The Zarrabian Incident

by C. A. James

  Through the door, she could see shafts of moonlight shining through hundreds of missing shingles. Shadows hinted of rusting farm equipment, piles of lumber, and an outline that looked like an antique tractor.

  Christine suddenly gave a little screech and ducked as a huge, silent shadow swooped just inches over their heads. McCaig laughed.

  “It’s just an owl.”

  She was embarrassed. “It just, you know, startled me. I didn’t hear a sound!”

  “Yeah, they’re like that. They have special feathers that evolved to fly in complete silence. Imagine how the mice feel. Just going about their business and bam! Your buddy’s gone.”

  “What is this? I mean, I know it’s a barn, but . . .”

  “A dairy barn.”

  “How can you tell?”

  She could see a bemused expression on his face in the moonlight.

  “Everything in here tells you a story. You can sort of see,” he said, waving left and right, “along each side there are stocks and feed troughs for the cows. They’d come in here for milking.” He pointed to their right. “See that wicked-looking thing there with long tines? Sort of like an overgrown pitchfork or something?”

  “Looks nasty.”

  “That’s a Jackson fork. It went through a block-and-tackle to a railing at the roof-peak up there, and they used it to hoist bales of hay up to the loft. A place like this probably had thirty or forty cows, and they’d have to grow hay in the summer and store enough in the barn’s loft to last all winter. If a rancher didn’t store enough, he’d have to slaughter some of his cows, and that could cut his income for years.”

  “Hard life,” she said.

  “A good life. Until it wasn’t.”

  She turned and started strolling back. McCaig looked at the moonlit barn for a few more moments, then turned and caught up with her.

  “So what happened?” she asked as they strolled.

  “Dairy farms were at the forefront of the agribusiness takeover. Way back in the thirties, before World War II. Used to be a farmer would milk his cows and sell it locally. Then they passed health laws about pasteurization, sterilization, bottling, and such. One guy on a farm like this just couldn’t afford the equipment. Most of them went under or sold out.”

  “This is personal for you, isn’t it?”

  “My grandfather. It broke his heart. He turned his hay fields into other crops—corn, beans, some garden vegetables. He did OK, managed to keep his head above water. But he was a rancher, not a farmer. Cows and horses were his thing. Dragging a plow behind a stinking tractor, back and forth across a field for twelve hours, that wasn’t his idea of a good time. Especially when the next morning he’d just have to get up and do it again.”

  “Then your dad took over, right?”

  “Not at first. My uncle farmed the place for a while. My dad went off to the war, learned to be a mechanic, and when the war was over he rented a garage in town and put out his shingle. Best mechanic in town. He could fix anything from a Ford Falcon to a wheat combine.”

  “You remember those days?”

  “I was pretty young when he finally closed the garage, maybe five or six, so I don’t remember much. Just the old shop, my dad talking to clients, and cars up on the rack. Stuff like that.”

  “How’d he end up a farmer?”

  “My uncle couldn’t handle the place. He was the nicest guy in the world, everyone loved him. But he didn’t have, I don’t know, energy? Initiative? Any sense of urgency about life. The farm started falling apart. Bills weren’t getting paid, and the crop yields were way down. I remember Grandpa coming into the shop one day while my dad was working on some car up on the rack. I was sitting on the workbench off to the side; I wasn’t allowed to go where they worked on the cars, so I liked to sit on the bench and watch. Grandpa came in and gave me a Popsicle. Then he and Dad had this talk, Grandpa begging him to come back and take over from Uncle Zeb.”

  “Seriously? You have an uncle named Zeb?”

  “Yeah, Grandpa was pretty biblical. Zebediah. My dad always figured he was lucky to get named John.”

  “No kidding.”

  “So anyway, Dad kept the shop open for a while, but turned out he was having trouble competing with a couple of car dealerships that had opened up and were taking his business. Cars were getting more complicated with electronics and computers and such. He’d spend weekends out at the farm helping Uncle Zeb, then back to the shop to wrench on cars. Did that for another year or so, but he started sending customers away, and finally he just closed up shop and we moved back to the farm.”

  “What did your Uncle Zeb do?”

  “Oh, he stayed on. Took one of the cabins down at the other end of the farm that used to be for the dairy foreman and fixed it up really nice. I think he was glad not to be in charge. He became a farm hand, but Dad gave him a share of the profits. He got married after a while, added on a bedroom, and next thing I knew I had a couple of cousins.”

  “How come you’re not a farmer?”

  “Nobody’s a farmer any more. Except maybe in the South—Texas, Arkansas, places like that. I hear there are still a lot of small family farms down there. They’ve organized into informal collectives. They share machinery, help each other when it’s time to harvest, that sort of thing. But here in California, it’s all about big corporations, huge high-tech machines, and cheap migrant labor.”

  “And your family’s place?”

  “Sold off. Just like this one. A hundred years of history, love, and sweat, and now it’s just one of ten thousand fields managed by a guy with shiny shoes sitting in some high-rise office in Chicago.”

  “I guess there’s no stopping progress.”

  “Nope.”

  They walked on in silence for another minute between the rows of trees, the moonlight filtering through the leaves overhead. Christine suddenly ducked.

  “What was that?”

  “What?”

  “I could swear some bird or something just about hit me in the dark!”

  “Oh, no worries, they won’t hit you.”

  “What are birds doing out at night?”

  “It was a bat.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Be thankful. They eat mosquitoes.”

  “OK, I’m thankful,” she said. “They won’t, like, land in my hair or anything, right?”

  “Nah. The worst they’ll do is land on your neck and suck all your blood out.”

  “Very funny. So how’d you get from the farm to the FBI?”

  “I just sort of fell into it.”

  “How do you ‘fall into’ one of the most elite law-enforcement agencies in the world?”

  “After I graduated from high school, I sort of putzed around from job to job. I was a carpenter for a couple years, worked in a machine shop, then had a stint as a used-car salesman.”

  She laughed. “You? Selling used cars?”

  “Yeah, that lasted about a month. I sold exactly one car, to Uncle Zeb. I think he felt sorry for me. Anyway, I met this girl and was convinced she was Cleopatra or something, and we got pretty tight. She’d just graduated high school and thought she was headed for the university, so she got me an application, slapped it on the table, and told me to fill it out so that we could go to school together. I had good grades in school, and when I finally got around to taking the SAT test, I aced it in math and science. It just comes naturally to me.”

  “You? Math?”

  “Yeah, you’d never guess, right?”

  “You’re a complex man, Agent McCaig.”

  “Either that or confused. Sometimes you can mistake one for the other.”

  “So you and your girl went to college together?”

  “No. Funny thing was, I got in and she didn’t. Really pissed her off. She ended up getting in later to a different school. I never did hear much from her after that.”

  “So what, you studied criminology?”

  “No, civil engineering. I did well, too. Then I joined the
Marines. They like college degrees.”

  “And you made captain. Pretty impressive.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. I was just doing my job. My grandpa always said, 'If you’re going to do something, do it right. Never do anything halfway.'”

  “And the FBI? How’d that happen? You studied engineering.”

  “The FBI likes variety. They want smart people. Analytical people. My dad always said I was good at solving puzzles. Turns out he was right. I just had this instinct, like I could look at all the facts and think like the bad guys, and I’d see stuff that everyone else had missed.”

  “You’re just full of surprises.”

  “I’m just a regular G-man, making a living.”

  “Drop the aw-shucks. It doesn’t work with me.”

  He laughed.

  Behzadi Jahandar crouched on the roof of the old eight-story brick building. He could feel sparks of excitement emanating from the four men of his team. There was a charge in the air. He felt it himself.

  The long months of planning and training were finally going to pay off. At last, their target was real, moored against a dock less than a kilometer away, looming large across the waters of Boston Harbor.

  Jahandar raised his powerful binoculars. The huge tanker ship seemed to jump toward him. He scanned it from bow to stern. It was exactly as planned.

  The ship was monstrous—one of the largest ever built. Its cargo consisted of five huge, cryogenically cooled metal tanks filled with highly flammable liquefied natural gas. If released, the tanks’ contents would expand to over 150 million cubic meters of natural gas, a staggering quantity of combustible fuel.

  His mission was to make that happen. His team was about to release the gas from this mighty tanker and set it free to burn in an uncontrolled and unprecedented conflagration.

  Jahandar lowered the binoculars. The harbor in front of them was empty of ships. The dangers of these gas-tanker ships were well known. Once a natural-gas tanker was in Boston Harbor, no vessels could approach. A small flotilla of Coast Guard and police boats had escorted the tanker to its dock and then taken stations up and down the harbor. Any mariner foolish enough to approach within a half mile would be quickly intercepted and arrested.

  America was awash in natural gas from its own wells, but it still had to sail these dangerous ships into the Boston Harbor to satisfy the enormous energy appetite of its northeastern cities. America was infatuated with capitalism, personal freedom, and small government, and had allowed an old building across the harbor to be converted into a public storage facility. Any citizen, for a hundred dollars a month, could rent a garage-sized storage space, put whatever he liked in it, and padlock the door. Nobody ever looked inside. Better yet, nobody questioned large trucks backing up to the loading dock, and the building’s elevators were suitable for heavy freight. All this less than one kilometer from the dock where the huge, heavily-guarded tanker was now unloading its cryogenic cargo of natural gas for a power-hungry nation.

  The long months of training in the Great Desert, all their planning and practice, all of the waiting and wondering, had finally ended when they were loaded into a helicopter. Its windows were darkened, and a black curtain separated his team from the pilot. After several hours they had landed and emerged in a dark aircraft hangar. They were instructed to eat a light meal, and then each man was put in a large shipping crate and given an injection. When they awoke, they were in a rented storage locker on the eighth floor of this building. Exactly as planned.

  Jahandar looked across the harbor again at the huge supertanker he was about to destroy. How had his life come to this? Jahandar considered terrorists to be misguided amateurs out to glorify themselves and humiliate their perceived enemy but offering no real victories. Terrorists made the front pages. Real soldiers had to pay the price when superpowers retaliated.

  He was a real soldier. He’d been drafted into the Iranian army, and like so many of his friends he had gone willingly enough and done his duty. He enjoyed the rigorous, disciplined life. He’d spent his youth as a wild boy, defying his widowed mother and an uncle who tried his best to step into the role of father.

  Once in the army, his Sergeant provided Jahandar with the discipline he’d needed all his life. He did well. When his eighteen-month conscription time was served, he re-enlisted as a professional soldier. He was never destined for greatness, but was promoted several times until he found his place, then settled into a career of solid competence. He was happy, his superiors were happy, and his family was well cared for.

  But then . . . the scene of the Grand Bazaar of Tehran flooded his brain. Smoke, dust, screams, the roof collapsing on his beautiful wife, a great weight crushing his chest, darkness.

  He shook his head to clear the vision. He glanced at his watch. It was time to get to work.

  Christine and McCaig discovered Zarrabian lying comfortably on his bed reading a book. He sat up as they entered.

  “You seem quite relaxed, considering what you’ve learned today.” said Christine.

  “It is Steinbeck. His storytelling skill is remarkable. I find it clears my mind.” He set the book aside and gestured at two old folding steel kitchen chairs. “Please have a seat. While you were out I brought these in from the old tank house.”

  Christine and McCaig sat down and shifted around a bit to get comfortable in the old straight-backed chairs.

  “Do you have more surprises for me?” asked Zarrabian.

  “There is a lot more to tell you,” said McCaig.

  “I am confused by what you have already told me.”

  “We are too.”

  “You have given me facts that lead to contradictory conclusions. In such a case, either the facts are wrong or there is a conclusion that I have not considered. The facts cannot be denied, which means there is some conclusion that I have not considered.”

  “Have you read Sherlock Holmes?”

  “I have heard many references to this fictional detective, but I have not read the books.”

  “Sherlock Holmes once said, ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ Perhaps we are ignoring the improbable.”

  “It is a wise quote. But now there is something you must see. Am I right to suppose your cell phones are turned off and you have had no contact with anyone today?”

  “Of course,” answered Christine.

  Zarrabian grimaced. “Then there is news that you may find unpleasant.”

  He reached over and turned on the old television. “It will take a minute to warm the tube.”

  “Where’d you get that old thing?”

  “It was in the tank house. A teen boy had turned the second floor, under the water tank, into his gaming and party room. Unlike the rest of this house, nobody had cleaned it.”

  He picked up a cartridge.

  “Wow, is that a VHS video recorder?” asked McCaig.

  “It is.”

  “And it still works?”

  “It seems to.” Zarrabian pushed a button. There was whirring and clattering, and the front of the machine popped open. He inserted the old tape cartridge.

  “I recorded this while you were buying pizza and groceries and Ms. Garrett was downstairs making her notes.”

  The television finally warmed up, and Zarrabian pushed the Play button. There were a few more clacks and whirs before a clear picture formed on the old television. President Oliver Whitman’s visage appeared, apparently in the middle of a news conference.

  “. . . as you may have heard, the four trucks and van used by the terrorists on the bridge have been pulled from the ocean floor by salvage crews. Our teams of experts are scrutinizing every inch of these vehicles. They have already discovered significant information pointing back to the powers who were behind this bombing.

  “We are doing everything in our power to restore normalcy to the San Francisco Bay Area. It will be years before the magnificent bridge, the symbol of the Golden State, can be rebuilt
. Engineers are already hard at work inspecting the bridge and preparing plans to rebuild it to its original glory. I’m told that the North and South Towers were not significantly damaged. When the bridge is rebuilt, it will start with those two beautiful towers, still standing strong. They will serve as a symbol of America’s resolve and strength.

  “This cowardly attack has damaged our bridge, but not our spirit. Our enemies will learn, once again, that America only grows stronger when threatened.

  “Thank you.”

  A chorus of reporters shouted, “Mr. President, Mr. President!”

  “Just a couple questions. Julie.”

  “Mr. President, there are rumors that the terrorist Zarrabian may still be alive.”

  “There is no truth to these rumors. He was killed in the cabin fire near Guerneville and his body was positively identified. Yes . . . Bob.”

  “Mr. President, it’s clear that you’re talking about Iran. You called this an act of war. If the evidence points that way, will you take this matter to the United Nations?”

  “The evidence will speak for itself, and I won’t make premature accusations. The United States of America always has and always will retain the right to defend itself against acts of war and to retaliate when such acts are carried out against us. The United Nations is, of course, a place for dialogue and negotiation. But we will not subjugate our sovereignty nor our right to defend ourselves to anyone.”

  The president looked around at the shouting press corps. “One more question . . . you, in the back, uh, Jason, is it?”

  “Mr. President, it was pretty clear that Agent McCaig, the lead FBI agent on the case, thought Zarrabian was alive. Doesn’t his distinguished twenty-eight-year career in the FBI count for something?”

  “As I’ve already said, the terrorist’s body was positively identified. I can’t comment on FBI internal affairs or personnel issues, but I understand that FBI Special Agent McCaig is being sought for questioning. I’m sure when he’s found he will put these rumors to rest.”

  Zarrabian punched the Stop button on the old VCR. It whirred and clacked, and the president’s image disappeared, replaced by a broadcast news program. He turned the sound down.