Her anger spilling over, Farah took a running lunge and hit Kharazzi with a closed fist. He saw it coming and moved at the last instant so she missed his prominent nose and hit his Adam’s apple.
Unable to breathe, his face reddened and his knees buckled slowly, as he brought both hands to his throat, his eyes wide open at Farah in astonishment.
“Come on,” Steve said. He grabbed Kharazzi and dragged him to the side of the road. He then motioned everyone toward the black car, and he got in the driver’s seat.
“Naurouz, where is the next ventilation shaft?”
Five minutes later, they abandoned the car in a field as Naurouz took them down stairs to another qanat.
They quickly splashed through the entrance and kept moving as long as they could. After fifteen minutes, Farah said, “I have to stop. Wait.” Breathing heavily, she leaned against the wall of the tunnel. “Did you feel that?” she asked. Since no one answered, she concentrated on regaining her breath.
Naurouz tensed suddenly. “Quiet,” he said. “Do you hear people in back?”
They stopped moving and held their breath. Farah managed to quiet her complaining lungs for an instant. The tunnel and the water clearly carried voices from the direction they had come.
They heard a shout that bounced over the water and down the tunnel against the clay walls. “Farah, stop! I order you!” It was Kharazzi.
A gunshot echoed in the tunnel. Steve put his arms on Kella and Farah and forced them down. “How far is the next shaft?” he asked Naurouz urgently.
Naurouz started to move forward again, as he said, “Come! The qanat is built straight and they know it. They don’t even have to aim.”
Another shot rang out.
They resumed their crouched run, Naurouz leading and Farah last, with Steve constantly looking behind to make sure that she didn’t give up.
Several shots ricocheted off the walls past them.
Naurouz stopped abruptly and put his hand against the dirt wall. “I feel a tremor. Hurry, another hundred feet or so! He pushed Kella to the front.
Tremor? As more shots pinged off the rocks in the tunnel walls, Steve crouched further and kept running. But he recalled the earthquake in Tehran. It had only lasted a few seconds. Was this going to be worse?
Steve suddenly flashed back to the avalanche that had killed Vera, his fiancée. Was it his fate also to be buried alive? Had these Acts of God been meant for him? Unconsciously, he breathed more deeply.
Farah had slowed down, and Steve went back to help her. As he put his arm under her shoulders, he felt moistness. He first assumed it was from the water, but then knew he was wrong. Water was not sticky; it was blood.
He helped her to the ladder and pushed her up. Naurouz was now behind him. As they climbed, the walls of the shaft started to crumble. One side of the ladder lost its hold on the vertical surface under their combined weight. Then the earth shook violently, and Naurouz, pushing Steve up in front of him shouted, “Hurry! Hurry!”
They heard screams from the shooters in the tunnel in back of them, screams that were muffled and extinguished by tons of dirt. The clay core of the walls and roof of the tunnel could not withstand the tremendous seismic force. Then an overwhelming sound, like a giant wave, monopolized their senses.
Steve turned and reached for Naurouz as soon as he was on the surface. By grabbing one arm then both, he pulled Naurouz out of the hole just as the ladder was swallowed by the crumbling walls of the shaft, shutting the opening behind them.
Steve took a breath and turned to see Kella leaning over Farah, who was stretched out beside what had been the ventilation shaft.
“How is she?” He asked.
Kella looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “Oh my God! I can’t feel her pulse. A bullet! I think she’s dead!” She looked up at the starlit sky and seemed to stifle a sob.
Naurouz shouted to them to move away from the qanat. Seconds later, dirt and rocks erupted, riding a powerful jet of water. Carrying Farah’s body in a fireman’s carry, Steve ran behind his friends, everyone protecting their heads as best they could. The deadly rain ended suddenly. They stopped and looked behind them. The water jet had given way to a sinkhole. Its gaping mouth growing larger, swallowing whatever was on its widening perimeter.
53. The White House: Oval Office
Dorothea Langdon, dressed in a long pale dress matching her long grey hair, sat facing the president on a chair to his left as, fingers intertwined and hands resting on his stomach, he leaned away from his massive wooden desk in his black leather armchair.
She had requested the meeting out of concern that the president would be too forward leaning, too likely to get engaged, in the events following the Iranian elections. The brutality of the Basij, the militia assigned to control the demonstrators, had already taken the life of a young female student.
The President of France had become the leading voice of the Western World in his outspoken opposition to the primitive methods employed by the Iranian authorities while the American President had kept his distance. Langdon knew that he was being pressured to be more supportive of the demonstrators but she had other thoughts. Her wing of the party had made Candidate Tremaine into President Tremaine. The president would not be in the White House without them and they expected to be listened to.
“Mr. President, if I may be frank, we cannot get involved in Iran’s internal politics. The bottom line is that, when we have elections, the international community of nations pledges to deal with our duly elected officials. They elect a new president, and we’ll have to deal with whoever wins. To go further, to try to influence their vote or their process, is simply hypocritical.”
“Dorothea, I agree with you. I want to make it clear that I will negotiate with whoever is in charge. To say anything negative now would immediately foredoom any chance of talks with the Iranians. On the other hand, our party expects me to stay on the side of human rights. To fail to do so would hurt us in the next elections. We are, after all the party of the people. After my speech in Cairo, I have to appear to be sensitive to the killings that took place during the demonstrations yesterday.”
“Mr. President, we don’t know what is going on in Iran. Our Interests Section is practically closed. The Chargé’s wife, according to the Department, has disappeared. It’s very strange if you ask me. How could she disappear?
“In any case, I don’t recommend overreacting to the information we are receiving from Twitter and YouTube. It could all be orchestrated to make us act in favor of the demonstrators who, for all we know, are very few and not representative of the population. I wouldn’t be surprised if all these messages were being written by Langley.”
She saw Tremaine look at his watch and she said, “My second point, Mr. President, concerns the funding necessary for the so-called Operation RAMPART—another flag waving name invented by the military-industrial complex, no doubt...”
“Dorothea, I sort of like that name. It implies defense, nothing too aggressive that might offend the Iranians, don’t you think?”
“Yes, Mr. President. I hadn’t thought of it that way. About the funding for RAMPART, I—we, that is, many people in our party, believe we should focus our economic priorities on domestic issues. The new universal health care program is slated to cost one point six trillion dollars over the next ten years. We must have the money to fund it. Our constituents expect it. That is what we ran on in the last elections.”
“Again, Dorothea, I agree.” He leaned toward her, flashed his smile at her, and put his hand on hers. “National defense is in a different pot. The money for RAMPART, a mere two billion this year, will not affect our ability to fund the new healthcare program.”
She withdrew from the physical contact and, although she leaned back a bit, she held his gaze. “Mr. President, we will have to defend this expenditure publicly. Frankly, I … we … are not comfortable with that thought. I can tell you as Chair of the House’s Intelligence Oversight Committee that th
e information on this alleged Iranian doomsday plan is very thin.”
She leaned down to retrieve a tissue from her pocketbook by her feet and blew her nose. “Sorry, I think that I’m coming down with a cold.”
She put the tissue away and resumed, “The information is from one source, an untested source at that. We can’t take the risk that it is fabricated out of whole cloth for reasons known only to the source, assuming there is a source in the first place. Although we can all guess what those reason are: winning resettlement in the United States and a green card and the funds to live like a millionaire, when our poverty programs are starving for funds.”
Langdon paused, as if to refocus her remarks. “Another point about the RAMPART program: We don’t know if it will succeed, or even if it’s necessary. The first casualty of RAMPART will certainly be our privacy. We all know the history of the intelligence people who claim they act in the name of our rights but are the first to violate them. The Patriot Act is enough of a travesty: government prying, wiretapping without warrants…”
Tremaine sat impassively, hearing her out.
“RAMPART will absolutely dwarf any previous programs,” Langdon continued. “Already, thousands … maybe millions … of innocent people … voters … our base … are caught in the NSA’s net. Anyone on the Internet, really, is a potential victim. I cannot emphasize enough, Mr. President, my belief that you must put a stop to RAMPART!”
As she turned to leave his office, Tremaine said, “I very much appreciate your thoughts. Take care of that cold.”
Tremaine was convinced of what he must do. Unless he stood taller than he had so far on the issue of the violence in Iran, his international stature would be diminished, and he would be known as the man capable of high and principled rhetoric but incapable of following through when it counted. He could not afford to lose credibility abroad, weakening American influence, and his opponents at home would be quick to fault him.
He knew well that his international experience was negligible, and this was no time to give ammunition to his domestic critics. Moreover, he was miffed that the French president had stolen the leadership from him on what was a human rights and democracy issue.
Dorothea Langdon had also given him some food for thought on RAMPART. Had his National Security team sold him a bill of goods? Was the CIA trying to push itself to the head of the line, together with the NSA, by claiming to hold what might, after all, be bad information? There were recent precedents. How would he look if there was no Iranian cyber project or intention to use it against the United States? What would be his reelection chances?
Why can’t the CIA produce harder, more convincing, more actionable intelligence? he groused to himself.
Tremaine’s mind went back to choosing a different option. If Iran could be made to understand that the United States had no hostile intentions, perhaps it would be more likely to stand down on any further aggressive acts. Maybe the United States should increase its assistance to the victims of the recent earthquake in a place called Yazd, he remembered.
54. On the Road to Shiraz
People had rushed out of their houses, most of which were damaged, some irretrievably. Some were going back inside to help others wedged under the weight of walls and roofs. Screams of despair came from victims’ families, moans of pain from the survivors under the rubble.
Many were running toward a house whose second floor was where the first had been. A fire had broken out on one side. A man was darting back in to retrieve valuables while a crying woman tried to hold him back with one hand. Her other hand held on to a little girl, who seemed confused and in shock.
Fires lit up the night in the direction of the city center. The smell of smoke permeated the air. Sirens sounded from police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks.
Kella grabbed Steve’s arm, “Let’s get Farah to a hospital. Maybe there’s still a chance.”
Steve saw an ambulance driving toward them and moved to the middle of the road to wave it down. It stopped. The driver opened the back of his vehicle when he saw Steve and Naurouz carrying Farah toward him. Naurouz and the driver put her on a stretcher and strapped her in. Without speaking and divulging they were foreigners, Steve and Kella climbed in the back with her while Naurouz sat in the front with the driver.
They drove through destruction and chaos. In one neighborhood where many streets were parallel, the quake had destroyed the buildings on every other street.
Steve was thinking that whether one lived or died had much to do with the luck of the draw, regardless of how much karma had been accumulated through good deeds or whether one flossed. Had they been a few feet back in the tunnel, they would not have gotten out. Had Kharazzi and his men been a few minutes slower or faster, they might still be alive.
The balconies of a seven-story hotel were piled up one on top of another where the entrance had been. A truck with a spotlight arrived in front of an apartment building across the street. Its beam revealed a deep V in the facade down to the third floor. The two sidewalls were still up completing the letter M. People were waving for help from their apartments exposed now because the front wall was down in the street burying those it had fallen on. Most buildings higher than two stories were damaged. They drove past buildings offering cut away views with floors slanting at steep angles toward the ground and everything inside having slid to one side or into the street.
Gas explosions were starting fires, too many for the town’s firefighting capabilities.
When they reached the hospital, the driver got out to open the back of his vehicle, and two other men rushed to carry Farah inside. Steve closed the back, climbed in the driver’s seat, motioned Naurouz back in, and drove the ambulance away. “This is plan B,” he announced.
Looking uncertain, Naurouz said, “The police will come after us.”
“The police are busy,” Steve quickly replied.
Naurouz gazed around them at the chaos and destructions. “I must go back to see how my parents are, the building...” he said.
Steve hesitated, his mind focused on reaching a rendezvous point with agency operatives. However, he felt that Naurouz had no choice but to check on his family before anything else. Neither did he have a choice but to help Naurouz. “Okay, tell me how to get there,” he said.
They encountered no roadblocks on their way back.
* **
The house was dark when they reached it. Naurouz rushed in still wielding his flashlight. Steve and Kella followed. Once inside, they saw that a TV set had been thrown across the floor ripping the electric extension from its molding at the base of the wall; decorations had been shaken from their shelves; and a diagonal crack extended across one wall.
Holding a candle, Jemshid walked out of a back first floor bedroom. Naurouz embraced him and asked about his mother Maryam before seeing her appear behind Jemshid. Except for internal breakage and the fall of the badgir—the windcatcher—from the roof, the house had withstood the quake.
“This is not the first time that investing in stone and concrete construction has paid off. Naurouz should not have worried,” Jemshid said.
As Naurouz and his parents spoke in Farsi, Steve grew impatient. Kella rested her hand on his arm, and Steve held off a few more minutes.
“I think it’s time for us to leave. Naurouz, if you can give us some directions, we’ll be off,” but Naurouz held his hand up.
“No, no. We’ll go through with the plan. A mere earthquake never stopped our community. We haven’t survived several thousand years of hardships by backing down at the first obstacle. In any case, Leila is waiting for you. I will take you there, and we’ll regroup then.”
They got back in the ambulance and left with Naurouz at the wheel.
“Too bad we don’t have uniforms that go with the ambulance,” Steve said.
“We’re lucky to have the ambulance,” Kella reminded him.
Naurouz, apparently inspired by Steve’s comment, said, “That’s a good idea. We’ll tak
e a very small detour.” He looked at them with the grin of a good boy discovering the pleasures of breaking the rules.
Within five minutes, they stopped in front of a large building in an industrial area. “Kharazzi is in the import-export business, and this is one of his warehouses,” Naurouz said. “Let’s see how he can help us tonight. I know he deals in medical supplies.” He disappeared around the back.
Kella moved from the back to the front seat with Steve and asked, “What about Farah? Should we check up on her before we leave?”
“Why?” he answered, surprised.
“Well, I couldn’t feel her pulse. She lost a lot of blood. But I’m no doctor. Maybe I was wrong.”
“There’s no way we can go back into that hospital without getting caught. If she were alive, she couldn’t travel with us. Without medical care, she would die for sure. She’s best where she is, alive or dead. Agree?”
Kella nodded. “She was a good person. Life wasn’t fair to her.”
Steve put his arm around her then let her go to ask, “In your last message, did you tell them we’re on our way to the coast?”
“I said we were heading for Shiraz. How far do you think Naurouz is going to take us?”
“I don’t know. I expect that he’ll pass us along to his Z network somewhere. He hasn’t volunteered much information.”
“Neither have we.”
When Naurouz didn’t return for ten minutes, Steve said, “I’m going to look for him.”
“Not without me you’re not,” she insisted.
Just then, Naurouz strode around the corner of the building, holding several green uniforms in clear-plastic wrappings.
“The guards are long gone and the quake destroyed the lock on the front door. I just walked in.” He handed a package to each Kella and to Steve. “I didn’t have time to check for sizes.”
* **
They were stopped twice on their way out of town. At each checkpoint, Naurouz drove to the head of the line of waiting vehicles.
Satan's Spy (The Steve Church saga Book 2) Page 25