At the appointed time I rode up to the Armenian Church near the main bazaar. Traffic was nearly bumper to bumper, but I made good time weaving through the mess. Davar was standing near the fence, waiting. She was dressed as a woman tonight, wearing a powder-blue ankle-length manteau and a darker blue scarf.
Stopped by the curb, I waved to her. She walked hesitantly over to the bike, looking it over. I handed her a helmet. “C’mon,” I urged.
She didn’t say a word, just clamped the lid on and seated herself sidesaddle, with both legs on the left side. Her right hand went around my waist.
Satisfied, I popped the clutch and let the bike roll.
When we had cleared the bazaar traffic and were actually riding normally, off the main boulevards, I took her back to my park.
There, with her standing beside the tree I had spent part of the afternoon under, I told her what I wanted.
My assertion that the regime was installing a dozen warheads on missiles stunned her. “My information is that the regime was at least a year, perhaps two, from having operational weapons. That is what I told Azari.”
“You were lied to.”
“Where did you learn about these warheads?”
“Your cousin Ghasem. Didn’t he tell you?”
“No.” After a bit, she asked, “So how are you going to get the information you want?”
“I don’t know. I need to talk to Ghasem. Perhaps he can help me. Will you set up a meet?”
She nodded, then looked around the park as if seeing it for the first time. “So, they were using me. I passed lies to Azari, and he publicized them in America.”
“That’s the way it looks,” I admitted.
“Does Azari know they were lies?”
“Yes.”
She stood there silently watching the dusk creep over us and the lights of the city come on. Finally she said, “Let’s go. We’ve been here long enough.”
“Where are we going?” I asked as I climbed on the bike.
“To a party.”
“You do parties in Iran?”
“Of course,” Davar said and gave a little giggle. I figured she had picked up her giggle in England, but maybe women everywhere did them. I couldn’t have been more than four or five years older than she was, yet it felt like a generation.
With her behind me sitting sidesaddle, I piloted us through traffic, which wasn’t bad that time of night, following her directions.
I confess, I was curious about her. She was smart, competent and very much a woman.
We wound up in North Tehran in a neighborhood similar to Davar’s, definitely upper middle class. She knocked on the door, and a young man opened it. The hallway behind him was dark. Davar murmured to him, then seized my hand and led me along the hallway to a door. When she opened it, I heard music and laughter and saw subdued lights below, in the basement. It was American music, a pop singer wailing in English, although I didn’t recognize the tune. Too out of date, I guess. Down the stairs we went, two pilgrims looking to escape the grimness of revolutionary Iran.
We had plenty of company. The basement was packed with young people, all talking at once, loudly, or dancing to the music or smoking foul dark cigarillos. Little red lights made the tobacco haze glow and illuminated the dancers. I stood there in amazement, looking at the women, who were wearing miniskirts, net stockings and high heels. Breasts thrust against tight blouses… hair swaying with the music… American music, most of it. Pop tunes.
I felt as if I had gone through a portal into the twilight zone. This is Iran? Beam me up, Scotty.
Davar appeared at my elbow. The manteau and scarf were gone, her skirt ended a couple of inches above her knees, and she had put on a pair of high heels, which lifted her eyes closer to mine and did something subtly wonderful to her figure. Seeing the look on my face, she laughed.
She led me around and introduced me to some of the attendees. She whispered what they did. Several were university professors, one was a lawyer, one of the women was a doctor, several people were engineers, and three or four were employed by the government doing this and that.
One couple was smoking hash in a corner-I could smell it, and I’m sure Davar could. She pretended she didn’t. “Who are they?” I asked.
“The man is a judge,” she said and pressed herself against me. “Let’s dance.”
We did, for almost an hour. Fast, slow, whatever, we gyrated, swayed and tangoed. As I said, the majority of the tunes were American, with a smattering of English and French and a few singers that Davar whispered were Iranian. I wondered if Ahmadinejad had ever heard one of those Iranian chanteuses; maybe he listened every night. When someone put on a hip-hop tune, I led Davar off the floor.
She made a tiny motion with her head, so I followed her up the stairs. The same guy was still in the hallway. The whole scene reminded me of a Prohibition speakeasy. What the party-hearty crowd downstairs was going to do if the Islamic Gestapo arrived with sirens blaring and guns out, if they ever did, was a bit beyond my powers of prediction.
We took another set of stairs upward. She opened a door, inspected a room, then pulled me in. She closed the door, then wrapped her arms around my neck, glued her body to mine and planted her lips on my mouth.
“Whoa,” I managed when she came up for air. “Just whoa.”
“Come on, big guy,” she whispered. “Give me what I want.”
“And what is that?”
“Guess.”
“Affection, sex, love, respect? This ain’t the way to any of those things.”
She pulled back far enough to look into my eyes. “How much time do you think we have, Tommy? How much time do you think I have?”
Well, she had me there.
I was still supporting her weight, so I carried her over to the bed and deposited her gently. Then I kissed her the way I thought she should be kissed.
When the technicians got the first warhead installed in a missile, a Ghadar-110 ballistic missile with an 1,850-mile range, Habib Sultani informed the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who of course wanted to go look. The official party went that evening in four vehicles. They were accompanied by armed troops in four more vehicles, just in case. Ghasem rode with his uncle Habib Sultani in the third vehicle. The general in charge of the weapons of mass destruction program, Brigadier General Dr. Seyyed Ali Hosseini-Tash, and his senior aide rode with them.
Hosseini-Tash was feeling mighty good. He had accomplished his goal; under his direction thousands of technicians and scientists had designed and built a facility to enrich uranium to weapons grade, designed and constructed a trigger and designed and constructed a warhead. It was, he told Sultani and Ghasem, the biggest engineering project in the history of Iran, and he had pulled it off.
Sultani asked about testing a weapon underground, and that sobered Hosseini-Tash. Having the damned things go bang with the oomph they were supposed to have was, after all, the real final hurdle. Until the weapons passed the test, Hosseini-Tash’s head was still on the block.
Hosseini-Tash’s aide, a bearded, turbaned math freak, began a long, technical explanation about why a test wasn’t necessary. He even discussed some of the key calculations as they rode through the darkness of the evening to the missile factory in the Parchin complex under the mountains east of Tehran.
After the troops in the lead vehicle had paused for a brief discussion with the guard officer on duty, all the vehicles were waved on through.
Ghasem watched Ahmadinejad stride away, accompanied by the officer in charge of the missile plant, who had been waiting. Soon they were in the tunnel, which drifted straight back into the mountain. The bombproof doors were closed, and access was by a smaller door, which stood open, in one corner of the larger one. Ghasem knew that the larger door was only opened when large objects needed to be moved into or out of the tunnel, such as a missile on its transporter.
Indeed, there they were, ballistic missiles riding transporters, dozens of them. They were arranged two abre
ast in the large tunnel, and others were parked in galleries that ran off at right angles. Seeing them here under the lights, within the security of the tunnel, painted and polished and gleaming, with the national flag on their tails, was heady stuff.
The sight seemed to straighten Habib Sultani, Ghasem noticed, and added an inch or two to Ahmadinejad’s erect stance. All these advanced weapons, waiting, ready…
The second gallery on the left was the one the officer led the party to. Soon they were standing in front of a Ghadar-110 missile with the panels that normally covered the warhead removed, exposing it. With the missile on the transporter, the warhead area was at least twelve feet off the ground, so the official party clambered up on a scaffold. There wasn’t room for Ghasem, who stayed on the ground. Consequently he didn’t hear much of what was said by the missile expert to Ahmadinejad and Sultani and Hosseini-Tash and the other officials, who had packed the scaffold platform.
Troops were arranged along the walls of the gallery, and they stood loosely with their AK-47s across their chests, watching the official party and looking bored. No doubt they had been trotted into position to impress Ahmadinejad, if he noticed.
Ghasem wondered what Tommy Carmellini would say if he were here, looking at the military might of Iran.
Of course, Ghasem wondered what Ahmadinejad and the other officials of the government intended to do with these nuclear weapons. He had assumed that film crews would be here, filming Ahmadinejad’s inspection, but there were none. If Ahmadinejad was going to make a major announcement to the press, there should be film crews, Ghasem thought.
Why have the weapons if the leaders weren’t going to announce the reality and demand the respect of the nation’s enemies?
Nuclear weapons were worthless unless your enemies knew you had them. Even Israel, which pretended it lacked such weapons, made sure the Arab states were well aware that they lived in a nuclear shadow.
Now Israel lived there, too, as did the American armed forces scattered around the Persian Gulf. And at sea.
The officials on the platform were huddled around Ahmadinejad, who was telling them something. He spoke so low that Ghasem could not hear his words, nor any of the other observers and soldiers near him.
“This afternoon before we began this inspection trip, I spoke to the Supreme Leader,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said. “The decision has been made. Iran will become a martyr nation. We will strike a blow for Allah that will resound throughout the world, a blow that will win glory for the Iranian nation and a place in Paradise for every Iranian.
“We have it in our power! Here are the missiles that we will use to destroy Israel and the concentrations of American forces that surround us. When the believers see our power, they will rally around us, unite and destroy the infidel dogs wherever they can be found.”
His listeners stood with mouths agape. They had been expecting some serious saber rattling, but not this! Not a nuclear strike against the Great Satan or its ally, Israel. To shake one’s fist at a lion is a political statement, but to stick one’s head in its mouth goes beyond politics.
In the silence that followed Ahmadinejad’s statement, a lone voice said, “If we initiate a nuclear war, the Americans and Israelis will kill us all. They will launch a hundred missiles at us for every one we shoot. Iran will cease to exist. The Islamic Republic will have committed suicide.”
Habib Sultani looked to see who had spoken. It was one of the two missile technicians, one wearing a white coat.
He looked Ahmadinejad right in the face and continued, “Jihad is for those who wish to be martyrs. Most Iranians have no wish to die like that. I-”
He got no further. Ahmadinejad cut him off with a roar. “No more! The decision has been made. You will serve your nation and Allah or we will execute you as a traitor! Do you hear me? You and your family will be shot. Which will it be? A traitor’s hell or a martyr’s Paradise?”
General Hosseini-Tash said nothing on the trip back to Tehran, nor did Habib Sultani. The strained silence was almost more than Ghasem could bear, but he kept his mouth shut, as did the math nerd. Ghasem figured he would hear whatever it was that his uncle thought when his uncle felt the time was right.
General Hosseini-Tash and his aide got out of the car at the WMD ministry, and the driver took Sultani to his. The driver stopped in the underground parking area that was used by the most senior officials. Sultani got out, followed by Ghasem. As the car pulled away, Ghasem spoke, only to be motioned into silence by his uncle.
“Later,” he said. He went to his car and motioned for Ghasem to climb in, and together they rode up the ramp and out into the streets of Tehran, now emptying for the night.
Sultani drove to a park, locked the car and walked away across the grass with Ghasem following.
“They listen to everything,” Sultani explained. “The office, the car, the house-there is almost no place that witch Hazra al-Rashid isn’t listening. No place.” Then he told Ghasem of Ahmadinejad’s statement.
Ghasem stood transfixed, unable to speak as the horror washed over him. Israel and America would transform Iran into a radioactive wasteland. This city, this nation, these people-all would cease to exist. Everyone not killed by the initial blasts, or the fires, would succumb to radiation poisoning. Everyone would die. Everyone. So the Supreme Leader and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a few chosen mullahs could earn a gold-plated ticket to Paradise.
When he again became aware of his surroundings, Ghasem saw that his uncle Habib was sitting in the dirt with his head in his hands.
***
Once a year the university faculty got together at a formal dinner. Callie Grafton always went, and since he was in town just now, Jake went with her. He dutifully shook hands and tried to remember names and listened politely to whatever anyone had to say. Since he was getting a little deaf, he missed some of it, but he tried to smile at the right times and laugh when everyone else did.
“You could get a hearing aid,” Callie whispered, eyeing him askance.
“I can hear you just fine.”
“You can not. You are merely getting better at reading lips.”
Before Jake could reply to that, Callie spotted her department head and led him in that direction.
After the cocktail hour, everyone went into the dining room-this affair was being held at a hotel-and looked for their names on the round tables, each of which seated ten people.
After the greetings by the president of the university and the dean of the faculty, waiters brought around salads. The waiter who placed a salad in front of Jake muttered, “Admiral Grafton?”
“Yes.” Jake glanced up. A young man in his twenties, clean-shaven and trim.
“This is for you,” the waiter said and passed him a letter-sized envelope. “I’m to tell you that it’s from a Mr. Ilin.”
Jake reached for the waiter’s arm, detaining him. “Who gave you this?”
“A man this afternoon. I didn’t know him. He paid me twenty bucks to deliver this envelope to you. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
Jake nodded and let the waiter go. He looked at both sides of the envelope: His name was typed on one side; the other side was blank. Made of cheap paper, the envelope was thin, containing no more than one or two sheets of paper, and sealed. He examined the seal. Apparently intact.
Jake stuck the envelope in an inside coat pocket and took a long hard look at the people around his table. All were colleagues of Callie in the language department, or their spouses. No one seemed very interested in him.
When he could stand it no longer, Jake excused himself and went to the men’s room. In a stall he opened the envelope. It contained one sheet of paper, which seemed to be a copy of an original. On the top was something in Arabic script. Then twelve pairs of numbers. Obviously latitude and longitude coordinates.
He recognized none of the positions. He put the sheet of paper back in the envelope and replaced the envelope in his coat.
Jake and Callie got home to their
flat in Rosslyn about ten thirty. He went straight to the office and pulled out an atlas. He was plotting coordinates when Callie came in.
She watched him for a moment and said, “Was that what was in the envelope?”
“Yes. The waiter said a Mr. Ilin wanted me to have it.”
Callie had met Janos Ilin, a Russian high in the SVR, holding a rank equivalent to lieutenant general. He wasn’t the type of man one forgets. “Surely he didn’t give it to the waiter?” she said distractedly.
“Oh, no. Someone who works for him delivered it and used his name.”
“What is it?”
He handed it to her. Although she was a linguist, she couldn’t read the script at the top.
“At first glance,” he said, “I thought it might be the locations of Iran’s nuclear-armed missiles, but it couldn’t be. Two of the locations are Tel Aviv; the others are locations of American military bases in Iraq, Qatar and Kuwait. One of the locations is Baghdad International. Then there is this one.”
He pointed at the map.
She compared the location of his finger with the numbers on the sheet. “There’s some kind of mistake,” she said finally. “This couldn’t be a target list. That location is right in the heart of Tehran.”
“There’s no mistake,” Jake Grafton muttered.
“The government of Iran is going to launch a missile to wipe out their own capital?” Callie asked skeptically.
“Looks like it,” her husband said.
“Oh, that list is something else. It isn’t what you think.”
Jake Grafton didn’t reply.
The room was quiet, and I could hear Davar’s heart beating. She had a strong, lazy heart.
“I hate the fundamentalists,” she whispered, apropos of nothing.
The Disciple Page 25