by Ann Fillmore
“Your new assistant having problems?” sneered the prison official that stepped out from behind the first security gate. The guard left them, hurriedly.
“Mr. Aql-Hadi will answer to me if he loses his lunch while you and I are doing business,” growled Shamsi Granfa and Tahireh was stunned at the transformation of her new boss. Vampirish was the best description. A shiver cascaded along Tahireh’s vertebrae.
“You have interview room three,” the official said and Granfa smiled, canines showing, “You are keeping close watch on me today.”
The official shrugged. “We play expensive games.”
Granfa spun on his heel and shoved his face into the official’s. Nose to nose. The official’s breath was clouding Granfa’s glasses. Granfa snarled, “You? You try to bite me more?”
“There is another player at the table.”
“Which bottom sucking toad is this?”
“A very important sucker,” the official did his best to snarl back, but a slight tremble in his hand gave him away.
Granfa stepped closer forcing the larger man to turn into soft putty. Granfa threw back his head and laughed, “So you will demand two payments from now on!”
“Just this time, just for the Pandharpurkar girl!”
“Why her?” Granfa snickered.
“They want her to die. We’re to offer you another in her place,” the official said quickly and stepped into the interview room, motioning them to follow. There was a metal table with attached straps, a metal chair with the same, and a more comfortable chair in the corner. The so-called interview room was obviously set up for torture. The official closed the door behind them. “Another Thai girl, one these people feel you cannot resist taking.”
“For what reason?” Granfa shrugged, “I’ve already tested Milind and she matches a man, an extremely wealthy man I might add, in Australia. I have not tested this new girl and you certainly don’t have the capability of doing these tests.”
The official was madly shaking his head. “No, no, of course we can’t. It is a…a political arrangement. Someone of high status wants you, and anyone else involved in your business, to be handed over.”
“You’re saying the transplant business is to be stopped?” For one second, Granfa let that hang in the air and then he roared with vicious laughter. “Never.”
Suddenly it was all clear to Tahireh. All the puzzling she had done about Shamsi’s business became clear. Shamsi Granfa sold the body parts of executed prisoners. With stupendous force of will, Tahireh again managed to keep lunch from spilling up and out and onto the floor.
The guard was quaking. “Never, of course, never. As I said, a high political someone has asked that we make sure Milind dies and you take the one named Dim Mahesh. As you take Mahesh out, we have been asked to hand you over to a person named Ali Muhit. An old man of military bearing. He is waiting upstairs.”
“This Muhit is from where?” asked Granfa.
“I don’t know,” said the official, “honestly I don’t. He is not Kuwaiti. His accent suggests Farsi? Iranian? An Iranian Security Force hummer brought him to the execution area gate barely an hour ago.”
Granfa nodded again and put his metal briefcase onto the table. “How will we do this? You cannot hand me over without stopping the services I perform and at this very instant there are three Kuwaiti personages that require my services as soon as possible.”
“We have a male prisoner being condemned today. We will outfit him to look like you. We will say you were shot as you tried to run.” The official shrugged helplessly again, “It won’t solve the problem, but it will forestall their actions. It will give the diplomats time to set up a cost. You understand.”
Shamsi nodded. “As long as the cost doesn’t come down on my head because I will only shift it to those who need my services.”
“That is understood, I am sure.” The official held out a hand, “You must give us some identification to put on the body, and your clothes.” The man sidled to the door, “I…I have a guard uniform for you. Your assistant, he will have to slip out the back way with the girls and you will have to go through the door for military guards.” The official began to beg, “It is the best we could do, the best I could come up with on such short notice.”
Shamsi placed several instruments on the table. “Go get me the guard’s uniform.” Granted reprieve, the official marched quickly from the room. “Close the door,” Shamsi said to Tahireh who immediately did so. “So now you understand, Mr. Aql-Hadi?”
“Yes. Regretfully.”
“You remain strong. The girl or girls must be made to appear dead. I put them in body bags but sometimes an official or a guard examines them. Luckily, only cursorily. If I am to go through this charade, it will be up to you to make sure the bags are put into my vehicle.” He sighed and dug keys out of his pocket and put them in Tahireh’s hand.
“Thank whatever god you pray to that you could be on the job today otherwise we would never have been able to rescue these girls.” He snapped on latex gloves.
“That is the part I don’t understand,” said Tahireh, “you say bodies, yet you say rescue.” Tahireh jammed the keys into her own pocket.
“You’ll see.” Shamsi took out a disposable hypodermic and picked through his collection of vials.
The official ducked back into the room. He was desperately uncomfortable. He held out a uniform and Shamsi handed the hypodermic to Tahireh.
“You guarantee me these clothes do not have lice?” muttered Shamsi. The official grimaced. Shamsi shook his head, sighed, and took the uniform. For a chubby man, he moved adroitly, changing in a few swift movements. He reached into the metal case and pulled out a spare pair of glasses and put them with the clothes. “There.”
The official, relieved, turned to go.
“What about the Pandharpurkar girl? I take it they do not want her body?”
“That is correct,” said the official. “I assume you will take care of that as you usually do and I will register the death certificates and mortuary receipts.”
“Of course.”
“Good. Then I will bring her to you as soon as the executioners are finished.” He was half out the door. “You do want to check over the Mahesh girl, right?”
“What use is she to me?” Granfa had turned his back to the official and Tahireh could see from his expression that he was playing on the official’s fear.
It was working because the official almost begged. “She is pregnant. By some sheikh’s son, a dignitary from Yemen or Bahrain I think. Please, you must take her.”
Shamsi Granfa’s expression perked up. He looked around and grinned. “Oh?” He pushed his glasses higher onto his nose. “A baby? Then I am interested. Bring her immediately.”
The door closed with a thud leaving Tahireh to hand the hypodermic back to Shamsi who had finished buttoning the uniform jacket. “Why such an interest in pregnant girls?” asked Tahireh.
“You can’t guess? And they don’t have to be young girls; it can be any of the women they bring in here, as long as the baby is healthy.” Shamsi chose one vial. “I offer the woman a chance to save her baby or in rape cases, a way to take it off their hands. I find good adoptive homes for the little ones.” His eyes became very sad. “It was not what I started out to do, trust me, but the first time they brought me a woman who was to be executed, she was about five months pregnant. At that time, there was no way I could save her. I hadn’t developed the necessary anesthetic compounds yet or the other techniques I use. All I could think at that moment was to save the baby. So, I convinced the guards to keep her alive until she came to term and I convinced her to let me adopt out the infant.” He smiled, “It was the best I could do. Then. Now it is different.”
A scuffle of feet preceded the slamming open of the door and a guard dragged in a shivering, emaciated Asian girl. Behind them came the official who said, “This is Dim Mahesh.” The guard threw the girl to the ground at Shamsi’s feet and the official dropped
a black plastic roll onto the metal chair.
“Go away,” Shamsi ordered the guard and the official and they quickly backed out of the room. The pudgy man motioned to Tahireh to help the girl into the more comfortable chair. “Do you want to live and do you want your baby to live?” he spoke directly into her face.
Her tiny mouth opened, shut, tears ran down her cheeks. Her head, shaven of hair, bobbed up and down.
“Okay.” Shamsi leaned closer. “Do exactly as I tell you. Do not vary your actions one millimeter. Exactly as I say!”
The tiny girl frantically bobbed her head again.
“Tell me, how far along are you? Six weeks?”
“More, sir. I don’t know exactly as I have lost track of time in this dungeon. I was raped the twenty-eighth of November.”
“Oh! You have been starved, yes?” asked Shamsi.
“Yes.”
“We will fix that.” He turned to Tahireh, “Any anesthetic we give her will compromise the baby. Watch and learn.” He picked another vial from the case and filled the hypodermic, deftly cleansed the girl’s arm and inserted the needle. “This is a sleep potion, my child. You will feel very sleepy in a moment. Let yourself drift off to sleep. Okay?”
Shamsi tossed the hypodermic into the case. He leaned over the girl who was quickly becoming woozy. He grabbed her chin, waved his gloved fingers in front of her face several times, and in a calm, soft voice seemed to sing her to sleep. When she was completely out, he poked her arm with a scalpel. There was no reaction, not even any bleeding. Shamsi grinned and looked at Tahireh. “She’s out.”
“You hypnotized her?”
“Yes. As deep as I can get her to go. The muscle relaxant is to make her body seem newly dead. There is no perceptible heartbeat and very little breath.” He tossed Tahireh a pair of gloves, “Put these on. I hear the guards returning. You must be ready. This is always ugly. The executioners cannot resist hurting these girls.”
Tahireh managed to pull the gloves on as the door slammed open and two men in black uniforms burst into the room carrying a lumpy body bag. The official was behind them. They tossed the bag onto the hard steel table. The official caught Shamsi’s eyes and gave one firm nod. The men slammed the door shut behind them and their footfalls faded down the corridor.
“You hold Dim up, don’t let her fall over,” Shamsi Granfa ordered Tahireh, “I must see to this one quickly.” He turned loose of Dim, Tahireh caught her. Shamsi unzipped the bag on the table. Tahireh gagged. Only a massive surge of will kept lunch down. The girl in the bag had a protruding tongue, her face was blue, and a horrible gash had ripped a swathe of skin apart around her throat. “I knew it,” grunted Shamsi. “Those sadists cannot resist.” He glanced at Tahireh, “She was raped before being taken to the execution area. Not to worry, I’ll deal with that when we get to my building.”
He pulled out a stethoscope and listened and took a relieved breath in. “She’s got a good heartbeat. I hope they didn’t shut down blood flow to her brain for too long.” He grabbed a small oxygen mask and emergency tank from the case and after opening an airway past the tongue, put the mask over her nose and mouth and almost instantly, the color of the girl’s face changed. “I daren’t do too much,” Shamsi instructed Tahireh. “She cannot have any movement. Thus,” he demonstrated and took out another hypodermic and another vial. “A paralytic agent. Just enough to keep her still but not enough to stop her breathing.” That done, he tossed everything back into the case, zipped up the body bag, grabbed the black plastic roll on the other chair and shook it open. It was another body bag. “I didn’t want to scare little Dim,” he explained.
Tahireh and Shamsi gently lowered Dim Mahesh into the bag. Shamsi snapped his fingers several times and the girl went stiff as rigor mortis. “She’ll stay that way until I tell her to come out of it.” He stood. “Ready for the gauntlet?” He stepped to the door, opened it. “Go get that pallet.”
Sliding out the door, Tahireh trotted to the far end of the corridor where a long pallet on wheels had been left. It was one of the clumsy kind with an unmanageable long handle. She pulled it to the room and the two bodies were put onboard.
“The vehicle I use is an ugly brown color with lots of rust spots,” Shamsi told her. “You can’t miss it. It’s at the other end of the alley from where I met you. In the coroner’s parking spot. You can wheel the pallet right up to the back doors. Trust me, no one will look at you for more than a second. People are terrified of death. Get the girls in and leave the pallet back in the alley. Start the engine. Be careful not to flood it. Be ready to pick me up. I have no idea what these guys have planned.”
“I can do that,” Tahireh assured him as he wedged his metal case between the bodies.
“I know you can.” Shamsi looked out along the corridor, “Go. There is a double door exit to the right, way down there. That leads directly out into the alley. Go.”
She went, dragging the heavy pallet behind her. It took all her strength to raise the meter-long lever off the doors. She was amazed that the entire hallway was empty. The alley was also empty of guards, of people, of everyone. The bribes had worked, surely that could be the only explanation for the clear path. She heard a volley of gunfire from somewhere close and shuddered. Her stomach was sickly sour.
A dirt-colored ancient army medic’s vehicle was parked exactly where Shamsi had said and because of her surging adrenaline levels, Tahireh jerked the bodies into the back of it with a minimum of grunting and heaving. The medical case she laid beside them. The pallet shoved back into the alley, Tahireh got the van engine going. Minutes passed. She turned on the heater. Suddenly, without warning, the pudgy form in uniform popped out of a side door along the other back street that T’d to the alley. The form waved. Tahireh jammed into first gear as she leaned over and unlocked the passenger side door and Shamsi was in.
“Drive back to my building,” he ordered.
“I don’t know where that is!” she retorted.
“Turn left onto the main boulevard and keep going. Just keep going.” Shamsi squeezed between the seats and into the back of the van. Tahireh heard him unzipping the bags, clicking open the case. She heard him order Dim awake and mere moments later, the shaken girl was crawling into the passenger seat. Little Dim was laughing and shivering and crying at the same time, hysterical and ecstatic. Fumbling, Tahireh managed to get the heater going. Shamsi shouted directions for Tahireh to drive and after fifteen minutes they pulled up behind Shamsi’s building. He was still working on Milind. “Is the driveway clear?” he asked, wheezing.
“All clear,” said Tahireh.
“Help me get Milind inside. You two, come on.” He pushed open the back doors.
“Will she live?” were Dim’s first words.
“Yes,” said Shamsi as they carried her. “She’ll have a nasty scar on her neck, but that is a small price to pay. Tahireh,” he smiled with satisfaction, “make sure to remind me to have her take the abortion pills before she leaves here.”
“You think of everything,” Tahireh remarked in awe.
“A lot of experience, a lot of planning,” was his response.
“How could it happen!” Darughih Sadiq-Fath screamed into the phone at Ali Muhit. “I can’t believe it’s the wrong person!”
“Our doctor suspected as much when he examined him,” Muhit explained in as calm a manner as was possible. “This man has been in jail for many years. His teeth are bad; he’s much older than Granfa is. I don’t know why the Kuwaiti officials would do such a thing when you gave a direct order.”
“And paid a lot of money,” Sadiq-Fath added. “I will find out. Dispose of that body. Wait there in Kuwait for further orders. I will get back to you as soon as I talk to someone in authority.”
“Yessir,” Muhit agreed. “We’ll be at the hotel.”
The night sky was filled with dust. Quddus Sadiq-Fath had decided to come home about an hour ago. It had not been a good day. He was mulling over whether or not to ha
ve the two agents in Sweden executed or to bring them back to Iran and strip them of all rank and put them in jail for the rest of their lives. Yet, obviously, it did not make sense that both agents, highly trained, skilled at their jobs, should have such high levels of alcohol at any time, not to mention at the same time. It frankly did not make sense that even one of them would drink. They were both conservative Muslims. Something was done to these men and the Swedes were taking advantage of a law meant for Swedes.
Besides, he was extremely unhappy about Ali Muhit being there and not here. Ali was too old for this kind of work, his vision was poor…yes, all in all, Sadiq-Fath decided, no more missions for him, it was time for the old warrior to retire.
Sadiq-Fath rang for the servant girl to serve him supper and for his boy of the night to prepare the bath. The darughih needed to relax.
“There is another suite of rooms at the Nof Hotel,” said Siddhu. “It is not on the roof like the baron’s suite. It is only on the second floor, above the kitchens. Still, it is comfortable and has an excellent view.”
Russ looked up from the monitor screen. “I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about, Siddhu.”
“You can’t stay at the drug rehab center any more. Dr. Legesse told me to find you living quarters.”
“Ahhh, I see.” The tall man smiled. “Hotel rooms are not my style. I’d rather find a place of my own.”
Siddhu shrugged. “The suite would be temporary.”
“Okay, temporary.” Russ turned back to the screen. “By the way, I’m in.”