Reverb (Story of CI #2)

by Rachel Moschell

  “Well done, Alejo,” Rupert was commending him. “I called them myself that night, but they said they’d already spoken with you. I should have had to be the one to call, but you did well letting them know.”

  Alejo sat silent, remembering the choked tone of Wara’s father when he had broken the news. The horror of Wara’s situation clogged his arteries again with adrenalin and he began to fidget on the squeaky hotel bed. Rupert continued with the rundown.

  “You said on the phone that the Samadis were already potential targets by the police.”

  Alejo exhaled loudly. “Yeah. But when I talked to Heydar, he said that Wara will probably just be released when they hear the story she is just a foreigner who stumbled upon a rock concert without knowing it’s illegal. So supposedly, all we have to do is wait.” The last comment came out in a dark tone that probably would have sent chills down anyone’s back but Rupert’s.

  “Well, we both know neither of us is much good at that,” Rupert answered, much too cheerfully. “I brought two lukes with me, and we can all meet up tomorrow.” Alejo looked at him in surprise. Rupert had come along with two agents, prepared to do some serious work. “Get me some kind of coffee in this lovely little hole you’ve found,” Rupert said, “and the two of us can get right to work. Let’s see what we can turn up.”

  33

  Wolves

  RIGHT FROM THE MOMENT MIRZA HAD SEEN the policemen burst into the concert, he’d known this arrest was different. There were no heavily-bearded clerics berating him as they stuffed him in the car, quoting Quranic verses. The place he’d been brought to was unrecognizable, once the guards ripped off his blindfold. Mirza had been hauled in and lashed here in Tehran after concerts, as well as in Esfahan; this place had a different feel. Of course he’d never been in Evin Prison, but every fiber in his body was telling him this was it.

  Something horrible was coming, for sure. But far beyond any angst he could feel about his fate rose the suffocating need to know what had happened to his sister.

  Neelam. Mirza slumped against the plaster wall of his cell, alone, for nearly three days, polishing her name with worry into a single, bright jewel in his mind. Oh God, please. Neelam. What have they done with you?

  The guards had given up coming into his cell to check on him, knowing that the “satanic” rock star would half-attack them, demanding news of his sister. Now they pushed trays of cold food through a crack in the door and slammed it shut, denying him even the pleasure of threatening them if they didn’t reveal the location of Neelam.

  It had been three days. Was his sister with Petra? He hoped so, but even more he hoped the two girls had already been sent home. Sent home with a little warning about attending rock concerts and appearing unveiled in mixed company.

  I’m the one they really want, Mirza knew. Ever since Sami, the case had been building against Mirza as well. Sami had brought the news of Jesus here to Iran, and that had changed thousands. But the Islamic Republic saw Jesus as Western and imperialist, making Sami part of the “velvet revolution.” Spreading revolt against Iran through non-violent means. Like Western clothing. And philosophy. And religion.

  Jesus, Mirza whispered, closing his eyes. His gut told him they wouldn’t wait much longer, that they were only leaving him here to ferment in his own fear awhile before starting in on him. Honestly, he expected the whole interrogation to be pretty much nonexistent. They had probably been watching. They knew all they wanted to about Mirza Samadi, and the rest they would simply invent.

  What Mirza figured they would do now is just start in with the beatings. And worse. They would have already made their plans for him, how they would charge him with treason and kill him like Sami. But first, they would make him suffer.

  Prisoners who made it out of Evin said they had broken Sami’s arms three times before the execution. Mirza felt his lower lip quiver and he ground his teeth together, rubbing his bare arms against the chill of the sunless prison cell. It wasn’t that he was as tough as he liked to seem. Even during the few minutes he had dozed against the wall, the thought of what was going to come through that door at him had given him nightmares he would never dare speak about.

  I’m afraid.

  Mirza had to admit he was scared, but what guy wouldn’t be, seeing what he had seen and knowing what he knew?

  But soon it would all be over with. However things happened after you died, he was sure he was going to end up with Jesus in his kingdom. That was the great hope. And there was nothing, nothing they could do to him to make him give up on that hope.

  In the end, Mirza was right. It was near noon on the third day when six prison guards actually entered his cell, bearing a blindfold and handcuffs. Swallowing hard, he let himself be led by them down winding pathways, then parked next to a cool tile wall. They cuffed him to a thick pipe of sorts next to the wall, then removed the blindfold, leaving Mirza blinking.

  The room was a nasty yellow of all things, adorned only with a few of those unsubstantial desks that immediately took you back to Middle School. Two men were waiting for him, one younger with a smelly-looking orange leather jacket and a greasy lock of hair falling into one eye. The older man was wiry and dressed in neatly-pressed Iranian clothing. His eyes were dark and cold, the blood-colored ring on his finger brilliant and demanding.

  The fact that he was standing here, chained to a pipe, seeing these guys’ mugs without a blindfold was really not a good thing. Mirza glared at them and did his best not to pee his pants.

  “Good afternoon, gentleman. Where is my sister?”

  Ugly Leather Jacket opened his lips to speak, but the older man held up the hand with the red orb, silencing him immediately. “We have no questions to ask you, Mr. Samadi,” he said, and his voice creaked like a needle across alligator hide.

  This was as Mirza expected; they were just going to start right in with the fun stuff. His hands against the fat metal pipe trembled.

  “The state has no need to question you, Mr. Samadi, because we already have a complete statement convicting you of treason and espionage. In case you were wondering, it was your friend, Rostam. He testified against you.”

  The tone was so calm, so breathy, that Mirza had to blink twice, hard, before he comprehended what the man had just implied. Rostam? Rostam had given testimony against him and given them cause to arrest Mirza and the girls?

  Then what must these men have done to Rostam? Anger boiled up from Mirza’s chest and he felt his face begin to burn. “What did you do to Rostam?” he bellowed. “Where is he?”

  Ugly Leather Jacket rolled pale green eyes and swiped the lock of hair off one pockmarked cheek. The Ring just regarded Mirza with those deadpan eyes, then suddenly, perversely, a thin smile rearranged his swarthy face into that of a cartoon viper, about to strike. “Oh, Rostam’s not here,” he chuckled, and then the smile flattened out into oblivion. “Your friend Rostam had every reason to say everything we told him to about you. Seeing as you had been stealing his wife.”

  Mirza’s face drained and he ground his teeth together, glaring at the stack of enlarged photographs the interrogators held up for his viewing pleasure. In front of his eyes swam the old photos of he and Ava, fooling around at some party long ago, in another life. The police had got them, when his laptop was stolen. This fact was now crystal clear, and Mirza expelled hot air through his nostrils, horrified that Rostam was probably in police safe-keeping somewhere right now, convinced Mirza was sleeping with his wife.

  They had made themselves enemies of the world by following Jesus, and now the time had come to pay the price. The flatness in the Ring’s eyes left Mirza no doubt that Rostam had already filled in all the details they needed. Mirza, Sami, and Rostam had offered themselves to the One who had died for them as fuel in His cause.

  And now would come the fire.

  “So, now what?” Mirza felt himself calm a little. The fact that the authorities had tricked Rostam into testifying against Mirza made him feel a little better; the case
was being concentrated only against him. Neelam was a girl, and they might let her go.

  The Ring seated himself awkwardly on one of the battered school desks, and Ugly Leather Jacket eyed Mirza with something like warning, then crossed his arms. “We really don’t want to take you to trial,” the older man started explaining nastily. “So much time and resources have already been wasted on other trials, men equally as filthy as yourself.”

  That would be a reference to Sami. They are charging me for the same crimes, but want me to just go ahead and confess so they can kill me and get it over with.

  Mirza’s heart beat heavier. This would mean recanting belief in Jesus, when it came right down to it. They were accusing him of soft revolution, but really, how many people were they executing for singing rock music or showing up in blue jeans? Lots of people got arrested for that stuff, but in the end, it usually blew over. This wasn’t about him and Sami. This was about Jesus. Pure and simple.

  And he wasn’t going to recant, was he? Strength filled Mirza’s lungs and his breathing steadied. The Ring was laying down his demands.

  “My associate and I have come prepared today to hear your confession.” Mirza pressed his lips together, already shaking his head no. In Iran, many prisoners had “confessions” beaten out of them, which were then broadcast on Iranian TV as fact. Of course a confession from Mirza Samadi of Moneta Z was sure to be one much-watched program. Ugly Leather Jacket was motioned to by the Ring, and he eyed Mirza intensely, then continued.

  “What we need from you is a confession that Islam is the true religion and that Christianity, which you have followed, is a lie of Western Imperialism. A fake. You have to explain to all those poor young people who you and your conspirators have deluded that you lied and led them into treason. You were a fake. Jesus is a lie.”

  Mirza sensed a bead of sweat pop out of his forehead and he met the interrogators stare defiantly. Never. He wouldn’t do it. If he appeared on national TV saying Jesus was a lie, what would that do to thousands of young people who were giving their lives to follow Him?

  Mirza clenched his fists like iron against the handcuffs and stood tall, knowing he was sealing his fate. “No,” he said lowly. “No way.”

  The Ring raised an eyebrow, seeming pleased and not the least bit surprised by Mirza’s answer. “I’m shocked,” he rolled his eyes, then nailed them on Mirza with the gaze of a black mamba. “This is what we’re going to do. You will say everything we tell you to say, Mr. Samadi, or your sister Neelam will be given to my guards. She is such a famous rock star, I’m sure the men will be thrilled.”

  The black mamba eyes disappeared into a haze of iridescent stars and Mirza slammed one foot down onto the concrete, stopping himself from slumping forward. He saw only red and the tension in his straining biceps sent tidal waves of pain from his wrists to the base of his skull.

  It was supposed to be him, not her. Not Neelam.

  “One minute to make up your mind, Mr. Samadi,” one of the interrogators said, but Mirza had lost all sense of time. He was five once again, back in time, hanging upside down from the seat belt in his family’s crushed car. Torrents of water spurted over boulders a long ways below, and as Mirza looked down one of his spindly, bleeding arms he saw a hand. Neelam’s small hand. And he was hanging on to her with everything he had, refusing to let her go.

  It was the impossible choice. He had held on to Neelam for all that time until the rescuers came, for all these years just the two of them were left. And now he was supposed to abandon his sister to these wolves?

  The tension faded from his fists like lifeblood from a wounded animal, and for the first time since his parents died twenty years ago, Mirza cried.

  34

  Malcolm the Super Spy

  THE ROOM SWAM AROUND HER AGAIN, yellow tiles and the press of stale air. Wara hunched over onto the battered school desk, huddled inside the sleeves of her manteau. She scraped her fingernails absently across the faded Snoopy sticker attached to the desk, barely visible in the bone-colored light floating from a dying florescent light. Wara’s toes curled against her flip-flops, registering the dreaded swoosh of the door behind her.

  “Good evening,” Shahrukh greeted her soberly. “I hope you’ve had time to think, being in here all alone.”

  Wara wondered if it really was evening. Several days had to have gone by since they had discovered she was really Wara Cadogan from Montana and marched her out of the cell she briefly shared with Tarsa. She had spent the time either alone in a new cell or here in this nasty interrogation room.

  And Shahrukh, her interrogator, was not happy. Not at all. And why should he be? Wara had lied to him, and somehow, he had found out. This was a nightmare. She lifted bleary eyes to meet Shahrukh’s in greeting, then returned her gaze wearily to the floor.

  She was trapped here. But one thought kept running through her head, pulling her spirits beyond the walls of this prison and through the Iranian countryside to Esfahan: Alejo can get me out of here. He won’t forget about me.

  But she was locked up in prison in Iran. What could he really do? Alejo was trained in all that spy stuff, but this wasn’t a movie. He wasn’t going to break in to this prison, knock all the guards out, and rescue her from Shahrukh.

  The story of Alejo’s friend dead on the porch loomed large in her daydreams. Iranian prison was the last place Alejo was interested in visiting.

  Wara heaved a shuddering sigh and risked a glance at her bazju, who was pacing near the larger desk, glowering. Rubber squeaked on tile as he halted and began to rub one temple with long fingers.

  “Ms. Cadogan,” he began in his clipped, accented English. “Despite what you might think, I do care about what happens to you. I’m just doing my job, and that job is to help you confess your crimes and be free, free as an honest woman. But I can’t help you if you don’t cooperate. You really can’t imagine the kind of pressure I am under over your case.”

  Wara’s throat muscles spasmed against the sudden dryness in her mouth. So far there had been yelling and screaming, threats and insults. But, maddeningly, the one thing Shahrukh had chosen to focus on was something way beyond Wara’s arena of knowledge. He didn’t want to know who was a Christian, or how many members were in the house church. Instead, Shahrukh had drilled her about a supposed secret organization, backed by Westerners and dedicated to overthrowing the Iranian government through a soft revolution. Christianity. Music. Literature. Facebook.

  Shahrukh faced her with barely controlled annoyance and shifted inside his orange leather. “We know you’re not the leader,” he reminded her flatly. “You’re just a cog. Your obvious inexperience tells us that, loud and clear. But we need you to tell us who your leader is.”

  Wara felt smothered by a new shawl of apprehension. Over the last few days, Shahrukh had fired off an astonishing list of names, possible leaders of this supposed soft revolution organization. Most of them Wara had never heard of, but a few familiar ones snagged her ear: Mirza Samadi, Rostam, Heydar. Pastor John Rainer. Even Jaime Malcolm had made the list, though the idea that the skinny kid could head up some international revolutionary group verged on the ludicrous.

  “I don’t know,” she repeated weakly, aware that there was no way Shahrukh was going to believe her. She had traveled to Iran on a fake passport, for goodness sakes. And been arrested with Mirza and Neelam, who were already suspected of working towards soft revolution.

  A new, horrifying thought occurred to her, and Wara felt her shoulders slump. What if Alejo and Sandal had been arrested as well? Of course the authorities would look for them, after having discovered Wara’s identity. Her little hopes of Alejo doing something to get her out of this were more than unrealistic. If Alejo wasn’t locked up, he had surely left the country to avoid being arrested.

  Shahrukh grunted at her answer and flipped dark hair out of his eye. The bazju stalked towards the door and rapped sharply on it three times. The door burst open, followed by an older man with eyes like grani
te in crisp gray clothing. Wara’s eyes gravitated towards the wiry man’s fingers, one of which sported an impressive red jewel. The man’s fingers dug into the arm of a pallid woman, who took in Shahrukh standing by the door and tried to flee. Haggard and middle-aged, the woman prisoner wore the same brown manteau as Wara, but it hung loosely on her gaunt frame. White lips were nearly nonexistent in her strained face, and she trembled behind a shield of unhealthy gray hair, obviously terrified by Shahrukh and the older man with the ring.

  This was not good. Wara stared at the woman prisoner, frozen as she began to imagine what had happened to her in this place.

  The heavy door clicked back into place and the livid older man shoved the female prisoner towards Shahrukh.

  The woman wailed in terror and the ring man regarded Wara with the obsidian eyes of a snake. Then he turned his hard gaze on the bazju. Wara realized that this older man was obviously in charge; Shahrukh’s lips twisted wryly but he lowered his eyes before the other man with respect.

  “Tell her,” Ring Man ground out. Shahrukh took a step towards the older woman, who cowered before him. “Please, no,” she whispered in Farsi. Her eyes never landed on Wara, but flitted between the two men.

  Shahrukh’s pale green eyes narrowed and he refused to look at the trembling woman. “This woman was charged with the same crime you are,” he informed Wara with annoyance. “But she refused to cooperate with me, and we had to use harder methods to try to convince her. You can see how broken she is, even though she’s only served seven years of her thirty year sentence. How old do you think this woman is, Ms. Cadogan?”

  Wara knew what they were trying to do: scare her into cooperating by the sight of this pitiful-looking prisoner. And it was working. The question Shahrukh had asked fizzled on her brain like an egg on a greasy skillet. She couldn’t concentrate, didn’t care how old this woman was. Her eyes kept shifting over to the man with the giant ruby ring, who watched the proceedings with expressionless eyes.