The army officer explained that the small domestic airport had been damaged by the recent earthquake and was ill-equipped to deal with its unexpected guests, but would do its best. The airport did not have a tug to tow the big jet off the runway so the passengers would have to walk the two kilometers back to the terminal. One of the army trucks would ferry those unable to make the walk. Given that formal immigration procedures could not be followed, no one would be permitted to leave the airport but, the officer explained, it was inhospitable country and the area boasted little to see anyway. He asked that Allard convey this information to the passengers before they deplaned. Allard agreed and told the officer that, on behalf of himself, British Airways, and the passengers, he appreciated the assistance and the hospitality. The conversation was cordial and both parties seemed to be relieved that a potential disaster had been averted.
Though the passengers were grateful to be safely on the ground, human nature was such that many soon began to think about missed meetings, delayed vacations, and the minor inconveniences that seem so calamitous when lives are planned down to the minute. Dozens of passengers tried their mobile phones but none could get a signal.
When Zac heard the deplaning announcement he fished out his U.S. passport, grabbed his carry-on bag, and followed his elderly seatmate down to the lower level of the aircraft and the open door. He felt the hot, dry air on his face as he looked out over the vast Iranian countryside. Sunset was not far off. A small housing development occupied the flatlands next to the airport, but a spectacular mountain range stood off in the distance, filled with cragged peaks and deep gorges. The sun bathed the land in soft pink light, making for a striking contrast with the deep blue sky.
His seatmate was in line in front of him, hefting a rolling suitcase toward the stair-truck.
“May I carry your bag for you?” Zac offered.
“That would be nice, thank you.” She proffered her hand. “I am Celia Parker. Lady Celia Parker,” she said with a mischievous smile.
“I suspected as much,” Zac said with a grin before introducing himself. “Didn’t you check a bag?”
“Not at my age. I can’t waste two hours waiting for my luggage in the off-chance they don’t lose it.”
The line on the stairs moved slowly and Zac took several photographs of the scenery with his mobile phone while he waited.
A frown crossed Celia’s face.
“I would be careful taking pictures round this lot. My husband was nearly arrested in Moscow in 1982 for taking a picture of the outside wall of the Kremlin. Can you imagine? The complex was in every Intourist brochure and on the BBC twice a day. It was one of the most photographed places on Earth.”
Zac glanced at the old woman. “That’s probably good advice, but I’ve spent a lot of time in the mountains and that’s one of the nicest sunsets I’ve ever seen.”
“They took his camera right there on the street. We lost all of our photos from the Hermitage up in ‘Leningrad,’” she said with contempt. “Barbarians.”
Twenty minutes passed before Zac’s passport was checked and he was in the line of passengers walking slowly toward the terminal. He’d suggested to Celia that she catch a ride on the army truck, but quickly surrendered to her withering gaze. Despite her age, she was proud, stubborn, and able to make the walk at a slower pace, which suited him just fine. Hues of pink, blue, and white tinted the sky as the sun continued its descent. He took a few more pictures while they walked.
“Are you traveling for business or pleasure, Mr. Miller?” Celia asked.
“Business, and please call me Zac. I work in London but I have some meetings in Singapore.”
“I used to live there. Singapore, that is. My late husband and I spent a decade there. Wonderful place for expatriates. Well, I suppose London is too, isn’t it?”
“It is. My job keeps me busy, but I bought a motorbike that I use on the weekends. I often ride up north with a group of friends. I’ve even taken it all the way to Edinburgh.”
“It must be a lovely trip. Do you get home often to see your family?”
Zac hesitated just long enough for Celia to pick up on it.
“Wrong subject? Sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude,” she said.
“It’s fine. My parents passed away when I was fourteen. Their car was hit by a drunk driver. I was raised by my aunt and uncle, but they sent me off to boarding school and we were never very close.”
Celia nodded. “A tragedy on many levels. My condolences.”
The terminal building looked as if it had been through a war. The earthquake had shattered more than half of the windows and many of the doors hung unevenly on their hinges. Fortunately, the simple interior, with linoleum floors and hardwood furniture, had been spared much of the devastation that had befallen the exterior. The men were directed to one area of the airport and the women to another.
“Segregation by sex?” Celia piped up. “Dear God, I’m not sure I even remember how to spell the word. Well, Mr. Miller. It’s been lovely meeting you. I hope when this Kafkaesque ordeal is finally concluded we will fly the rest of the way to Singapore together.”
“I hope so too, Lady Celia.”
All the signs inside the terminal were in the Persian language, but a few airport employees had arrived and were gesturing to the seating areas and bathrooms, all of which instantly became overcrowded.
Zac sat on a bench and worked on his laptop until the line for the men’s room finally disappeared. He took his carry-on bag and turned down the hallway. One of the airport employees, who was speaking into a handheld radio, motioned him to the door on his right. Zac entered and was surprised to see the army captain who had met the plane seated at a table. Zac assumed he had entered the wrong room until the door closed behind him. There were three other soldiers there.
“Your passport, please,” the officer said to Zac in surprisingly good English.
“Sorry, I think I have the wrong room. I was looking for the toilets.”
“This is the right room. Your passport, please.”
Zac handed him the document.
“What were you taking photographs of earlier?”
Zac thought for a moment. “Just a few pictures of the sunset on the mountains. It was very scenic.”
“May I have the camera, please?”
Zac realized that it was not an accident that he’d been directed to this room, and neither was the timing. They had waited for him to go to the bathroom. They wanted to separate him from the other passengers without making a show of it. He thought of the Englishwoman’s warning.
“Yes, of course. It’s in my pocket.”
The soldiers watched closely as Zac set down his carry-on bag and removed his phone. One of the men took the device and left the room. The captain asked if Zac had been to the Islamic Republic of Iran before, what he did for a living, and general questions along the same line. There was a period of uncomfortable silence while the soldiers stared at Zac and he stared at the floor.
“Have I done something wrong?” he finally asked.
“What makes you think that?” asked the captain.
“Are you questioning all the passengers like this?”
Silence.
The soldier who’d taken the phone returned after twenty minutes and had a whispered conversation with the captain.
“This should be cleared up soon. I will be back shortly,” the captain said before stepping out of the room. He returned an hour later and spoke briefly with the soldiers before turning to Zac.
“Time to go.”
The captain motioned toward the hallway. By the time Zac turned toward the door, he felt a sharp prick in his neck. By the time he hit the floor, he felt nothing at all.
FIVE
ZAC AWOKE TO a powerful throbbing at the base of his skull and coughed weakly as he tasted the stale, rank air. With great
effort, as if rousing himself from a dream, he opened his eyes. He was seated on a chair above a grimy and uneven floor and his traveling clothes were gone. Someone had dressed him in frayed canvas work pants and a faded denim shirt. He thought back to the room with the soldiers. He remembered getting ready to leave, but nothing else.
It required deliberate effort to lift his head. To his right sat a soldier in a chair, but it wasn’t one of the men who had apprehended him. This one wore a different uniform and a black beret. He caught Zac’s gaze for a moment and walked out of the room.
Zac tried to stand but his arms and legs would not respond. His ankles and wrists were bound. The room was an office like one might find in an old factory or a warehouse. It was Spartan, with off-white paint, a table, and a few chairs. He wondered how long he’d been unconscious.
The soldier returned and resumed observing his prisoner.
“Do you speak English?” Zac asked.
“No, Pashto and Arabic, and Persian, of course,” responded the guard in thinly accented English.
“Why am I here?”
“No English, sorry.”
The guard was toying with Zac, so the two men simply sat in silence until three more soldiers entered the room. The second man through the door was older and wore a crisp, khaki-colored uniform more suited to a desk than to combat.
Probably an officer, Zac thought.
The man spoke quietly with the original guard in Persian, or at least Zac thought it was Persian. He couldn’t speak a word of the language, but they obviously thought he could. He watched the officer’s profile as he spoke. The man radiated determination and intelligence. His dark, deep-set eyes locked on to the other soldier as they spoke, but Zac recoiled when the officer turned. The left side of his face, from his neck to his hairline, was a glossy mass of purple and brown scar tissue. There was no recognizable shape to it: no eyebrow, no facial hair, no form at all. The only human quality was his perfectly functioning eye. Like a black hole, it took in everything and revealed nothing.
“I am Colonel Arzaman of the Revolutionary Guards.” His voice was calm but forceful. “Tell me, why have you come to Iran?”
Zac opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. His eyes danced over the man’s face, wondering what could have caused the horrific scarring.
Eventually he spoke, barely above a whisper. “I never meant to come here. I was on my way to Singapore. Our plane had engine trouble and we had to make an emergency landing.”
Arzaman’s expression remained impassive. He sat across from Zac and folded his arms across his chest. His left hand had been burned as badly as his face. The fingers were crooked and small. His eyes never left Zac.
“Tell me what you did after the plane landed.” He raised a cautionary finger. “Do not leave anything out.”
The circumstances, the man’s scarred face, and his sharp gaze made Zac look down at the floor again. He realized now that the brown grime on the tiles wasn’t dirt. It was dried blood. His breath quickened. He looked Arzaman in the eyes and answered carefully.
“After we landed, I took a few pictures while I waited for my passport to be checked. A soldier wrote down my information and I walked to the terminal. I worked on my laptop for a while then went to the bathroom, when I was . . . met by the soldiers.”
“And what did you take pictures of?”
“The sun setting on the mountains. As I told the others, I’ve never been to the Middle East and was trying to make the best of our unexpected stop.”
Arzaman was silent for a moment, his black eyes unmoving.
“What else did you photograph?”
“Just mountains and rocks.”
Arzaman scowled. A look of profound disappointment spread across his face.
“This process will be less difficult, especially for you, if you do not waste my time.”
“I swear I didn’t take any pictures of the soldiers, the airport, or anything else. There wasn’t anything else to take pictures of. Just desert, mountains, and sky.”
Arzaman said nothing, so Zac tried another tack.
“Look, I took those pictures with my phone. If I were intentionally taking pictures of something . . . unusual, don’t you think I’d use a better camera?”
“An excellent point. One of the first things we did was examine your phone. We discovered that it is quite advanced. Not only does it have a high resolution camera and GPS device, but a sophisticated password and encryption system as well. You took photos of some very sensitive areas.”
Zac’s chest tightened. Whether it was to stoke nationalism at home or simply poke its enemies in the eye, Iran had a well-known habit of arresting foreigners and holding them as spies. The list included hikers, tourists, and businessmen. Some had been held for years on trumped-up charges before being released, and those were just the ones Zac knew about.
He looked nervously at Arzaman. “All phones in the U.K. have cameras, GPS, and passwords. I bought it off the shelf at a wireless store. It’s a regular phone.”
“Please. I am well acquainted with Western technology. This is extremely sophisticated equipment. You would have me believe that all cell phones in the West are like this? We have not yet decrypted the data on it, but we will, so do not lie to me. You will only make things more difficult for yourself.”
Zac pleaded, “Bring it back. I’ll give you the passwords. I’ll show you every picture. It’s nothing special. I just have the encryption software because I use it for work.”
“Another good point. Let us talk about your work for a moment. We will return to the phone later.” Arzaman spoke with the formality of an educated man who’d learned a foreign language later in life. “And for whom do you work?”
“E.A.D.”
“What does this mean, this E.A.D.?”
“Electronic Architecture Development. It’s a technology consulting company. That’s why I have the high-end phone and laptop. We buy the newest equipment to evaluate it. Please, call my office. They’ll vouch for me.”
“Of course they will. I would expect nothing less. Your passport says you are American?”
“Yes, but I live in London.”
“Your name?”
“Zachary Miller.”
“I can read your passport. What is your real name?”
Not knowing what to say, Zac said nothing.
“What were you going to do with the photos?”
“I wasn’t going to do anything with them. I’ll delete them. I’ll give you the password to my phone.” He spoke quickly, desperately. “Look, we made an emergency landing. It’s a one-in-a-million chance that I’m even here. I was staying at a friend’s apartment in Paris while he’s out of the country. When I learned that I had to go to Singapore, I just grabbed my bag and left. This is a huge mistake.”
Arzaman sat in silence for a minute that seemed like a year. He looked at Zac, but the Iranian’s mind seemed to be elsewhere when he began to speak.
“Many years ago, during the Holy Defense War with Iraq, I was a young lieutenant in command of a tank company. We had been ordered into rain-soaked Dezful, in western Iran, to drive back the invading Iraqis. I arranged our eighteen tanks into a wedge formation, with my own Chieftain in the vanguard, and attacked over a dry stretch of ground. We quickly destroyed one of the enemy tanks and disabled three more. The defenders fled like dogs in their Soviet-built T-62s. They simply did not have the will to fight. We pushed through the center and drove up the middle of the valley to finish off the enemy and secure our gains. But on the other side of a ridge was a battalion of Iraqi T-62s, dug-in and waiting. They opened fire immediately. We had been led into an ambush. Our crew worked furiously to escape, but the underpowered Chieftain turned slowly. Its engine struggled with the heat and mud until a deafening explosion filled our tank. We rocked violently onto our right track and crashed to
the ground, disabled and ablaze.”
Arzaman turned and stared into Zac’s eyes.
“I opened the hatch and had begun to pull myself out when our external fuel supply burst into flames. A fireball of burning diesel engulfed my left side. My flame retardant suit shielded my body, but the heat fused my hand to the surface of the burning tank.”
He rotated his disfigured hand as he stared at it.
“Faced with certain death or excruciating pain, I ripped the skin from my hand and leapt from the tank. A few seconds later, the burning fuel flowed into the open hatch and ignited the cordite we used to fire the main gun. The turret, with my crew still inside, spewed flame like a volcano.”
Arzaman spun on his feet and faced Zac. The volume of his voice rose with his anger.
“I tell you this because I learned that day, in a very literal way, that pain and suffering can set you free; that we must endure hardship if we want to survive. I learned that everything is not always as it appears. I would not trade that experience for anything, so do not lie to me, do not insult me with your feigned innocence. I do not believe for one second that you are here by accident.”
Zac looked at the enraged Iranian, at the soldiers staring down at him, rifles in hand. This couldn’t be happening. Any minute now he would awaken from the nightmare. He looked up at the colonel.
“I want to talk to someone in the U.S. embassy.”
The nearest soldier smashed the butt of his rifle into Zac’s stomach. He doubled over in the chair and gasped for breath.
Arzaman began shouting. “Do not lie to me! Do not tell me you are taking pictures of the sunset. Why do you treat us like fools? Look at me. Do you think this is a game? Do you think anyone even knows you’re here?”
Arzaman grabbed Zac around the throat and pinched his carotid arteries. The Iranian squeezed harder and Zac felt light-headed. His vision began to cloud. He thrashed about in the chair, trying to break free. The Iranian loosened his grip and smirked. He pushed Zac back until the chair was balanced only on its rear legs.
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