He drove aimlessly from headquarters, craning for the first indication of dawn as a mariner scouts the horizon for weather. The wheel was a Ouija board that pulled him to the Old Karaj Road, and then due west. When he stopped outside Maryam Lajevardi’s the black of night was still intact, enveloping the hazy moon and a single bulb that the woman evidently had overlooked in her haste to flee.
He brushed aside the bedroom curtains to play the light from a five-cell flashlight on the floor. Then he climbed in through the open window. The bed had not been slept in. He heard footsteps receding into the inner rooms, and strode purposefully after them, a warning that there was no place to run. A chair fell over in the kitchen, and silverware rattled in a drawer. The darkness swallowed the beam of light, which bounced back off a carving knife held high in a tremulous hand.
“Couldn’t you have knocked?” Maryam Lajevardi lowered the blade, and Darius followed it with the flash till it hung loosely at her side, “and used the door like everybody else?”
“What are you doing here?”
“You may remember I live here. And if you don’t—” Maryam’s sweet, mocking tone hardened into muted anger, “then why are you in my kitchen at this hour?”
“I was informed that you’d run away. I came to see for myself.”
“You were informed?” Maryam looked outside at the quiet commercial buildings, then pulled down the shade, stifling the dry breeze. “I have nosy neighbors, but not very reliable as witnesses,” she said to him. “You can’t believe what they say about me. They, or anyone else.”
Darius tugged at the light string above the table, switched off his flash. “Where did you go?”
“I was bored. And lonely. I found a few thousand rials I’d forgotten about in the pockets of my chador, and went to see a friend. What’s wrong with that?”
“You also told me you had no friends in Teheran.”
“It could be that I was looking to make one. Is that against your rules, too?”
“Possibly the rule should be written,” he said.
“If I was running away, would I be talking to you now?” She relaxed when he did not come back at her with another question. “I’d been cooped up so long I couldn’t stand it by myself another minute. I called a cab and went into the city, and stopped for something to eat. Are there rules against that, too?”
It was senseless to pursue it. If he did, she would tell him the name of the restaurant and what she had ordered, how much the meal had cost and what the waiter had said when he came to her table, and how he had tried to shortchange her. And none of it true, and totally beside the point.
“I find that hard to accept,” he said.
“Well, that’s your prob—”
“Hard to accept anything you say. You’ve been consistently untruthful, about working at the currency exchange, your whole past. In 1983, you were arrested for trying to toss acid at two women downtown. Do you deny it?”
“I was a naive child then, a baby. I didn’t know how to think for myself. I believed in all the promises of the Revolution. Every one. If the government had allowed girls to string plastic keys around their necks and dance through the minefields of Basra, I would have been first to volunteer. That was a long time ago. Two years later, I was in high heels and lipstick, and buying Rolling Stones records on the black market. That’s where my history begins.” She stared into his stony face to see if any of it was sinking in. “You know nothing about me. Absolutely nothing. You’ve taken an isolated incident that happened half a lifetime ago, and no doubt built it into a fantastic biography.”
“We know also,” Darius went on as if he hadn’t heard her, “of your relationship with Sheik Javad Salehi.”
The color drained from Maryam’s cheeks. Her brows, normally two pale smudges, emerged like invisible ink in the white ridges above her eyes.
“… And that he is living these days in Shemiran—”
“Is that so?”
“At the Manzarieh guerrilla camp less than two kilometers from Saltanatabad Avenue. A remarkable coincidence, your settling so near your former benefactor without knowing he was there.”
“Coincidence is all it is.” Maryam’s tone was so reasonable that he felt himself, if not believing her, starting to consider that he had overlooked an obvious explanation. “You must give him my phone number when you see him.”
“This isn’t funny. Don’t treat it as a joke.”
“Do you hear me laughing? I’m being kept prisoner in my own home because of these crazy notions that I’m involved in murder and drugs, with no way to prove I know nothing about them. Where do you get your ideas?”
“From facts, and what must be inferred from them. Sheik Salehi is a principal instructor at Manzarieh. Considering your past relationship, it’s hard to believe you’ve never been to the Party of God camps in Lebanon.”
“He wasn’t teaching anybody to be a guerrilla ten years ago. He was working for the Pasdar in central Teheran, counseling troubled youngsters to channel their energy into productive activities. After I got into trouble, it was he who returned me to my family. I shudder to think where I would be today without his kind care.”
“Far from here,” Darius said, “and from being the subject of a police investigation.”
“Ask Javad yourself,” Maryam said. “I’d love to see him again, to be able to thank him for what he did for me. How soon can you arrange a meeting?”
As tempting as it was to use her to get to Salehi, he was unwilling to try it. If the Komiteh were looking for Maryam, he’d be giving them a free chance at her, and, if not, she would be in contact with a powerful protector. He found the telephone on the living room floor and dialed in the dark, counting the holes in the rotary dial with his fingertips. “It’s me, Bakhtiar,” he said. “I’m sorry to wake you, but I need you to—”
Maryam had wandered in after him, and now she nudged the receiver from his ear. “No, wait. I don’t—”
“One second, Hamid.” Darius cupped the mouthpiece. “What do you want?” he asked her.
“Nothing.” Already she had begun to walk away.
Darius still felt the pressure of her hand on his, her tag in their undeclared game. “Come back to the Old Karaj Road address,” he said into the phone, “and bring a good book to read. Yes, she’s here now … minutes ago. I want you inside this time. You’ll sit twelve-hour shifts, alternating with one of the other men.”
When Darius returned to the kitchen, Maryam had switched off the light and was somewhere near the table, tapping the handle of the knife against the Formica top.
“An officer is being assigned to the house, so you can’t run away again,” he told her.
“I didn’t run away before.”
“Hamid will stay indefinitely. He is a criminalist, about your age. He likes the Beatles, too. You won’t be bored anymore, or lonely.”
“Does he have a rich fantasy life like yours?” Maryam was a disembodied voice in the dark. “I don’t want him here. Why won’t you leave me alone?”
“You have information I need.”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know. And if I could guess what it is, I suspect you’d lock me up. You’ve placed me in an impossible position.”
“But a safe one. You realize the police aren’t alone in wanting to listen to your story. Others are getting close, and they can be persuasive.”
“I see now, you’re here for my benefit. Draw up a confession, and I’ll sign it. The more heinous the crime, the better—the better for me. There isn’t a thing I won’t admit to.”
“Not for your benefit, Miss Lajevardi.”
“For whose, then? The dead girls? I would have thought it’s late for them.”
Darius saw himself pulling at slack strings as he attempted to manipulate her loyalty, playing the same sorry game with her future that Ashfar played with his. “You’re not accused of anything,” he said.
“Then it must be for your benefit. What will you give me in
exchange? Isn’t that the way the police operate? Promise me something, Lieutenant Colonel, and you’ll have the words you need to hear, whatever you say they should be. I won’t drive a hard bargain.”
“It’s not a confession we want.”
“Nothing?” She taunted him. “That’s your best offer? It seems unfair that you should profit from my remarks, and I’m to have nothing in return.”
“Not a confession; but the truth.”
“Oh, that’s different. I’ll sign right now. I’ll talk,” she said. “But first you have to tell me what it is.”
Not as prosecutor, jailer, nor interrogator did he awe her. She tugged at the light string again, and he was blind in her pale beauty. In that instant she was nearer to all his secrets than he was to learning any of hers.
“The truth,” he said again. “Is it asking so much?”
“Don’t you see?” Maryam shook her head, flinging tears against his dry lips. “Don’t you see that’s all I have?”
12
A WOMAN WITH A Kurdish accent was asking the price of melons in Qom. Darius spoke louder, but was unable to drown out the cross talk in the line.
“It’s good to hear your voice …”
Darius paused, straining to make out the words. An elderly man he thought had answered the Kurdish woman seemed to be talking to him.
“I was beginning to be afraid I had lost my favorite nephew.” Over the racket Hormoz’s breathy rasp was becoming clear.
“Your only nephew.” Darius brushed Maryam Lajevardi’s folder out of the way, and sat on his desk with his heels hooked in the handle of the bottom drawer. “How have you been, uncle?”
“As well as can be expected. Which is, truth be told, not as well as I would like to feel, although not as bad as my enemies wish.”
During an instant of quiet following a false start by all the parties on the crossed wires, Darius re-created Hormoz’s playful smile on his own lips. “You have no enemies,” he said.
“Every man, every man who has lived as long as I, has enemies,” Hormoz said, “although others may have lost some good ones along the way.”
Darius missed the rest of what Hormoz said, but learned that melons had been going up all summer in Sanandaj, and now was a bad time to buy.
“… Are you surviving? Has it been hard for you, having your freedom?”
“I’ve been too busy to appreciate it,” Darius said.
“You’re putting it to its proper use. I heard from Farib just yesterday. She is in good health, but there are hints she’s unhappy.”
“How’s that?”
“She says she will remarry soon.”
“I didn’t know she was seeing anyone,” Darius said. “We don’t have the same friends anymore. We never did, really.”
“He is an older man, a goldsmith. In no way is this a love match, but he is said to be quite well off. Alas, if that is what she wants I hope he gives her all the happiness she deserves.”
A pain that was lodged permanently under Darius’s ribs metastasized in his heart. He had given Farib little thought since the divorce, only in part because he was wrapped up in the investigation. A compulsive side of his personality was taunting him, making her desirable now that she would be unavailable to him forever. Though he saw through the trap, it did nothing to ease his hurt.
“I’ve recalled several facts about my former pupil since our last conversation,” Hormoz was saying, “and talked to other people who knew him from his time at Faiziyeh.”
“I didn’t call about Bijan—” Darius stopped, no match for the woman inquiring about melons.
“… Did you know he is from a family whose roots go back ten centuries in the Iraqi city of Najaf? It was his father’s father who moved to Iran, settling in Khuzestan in the 1920s. During the Imam’s exile in Najaf Bijan was part of his entourage until he fell from favor and was ordered back to Teheran, where he has labored in deserving obscurity ever since.” Hormoz coughed. His lungs made hissing sounds as he struggled for breath.
“The phones are not secure,” Darius cautioned him.
“These are not secrets. Do you need more?”
“I don’t know what I need. I wanted to ask about another of your old students.”
“Which one?”
“Javad Salehi.”
“I hadn’t been told he was in Teheran.” Hormoz’s voice was a feathery whisper. “He isn’t murdered?”
“There hasn’t been a killing in weeks. I have to find out about his past, same as Bijan’s.”
“We are talking about two completely different men. There are professors at Faiziyeh who to this day hold up Javad as a shining light to each new class of students. He was unusually disciplined, with no interest in worldly things, and dogmatic to a fault regarding the pronouncements of the Imam. He favored qital, the purest form of holy war, a war without mercy to convert the infidel at the point of a sword, but favored it to guarantee his redemption rather than the converts.”
Darius heard a harsh click. “Hormoz?”
“Yes, I’m still here.”
“Where did he go from Faiziyeh?”
“We lost contact for several years. Around 1984, I received a letter of apology for having broken off with me. He had accepted an appointment to the National University, which recently had been established by the Party of God.”
“I remember it,” Darius said. “It was located at Evin. But it was no university. The official name was the Revolutionary Research Facility. There were a thousand students, mostly PLO.”
“Javad was resident lecturer in Psychology of the Jihad. He had made himself an expert on inflicting terror on civilian populations. The National University supported what were referred to euphemistically as extension campuses at Firoughkoor and Manzarieh. The graduate centers were in south Lebanon, close to the Israeli border, and in Beirut.”
“Say again?”
“After two years at Evin, he wrote to tell me he had taken up directorship of the camp in Lebanon.”
“Did he mention the name?”
“No, but I recall that the student body was entirely female. Three hundred foreign women who had come to Iran to be converted to Islam had embraced a martyr’s fate and were brought to the camp to await a suicide mission. There were girls from Nicaragua and El Salvador, from Germany and North Korea and Northern Ireland—”
“Were Iranian girls among them?”
“A few. The majority were Lebanese Shi’ites, and Syrians. But the loyalty of the Syrians was suspect, and they were booted out of the camp.”
“Why?”
“Syrians in Lebanon care more about drugs than holy war. The dictator Assad’s brother is personally in charge of the drug trade in the areas of the country under his army’s control. All revenues are supposed to go to furthering the fight against the infidel West, but most of it lines the pockets of the Assads. In the camps near Israel drugs were the primary curriculum.”
“Salehi told you this? He could have been shot.”
“He was troubled by the commonplace hypocrisy. He had faith that the camp could do important work if the dealing in drugs ceased.”
“What did you advise?”
“Javad had no business there. This I could not say directly to him. I quoted from a commentary on the chapter of the holy Qur’an on the prophet Houd:
“ ‘Let us be under no illusion about holy war. If we are not prepared to fight for our faith with a pure heart, our lives will be forfeit, and our resources used against us by our enemies.’ ”
“You meant for him to quit the camp?”
“Yes, and to divorce himself from drugs. They are an abomination in the eyes of God.”
“Salehi misunderstood,” Darius said. “He thought you meant he should use them to further his cause.”
“He knows better. He chose deliberately to interpret my remarks that way.”
Someone had come into the outer office. Darius swiveled around in time to see Ghaffari slip behind his desk like
a schoolboy late for class. He lowered the receiver, and snapped his fingers to get Ghaffari’s attention. “Where have you been?”
Ghaffari gestured dismissively. He looked exhausted and needed a clean shirt. Darius hadn’t noticed before that his hairline had begun to recede, and he was graying at the temples. Ghaffari was thirty-two.
Hormoz was trying to impress upon Darius how perplexed he was that a man as principled as Salehi would have twisted the meaning of his words. “I will write to him today, better to explain—”
“It’s late.”
“I accept the blame for the damage that cannot be undone. Still, there is opportunity for him to acknowledge his error and find the correct path.”
Another click signaled twenty seconds of static, and then Hormoz faded beneath a younger man’s complaint about constant sandstorms and the unavailability of air filters for General Motors cars. Darius stared at Ghaffari, who sat frozen with his head in his hands. He screwed the receiver against his ear, listening for Hormoz, but it was the frustrated motorist who dominated the line.
“I can’t hear you,” Darius shouted, “and I’ve got to go. Don’t send your letter till we’ve talked again.”
Ghaffari had returned to life, and was rooting in his bottom drawer for a bottle of bootleg. “I know, I know,” he said contritely when Darius got off the phone. “Listen first, then give me shit.” He put a paper cup on Darius’s side of the desk, and looked all over for another.
“It’s Sharera’s fault,” he said. “She informed on me like she said she would, told the Bon Yad I was screwing around with Nahid. Lucky for me, she couldn’t wait to let me know I’d be going to jail. I had one chance left, to drive through the night and hide Nahid in Tabriz, where I have cousins to look after her. We had to crash through two Pasdar roadblocks just to get out of Teheran. Nahid was in a panic—and I wasn’t much better. The Komiteh grilled me for six hours straight when I got back. Without male witnesses it was my word against Sharera’s, though, so she was outnumbered four to one, like in a court of law.” Ghaffari’s strained smile came apart when Darius didn’t rise to it. “They didn’t believe the first thing I told them, but what could they do? They had to take my word. The law regarding adultery is their law, the religious law. They let me go.”
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