The Disciple

The average Ahmad had plenty of pain. The inflation rate was 25 percent, with the price of food rising 35 percent in the previous month alone. Unemployment was rampant, and it was impossible to finance real property, machinery or inventory purchases.

The Parliament was at loggerheads with Ahmadinejad, who wanted to end state subsidies on fuel, electricity and water, and enforce the sales tax. Clearly, the natives were getting restless.

“So whaddaya think?” I asked my expert, Frank Caldwell. We were on a break from disappointing supplicants anxious to leave the Islamic Republic, sipping coffee and trading newspaper sections.

“This place reminds me of a boiler with the safety valve wired shut,” Frank replied.

“It’s all the fault of the Great Satan,” I said and turned the page of my newspaper.

“Gotta blame somebody,” Frank agreed. “Certainly this mess couldn’t be the fault of God’s Elect.”

After work I spent the afternoon in a carpet museum broadening my mind, then walked a while, people-watching and taking in the scene. I wondered if I was going to get any cooperation from Davar Ghobadi. She certainly wasn’t a loyal fan of the regime, and she also had a bunch of friends who weren’t. Or was all that just an act? Musing along these lines, I coughed up the worst of the lung crud and went back to the hotel for a shower.

The hotel used magnetic cards for keys. I inserted mine, the light turned green, and in I went. As the door swung shut behind me, I stopped dead. Davar Ghobadi was sitting in the soft chair beside the bed wearing nothing but a short nightie and smoking a cigarette.

I took a quick look right and left. Nope. She was the only one.

Before she could say anything, I held my hand up to silence her. I went over behind the television, pulled the handful of wires and cables up where I could see them and found the on-off switch I had installed to silence the IRGC’s bugs. I flipped it off, then tucked the wires back where they belonged.

I turned around to face her. “How’d you get in here?”

She held up a door card.

“Where’d you get it?”

“A friend of mine works here.” She stretched out a leg and pointed her bare toes, then pulled it back.

“Are you aware of the fact that this hotel is under twenty-four hour surveillance by the IRGC? That every room in the hotel is bugged?”

“Didn’t you just turn the bugs off?”

“Yes, but-”

“See, I have faith in you, Tommy Carmellini.” She had some trouble getting her tongue around my last name, but she did it. “Besides, the IRGC toadies have been watching me come and go, here and there and everywhere, for years, and they’ve said nothing. They’re watching you infidel suit-and-tie spies.”

The drapes on the window were open, and she would be visible from a building across the street. I walked over and closed them, which made the room darker.

“What do you want?” I asked curtly as I sat down on the footstool. She was putting us both in a lot of danger, and I resented it. Putting me in danger, anyway. How much danger she was really in was something to speculate about, and I tried to do that just now as I watched her blow smoke rings like a fifteen-year old teenybopper.

“You,” she said, which didn’t surprise me. After all…

She dropped her butt in the water glass she had been using as an ashtray and came over to me. She arranged herself on my lap. Her skin was smooth and silky. I tried not to touch her, but that didn’t work. I wrapped my right arm around her to keep her from falling off my legs.

“How old are you again?” I asked.

“Twenty-five,” she whispered. She put her lips on mine. It was like being kissed by a butterfly.

Finally she broke contact, moved her face away an inch or so. I found myself looking deep into two big brown eyes. “Don’t you like me?” she asked.

“You’re a very forward young lady.”

“This is the way they do it in England.”

“We aren’t in England.”

“I bloody well wish we were.”

“And I’m not your Oklahoma boyfriend.” I made her stand up and pushed her toward her chair.

She didn’t pout, just went, and sat facing me with her knees together and her elbows on them.

“Tell me about this dead drop you use.”

“No.”

“Has it occurred to you that it may well be serviced by a government security agency?”

I could see the astonishment in her face. So the answer was no, it had indeed never occurred to her.

“That you and Azari may simply be conduits to tell the story the Iranian government wants the world to hear?”

“Azari recruited me. We devised our communication system. He and I alone.”

“So you send Azari pictures from time to time. The Iranian government must know he’s spilling secrets all over infidel America, and you are the only art lover he knows. Or maybe he has one or two art devotees sending him e-mails. So why haven’t the holy warriors questioned you?”

She arose and walked slowly around the room. In that nightie she looked pretty good, let me tell you. After a moment, she turned to face me. “You are intimating that we are being controlled by the government.”

“No. I am stating it flat out. The Iranian government is probably controlling you and Azari.”

She made a noise with her lips and went back to the chair.

“Tell you what. Why don’t you put your clothes back on and get the hell out of here so I can take a shower and go to di

She grabbed her clothes and went to the bathroom. In less than a minute she was back. I held out a cell phone. “For you,” I said.

She just looked, refusing to touch.

“This one the government doesn’t know about,” I explained. “You can call me on it by just pushing the ‘one’ button. If you change your mind and want to tell me what you know, or want to help me find out what is really going on in this country, push that button.”

She pocketed the phone and stepped right up to me. The top of her head was just below my chin. “I am a woman,” she said.

I wrapped her up and gave her a real kiss. She gave it right back.

“You sure are,” I said when we finally broke for air.

Then I opened the door and gently nudged her through it. I closed the door behind her and put the chain on.

CHAPTER NINE

The destruction of the Tabriz bomb factory by American commandos was even more of a media nonevent than the destruction of the Syrian nuclear reactor the previous May. Not a single drop of ink on newsprint anywhere on the planet recorded the event, nor a single syllable on broadcast media. The fact that the factory had exploded did make the Internet, but in answer to inquiries, the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the factory in question had been manufacturing fertilizer and had had a minor fire in the middle of the night. The American government was asked no questions, so didn’t need to lie.

The irony of his position had President Ahmadinejad in high dudgeon at the cabinet meeting the morning after the raid. Since Iran had repeatedly and publicly denied manufacturing roadside bombs and supplying them to Iraqi and Afghan holy warriors to murder and maim their domestic enemies and American troops, Ahmadinejad found it impossible to complain about a commando raid, an act of war, which resulted in the destruction of an officially nonexistent factory.

He did, however, find it very satisfying to tongue-lash the minister of defense, Habib Sultani. “The glorious armed forces of the Islamic Republic have been humiliated,” the president shouted, his voice filling the cabinet room. “American commandos sneaked across the border undetected and unmolested, sabotaged a vital munitions supplier, destroyed it so thoroughly that nothing was left this morning but a smoking hole, and made a clean escape. The air force radars failed to detect the helicopters on ingress or egress, no fighters scrambled, not a single shot was fired at the godless villains.”