The Disciple

The president rose from his chair and shook out his trouser legs. “General Heth, I appreciate all the work that went into the plans that were briefed this morning. Much of that can be used. However, we are not going to invade Iran. If that means their hardened nuclear sites remain intact, so be it. We are going to shoot down any missiles that they launch-and unfortunately we are going to have to let them launch some, to prove to the world that they struck first-and then we are going to decapitate the Iranian government. That’s it. That’s all we are going to do.”

He looked from face to face.

“I am putting Admiral Grafton in charge of the entire effort. I want everyone in and out of uniform to report to him. He will brief me on the plan. If it becomes necessary to alter it for political reasons I will order him to do so, and we’ll go from there. Any questions?”

“Political reasons?” the chairman murmured.

“The Israelis are demanding a first strike-I’m trying to talk them out of it,” the president said. “I can plead and beg and twist arms, but with the Israelis, there is a very real limit. The life of every Israeli is on the line. I spent an hour last night with the Israeli ambassador. He asked me what I’d do if the missiles were in Havana and were going to be launched at America.”

No one else had any other comments. The president walked out, with Sal Molina trailing him.

Jurgen Schulz studied Grafton’s face. “Did you know that was coming?”

“No. And I didn’t ask for it.” Grafton rubbed his forehead and eyes, then said, “Well, gentlemen, we’ve been told what to do. Let’s figure out how we’re going to do it.”

I was going to work every morning, trying to pretend that I didn’t know jack about the Iranian mullahs’ plans to declare war on civilization in order to rid the world of unbelievers. I knew things were winding up to the breaking point here in Tehran-I could feel it in the air-and I was stuck in the middle. So were Davar and Ghasem and the folks at the Swiss embassy, not to mention all the other spies and tourists and naive Iranians who lived in this third-world hellhole.

The prospect of being caught in the middle of a nuclear war has a remarkable cleansing effect on the mind. Survival bubbles right to the top as your number one priority; everything else fades into insignificance. You stop worrying about your waistline, your job and how your IRA is doing.

I would have been hunting for a hole to hide in with all the fervor of a rat ru

Of course, my only possible source of information that hot was Ghasem Murad, who was spending his days at the Defense Ministry. He said he’d help, of course, but he wasn’t around. I thought about trying to put some pressure on his cousin Davar, but all she wanted to do was curl up in a quiet place with me.

Ol’ Ghasem knew what I wanted, and he knew the stakes-literally, the survival of the Iranian people-so I was waiting for him to call, which on a good day is one of my least favorite things to do, and on bad days is torture. If I ever get the job of ru

I was musing along these lines one morning as I opened the diplomatic mail, and there it was-a tourist visa for one Abdullaziz Nasr Qomi. I dug through the envelope… and found another, one for Mostafa Abtahi.

So Jake Grafton came through. Good on ’im.

What if, before they left for America, Ahmadinejad shot off his missiles and Israel or America retaliated? These two guys who never had a chance would be cremated alive or have their hides burned off or be poisoned by radiation. All because they were still here, still trapped in this fascist shithole.

I put the visas in my pocket, locked everything up and headed for the stairs. I had both their addresses, so why not deliver the visas?

I went after Qomi first. The map I had in the government sedan suggested that the street he lived on might be in a workingman’s slum on the southwest corner of town. Only one way to find out. I got the car in motion and threaded it into traffic.

I drove along for a while before I remembered the MOIS. What if they were following along? Well, they had seen Qomi enter the embassy, so…

On the other hand, maybe they didn’t know why he went there. Maybe if they found out that he had actually scored a tourist visa, they would take his passport and visa away from him, send some suicidal jihadist to America in his place. That possibility was, I reflected, probably one reason State was in no hurry to give these damn tourist visas out to sheet-heads. Thank you, bin Laden.

I pulled over when traffic allowed and checked the radio frequency band for beacons. Apparently, no.

I had to park the car on the edge of what I hoped was the right neighborhood and go walking. The streets narrowed and the pavement ended. The houses were huts, jammed together. Most of them lacked electricity.

I found Qomi’s place, finally, after talking to four people. Needless to say, he wasn’t there. I settled down to wait. And wait. And wait.

If I hadn’t been so fixated on nuclear war, on what this neighborhood was going to look like in ashes, maybe I would have given up, written him a note or something. But I didn’t.

It was in the hour before dusk that he appeared, walking slowly on his crutch. He was dirty, and his clothes were, too. He had obviously spent the day at manual labor.

He saw me and paused. Stood staring. Finally started my way, walking as fast as he could.

“Meester Carmala,” he said. “Meester Carmala.”

“I have your visa,” I told him in Farsi. “When can you leave?”

“You have it?”

I pulled it from my pocket and showed it to him. It was in English and Farsi, so he could read some of it, anyway. He bent down, afraid to touch. When he stood up, he was beaming. A smile split his face almost in half.

“When can you leave?”

A variety of emotions played across his face. He jerked his head, then led the way into his hut. One rude bed, a wooden-frame chair, a teapot, a little chemical heater and some clothes carefully folded on a small table. That was it. The toilet facilities, such as they were, were out back.

I took charge. “Your passport.”

He produced it from a pocket of his trousers. No use leaving that around for someone to steal.

I opened it, examined the photo. Yep, it was him, all right. I shoved the clothes out of the way and used the table, peeled the protective paper off the visa and glued it to a page in his passport.

Luggage? I looked around. There was nothing.

“A bag. Luggage. Something for your clothes?”

Qomi slowly lowered himself onto the bed. He bit his lip and shook his head.

“You have money for an airline ticket, don’t you?”

He shook his head, once.

I waved the passport at him. “You were going to sell this?”

He refused to look at me. Lowered his gaze to his hands.

I stood there feeling like a fool. All day I had been waiting, walking the neighborhood, looking at abject poverty in the fourth richest oil-producing nation on the planet. No fucking trickle-down around here, by God. The mullahs were latching on to every single petrodollar and squandering it on reactors and missiles and warheads.

“Well, you’re going,” I said to Qomi. “Get up, let’s go. Anything you want to take with you to America, better put it in your pockets.”

He stared at me. “Get up,” I roared in English. Then Farsi.

I must have looked like a madman standing there, waving that damn passport.