Johnson started to mumble an apology, but Banquo waved him off. “Consider your options, Peter. If you want to move forward, we need to come back in here for a long session and go over specific scenarios. I don’t envy you. There are no good choices. But I would argue doing nothing has far worse consequences, ones that you won’t be able to drink away. You are implicated now, one way or another. You represent a unique opportunity to secure victory at the price of one bullet. Fellows like you don’t come around very often, Peter Johnson. But when they do, I simply cannot resist demanding of them what they say they want.”
“My ceremony of innocence is drowned?” Johnson mused, almost to himself.
“You know your Yeats,” Wallets said.
Johnson pursed his lips. What was there left for him to say? Nothing. Just a decision. To go or not to go. A million years ago, it seemed, he’d asked to join la résistance. But that was before anyone asked him to pick up a gun and point it at another man. It still sat, with all its black metallic solidity, in the same spot on Yahdzi’s desk.
Banquo stood up. “Let us know your decision today or tomorrow.”
Later, alone in Banquo’s office, once more Wallets looked at his boss. “Do you really believe all that crap you fed him?”
Banquo stared at the huge plasma TV screen; CIA-SPAN showed mobs from the Religion of Peace burning effigies of the Pope for baptizing a prominent Muslim writer. He forgot the screen and pondered the thick file on Johnson before him. Slowly, he opened it and began turning the pages; then paused—a page caught his eye. It had come from very early on in the process, when Banquo read everything Johnson had ever written. Examining the man like a bug under a glass. Combing his past for anything that might give Banquo & Duncan a clue to the man and his character. Even going back to a tiny screed in a defunct Oxford magazine called Scrivener. The article about the old nursery rhyme in Orwell’s 1984:
“Oranges and lemons,” say the bells of St. Clement’s.
“You owe me five farthings,” say the bells of St. Martin’s.
Ending with the dark lines:
Here comes a candle to light you to bed
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!
But something in those bells spoke of a long buried, long ignored deep care for the past and regret at a great civilization slipping into oblivion. It spoke well of the student Johnson, that he could see as much. They’d paid the scribbler five measly pounds.
“It’s not important what I believe,” Banquo murmured softly, finally answering Wallets’ question. “It’s only important what he believes.”
Giselle came home for dinner that night. Mexican takeout, enchilada Suisse, and lots of beans and red rice. They ate at the big kitchen table under the shiny racks of pots and pans, shoving the white Styrofoam platters back and forth, trying not to make a mess of things. Then digging in the Sub-Zero fridge for cool glasses of milk when the salsa kicked in. Giselle turned the pages of a recent Vogue, occasionally showing Johnson the latest must-have and asking, “What do you think?” But answering herself before he could, with a simple “Blech.” The spread showed a red John Galliano gown strung with loopy threads from bust to ankles like a flapper’s dress, the whole thing a quivering mess of fringe.
“Maybe for my funeral,” she said. “If I’d died during Prohibition.”
She kept on, turning pages and making remarks; Johnson watched her. He stopped hearing the actual words and nodded silently at each new silly picture. Quietly enchanted that she was with him that night and talking about things that didn’t matter. There was something safe and normal about it all. The young lady perusing the latest goofy fashion, her father simply watching.
When they were finally done and stuffing the remnants of Paco’s Tacos into the compactor, Johnson managed to say, “I’m going to be away for a week. An assignment. Want me to bring you anything back from Iran?”
Nothing unusual in Daddy going to strange places. Giselle didn’t raise an eyebrow. “No, just you.”
CHAPTER NINE
What to Do with a Lemon
A very sober Peter Johnson looked up from his hospital bed. The taste of gin and tonics in his hotel room at the Azadi Grand long since faded from his tongue. Compared to this bare hospital room the hotel seemed Shangri-La, a far distant place of ease and comfort. That crap in North Carolina had never prepared him for this. Or had it? He wasn’t sure.
Over the course of several days the patient had lost count of the procedures. The barium enema. The catheter up his urethra. No solid food, just a vitamin-protein drip. Stomach pumped twice. An anal probe worthy of an alien abduction. He remembered a series of X-rays, including his testicles, squeezed between photo plates. A full CAT scan. The hospital’s new name translated roughly as The Hospital Center for the Promotion of Health and the Celebration of Virtue, but before the Revolution known simply as Vanak Hospital. His “doctor” was a lovely, gentle man named Ali Ebtekar. Every day he came in to look at Johnson’s chart, and every day he said the same thing, “We’re very close now; thank you for your patience.”
Johnson knew the score. First, the authorities were looking for an implanted global positioning chip stuck in his body somewhere. As the technology got smaller and smaller, the procedures got longer and longer. Soon, they’d shred you to find the thing. He didn’t have one, so he wasn’t worried. And secondly . . . obviously . . . Sheik Kutmar intended to soften him up like butter, then squeeze him through a sieve before the mullah deigned to meet him. God, if he ever got to Dr. Proton, what would be left? Today his polite physician came in with a broader smile than usual. Ahhh, Johnson knew: the day of release.
With many a tut-tut-tut and some pleasant clucking, a fey male nurse wheeled him in a wheelchair to the front desk and glass doors of the hospital. The nice lad smiled sweetly at him, and Johnson knew that if the mullahs were ever overthrown, this guy wouldn’t lose a minute applying for a visa and moving to Massachusetts to settle down and get married to a guy named Hansel.
“I’ll be your best man,” Johnson confided, but the kid didn’t speak English.
Releases and forms in Farsi were handed to him. At least he assumed they were releases, but he signed them anyway. The clerk processed the bill for his stay on his Visa card, liberated on the day of his arrival and now returned to him. The whole business cost about $6,000. He signed the charge slip without comment and wondered what other mysterious charges would appear on the next bill cycle. After all, the plastic had been out of his possession some three days. That’s a lot of charge time. Right now, he’d bet it was refrigerators, air conditioners, and satellite dishes. Maybe some personal computers or software they’d copy and pirate. Trademarks, intellectual property, and copyright protections didn’t mean squat in this corner of the world. Never had.
What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine. He’d square it with Visa later. Let Banquo do it, for that matter.
Kahleed from the Information Ministry and his driver from MahdiCab were waiting for him at the curb. Both men took each of his hands in welcome, almost petting them, grinning, one after the other as though delighted at the outcome of some long arranged plan.
“Auspicious day!” Kahleed exclaimed, opening the taxi door. “Sheik Kutmar and Jazril Mahout say to meet them at the Ministry. His Excellency wishes to meet you. Yes. Him.”
Kahleed gave Johnson a large beautiful poppy flower, bright red, in a clear plastic stem vial to keep it fresh. “Give this to His Excellency. He is a man of many sympathies, among them the most fleeting symbols of life. He will look kindly upon you.”
As they drove, they left the windows in the cab open. The driver apologized—the air conditioning wouldn’t work today, but maybe tomorrow. Johnson knew where the Information Ministry was, straight across town from the hotel, but they seemed to be taking a roundabout route. First, through a crowded bazaar. It was an open market, with saffron and yellow awnings, stalls of fresh produce, melons, grapes, olives, open-air butchers hanging s
kinned upside-down goats with deathly grins straight out of Guernica and booths selling everything from Cabbage Patch dolls, to DVDs and cosmetics. Among the stalls were the inevitable heroic posters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in open-collared shirt and even larger posters of His Excellency Mohammed Gul, former president, spiritual leader, “reformer,” and lover of pretty poppies.
The man’s full name ran like a babbling muezzin: Hojat al-Islam wa al Moslemeen Sayyed Mohammed Gul. Rendered in English the tongue twister: Proof-of-Islam-and-of-Muslims-Master Mohammed—a name used only by those who claimed direct descent from the Prophet himself. See? his name said, I come right from the Prophet, so don’t think, just obey. Islam. Submit. Or else.
Thousands of his fellow Iranians, journalists, doctors, poets, and professors rotted away in his jails. Many were beaten to death or died of starvation, while others were rendered back to their families for a night or two, then whisked off to jail again as a lesson to others. His Eminence had just returned from a victory tour of Harvard University, where no one mentioned the trail of blood dragged along the floor by his flowing robes, where nary a soul mentioned the stink of corruption and death that followed him like a dank cloud. Giving truth to the old Persian saying, “When a mullah calls, an undertaker is sure to follow.”
Inside the cab, Johnson could smell the street, miles of dusty roadway, beneath which shallow sewers trucked their filth off somewhere else without really enough water to flush them clean. The whole Middle East smelled like that—never enough water. The odor of too many people living over too few drains. Where dried dung was still used for fuel in rural towns and kerosene cookstoves were more common in apartment buildings than Magic Chef ranges, even right here in the heart of oil country. Dung, burnt oil, human waste.
The noisy bazaar gave way to an open boulevard of apartment complexes, and the cab speeded up. Johnson saw dozens of mini satellite dishes sprouting from every other window and rooftop like a forest of gray mushrooms. The religious police couldn’t keep up with demand. Every time they cracked down on privately owned satellite receivers, smashing them or cutting the cables, they sprouted up again overnight. The great window on planet Earth, the eyes and ears to the forbidden outside world with its endless temptations and earthly delights. No matter how hard you tried, no one could keep the Home Shopping Network from your door.
They were coming up to the Ministry building, still several hundred yards away, when Johnson saw something was wrong. The cross streets on either side of Mosaddeq Boulevard were blocked off with barricaded police lines, and behind barricades were the Thuggees of Ansar-e-Hezbollah, the “unofficial” religious vigilantes all in black, black kaffiyehs with clubs and machetes. The cab passed three cross streets, each one blocked off with several dozen Hezbo toughs behind the police lines. The Tehran Metropolitan Police stood in front of the vigilantes in their blue uniforms, as though to hold them back, but they seemed bored, as if they knew the outcome of this job all too well.
“What’s going on?” Johnson asked Kahleed. But the Information Ministry man said nothing, and the driver pulled over, a block away from their destination. The cabbie turned around in his seat and threw a panicked look at Kahleed, rattling out something in Farsi. And Kahleed rattled back, waving his hands about in frustration.
Then it became clear. Fifty yards off, a huge body of protesters turned a corner and came into view marching right before the Information Ministry Building, several thousand strong, holding banners and chanting. Three or four local “news crews” were dancing ahead of the crowd, videotaping the scene.
“Who the hell are they?” Johnson demanded.
The cabbie and Kahleed shouted back and forth at each other for a second, arguing about whether to pull up in front of the Ministry building or stay put. The cabbie wanted to stay put, Kahleed wanted to go for it.
“Kahleed, answer me,” Johnson said.
Kahleed left off his argument. “These are nobody! Apes and pigs. Can’t you see?”
But what Johnson saw were Iranians of all manner and age, young and old, man and woman. “What do the banners say, Kahleed?”
At first the man sputtered, “I can’t read. I don’t know—” Then read off what he could: “We have not been paid—workers of the Kashan Weaving Company. Father has no water; Father has no bread. Iranian Labor Laws is the blood money of the martyrs—students of the scientific center for management of the province of Kashan.” Kahleed took a breath. “This is nothing, Effendi. Nothing. Unhappy people, that’s all. Nothing better to do than watch Dynasty and Bay Watch on pirate TV and make noise.”
Then a sharp scraping sound. The uniformed local metropolitan policemen pulled aside the barricades on either side of the boulevard and let loose the Hezbo vigilantes. They came out of their cross streets with a roar of “Allah Akbar! ” and swarmed about the cab like locusts, then ran straight for the protesters. The first ones to go down were the video guys, one cracked on the skull from behind as he filmed the banners, another as he turned to film the black-clad assault. When the Hezbos reached him they slashed his leg and arm, and blood flashed over the camera as it hit the ground.
The women in the crowd of marchers began to scream, pleading for their lives; many were beaten about their bodies. As the number of wounded mounted, the crowd began to disperse, then scatter as the banners fell. Suddenly, elements of Hezbos turned from the melee and rushed the cab. Clubs smashed the taxi’s window glass, and all the doors of the cab were yanked open. Kahleed, Johnson, and the cabbie were bodily dragged out and thrown to the pavement. The thugs were yelling, and Kahleed was begging, trying to explain and ward off batons all at the same time.
Johnson kept shouting, “We’re here to see His Excellency Moslemeen Sayyed! Moslemeen Sayyed! His Ex—” when he was clubbed on the elbow, and a ribbon of white pain flashed across his body, shutting his mouth.
Kahleed pointed frantically at the Information Ministry and cursed the fanatics when Tehran’s Finest in their blue uniforms intervened, sensing something amiss. They shooed off the vigilantes and helped the three from the ground. The cabbie had a cut over his eye that dripped blood, and Kahleed limped. Johnson moved his elbow a little, and the ribbon of pain talked to him again, but nothing was broken. The Tehran local police grunted noises of annoyance and helped them toward the Ministry building. In a phalanx they walked the three men the last few yards to the granite entranceway steps, holding the glass doors open for them and ushering them inside. Johnson looked at his clenched fist. Somehow through all of this he’d clutched the pretty red poppy. The plastic vial was cracked, leaking a little water. The flower stem was bent at a peculiar angle, but not completely ruined.
Civil servants from the Ministry’s reception desk came forward bearing antiseptic nappies for the cab driver and cooing at Kahleed in soft tongues. Suddenly the Ministry’s glass doors were flung open once more, and a man in blue from the Tehran Police flung Kahleed’s briefcase and Johnson’s work satchel across the marble floor. The two items skidded to a stop at their feet as the doors swung closed, and civil servants from the Ministry graciously picked them up, clucking apologies. Johnson brushed himself off.
The more elegant of them gave a smile of welcome. “Please don’t be distressed. It is very kind of you to come.” At the bank of elevators Johnson noticed the wiry Sheik Kutmar looking like an enormous praying mantis in his flowing robes. He bowed once, directing him to an open elevator.
“You go now,” Kahleed told Johnson. “The Ministry men take care of us.”
Sheik Kutmar joined Johnson in the elevator for the ride up. He glanced once at the bent flower, but his face betrayed nothing. The elevator doors swooshed open, and Sheik Kutmar led him outside. Through another set of glass doors and into a bright, luxurious sitting room. His Eminence sat on a gold brocade couch and stood up when they came in. Two security men in suits and sunglasses flanked the couch a step and a half behind the mullah. Another security man covered Johnson from the corner of the room, never taking h
is eyes off him for a second.
Sheik Kutmar stopped Johnson a few paces away from His Eminence and motioned for the bent red poppy in the cracked vial.
“Please, may I?”
Johnson gave it to him. Sheik Kutmar brought it to show the former president, kissing the fat man’s outstretched hand before presenting the gift. Moslemeen Sayyed nodded, gazing at it mildly, looking for all the world like a plump happy turnip in his purple robes. Then smiled as if the flower pleased him. He murmured a few words as if to bless it. Then his eyes strayed to a large vase on a table. It contained nothing but poppies—and not just red ones but yellow and black and blue and orange ones. In fact, Johnson didn’t think he’d ever seen a more wonderful display. Sheik Kutmar took the blessed flower stem and placed it carefully in the large bouquet, where the other stems kept it upright.
Moslemeen Sayyed spoke a few words clearly to the room, staring directly at Johnson. But it was Sheik Kutmar’s voice that told him what it meant:
“His Eminence says, ‘The strong stems uphold the weak ones.’ Would you care to sit?” He motioned to a chair by the great man’s side. Johnson approached and, as the mullah did not present his hand to be kissed, just paused for a moment. As the holy man bent to sit, Johnson followed suit, and so they reached the cushions together.
“Thank you for seeing me, Your Eminence.”
Every time His Eminence spoke, Sheik Kutmar translated directly, and every time Johnson replied, the Sheik did the same for him, his cold, calm voice precise and startlingly clear. The former president was nothing like his emissary, not aloof, but familiar and genuine. Like talking to an old family friend.
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