The Disciple

“If I hang around her, the powers that be are going to get antsy.”

“The Iranians have gone to a lot of trouble to sell us some lies,” Grafton said. “The only possible reason to do that is to hide the truth, whatever that is. Let’s see how far they can be pushed.”

“Truth is rare, these days,” I remarked.

“Priced that way, too,” the admiral observed.

The booming of thunder woke Davar Ghobadi in the middle of the night. Her room was in the attic, tucked up here under the eaves. The room was chilly, and she could hear the rain drumming on the eaves of the old house quite plainly.

Too plainly. She opened her eyes and, as lightning flashed, saw that her window was open. The curtains were dancing in the breeze coming though the opening.

She threw back the blanket, got out of her small bed and walked past her desk and the big table covered with her father’s blueprints to the window. Hadn’t she shut it before she went to bed?

She paused a moment in the darkness, listening to the wind and rain in the trees and looking out at the neighborhood, which was composed of monstrous old houses on big lots on the hills on the north side of Tehran. In the early part of the century rich people and foreigners had built these houses, trying to escape the noise and traffic of the city center. They had succeeded. This neighborhood was an oasis in a third-world sea.

Davar shivered, then pulled the window closed.

She turned-and a gloved hand was clapped over her mouth as she was seized roughly.

Panic swelled, and she tried to struggle against the overwhelming strength that imprisoned her. She could taste the leather of the glove on the hand over her mouth. Recovering from her momentary terror, she ceased struggling… and felt the pressure of the hand over her mouth lessen.

“I didn’t think you were a screamer.” A male voice, whispering in English. American English.

She recognized the voice. It was that spy, Carmellini.

She saw him in a lightning flash, dressed all in black, towering above her, a shadowy, damp presence, his strength still immobilizing her.

Now the hand over her mouth came away.

“Is there anyone else on this floor?”

“No.”

“Can we be overheard?”

“I don’t think so.”

He released her from his grasp and retreated, a dark shape in a darker room. When the lightning flashed and the thunder boomed again, she saw that he had taken off the black hood that covered his head, and he was smiling.

“Sorry to drop in on you like this, but getting a date in this town is just impossible.”

Finding the Ghobadi house in the toniest neighborhood of Tehran with the help of a GPS hadn’t been difficult. Deciding which room to enter had been dicier, and I finally settled on the attic. My night vision goggles, which used both starlight and infrared, helped ensure I wasn’t going to stumble onto a guard in the yard or climb through a window onto an occupied bed.

She was wearing only shorts and a T-shirt, and Muslim or not, she didn’t seem embarrassed by my presence. I remarked on that as she lit a cigarette and puffed nervously.

“I had a boyfriend,” she told me by way of explanation. “When I was in England. He was from Oklahoma.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I should have married him.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“My mother was ill. When I got my degree, I came home to take care of her. She died last year.”

While she was talking, I was scoping out the room, which was large. Apparently she had most of the attic, or all of it. Large tables held blueprints. I looked them over with my penlight while she told me about mullahs, life in Iran and the life she had had in England.

“What are these?”

“Construction projects my father’s company is building.”

“Why do you have them?”

“I check the math for him. Sometimes his engineers make mistakes.”

“And you don’t?”

“Not with numbers.”

“May I photograph these?” I asked.

“If you wish,” she said. She seemed to have no problem betraying the mullahs.

She segued right into politics and nuclear weapons while I rigged blankets over the windows, the one I had entered and another on the opposite side of the room, then turned on every light in the place.

Old-time spies used Minox cameras, but my agency had gone digital. I got out my Sony Cyber-shot, which was perfect for this use; just lay the document flat, focus and click.

“Are you married?” she asked.

I shot her a glance. She was trying to look nonchalant, and failing. “This year all the foreign spies are single.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“I’m temporarily between,” I muttered as I repositioned blueprints.

“In England I had many boyfriends,” she said and slowly peeled off the T-shirt.

Uh-oh! It wasn’t enough I was in a Muslim woman’s bedroom photographing state secrets; now she was stripping down to her birthday suit.

I stopped taking pictures and took the memory card out of the camera. Meanwhile Davar was removing the shorts. Well, she was a woman, all right.

I dug in my backpack and got out the satellite burst transmitter. Somehow I managed to get the camera card in it, got the thing turned on and stuck it outside on the window ledge, all the while watching Davar pose on the back of a chair. I wasn’t nervous-I was terrified.

“Do you Iranians still stone sex fiends to death?” I asked her.

“You can kiss me if you wish,” she said and arched her back to display her breasts better.

“Tell me about this guy from Oklahoma.” I checked my watch. Another sixty seconds or so on the burst transmitter, which would erase the camera card after the transmission, then I was out of here.

“He wanted me to marry him.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I had to return to Iran. I’ve told you that.”

“Write him a letter,” I said as I went around the room turning off lights. “Tell him you changed your mind. Women have the right, you know.” When the place was as dark as it was going to get, I pulled on my backpack.

I ran into her in front of the window. She wrapped her arms around me.

I thought, What the heck? and gave her a long kiss. Her lips and tongue tasted delicious. She pressed her naked body against me.

“Write him a letter,” I said huskily, pushing her away.

I pulled the blanket down and pulled on my night vision goggles. No one in sight. I retrieved the burst transmitter from the window ledge, then eased out the window and felt for the handholds I had used to climb up.

Davar Ghobadi stood at the window until Tommy Carmellini reached the ground and disappeared into the night. One instant he was there, then he was gone, swallowed by the darkness.

She went back to bed, but sleep wouldn’t come.

Her thoughts were still tumbling about-Tommy Carmellini, Iran, mullahs, nuclear weapons, Ghasem, Azari-when she finally drifted off to sleep.