Gordita Conspiracy

by Lyle Christie

  “American or European?” I heard someone say.

  I turned my head and glanced over my shoulder to see two Iranian policemen standing behind me, and my urine instantly stopped flowing.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  The one on the left was the first to speak. He was a serious looking middle-aged man with a well-trimmed beard and the yellowed teeth of a life long smoking habit.

  “You are standing, so you have to be one or the other.”

  Wonderful, he was observant but hopefully not too curious.

  “You guessed it. I’m American, but then you obviously already know that because I responded in English.”

  “Yes, so what brings you to Iran? Searching for more weapons of mass destruction?” he asked.

  Even better—he was a comedian, and he and his young partner shared a laugh at his little quip.

  “Afraid not. I’m just a photojournalist doing a piece on Iran’s ancient ruins.”

  “Interesting. Which ones?”

  “Lots of them.”

  “Such as.”

  God bless the Internet and the research I had done before going on this assignment. Since I was posing as a photojournalist, I had done a lot of reading up on Iran’s storied history and related ruins.

  “Mostly ancient Persian. Places like Shushtar, Passagard and Persepolis.”

  “Ah, Persepolis, which Alexander The Great pillaged and burned to the ground. Another of the many western leaders who have invaded our lands.”

  “Truly a shame.”

  “Yes,” he said, taking a moment to think.

  “Where do you plan to go next?” he asked.

  “South to Bishapur.”

  He gave his partner a look then turned back to me.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I check your tourist visa.”

  “Not at all. Do you mind if I finish peeing first?”

  “Go ahead. Assuming our presence doesn’t hinder your flow.”

  It sounded like a challenge, so I turned back and looked towards the hole in the floor and tried my best, but the urine wouldn’t come.

  “Oh, are you shy?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Not usually, but then men in America rarely stare at each other while they are holding their penises.”

  “That’s not what I’ve heard.”

  The two of them laughed again. Hardy, har, har. What a couple of shitbags.

  “Do you mind waiting outside?” I asked.

  “Yes, we do.”

  Oh well, might as well make them feel at home. I was lucky enough to feel a nice fart coming on, and I let it out slowly, making it rumble and sound like a series of backfires from a car’s exhaust. Middle Eastern food tended to give me terrible gas, so it was unlikely that it would smell particularly good to someone other than myself. I heard both of them backing up, obviously searching for clean air, and I couldn’t help but laugh. The brief respite gave me the inspiration I needed, and a steady flow of urine finally started pouring into the hole in the floor. I finished and was giving Tag Junior a gentle final shake when Mr. Chatty told me to hurry up. Fuck him—some things a man must do at his own pace. I zipped up, adjusted my pants, and finally turned to face my antagonists, who both smiled smugly, as they were apparently enjoying accosting a westerner in such an awkward and usually private place. At least now I could get a more detailed look at the assholes. Mr. Chatty was heavy set, carrying a little extra weight in his mid section while his subordinate was a bit younger, fitter, and obviously hadn’t been spending his down time scarfing down zoolbias and bamiyehs, which were the Iranian equivalent of donuts.

  “Do you make it a habit to roust tourists in bathrooms?” I asked as I handed him my visa.

  “Depends on the tourist,” he said, looking at my visa and frowning.

  It wasn’t a forgery, so if he found any problem, he was just being an asshole.

  “I think you should come with us. I’d like to verify your visa status at the station.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I said so.”

  This was not a good development, and I was going to need to either talk or fight my way out of it—hopefully the former.

  “Honestly, guys, I’m on a tight timeline with my editor back in New York. How about I buy you lunch, and we part as friends, the end result being that we’re improving American and Iranian relations.”

  His expression hardened in spite of the fact that I thought I was being particularly amenable.

  “You will do as you’re told,” he said, testily.

  “I’m just trying to be friendly.”

  “Turn around and place your hands on your head,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, but I really don’t have time for this.”

  “I don’t care what you have time for.”

  “Look, this is only going to go down one of two ways. The easy way, where you leave me in peace, or the hard way, where I leave you in pieces.”

  “You Americans like to talk tough, but, when it comes down to it, you are a bunch of overprivileged pussies who spend your time driving your Teslas and Priuses between your mansions and your country clubs.”

  “Honestly, you’re misinformed, as I have a condo, and I drive a Subaru to my country club.”

  “Enough! It’s time to go to the station and see if we might quiet that big mouth of yours,” Mr. Chatty said, as he pulled out his handcuffs and started to walk in my direction.

  Why did people always have to choose the hard way?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Great Exodus

  EVERYONE LOOKS BACK at particular moments in their life and wishes they had done certain things differently, and I had a feeling the Iranian police officers standing in front of me would most likely feel that way about the next sixteen and a half seconds that would unfold in this small and otherwise lackluster bathroom. I turned my back to the two men, giving them the false impression that I was going to acquiesce, but it was all a ploy. In reality, it was just a way to get them to lower their guard, so that I could inflict some very purposeful damage to their bodies and, in turn, their egos.

  Unfortunately, I had two armed opponents and therefore needed to take each man out of the fight as quickly as possible, and that would entail affecting airflow, blood flow, and nerve functioning. First on my radar was Mr. Chatty, who was just coming into attack range. I glanced over my shoulder to judge the distance then lashed out with a very hard, low back kick to his groin that doubled him over. I quickly turned and grabbed his head and delivered knees to his face until he went limp, and I was able to toss him aside. His junior officer reacted by going for his holstered pistol, so I used my longest weapon, namely my leg, to front kick him in the stomach and send him sprawling back against the wall. It stalled his efforts, but he was soon back to trying to reach for his pistol. I was faster, however, and closed the distance and swung a right elbow strike at his head while I took hold of his weapon hand with my left. The blow stunned him, and I reached down and used both hands to twist his pistol back towards his center until he released his grip. The weapon was officially free, and I used it like a club and struck him in the temple then hooked it around the back of his neck and delivered a knee into his midsection that buckled him over. His next destination was going to be the floor, and, as he was already halfway there, it was easy to leverage his right arm up and flip him head over heals to land on his back. He recovered surprisingly quickly and rolled over and got up to his feet, looking particularly angry as he charged me and attempted a tackle. He rammed his shoulder into my stomach and nearly knocked the wind from my lungs as he pushed me backwards into the wall. It showed a lot of resolve, but it was a risky move because it exposed his head and allowed me to deliver two simultaneous chops to each side of his neck. The chop was the consummate martial arts movie move, and had been used by everyone from the cartoon character Fred Flintstone to James Bond. It therefore seemed a little silly to the layperson, but in actual use was quite effective—especially
when done properly. This meant hitting with the bottom inside corner of the palm in order to transfer a lot of energy into a smaller point of impact. It could be used to great effect on soft tissue all over the body, but in this instance it was directed at the sides of the neck in order to enact the very fancy sounding baroreflex, which occurred when trauma to the carotid artery confused the brain into misinterpreting the blood pressure and made the unlucky victim pass out. As expected, he went unconscious, but, as the effects were temporary, I applied an inverted blood choke just to make sure Sleeping Beauty stayed out of the rest of the fight.

  At the six second mark I heard a noise and hazarded a glance behind me and saw that Chatty was suddenly coherent and reaching for his gun. I quickly dragged Sleeping Beauty around to form a human shield in order to take away any chance of Mr. Chatty shooting me—unless, of course, he wanted to shoot his partner as well. He was caught in a moment of indecision, and it gave me the opportunity to shove his comatose friend onto him and knock both of them to the ground. His gun hand was trapped with his gun pointed harmlessly off to the side, and I came forward and stepped on his wrist just hard enough to make him cry out in pain. He released the pistol, and, now that I had both of their guns, I leaned down and held the guns in front of Mr. Chatty’s face.

  “You chose the hard way, my friend,” I said.

  “No, don’t kill me. I have a family!”

  “Don’t worry, I have no intention of killing you. I don’t want you to ever forget the day a pussy American photojournalist taught you some manners in a restaurant bathroom. I think it’ll be an important lesson in helping you become a better ambassador to the next batch of tourists who manage to visit this beautiful country. So, listen closely and repeat after me. You get more flies with sugar than you do salt.” I said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will in time. Now say it.”

  “You get more sugar with flies and salt,” he said.

  “No, you get more flies with sugar than you do salt.”

  “You get more flies with sugar than salt.”

  “Close enough.”

  He thought a moment then smiled nervously.

  “I think I understand.”

  “Good, now don’t forget it!” I said, as I leaned down and pistol whipped him hard in the temple, sending him into a dreamy sleep.

  I stood up to take a look at my handiwork and realized I’d been particularly lucky, if you could call getting cornered by two policemen in a bathroom lucky. Still, I had managed to avoid a long and potentially lethal physical confrontation that could have attracted unwanted attention, and, worst case scenario, more police. The question now was what to do with officer Chatty and his rookie partner. I decided on the simple approach and dragged Mr. Chatty over to a stall, placed him over the hole facing away from the door, then lowered his pants around his ankles and leaned him against the wall, so that he would stay upright. Finished, I set his friend up in the next stall over then stood back to check my work. The two policemen looked liked a couple of close friends sharing a double dump and appeared to be so peaceful in their current state that it made me almost feel a little guilty—almost. Trouble temporarily averted, I washed my hands and left the bathroom to find Farid talking animatedly with the girls, though he looked up and paused when he saw the concern in my expression.

  “Did you have a bad time in the bathroom? I assure you it wasn’t from the food here.”

  “No, no problem with the food—yet. My problem was with the police. I take it you didn’t see them go in after me.”

  “No, I was—um—busy talking,” he said, looking guilty as he nodded towards the girls.

  “Oh, well I’m glad to see you had my back—not!”

  “Shit, I’m sorry, are you OK?”

  “Yeah, but it’s probably best if we get as far away from here as we can, so, let’s roll, Cinderella!”

  Farid said goodbye to the girls, and we headed out to the car and were soon back on the highway, where he looked particularly tense as he checked the rearview mirror every few minutes.

  “Don’t worry. We should have at least an hour before they wake up. Plus, I told them we were headed southwest towards Bishapur.”

  We drove another quiet hour through the beautiful Iranian countryside without incident, and Farid finally started to relax.

  “So, what’s the plan?” he asked.

  “Pretty straightforward. We drive to Urmia and meet up with a Mossad Agent who will help us cross the border to Turkey. After that, we board a boat in Istanbul then motor out into the Aegean Sea and rendezvous with the submarine Ohio. From there, it’s a brief trip to the Sigonella Naval Air Station on Naples, where we’ll catch a plane to the land of blond hair and plentiful bosoms.”

  The next four hours passed without incident, but all that changed at the beginning of hour five when all hell broke loose—in the car that is. The falafels, or fried explosive devices as I came to know them, were finally starting to do their job, and a great exodus of gas was waiting to exit my backdoor. To be nice, I reached over and rolled down my window.

  “What’s wrong? Are you getting sleepy?” Farid asked.

  “No, I’m fine, but you probably don’t want to do any deep breathing exercises.”

  “Why—what’s the prob…”

  Suddenly his eyes started to glaze over, and he immediately rolled down his own window and fanned the air around his head.

  “Oh my God! You fucker!” he said.

  “Sorry, falafels have always had this effect on me.”

  “They have this effect on everyone,” he said, as a smile formed on his lips.

  “Really?”

  “Oh yes!”

  That’s when I realized he had just returned fire.

  “Sweet Mother of God! Your butthole is a cauldron of evil!” I said.

  “What do you mean? I think it is a den of joyful goodness!”

  “Yeah, if goodness smelled like three day-old diarrhea and burnt butt hair.”

  “Hardly, my butthole is as hairless and smooth as a baby’s.”

  “Yeah, because that fart just burned it all off.”

  I fanned the air and attempted to drive the fart towards him while he did the same, the result being that it was left in a kind of holding pattern in the center of the car. Both of us started laughing, and the experience was feeling more like the innocent fun of hanging out with my friends back in college, and it made the moment oddly comforting. Working in the intelligence business was, by its secretive nature, a fairly lonely existence, and it was rare to bond with a total stranger, least of all, over flatulence. Still, I never saw James Bond fanning farts in his Aston Martin, but then he was generally in the company of beautiful women.

  Several farts and many laughs later, we were almost halfway to Urmia, and it was time for a necessary bathroom stop. I was desperately hoping that Farid would perhaps take a dump and lose some of his mojo, which would de-escalate our war of the bungholes and allow me to breath a little easier. We exited the highway and crossed over to the other side and pulled in to the nearest gas station.

  “I can pump the gas if you want to go first,” I said.

  “Thanks, I’ll be right back.”

  I went around and started pumping the gas and took a moment to look around at the countryside. The flora and fauna reminded me a lot of the American Southwest, specifically New Mexico, which made sense, considering we were pretty close in terms of latitude and elevation. It was strange how places even thousands of miles apart on different continents could look similar, and it was at moments like this that you could really visualize that the landmasses of the earth used to be one giant super continent called Pangaea. We really had to be thankful for tectonic plates and oceans, as I couldn’t even imagine how turbulent and fucked up the world would be if all the countries were side by side. Farid appeared a moment later, looking relieved although not as relieved as I would have liked. He obviously hadn’t dropped the deuce I’d hoped for,
because no man could have emptied his bowels in that little amount of time.

  “No dumpage?” I asked.

  He smiled.

  “Afraid not, my friend, but I wouldn’t have gone either way, as I absolutely detest public restrooms, and I’m serious when I say I would rather shit in a fucking bucket.”

  “I would agree, as long as that bucket is nowhere near a public restroom.”

  I ventured inside to the bathroom and once again opted to stand as I emptied about three cups of tea then washed my hands and returned to find Farid looking tense. He motioned to the car on the other side of the pumps, and I saw that it was a Police cruiser. Fuckinzee. It was a Mercedes and a hell of a lot faster than the nondescript piece of shit we were driving, so, if it came down to a chase, we would be greatly outmatched.

  “Anything I should know?”

  “I’ve been listening to the police radio chatter and heard that there’s an alert out for us, and they have a description of our car.”

  “Oh shit fuckers! I guess that means one point for the MOIS.”

  “Yeah, but fortunately for us, our guy here hasn’t noticed us yet.”

  The policeman walked inside while Farid and I got into the car and looked at each other.

  “Well? What now?” Farid asked.

  “We need to get off the main highway until we can find a different car. Do you have any friends or colleagues out here?”

  “I have a colleague in Sanjun-rud.”

  “Is it far away?”

  “No, it’s the next town, and I think she might be willing to help us.”

  I was picking up on a distinct discomfort in Farid’s tone—one I recognized to generally be derived from interactions with the opposite sex.

  “Wait a minute—did you by chance have more than a friendly relationship with this female colleague?”

  “Yeah,” he said, uncomfortably.