Brides of Blood

by Joseph Koenig

  “But what is best about Paris,” Ashfar went on, “is the community of loyal countrymen that has settled there around the royal family. Quality people—the senior commanders of the Army Aviation Service Group, two thirds of the air force generals from the Soviet and Turkish borders. It would warm your heart to see how many of our compatriots have established themselves comfortably in Europe. And every last one of them doing whatever is in his power to restore Crown Prince Reza to the throne as head of a modern, incorruptible constitutional monarchy. That’s why we’ve come back, to lay the groundwork for his return.”

  Where in years gone by Ashfar had the relief of pain as a prime selling point, reduced circumstances, thought Darius, had forced him to support his positions with argument before announcing his terms. But even without the authority of government backing he remained imposing, exuding the threat of bodily harm as other men gave off a bad odor.

  “You’ll let me know when the baby shah is ready to leave France,” Darius said. “After looting the treasury, I doubt the Pahlavis have any great desire to see Iran again.”

  Ashfar laughed. Baraheni joined in, covering his mouth with a massive hand, the slow freight rumbling through a tunnel.

  “Did I say something funny?” asked Darius.

  “It’s quite sad, actually.” Ashfar held on to a frozen, joyless smile. “They told us the masses were waiting to rise up against the fanatics and were hungry for leaders to organize them, that they would forget the past and welcome us with open arms. It hasn’t been like that. Your friends in the Komiteh, they would be glad to have us. But they are the only ones.”

  Djalilian came in with bowls of the thin stew called abgusht and naan, oval pancake-shaped bread, and set the tray down at the edge of the mattress. Ashfar unscrewed the lid from a plain glass jar, and poured an inch of clear liquid into each of four tumblers. Darius pulled his head away when Ashfar brought a glass to his lips.

  “Did you snatch the right man? The Darius Bakhtiar I used to know never refused a drink.”

  “Maybe bootleg isn’t good enough for him,” Baraheni said.

  “I think it’s our company he finds distasteful. I think he would rather be someplace else.” Ashfar emptied Darius’s glass into his own. “Well, no one is forcing him to stay against his will.”

  Baraheni inserted a key into the handcuffs. Darius’s numb hands swung around his hips, and he looked at them as if he had never seen them before. His eyes shifted toward the open door, and back to Ashfar, whose gaze could have burned through the steel shackles. He estimated the chances at close to even that he could be up the stairs before the others were on their feet or drew guns—even though that was what they were expecting him to do. The refrigerator went off. He heard footsteps on the upper floor, and he sat down and tasted the stew.

  “Saeed,” Ashfar said, “apologize to Lieutenant Colonel Bakhtiar for hurting him in Shemiran and treating him so shabbily today.”

  Djalilian’s spoon went dead in the air. He stuffed his face with bread, and gestured that he couldn’t talk with his mouth full.

  “You have to.”

  Baraheni pinched Djalilian’s cheek in mock affection, squeezing pasty saliva onto the mattress.

  “… Sorry,” Djalilian mumbled, and rubbed color into a white streak alongside his lips after Baraheni let go.

  “Saeed’s a good boy,” Ashfar said to Darius. “A hard worker. Almost as hard as you were at his age. But it’s less than two years since he fled west; he still has rough edges. That’s why we tolerate his excesses, why we’ve been willing to tolerate yours. We don’t want much—just some help in getting back home.”

  “I don’t work for the passport office. You can leave the way you came in.”

  “That’s a fact,” Ashfar said. “But, frankly, we arrived in Iran with limited funds, and those are all but gone. What fun will there be in returning to Paris to live in poverty?”

  Darius was about to shake his head again, when Baraheni pressed his cheeks between meaty hands and tilted his face at Ashfar. Darius heard bones creak, felt his skull compress …

  “In the six weeks we’ve been back,” Ashfar said, “we’ve found out that Afghani heroin is being brought regularly into Iran.”

  “Where did you get your information?”

  “Listen.” Baraheni squashed Darius’s mouth shut. “He’s telling you.”

  Ashfar swilled vodka. “The fanatics have a low opinion of narcotics smuggling, and enjoy nothing so much as stringing up drug traders side by side in public places. They regard their part in this filthy business as doing the work of God, as they describe any criminal enterprise that serves their purposes. None of the drugs remain in Iran. They’re destined for transshipment to North America, where they can be applied to subverting the will of the despicable Great Satan, while bringing in badly needed hard currency for the Islamic Republic. The most recent shipment, as you know, has been diverted. It is our patriotic duty to retrieve it, and spoil the plans of the fanatics.”

  “… And save the Americans from the consequence of their illicit appetites,” Baraheni said.

  “Good point.”

  “How did you learn about the heroin?” Darius asked.

  “You mean, how did we know you were working to find it?” Ashfar said. “Have you forgotten the old days, what good spies we were? You were one of the primary contacts we wanted to establish in Teheran. Before we made approaches, however, we had to learn your current thinking. So we started following you around. Every time the heroin changed hands, sooner or later you turned up. That morning on Saltanatabad Avenue when the girl was found slain, you were too busy with the corpse, or else you might have noticed Saeed and myself among the crowd of spectators. Or maybe not, as we had on chadors. When you connected the heroin so quickly to Najafi, Baraheni suggested you must be working with the smugglers. I had to remind him that you’re a policeman trying to run down the drugs for legitimate ends, the same as we.” Ashfar smiled; but not Djalilian, nor Baraheni, who shifted his grip to Darius’s arms.

  “Saeed and another friend were supposed to bring you here for a talk—not to beat you and leave you bleeding in the street because some people came by and frightened them off.”

  Knowing the answer, asking because it was expected of him and he was afraid to deviate from Ashfar’s script, which so far as he could tell called for him to remain alive at least into the foreseeable future, Darius said, “What are you proposing?”

  “Help us to put our hands on the drugs, and we’ll bring you out of Iran with us.”

  “But who is going to prevent Baraheni from putting his hands on me?”

  “You see, Saeed?” Baraheni said. “Even a murderer has compunctions.”

  “You will transport the heroin yourself,” Ashfar said. “We trust you not to screw us out of it. Once you rejoin us in Paris, you’ll be under the protection of French law. Until then, you are the law. Your well-being is not in such great jeopardy as you pretend. I would venture that you’d set other considerations aside if we could bestow a French visa on you, let alone asylum or citizenship.”

  A nerve rubbed raw transmitted the energy to break out of Baraheni’s grasp. “Then we’re agreed—what you’re proposing is an impossibility,” Darius said. “Be realistic, or let me go.”

  “Nothing is impossible.” Ashfar snapped his fingers, then examined his empty hand like a conjurer who had made a ridiculously large object disappear in air. “We have access to excellent French ID; stolen and bought, not forged; driver’s license, social insurance card, immigration papers, military discharge documents for a man of your age, general appearance, and background. Ever want to be in the French Foreign Legion when you were a kid? Here’s your chance to be a bona fide Legion veteran entitled to all medical and legal benefits that go with twenty years’ service. We can pull you out of this hellhole, and get you started on a new life in Europe with a tidy sum in the bank.”

  Darius pictured himself a retired Legionnaire crumpled i
n a Parisian alley with Baraheni’s knife in his back, an expression of pained bewilderment combining his own cynic’s distrust with Gallic resignation. “Up to now, you’ve been picking my brain,” he said. “You haven’t told me anything about the heroin.”

  “You’re not in much of a position to make demands,” Baraheni said.

  “Bakhtiar never was one for jumping into the water without wetting a toe first, except, I suppose, when it came to Farmayan. What he’s asking is not unreasonable.” Ashfar refilled Baraheni’s glass from the jar. “On approval,” Ashfar said to Darius, “we will let you have the name of the girl shot to death with Najafi in south Teheran.”

  “You knew her?”

  “Thanks to Saeed. We hadn’t been in Teheran two days when we realized the people weren’t ready to rise up against the fanatics. We were bored, disheartened, scared—I don’t mind telling you; nursing our meager funds until something came along to make our mission worthwhile. Saeed alone was enjoying himself. He’s from Isfahan, and this is his first time in the capital. He was out every day, taking in the sights, when he ran into a girl he had known at home. A drug dealer had captured her fancy, and quickly lost it, rather a repulsive fellow whose daily beatings were starting to wear on her. She asked Saeed if he wouldn’t mind helping her to rob her boyfriend for fifty percent of the profits. Saeed didn’t know what to make of it. Valuable time was lost before he passed on what she had said. A meeting was arranged for the Museum of Archaeology, where the girl told us Najafi was storing kilograms of Afghani heroin in his house—” A heavy object crashed to the floor upstairs. Djalilian would have snatched up the M-16 had Baraheni not beat him to it and put it out of reach. “This is not what we came to Iran for. It’s the kind of thing we have been fighting all our lives. After much debate, we concluded the drugs were going to be sold in any event, and the greater evil would be to let the dealers have the proceeds. While we debated, others went into action. The night before the robbery was to take place Najafi and the girl were murdered, and the heroin apparently taken from its hiding place.”

  “You were inside the house?” Darius asked.

  “Twice before the police. Once after.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Not a thing.” Ashfar took more vodka for himself. “Dope is a contemptible occupation. Already the smell of shit is on us. But if we don’t turn up the heroin ourselves it is going to the U.S. and the money to the fanatics, and better we should stink from that than they. If you come over to our side, you will be treated as an equal partner. If not, if you get to the drugs ahead of us and return them to the Komiteh, it will be on your conscience. Are you listening?”

  Ashfar waited to hear his answer. Darius waited with him.

  “I’ll take that for a yes,” Ashfar said abruptly. “The girl’s name is—was Sousan Hovanian, a Christian, originally from the Armenian quarter of Isfahan, where her parents are caretakers of the Vank Cathedral. She was twenty-three. Any more questions, save them; you know as much as we. More …”

  Marched upstairs with the blanket over his head, Darius listened in vain for the voices he had heard through the ceiling. Djalilian went with him into the back of the ambulance, and to guard him against his guard so did Baraheni. As they retraced a twisting route into the heights, Baraheni regaled the younger man with stories of how he had disposed of the shah’s enemies, the expedient murders of left-wingers pinned on Muslim zealots of the right, who then were tortured to death for refusing to confess to crimes about which they knew nothing. His intended audience was Darius, who discounted the message of each grisly account. It was illogical for Ashfar to attempt to recruit him to locate the heroin and then order him slain while the offer stood. As illogical as shooting Najafi and Sousan Hovanian before they could tell where the drugs were to be found.

  “Farmayan was a good friend of ours. Everybody in the bureau was shocked that he took a bullet without a fight.” The voice was still Baraheni’s, but directed at Darius it lacked humor. “It threw a fright into some of the weak sisters when they heard. They thought the fanatics had sent us a message. We knew better, Ashfar and me. To get close to him the killer had to be someone he knew. The part that gave us trouble was that you would have that much guts.”

  The blanket was torn from Darius’s head, and he was looking into the black bores of two guns.

  “Nice equipment,” Baraheni said. He patted the weapons with the rough affection of a doctor delivering twins into a sorry world, and stuffed the barrels inside Darius’s waistband.

  The air sweetened as the way grew steeper. Darius tossed the blanket around his shoulders, but could not warm himself against a chill that had eaten into his bones. Soon the ambulance stopped, and the door was opened by the tall man who had gotten in the first lick when Darius was worked over in Shemiran. Keys were pressed into his hand, and his gunbelts slung over his arms. “Three from the corner,” the tall man said, and pointed him at the curb.

  Walking away into the darkness, Darius experienced the sensation of a bull’s-eye burning into his back. Halogen beams washed over him like radar locking on to a target. The roar of the engine starting up again sent him diving between parked cars. As he fumbled for his guns, the ambulance raced down the center of the street. His Paycon was parked where the tall man had said it was. The ambulance ran a red light and disappeared while he jabbed the wrong key at the door.

  He locked himself inside, and swept out the glove compartment for the flask that wasn’t there. His guns had been returned with the clips intact, the firing chambers empty. He drove home to his new apartment composing the report of his kidnapping, reciting the details out loud because there was no one he could entrust them to. While Ashfar and Baraheni decided whether they wanted him silenced, it was worth more than his life to keep them out of the Komiteh’s hands. One word that he had been in contact with SAVAK expatriates, and the Revolutionary Prosecutor would declare him in enmity with God, and corrupt on earth, crimes for which the penalty was crucifixion.

  Vodka from the freezer took some of the chill out of his bones. He asked the long-distance operator to connect him with the National Police in Isfahan. “Isfahan is half the world” had been common wisdom since the sixteenth century, when the city was the grandest in Persia. Tonight, with phone service cut off, the ancient capital might as well have been on another planet. The smart thing would be to have Bijan put the Komiteh in Isfahan to work confirming Sousan Hovanian’s identity. But that was the smart thing. A better thing was the vodka. He fell asleep clutching its dregs to his chest.

  He was up at 5:00. He showered, and because it was the sabbath, made a concession to the new reality by not shaving. In an hour he was at police headquarters. He teletyped a request to Isfahan for information about Sousan Hovanian, then went downstairs where Ghaffari was waiting to drive him to congregational prayers at the University of Teheran.

  Basijis armed with German G-3 automatic rifles ushered them inside the walled campus. In a plaza the size of several soccer fields tens of thousands of men knelt on prayer rugs toward an unadorned stage. The delegation from the National Police were clustered in the shadow of a television camera platform. At the end of the row of the newest recruits Darius set down a white prayer stone that was his last birthday present from Farib. After attendance was taken he would leave early, as he always did, pleading the demands of a major investigation.

  The stage was a breakwater in a khaki sea buffeted by a tide of white turbans. A crater in the concrete near the Foundation of the Oppressed and Deprived memorialized the worshipers killed when a Khalq Fedayeen guerrilla had blown himself to bits with TNT several years before. An ayatollah from Shiraz, whom Darius had never heard of, was imploring the faithful to donate blood for Lebanese Shi’ites battling surrogates of the Zionists south of the Litani River. He was followed to the rostrum by Ayatollah Maraghehni, the head of the Supreme Judicial Council, who pledged to the crowd that the government had no intention of restoring relations with the United Sta
tes.

  “We have welcomed the severance of ties, and this is the word of the Imam, officials, parliament deputies, and people from various walks of life. Global arrogance led by the Great Satan lacks wisdom. In their unmanly propaganda the Americans have defamed us before world public opinion, and have introduced Iran and every other revolutionary country as supporters of kidnapping and have thus deceived many a country into believing this.”

  Darius wondered what he had been deceived into believing about his murder case, the absurdities he had clung to because a false trail under his feet was less frightening than a free-fall through a void. The evidence alone didn’t lie, but much of it had nothing to say, not to him. With dental records unobtainable for Sousan Hovanian, he would pay from his own pocket to bring a relative to Teheran for a look at the body, and to prolong the illusory comfort of gradual progress. The heat reflected off the plaza’s bare walls gathered like dust in the prayer rugs. It boiled the alcoholic sweat from his body, which he was determined to replace at the first opportunity. Ayatollah Maraghehni finished his sermon on the Great Satan, and launched into another.

  “We guarantee the people the administration of justice and equity in every aspect of social and economic life. The laws of the state look at wrongdoers and offenders with the same eye irrespective of their social position. It has been brought to our attention that miscreants in the army, the bureaucracy, and most notably the National Police have escaped punishment for longstanding misdeeds that demand retribution. Rest assured that the law will catch up to all transgressors, including those who believe that, because they are charged with enforcing it, they are outside its reach.”

  The entire line of recruits turned toward Darius. He faced them down with a stare borrowed from Ashfar until they bowed their heads in a prayer that was neither to him, nor for him, but a plea to God just to make him look away.

  The ayatollah stopped for a drink of water, and resumed less stridently. “I want to laud the teachers of the nation on the occasion of National Teacher Week, and to pay tribute to the educator at so many madresehs and the University of Teheran, Ayatollah Motaharri, who was martyred in this city on May 2, 1980 …”