The Disciple

by Stephen Coonts

It had been Dr. Murad’s car, but when he had decided he was no longer capable of driving it safely, he had given it to Ghasem.

  When they were walking in the heat toward the automobile, Dr. Murad held on to the younger man’s shoulders. He seemed lost in thought. Halfway there he signaled a pause and stood swaying, waiting… for his heart to stop hammering futilely, Ghasem thought. There was a bench just steps away, so Ghasem eased the old man over to it and helped him seat himself. Then he sat beside him.

  “I have a question,” Ghasem said and waited for his grandfather to nod an acknowledgment.

  “I heard Uncle Habib make a remark that I have been thinking about ever since. He said Iran is surrounded by enemies of God. By that he meant American armed forces. Still, in light of our conversations, I have been thinking, and wondering. Can God have mortal enemies, enemies of flesh and blood?”

  The old man smiled wanly. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “He could have such enemies only if He tolerates them.”

  “If He wishes to have them?”

  “Yes.”

  Dr. Murad smiled again, then said, “Your god is large and powerful. Habib’s is small and impotent.”

  “Habib Sultani doesn’t see it that way.”

  “Indeed,” the professor acknowledged. “Many men have an extraordinary ability to ignore the obvious.”

  Ghasem took a deep breath, then said, “So we are once again back to the core question: Is Islam a religion or a political ideology?”

  “Unfortunately,” answered the old man, “it is both. I say unfortunately, because Islam cannot survive in the world as a political ideology. The jihadists cannot win. If martyrdom is the fate of all true believers, then Islam will perish with them. Islam can be the faith of the dead or the faith of the living, but it cannot be both.”

  Automatically, Ghasem glanced around to see if anyone overheard. No one had. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. His grandfather was under suspicion-well, he had been under suspicion since the Islamic Revolution. The revolutionaries had closed the universities for three years, lectured professors and students on what they could teach and jailed, tortured and interrogated those who didn’t toe the line of fundamental Islam. True, there were many other religions in Iran, but the official state religion was Shia Islam-Khomeini’s version-and woe to the man or woman who didn’t understand that and bow down. A wrong word, a gesture, a facial expression-anything could ignite the Revolutionary Guard, who roamed the campus in black uniforms, carrying weapons.

  Dr. Murad gestured. “Help me up,” he said. Ghasem did so, and they resumed their journey toward Ghasem’s automobile.

  “There is an Islamic professor in Germany,” Ghasem said, “who said that the Prophet, may he rest in peace, is fiction. That he never existed. What do you think of that argument?”

  “Muhammad’s was the most documented life of any of the prophets,” Murad said slowly, measuring his words. “Thousands of pages, thousands of facts. One suspects there was such a man, but by all accounts he was illiterate. He dictated his revelations to a scribe. The assumption has always been that the scribe was merely a scrivener who wrote down the Prophet’s words verbatim. And yet the Prophet dictated the most sublime piece of literature ever written in Arabic. The language inspires and soars, it is beautiful and majestic and grand. Indeed, the language of the Koran became the Arabic that everyone wanted to speak. That scribe…”

  “God told Muhammad what to say.”

  “Or the scribe took the ruminations of an illiterate, charismatic tribal chief and founded a religion.”

  “You should be working on your book,” Ghasem said, “instead of wasting your strength on lectures.”

  “I don’t lecture; I just talk,” his grandfather said. “The students do not want to hear or think about the problems with Islam, and you know it. They have the perfect religion; they wish to hear about the strange beliefs and practices of infidels and pagans.”

  Since he taught comparative religion, Murad was under constant, intense scrutiny. He had survived by refusing to discuss Islam at all and discussing other religions as if they were voodoo practiced by illiterate natives starving on an isle in the sea’s middle. Still, his classrooms were packed, and Revolutionary Guards were ever present, listening. Even discussing other religions was a dangerous game: Converting to Christianity was a capital offense in Iran, and if any of his students did it, Murad, the scholar, would be implicated.

  A moment passed before Dr. Murad said, “I have almost finished the book.”

  Now Ghasem stopped short and looked at the old man’s face. “When last we spoke, you said you were at least two years away.”

  “Your cousin Khurram was there when you asked, if you will recall.”

  Ghasem thought about it. “I remember.”

  “I do not want Khurram reading it. Nor discussing it.”

  Ghasem nodded. Khurram was very conventional, without a mote of intellectual curiosity. He was a chip flowing along on the fundamental Islamic stream that had ruled Iran since the fall of the shah.

  “Nor your uncle Habib Sultani.” The professor paused, then added, “Why my daughter Noora wanted to marry him is one of life’s mysteries.”

  “You gave your consent.”

  “I did. Sometimes I wonder if Noora wishes I had refused.” Dr. Murad sighed. “I want you to read the manuscript,” he continued, returning to the subject abruptly. “Show it to no one, make no notes. Read it… and tell me what you think.”

  “Yes, Grandfather.”

  “I have made no copies. The one you will have is the only one.”

  Ghasem nodded.

  They came to the car. When Ghasem had the old man seated in the right seat, the windows open and the car crawling through traffic, Dr. Murad said, “A few more days, and it will be finished. Read it quickly. My heart is acting up again. My time is drawing to a close.”

  After he dropped his grandfather at his house and helped the valet get him comfortable in a chair, Ghasem drove to the building where he lived. He shared a tiny apartment with a friend from the university, Mostafa Abtahi.

  A licensed civil engineer, Abtahi had found a job at a printing firm that sold maps to tourists. He spent his days hunched over a drawing table updating maps of Tehran and the Iranian road system. His ambition, which he discussed endlessly with his friend Ghasem, was to go to America and get rich. Several months ago he had written to the American State Department requesting an American visa, and he was still awaiting a reply.

  Tonight, as he and Ghasem shared a meager dinner-all they could afford-Abtahi launched into his favorite subject.

  “My older brother has been in America for five years,” he said, as if this tidbit were really news. He had told Ghasem everything he knew about his older brother a dozen times. “He owns an automobile repair shop in New Jersey. When I get there he will hire me, and together we will repair automobiles.”

  “What kind of automobilies?” Ghasem asked, to humor his friend.

  “Taxicabs, mostly. Farrukh repairs a lot of taxicabs that are driven around New York by Iranians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians, Syrians, Saudis-men from all over the Middle East. They come to him because he speaks Farsi and Arabic and doesn’t cheat them too much. Some garages install used parts in customers’ cars and charge them for new ones, but Farrukh doesn’t do-”

  “Why America?” Ghasem asked. He had heard about the car repair business many times before. “Why travel halfway around the world to live in a nation of infidels?”

  “Ah, in America they are rich. The people may be infidels, but they are from all over the earth and they go there and make lots of money. In America, people willing to work hard can get rich. Farrukh sees rich people everywhere. The houses, the cars, the boats-”

  “There is more to life than money.”

  “True,” Abtani agreed, scraping the last morsel from his bowl, “and a person who has money can afford to enjoy all those extra things.”

&nbs
p; “When you get to America, will you join a mosque?”

  “Of course. The one Farrukh belongs to. He says it is a good place.”

  “Are the members supporting jihad?”

  Abtani eyed his friend, then said frankly, “No.”

  “The Americans are fighting Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. Does that bother you?”

  “That is not my fight.”

  “What do you think of jihad?”

  “I am not a holy warrior, and I do not want to be one. I think martyrs are fools.” He thrust out his lower jaw belligerently. “That is what I think. I want to find a good woman, get married, have children, have grandchildren, feed them all they want to eat, grow old and enjoy the life that Allah gave me.” He made a chopping gesture. “Allah made the world without my help, and I think He could handle the infidels, if He wished. He could snap his fingers and transport them all to hell or Paradise, if He wished. But apparently He does not so wish. I will live as my parents lived and trust in His mercy.”

  “Perhaps that is the best way,” Ghasem said thoughtfully.

  “I will go to America,” Abtani said stubbornly. “As soon as they send me a visa.”

  Like the president of the United States, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used a trusted aide to keep close tabs on the intelligence community, both the MOIS and the Qods Force of the IRGC. Amazingly, in male-dominated, fundamentalist Iran, his aide was a woman, Hazra al-Rashid-not her real name but a nom de guerre. She had gotten her start during the Revolution ratting on her fellow university students, then torturing them. Her methods quickly got out of control, even for a third-world sewer like Iran, so she changed her name and was transferred to another prison. There she became a protégé of Ahmadinejad-ten years her senior-who was also earning points for Paradise by rooting out heretics and potential political enemies. He reined in her wildest impulses (which meant some prisoners lived a little longer) and drained off some of her sexual energy. They were made for each other.

  Today, in the privacy of the presidential office, she told Ahmadinejad about the CIA’s approach to Professor Azari. “He has suggested that Rostram cooperate with the CIA’s spy in Tehran.”

  As usual for women employed by the government in postrevolutionary Iran, Hazra was wearing a black chador and a black scarf that covered her neck and the top of her head. Only her face and hands showed.

  “Who is the CIA’s spy?” Ahmadinejad asked.

  “One of the new officers in the American Interests Section of the Swiss embassy. We have suspected him since he arrived, but so far he has done nothing.”

  The thing about the chador, Ahmadinejad mused, was that it hid everything. Intended by the mullahs to prevent male temptation by completely shrouding a woman’s figure, it had just the opposite effect. Now everything was left to the imagination; women became mysterious figures who raised sexual tension wherever they appeared, even old women, the crippled, the lame and the grossly overweight.

  “The American is named Carmellini,” Hazra said. “He is a tall, fit man who runs at least five miles a day.”

  Instead of a sexless society where believers thought only pure thoughts, Iran had become the most sexually charged nation on the planet. The men thought about sex every time they saw a woman, fantasized about having sex with her and, even when she passed from view, obsessed about sex like a hormone-drenched teenage male. We are going to have to do something about chadors, Ahamdinejad mused. Even as he entertained the thought, he knew that course was politically impossible, as long as the Party of God remained in power.

  “We are going to have one of our agents make contact with Azari,” Hazra said. “We must know precisely what he told the CIA.”

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad turned Hazra around, so she was facing away from him. Then he began lifting the hem of her chador.

  Ahh yes, she wasn’t wearing anything under the black sack. But then, she never did. He also liked the fact that she shaved her legs in the European style.

  “We must confirm that the CIA believes Azari is telling the truth,” Hazra said as Ahmadinejad pushed her gently down onto the desk and began stroking her buttocks and back. She spread her legs slightly, wanting him to stroke her vagina. She was already wet, ready for him. Ah, now she felt his hand.

  “If they didn’t believe him,” she continued, “one doubts that they would want to talk to Rostram.”

  “You have done well, my beloved,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said as he thrust his penis into her.

  I was going to ruin my lungs if I kept running every evening. This evening the crap in the air hid the Alborz Mountains to the north.

  I walked the last few blocks back to the hotel, trying to cool off. Occasionally I coughed, hacking up the goop from my lungs.

  A block from the hotel I heard someone say my name. “Tommy Carmellini.” I turned, looking for the speaker… a skinny kid leaning against a building smoking a cigarette. He looked about eighteen. Smooth cheeks, medium-length hair, grungy trousers and a long-sleeve shirt and sweater.

  I turned and walked toward him. “Those cancer sticks will kill you,” I said conversationally.

  “I’m Rostram,” he said and took another nervous drag on his butt. I thought I heard a trace of a British accent.

  I glanced right and left to see who was watching us. No one, apparently. I took another good look. Someone was jerking me around.

  “And I’m the fucking Wizard of Oz,” I said, turning away.

  “Hey,” he said. “Hey.” He stepped after me and tugged at my sleeve. “Don’t bugger this up, you bloody Yank. I’m Rostram.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You picked a rotten place for a meet.”

  “We must meet somewhere,” he said, sucking on that weed, “and no one is watching you. You’re clean tonight. Let’s go across the street to the park and sit down.”

  I didn’t know what to think. I had been expecting some fifty-something bureaucrat or scientist who hated the regime, and instead I got this kid.

  We jaywalked and didn’t get run over. Found a bench in the park. I sat on it, and the kid perched on the back. He lit another cigarette and blew smoke around. He was smoking Marlboros, I noticed, and he smoked like a beginner, nervously, very aware of the weed. I wondered where he got the damn things. His eyes were constantly moving, but at least some of the time he was sizing me up.

  Then he made a gesture, reached up to brush some hair back off his forehead, and the revelation hit me like a hammer. This was no boy! Rostram was a woman!

  I looked at my shoes, scanned the passersby, then looked at him again. Yep, almost no Adam’s apple, really clean cheeks, slender fingers and just the faintest hint of a chest.

  Oh, man! The one thing everyone in the world agreed upon was that the Islamic fundamentalists were super-protective of their women. It wasn’t enough that I was a spy in the house of the saved. Oh, no. That goddamn Jake Grafton had sent me here to hook up with some Muslim traitor babe.

  I sat there trying to keep my temper from going thermonuclear as I let the reality of the situation sink in.

  “So how did you meet your pen pal?” I asked finally, when Rostram had smoked her weed about down to the filter.

  “Pen pal?”

  “The guy in America you correspond with.”

  “Oh,” she said. “He was a professor at Oxford when I was there.”

  “How old are you, anyway?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Does your daddy know you’re out running around in men’s clothes, smoking cigarettes and talking to foreign spies?”

  She flipped her cigarette away and gave me The Look.

  “You had me fooled there for a while,” I told her.

  “What tipped you off?”

  “That thing you did with your hair. It’s a woman’s gesture.”

  “Not my stride?”

  “Nope. Fooled me there.”

  She got out her Marlboros and kicked one out of the pack. Stuck it in her mouth and lit it like an English schoolboy who was
pretty damn cool and ditching school and didn’t care who knew it.

  “So how did you get into treason, anyway?” I asked, just to make conversation.

  “My pen pal asked for my help. I agreed to do it because I loathe the fanatics who are running this country.”

  “Passing military secrets to foreign spies strikes me as a bit more than a political protest.”

  “These fools are about to start World War III.”

  “They catch you, you won’t live to see it.”

  “I know that. That’s why I’ve been watching you for two days, checking to see if anyone is watching you. They aren’t.”

  “Or you just haven’t seen them.”

  “You’re clean, Carmellini.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  “I’m not going to tell you. Rostram is enough.”

  I nodded and looked casually around. No one seemed to be paying any attention to us, but that may have been only window dressing. For all I knew we were being filmed for a starring role on the six o’clock evening news. I could see the headlines now: american spy seduces islamic woman.

  “Why are you in Iran spying on us?” she asked.

  I tried the old Carmellini charm, which had apparently worked fairly well for dear old Dad or I wouldn’t be here. “Well, I had a choice. Several choices, actually. My boss wanted me to do this gig, but I could have gone back to Iraq for another tour of tracking down roadside bombers, or I could have resigned from the Company and joined my brother-in-law in his bagel business. Or I could have taken a banana boat to South America and become a beach bum until the money ran out or I ruined my liver, whichever came first.”

  She was eyeing me while I ran my mouth, wondering if any of this was true.

  “You worry a lot, do you?” she murmured. She was playing with the cigarette pack.

  “All the time. Don’t you?”

  “So what is it you want from me?” she asked. Her eyes darted around again, then lit on me. This was one nervous woman.

  “Are you nervous because we’re doing a little treason, because I’m an infidel, or because you’re out and about with a strange man?”