini believed it was their divine right to rule. The Shah never claimed to be the temporary representative of the Twelfth Imam who is supposed to return at the end of time—Judgment Day.”
Steve was fully awake now as it dawned on him that Firuz was exploring and articulating, probably for the first time, his motivation, his reconsidered view of the path that his life should take.
“What about Khamenei, Khomeini’s successor. Is he simply pursuing his predecessor’s policies?” asked Steve.
“Good question. No, not entirely. I do know that people from his office, the Office of the Supreme Leader, are in all government and private agencies. Wasn’t that what the Soviet Union used to be like, with ideological commissars? That’s not the Iran of Cyrus the Great.”
A few minutes later, Firuz said, “I’m dead. I’m going to sleep.”
Steve, feeling that sitting in the middle seat all day had probably been the most tiring thing he had ever done, responded, “Let’s talk in the morning.”
He went to sleep, knowing he had to get the CDs to the CIA with the shortest possible delay. That was the only certainty in his mind. His other mental three-by-five cards only had questions.
What were SENTINEL’s Zoroastrian friends able to do to get them out of Iran? What was the CIA ready and able to do? What were Mousavi’s forces doing right now to find him and seize him and Kella? What about Farah? Had it been wise after all to bring her along? He didn’t want to be Dorothy on her way to see the Wizard, picking up strays on the way.
What was SENTINEL doing? Were he and Steve still on the same team, or had he been doubled by Mousavi in exchange for his life? Was this house an elaborate trap? Was the focus of Mousavi’s search still toward Turkey, or had he, the master chess player, figured out Steve’s feint and moved his own pieces on the board? Did Mousavi have pawns in Yazd who were now looking for him while he slept unwary on the roof of this strange house?
48. Yazd: Yazdi House
Steve felt a hand shake him, and he woke up. Fully dressed, Firuz said, “Mr. Breton, I’m leaving to go back to Tehran. I just spoke to my uncle, and he said that he’s going to try to come down in a few days.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” Steve stood up.
The sun was barely over the horizon. The outlines of the city lay below him, a few wide streets crisscrossing mazes of narrow alleys, an entire town of mud bricks. On the outskirts he could see what seemed to be remnants of fortifications.
“I’ve been thinking. What if you came with us, leave the country with us. Then you can explain the cyber program in person. Better than the CDs. What do you think?”
Firuz looked thoughtful, his eyes averted, his head down. “How are you going to leave?” he said as he looked at Steve.
Steve ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know yet. Your uncle has promised to help.” Steve still didn’t want to allude to the external help he was counting on.
Firuz shook his head slightly. “In a way, it would like taking a chance on escaping from prison when you only have a short time to serve. So it doesn’t make sense for me.”
“I understand. I still want to speak to Jemshid. I hope that he has a plan. I’m frankly worried when your uncle Hashem tells you that he’ll be here in a few days. We don’t have a few days. Tell your uncle about the CDs and how important it is that I get them to the right people quickly.”
“He already knows about the CDs,” Firuz smiled. “They were his idea.”
* **
Farah and Kella were having a cup of tea, when one of the young women they had seen the night before entered their room.
“I’m Leila,” she said, “Jemshid’s granddaughter.” She was nineteen or twenty, with lively dark eyes and sunglasses on top of her black hair. “I’m going into town to run some errands, and I thought you might want to come along, to see Yazd.”
Farah translated and Kella replied. “It’s best if we both stay out of sight.
“Me, especially. If I get stopped, even for jaywalking, I’m in trouble.”
“I’d like to go,” Farah said. “I have an ID card and I speak the language. Steve said they’re not looking for us down here, remember? Don’t worry.”
An hour later, each wearing a hijab and a light manteau, a shapeless overcoat, Leila, her sunglasses over her eyes, and Farah came out of a clothing store. A man in his forties in a brown suit and shirt almost bumped into them.
“Well, Leila, what a pleasure to see you,” he said, nodding to Farah and letting his eyes linger over her face a moment too long. Farah felt inspected and assigned a rating, his sharp predatory profile and unflinching eyes searching for hidden flaws.
“Hello Mr. Kharrazi. This is my friend Farah.”
“Indeed. How are your parents, Leila?”
After more obligatory exchanges about family and health during which he looked more at Farah than at Leila, he asked Farah, “And are you from Yazd?”
“No, just visiting.” Farah smiled, hoping that Leila would cut this conversation short. His left sleeve was empty. At least, she couldn’t see his left hand.
“That’s too bad. Are you staying with Leila?”
“Yes, Mr. Kharrazi. Leila, shouldn’t we hurry? Remember we’re meeting your mother.”
“That’s right. I’m sorry, Mr. Kharrazi, we have to go. It was so good to see you.”
“The pleasure was mine, dear ladies. Enjoy your visit Miss ... what did you say your last name was again?” looking at Farah.
“Khosrodad,” she said reluctantly but not ready with another name.
After they walked away and felt safely out of Kharazzi’s hearing, Farah asked, “Who was that? He makes my skin crawl.”
“Kharrazi was a business acquaintance of my father’s. He’s been trying to marry me ever since I can remember. I think he’s interested in you.” She giggled. “I know. He was looking at my hands to see if I was wearing a wedding ring. He’s as subtle as a Bedouin buying a camel. I recognized the searching glance. What’s the matter with his arm?”
“His arm? Oh, he lost it in the war. He was in the Iraq War, at the end I think.” Then laughing, she said, “Thank you, thank you. Now he’
s found someone else to hound.”
“Well, not for long I hope.”
Farah was no longer sure that her decision to go shopping with this young girl had been the best idea she’d ever had.
49. A Street in Tehran
Yazdi parked and walked toward the post office thinking about what he was going to say to Steve. He had the best seat in the house watching the game between Mousavi, the counter espionage hunter, and Steve, the high-value CIA prey.
Catching the Great Satan’s Spy had become a national priority. Now that Mousavi, the chess player, had decided to name Steve and the CIA as Neda’s killers, the nature of the chase had changed. Until then, the issue had been generic, Iranian counter-espionage’s inability to keep the CIA from operating within the country, a big deal only to a few people. Now the CIA spy had killed an innocent Iranian girl, a poor student, much more concrete and a spark to the powder keg of national pride.
American newspapers had advertised that the CIA was running a high level source under the noses of the Iranian leadership; the American action was a deep insult. Those who had no personal knowledge of the countrywide counter-espionage search had assumed it. To some, the affront was to thousands of years of history and culture from an upstart nation whose main claim to fame was its condescending arrogance based on jealousy and ignorance. To others, who looked through the prism of religion, the insult was to Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law, to his son Hussein, killed at the battle of Karbala whose martyrdom was memorialized every year at Ashura, and to Muhammad ibn Hassan, the last of the twelve imams of Shiism.
All Iranians were humiliated to their core, or pretended to be for their own reasons. Others, also for their own reasons, wondered whether to try to contact and help this CIA spy. Mousavi was now harnessing Iranian nationalism, igniting national pride to react to American incursion in Iran’s internal affairs.
Yazdi advised both sides; best seat in the house was also the most dangerous seat in the house. One misstep and he was a dead man. His meeting with Mousavi yesterday, which was also attended by the top civilian, military and IRGC officials with domestic security, had left no doubt in anyone’s mind that the arrest of the Satan Spy was the country’s number one concern. The contest had probably reached the betting houses in London. He wasn’t sure himself on which contestant he would put his money today.
Satan's Spy (The Steve Church saga Book 2) Page 22