Scorpion draped an arm over Ghanbari, who wore a spooky Guy Fawkes type mask, as if they were drunken buddies, and making gestures like a fool, he pulled Ghanbari with him as they followed the family toward the park entrance. There were more Basiji militiamen at the entrance, but they ignored him and Ghanbari, focusing on a group of teenagers, one of whom tossed a firecracker into the park. Two of the Basiji grabbed the teenager. For tonight at least, being Haji Firuz was saving his life, he thought. But what about tomorrow?
They followed the family from the Peugeot down the path to an open area with illuminated water fountains and dozens of bonfires surrounded by crowds, singing and talking and taking turns making a running leap over the fire. People were clapping and laughing as if the crisis didn’t exist. There was a high whistling sound and a vertical stream of sparks as someone fired a rocket into the sky.
As the family from the Peugeot approached one of the bonfires, Scorpion accidentally bumped into the father, knocking a messenger-type bag off his shoulder.
“Bebakhshid, ghorban,” Scorpion apologized. “Khahesh mikonam,” please, picking the bag up off the ground and handing it to the father with a bow.
“Bashe, mersi, Haji Firuz,” the father laughed with a shrug. It’s okay, thanks.
“Mersi, mersi,” Scorpion said, shook his tambourine and danced a little jig for the children who giggled. He gestured for them to jump over the fire.
The father took one of his sons, a boy of about seven, and stood him about six or seven feet from the fire, then gave him a nudge. The boy ran at the fire, his tongue sticking out and jumped over and everyone cheered.
“Barikallah! Barikallah!” Bravo! Bravo! Scorpion joined in cheering. As the others in the family started their jumps over the fire, Scorpion nudged Ghanbari and they began to edge away in the crowd. They made their way on the crowded walkways, shadows from the flames dancing on faces as they headed across an open area toward a hedge near the edge of the park.
“What just happened?”
“We got ourselves a ride,” Scorpion said, nodding and shaking his tambourine at a group of preteens. On top of the tambourine he showed Ghanbari he was holding a car key he’d stolen from the Iranian man. “They’ll be busy here for a couple of hours at least.”
“Where did you learn to do something like that?”
“Remy le Panthère. Remy the Panther. He was from Côte d’Ivoire. Black, handsome devil; best pickpocket in Paris. He could strip your pockets clean in three seconds and you’d never know he’d been there. No gangs of Roma kids, no man and woman front-and-back team. Didn’t even need the kind of crude bump and grab I just did.”
“You spent time in Paris?”
“At the Sorbonne,” Scorpion nodded, glancing around before stepping through the hedge and out to the street. A moment later Ghanbari followed.
“You didn’t learn that at the Sorbonne.”
“No. The useful stuff I learned on the streets.”
They headed for the parking lot where the Peugeot was parked. Another minute and they were inside the Peugeot. Scorpion took off his Haji Firuz hat and put his ZOAF pistol with its sound suppressor next to him. As they headed for the parking lot exit, two Basiji militiamen stepped out of the shadows and waved them down. Scorpion’s eyes darted around. There were no other police or militia around. Ghanbari, next to him, looked terrified.
One of the Basiji motioned for him to roll down the window.
“Your papers, Haji Firuz?” the Basiji said.
Scorpion reached into his pocket and handed him some crumpled-up handful of rials.
“What’s this?” the Basiji said, his eyes suspicious. “Get out of the mashin.”
“Bashe,” okay, Scorpion said, and shot him in the forehead. He shot the second Basiji in the head a second later and drove out of the parking lot. From the park came the sound of firecrackers. Anyone who might have heard the shots probably assumed they were firecrackers too, he thought, driving carefully down the street and onto Niayesh Highway heading west.
“You killed them,” Ghanbari said, wide-eyed, looking at Scorpion as if he had just seen him for the first time.
“Yes.”
“Just like that. You just killed them and drove off like it’s nothing,” he said, breathing hard, like he had just been running.
“Would you rather be on your way to Evin Prison? I killed your enemy, Sadeghi, too.”
They drove on the highway, crowded with traffic. They had to get out of town and on the road to Chalus before there were roadblocks, which the police might be reluctant to do, he thought, causing massive traffic jams on the night of Red Wednesday.
For a time, Ghanbari didn’t say anything, then: “How do you live with yourself?”
“Look who’s talking? What did you think Asaib al Haq was doing in Iraq? Kissing Sunnis and Kurds—and American soldiers too? You probably have more blood on your hands than I do.”
The traffic eased as they took the cloverleaf south onto Yadegar-e Emam Highway past a big market, lit up at night for the holiday. There were fireworks in the night sky over Pardisan Park.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” Ghanbari asked finally.
“No.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Look, I never talk about this,” Scorpion said, eyes flicking up to the rearview mirror to make sure there were no tails. “But just this once. Because we’re on the run together. Did you see those people tonight in the park? All happy, enjoying the holiday, hoping for the best for the New Year? Just people.”
“Yes,” Ghanbari nodded.
“They’re closer to war than they can imagine. Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, might die. Not just in Iran, but America, Israel, Europe, the entire Middle East. Mostly innocent people who just want to live their lives. The Gardener put all that at risk. Last night we brought justice and maybe a chance to prevent the war. If you don’t think that’s worth the lives of a few Basiji, then your moral calculus is very different from mine.”
They drove on through the night. Scorpion headed west toward Karaj, a suburb in the extreme northwestern corner of Tehran, then turned north on Route 59, the only road through the Alborz Mountains to the northern coast of Iran on the Caspian Sea. He drove at a good pace, taking the curves of the winding two-lane road through the mountains at speed. With any luck, in another hour or so they’d be in Chalus, and another hour or two after that out of Iran.
“It’s a shame we couldn’t drive this road during the day,” Ghanbari said. “This is the most beautiful road in the world. Steep green mountain slopes, clear rushing streams, waterfalls, rainbows. It can take your breath away.”
They drove for a while. Ghanbari tried to get news on the radio but everything was about Red Wednesday. Then Scorpion began to slow. They were in a deep narrow canyon. There was a glow of light coming somewhere from around the bend of the road ahead. He pulled to the side of the road, stopped and got out, taking the pistol.
“What’s wrong?” Ghanbari asked, getting out too.
“Not sure,” Scorpion said, walking on the edge of the road, barely the width of his shoulders. Below him was a drop of at least a hundred feet where a clear rushing stream ran tumbling over rocks. The air was clean—the first clean air he’d breathed since he’d been in Tehran—and the sky above the canyon was full of stars. He walked a hundred yards, then crossed to the other side of the road and began climbing the face of a rocky cliff. It was mossy green, and smelled of vegetation, and was wet with water trickling down the rock face. When he was up about twenty feet or so, he leaned out and was able to peer around the bend into the serpentine winding of the road through the canyon. The light was coming from a massing of vehicles a kilometer up the road. It looked like there were at least twenty of them.
“What is it?” Ghanbari called in a whisper from below.
“Roadblock,” Scorpion said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Zanjan,
Iran
They ra
n out of gas four kilometers outside Zanjan. It was an hour before dawn and the sky behind them had a violet predawn light just outlining the tops of the mountains. Scorpion told Ghanbari to wait in the Peugeot and began walking alone toward the city on the empty road.
The roadblock on the road to Chalus was like a cork in a bottle. For a second Scorpion had briefly flirted with the idea of using the gasoline in the Peugeot’s fuel tank as part of the explosive for a car bomb, but the narrowness of the canyon road and the number of vehicles and the amount of force at the roadblock made it impassable. They would never reach the Caspian Sea.
“How did they know we were coming on Route 59?” Ghanbari had asked as Scorpion made a careful U-turn on the narrow road and headed as fast as he could back toward Karaj.
“It’s logical,” Scorpion said, darting a glance at Ghanbari, his face shadowed by the light from the dashboard. “It’s the only road through the mountains. They know with everyone in the country looking for us we have no choice. We have to get out of the country.”
Ghanbari nodded.
“So now what?”
“Plan B.”
“Which is?”
“Iraq,” Scorpion said, driving faster as the road became straighter coming down out of the mountains. When he reached Karaj, he got off the highway to avoid the highway interchange where there might be another roadblock. Instead, he used dark back streets on the outskirts of Karaj, the bonfires all burned out and nearly everyone gone to bed by now, to zigzag his way to the Karaj-Qazvin Freeway. He drove onto the freeway and headed west toward the Iraqi border.
“That border is very heavily guarded,” Ghanbari said. “It’ll be even worse now that they’re looking for us. It’ll be impossible to get through.”
“We’ll see. Turn on the radio; maybe we can catch some news now,” Scorpion said. Ghanbari fiddled with the radio, then found a late night news broadcast on Iranian twenty-four-hour IRIB radio.
“ . . . according to Fars News Agency, Foreign Minister Hamid Gayeghrani jenab reiterated to reporters that the Islamic Republic of Iran will regard any attack by the illegitimate Zionist regime called Israel as an attack also by the United States. The foreign minister stated ‘Iran has the means to retaliate against American bases and interests anywhere in the world.’
“In other news, authorities suspect that the wanted criminals, the foreign spy Laurent Westermann and the traitor Muhammad Ghanbari, added to their crimes by killing two heroic Basiji militiamen in Mellat Park. The murderers are believed to have fled in a stolen white Peugeot 4008 SUV . . .”
Ghanbari turned the radio off.
“How did they know it was us?”
“They know we’re on the run. We can’t use a bus or a train or get on a plane. We’d be spotted in a second. They know we can’t rent a car or buy one. They assume we have to steal one. The Peugeot was stolen; the Basiji are dead. It had to be us—and even if it wasn’t, they’d say it was us,” Scorpion said. He didn’t say what he really thought: Scale is running this. It would be a mistake to underestimate him. In fact, Scorpion was counting on it.
“We have to get rid of the Peugeot,” Ghanbari said.
“We will. A few more hours and we’ll either be out of Iran or we’ll be dead.”
Now, walking on the shoulder of the freeway near Zanjan, Scorpion watched the sky lighten with the dawn. He had no illusions about what was about to happen. It would all depend on Shaefer and Dave Rabinowich, because he was out at the end of a very shaky limb. And even though the countryside as he approached Zanjan looked peaceful, there was no question but that the Revolutionary Guards would catch any communications he tried to make, regardless of the mechanism. It was going to be unbelievably close, he thought, hiking over fields to a side road roughly paralleling the freeway, spotting a gas station at the edge of the city.
The cell phone in his pocket vibrated. Looking at it for a minute in the gray early morning light, he thought it was the final piece of the puzzle, then put the phone back in his pocket. He walked over to the gas station. It was too early. He sat down on the pavement to wait for them to open.
Almost an hour later a middle-aged Azeri man dressed in a sweater and a traditional papaq lamb’s wool hat, came yawning to open the gas station. He smiled broadly when he saw Scorpion, still in blackface and red costume.
“Sobh be khayr, Haji Firuz,” the Azeri man said. Good morning, Haji Firuz.
“Salam, brother. We ran out of petrol.”
“On Red Wednesday? We must correct your luck for the New Year, brother,” the Azeri said. “How far is your machine?” unlocking the office.
“Only four kilometers back on the freeway. And if it’s possible, I need to make a phone call.”
“Of course, brother. I will drive you to your machine with enough petrol for you to come back and fill up. And please, make your call at no charge.”
Ta’arof, of course, Scorpion thought. Only it might cost the Azeri his life.
“Please, brother, you must let me pay. My honor demands it and I am already too greatly in your debt. Your generosity overwhelms this poor brother.”
“For your honor only,” the Azeri said, touching his hand to his chest, and went outside to fill a fuel can with gasoline. Meanwhile, Scorpion used the office phone and dialed the emergency number in Mosul, in northern Iraq. He spoke briefly to someone, who only repeated “Bale, bale,” yes, yes, mentioned PJAK, and described a remote farmhouse on Kohneh Khaneh Road on the outskirts of Piranshahr, a town close to the Iran-Iraq border. The voice at the other end of the line didn’t have to elaborate. Scorpion understood immediately what Rabinowich and Shaefer had in mind.
PJAK, the Free Life Party of Kurdistan, was a paramilitary organization that operated in the border region between Kurdish Iraq and Iran. They were affiliated with the Kurdish PKK party, and although officially designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government, there were nevertheless links between PJAK and both the CIA and the Israeli Mossad, which sometimes used them for targeted actions against the Iranian regime. The PJAK group would come for them at the farmhouse and smuggle them over the mountains into the Kurdish region of Iraq. Plan B.
Later, the Peugeot fully gassed up, the morning bright and sunny, he and Ghanbari were speeding on the Zanjan-Tabriz Freeway toward the border. If their luck held and there were no roadblocks till later in the day—even VEVAK and the Basiji would be getting up late Red Wednesday morning—they had a chance. More and more traffic began to appear on the road, which made Scorpion more comfortable. They would be harder to spot from the air.
Ghanbari found a map in the glove compartment. They tried to decide the route.
“Where do you think they’ll put a roadblock?” Scorpion asked.
“Tabriz is the biggest city in this region. If I were them, I’d put it on the freeway outside Tabriz. I’d go here,” Ghanbari said, pointing at a smaller road, Highway 26, that would take them around Lake Urmia, the largest salt lake in the Middle East.
“Sounds right,” Scorpion said.
When he saw the road sign for Mahabad, he turned off the freeway and south onto Highway 26. Driving around the southern curve of the lake, he had to squint against the glare of the sun on the white salt fringe and sparkling blue of the water. Just another two or three more hours, he thought. That’s all he needed. He glanced over at Ghanbari. He looked like he had fallen asleep, his head against the car window. Maybe he was, Scorpion thought. Not that it mattered. The only question now was whether they’d be dead before the afternoon was over.
The farmhouse was at the end of a road at the edge of the town. Scorpion parked the Peugeot behind the house, out of sight from the road. Beyond the fields were the mountains, the slopes green and only the peaks still snow-covered. He estimated they were about four miles from the border. He had expected the farmhouse to be unoccupied, but there were three generations of a family living there. Kurds, of course. This whole area was Kurdish on both sides of the border, and Kurdish was t
he language the farmhouse family spoke among themselves, though they used Farsi with guests. The house was carpeted throughout, but with no furniture; typical for this part of Iran, Ghanbari whispered.
Scorpion placed all his Iranian money on the carpet on the floor, a stack of rials thick as a man’s thigh, and told the family they would have to leave. The farmer’s wife, a heavy-set woman, was having none of it.
“It’s PJAK, you understand? PJAK,” Scorpion told her. She said something in rapid-fire Kurdish that he didn’t understand. “Tell your woman,” he told the farmer. “You have to go. It’s too dangerous now.”
The farmer took the money but didn’t go. The wife shouted at him, gesturing that the strangers should leave. The farmer looked at the money, clearly reluctant to give it up, and at Scorpion and Ghanbari.
“Maybe you should leave, honored guests,” the farmer said awkwardly.
“PJAK is on their way. If you are still here, it will be very dangerous for you. Tell your wife to think of her parents,” Scorpion gestured at the older couple, “and her children.”
The farmer spoke to his wife. She shouted at him. As she was shouting, Scorpion took out his pistol and fired three shots straight up through the roof. The woman stopped shouting.
“Berid!” Go away! Scorpion shouted, motioning with his head for Ghanbari to help him get them out of the house. “Get out! Now!”
The farmer and his wife glared at them, but gathered up the children.
“Come back in twenty-four hours. Not sooner,” Scorpion said, shoving them out of the house. They piled into an old Nissan pickup truck, the entire family, muttering and throwing him the evil eye, two of the children clinging to their mother’s skirts. Ghanbari spoke to them for a moment and then they were bouncing away down the road in the truck, leaving behind a cloud of dust and diesel fumes.
Ghanbari came back into the house.
“Was that necessary?” he asked, coming over to Scorpion.
“You probably just saved their lives,” Scorpion said.
Scorpion Deception Page 26