The Disciple

CHAPTER SIX

When I left the embassy the following evening, I picked up a tail. Actually, two of them, working as a team. I made no attempt to lose them; I went to my hotel.

Before I donned my running duds, I inspected them carefully, especially the shoes. Putting a beacon in a shoe would be an easy way to keep track of me. Apparently the MOIS or IRGC hadn’t yet gotten around to that, but they might, whenever the spirit moved them.

I put on my running clothes and went back out onto the street. My two tails were still there, still dressed in street clothes.

I began jogging, warming up, working up a sweat. No matter how many times you have been followed, every time it happens your mind starts racing. These guys tried to follow me by running, but they weren’t in shape, and soon I saw them no more. Did that mean no one was following me now, or was I the subject of a more sophisticated surveillance, and the followers just wanted me to think I had shaken loose?

And why today? Why right after Jake Grafton talked to Professor Azari?

The problem with the spy business is that nothing can be taken at face value.

I ran six miles and ended up back at the hotel. After a short walk to cool down, I went in, got a shower and headed for the dining room.

The next day I again talked to Grafton on the encrypted satellite telephone. “Rostram and Azari have exchanged e-mails,” he said. “Azari advised him to cooperate. He didn’t tell him to-he advised him. Don’t know if that nuance is important, but it implies volumes.”

“Okay.”

“Be careful, Tommy!”

“Right.”

That evening no one followed me when I ran. Go figure.

Just in case, I ran to the central bazaar and ducked into one of the myriad of alleys lined by booths. Three turns later, I came out the south side of the bazaar amid a nice crowd. As soon as I could, I began jogging again.

Now you may think I am some kind of exercise nut, but there was method in my madness. The faster the rabbit, the more difficult he is to follow. Sure, every now and then the security apparatus could mount a major effort to keep me under surveillance, but I had been running every night for a month, and if they had used their manpower that way, they had nothing to show for it. I was betting-hoping, actually-that if they had tried it, they had given up on me now.

Of course, there was always last night. Why last night, and not tonight?

What game were they playing?

If I stayed in this business long enough, I was going to wind up a jibbering idiot.

William Wilkins took Jake Grafton with him when he went to the White House to brief the president and National Security Adviser Jurgen Schulz. Sal Molina met the two CIA officers and escorted them to the Oval Office, where the president and Schulz were deep in conversation. Molina closed the door behind him and dropped into a chair near the door.

After everyone shook hands and found a chair, Wilkins got right to it. He briefed them on the incident in the Strait of Hormuz and let them read the Op Immediate message from the task force commander.

“So we lost an F/A-18 and pilot?”

“Yes.”

“A provocation,” the president said softly. “Or an attempt to make the Americans turn on their ALQ-199s,” Jake Grafton said.

“Did they?”

“The admiral was instructed to report it if they did. He didn’t mention it.”

Wilkins removed some satellite photos from his briefcase and spread them on the president’s desk. “Iran is planning a missile test,” he said. “They are moving three ships into the Indian Ocean, a destroyer and two small civilian ships with large radar arrays, and they are positioning missiles on launchers at their test site in the desert.”

“They’ve tested missiles before,” Schulz remarked.

The president picked up a photo, looked at it, then passed it to Schulz and reached for another. “When?”

“Soon. Within days, we think. They have at least one long-range missile on a launcher, a thing they call the Shahab-3. There are also four intermediate-range missiles, Shahab-2s, and four short-range ones, Shahab-1s. As Dr. Schulz noted, they have shot missiles before, but never nine at once.”

“President Ahmadinejad has a trip planned next week,” Schulz interjected. “He’s going to Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation on the planet, and Malaysia. He’ll massage the leadership, take their temperature, and talk directly to the masses to gin up some grassroots support. One suspects the missile shoot will go off while he’s abroad, so he can play the role of the modern Saladin.”

“How accurate are the missiles?” the president asked.

“These things are derivations of the old Soviet Scud missiles. The Scuds were short range and wildly inaccurate, but an adequate delivery vehicle for a nuclear warhead. With conventional explosives in the warheads, the Syrians were lucky to hit Israel with the things. From Iran…”

“Have the Iranians updated the guidance systems?” Schulz asked pointedly.

“Probably,” Wilkins said, “but we have no hard evidence.”

“Another guess,” Schulz said, his disgust evident.

“Dr. Schulz-” Wilkins began, but the president cut him off with a gesture.

“What is the range of the Shahab-3?” the president said.

“About twelve hundred miles. Yes, it will reach Israel. And Iraq, and the oil facilities throughout the region, and our air bases in Arabia. It will even reach our bases in Turkey.”

“Terrific,” the president muttered.

“The Patriot system that we have supplied to Israel is designed to knock these things down,” Jurgen Schulz noted.

Wilkins glanced at Jake. “Admiral?”

“A nuclear warhead can be designed to detonate if the delivery missile changes course and speed unexpectedly, which would happen if it is hit by a Patriot missile,” Jake said. “It can also be designed to be ejected from the delivery vehicle so that it free-falls to a preset altitude before it detonates, thereby maximizing damage to surface installations. Destroy the buildings, kill all the people, and so on. And let’s not kid ourselves-the Patriot system is designed for close-in missile defense. Patriot is a last-ditch defense weapon, and it is not perfect-no weapons system is. Some percentage of Patriot’s targets will always escape destruction.”

The silence that followed that statement was broken when the president said to Schulz, “We better start talking to the Israelis.”

“We are talking to them.”

“Talk harder.”

“Do you intend to brief the congressional leadership about this?” Molina asked.

The president mulled it over. “Jurgen, why don’t you go over to the Hill today and see the chairman of the House and Senate committees? I don’t want to blindside them on this.”

Schulz frowned. “Congressman Luvara has been stating publicly that he can’t see why we should worry about Iran getting the bomb when the Israelis have it.”

“If he makes a crack like that to you,” the president said, “suggest that he plan to spend his next vacation in Tel Aviv. Maybe when he’s sitting on Ahmadinejad’s bull’s-eye he’ll see the problem.”

“What he’s really questioning is our commitment to Israel,” Schulz shot back.

“I know that,” the president said. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his forehead. “The issue is larger than that, though. Will we honor our commitments to all our allies-Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, Saudi Arabia and Israel?”

“Taiwan,” Sal Molina interjected.

“And South Korea,” the president said heavily. “Well, Luvara is a problem for another day.”

He leaned forward, folded his forearms on his desk and scrutinized the faces of the men before him. “The hell of it is that Ahmadinejad knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the United States will not let him wipe Israel off the face of the earth and get away with it.”

“Does he know it?” Shulz asked.

“Well, by God,” the president said, “pack your toothbrush, Jurgen. You can take him a letter from me. I’ll tell it to him in plain English. You can even give him a Farsi translation.”

“Will he believe it?” Sal Molina asked.

“That’s not the right question,” Jake Grafton said flatly. “Even if he believes it, will that knowledge deter him?”

Tehran was Ghasem’s city. He had spent his life there and loved every square meter, including the spectacular view of the Alborz Mountains to the north, the sights and smells and press of people in the bazaar, the palaces, art museums, mosques, churches, parks, synagogues and temples, and the myriad of cheap apartment buildings and the perpetual traffic jams and endless crush of people, all fifteen or twenty million of them-no one knew for sure. What everyone did know was that the Persian natives had been joined by ethnic and linguistic minorities from all over Western Asia, including Assyrians, Lurs, Gilaks, Kurds, Turkmen, Arabs, Armenians, Talysh, Sikhs, Romas, Syrians and Lebanese, to name just a few. The latest people to join the mix were refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The majority of Tehranis were followers of Shia Islam, but the rest covered the entire religious spectrum, from the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East to Zoroastrianism, and everything in between, including Sunni Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sufism, or Mystic Islam, the religion of the legendary Whirling Dervishes.

This religious soup was the intellectual food for Dr. Israr Murad, an elderly scholar who lectured on an irregular basis at the University of Tehran. Today Ghasem glanced at his watch as he parked his car, locked it, then trotted across campus. He opened the door and slipped into the back of the lecture hall just as Dr. Murad was making his final remarks.

When the students had left the lecture hall, Ghasem went forward to help Dr. Murad gather his notes. Murad was in his early eighties; he was still mentally active, yet arthritis and heart ailments had slowed him down. He sat and watched Ghasem pack the last of his notes in his leather briefcase.

“It went well?” Ghasem asked.

“Aii,” the old man said, and made a gesture. “They ask the same questions that their fathers asked, and their fathers before them. If only they would think up new questions…”

“Their minds work in predictable ways,” Ghasem murmured.

“And religions give predictable answers.” The old man sighed and levered himself erect. “Did you bring the car?”

“Yes, Grandfather.”

It had been Dr. Murad’s car, but when he had decided he was no longer capable of driving it safely, he had given it to Ghasem.

When they were walking in the heat toward the automobile, Dr. Murad held on to the younger man’s shoulders. He seemed lost in thought. Halfway there he signaled a pause and stood swaying, waiting… for his heart to stop hammering futilely, Ghasem thought. There was a bench just steps away, so Ghasem eased the old man over to it and helped him seat himself. Then he sat beside him.

“I have a question,” Ghasem said and waited for his grandfather to nod an acknowledgment.

“I heard Uncle Habib make a remark that I have been thinking about ever since. He said Iran is surrounded by enemies of God. By that he meant American armed forces. Still, in light of our conversations, I have been thinking, and wondering. Can God have mortal enemies, enemies of flesh and blood?”

The old man smiled wanly. “What do you think?” he asked.

“He could have such enemies only if He tolerates them.”

“If He wishes to have them?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Murad smiled again, then said, “Your god is large and powerful. Habib’s is small and impotent.”

“Habib Sultani doesn’t see it that way.”

“Indeed,” the professor acknowledged. “Many men have an extraordinary ability to ignore the obvious.”

Ghasem took a deep breath, then said, “So we are once again back to the core question: Is Islam a religion or a political ideology?”

“Unfortunately,” answered the old man, “it is both. I say unfortunately, because Islam cannot survive in the world as a political ideology. The jihadists cannot win. If martyrdom is the fate of all true believers, then Islam will perish with them. Islam can be the faith of the dead or the faith of the living, but it cannot be both.”

Automatically, Ghasem glanced around to see if anyone overheard. No one had. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. His grandfather was under suspicion-well, he had been under suspicion since the Islamic Revolution. The revolutionaries had closed the universities for three years, lectured professors and students on what they could teach and jailed, tortured and interrogated those who didn’t toe the line of fundamental Islam. True, there were many other religions in Iran, but the official state religion was Shia Islam-Khomeini’s version-and woe to the man or woman who didn’t understand that and bow down. A wrong word, a gesture, a facial expression-anything could ignite the Revolutionary Guard, who roamed the campus in black uniforms, carrying weapons.

Dr. Murad gestured. “Help me up,” he said. Ghasem did so, and they resumed their journey toward Ghasem’s automobile.

“There is an Islamic professor in Germany,” Ghasem said, “who said that the Prophet, may he rest in peace, is fiction. That he never existed. What do you think of that argument?”

“Muhammad’s was the most documented life of any of the prophets,” Murad said slowly, measuring his words. “Thousands of pages, thousands of facts. One suspects there was such a man, but by all accounts he was illiterate. He dictated his revelations to a scribe. The assumption has always been that the scribe was merely a scrivener who wrote down the Prophet’s words verbatim. And yet the Prophet dictated the most sublime piece of literature ever written in Arabic. The language inspires and soars, it is beautiful and majestic and grand. Indeed, the language of the Koran became the Arabic that everyone wanted to speak. That scribe…”

“God told Muhammad what to say.”

“Or the scribe took the ruminations of an illiterate, charismatic tribal chief and founded a religion.”

“You should be working on your book,” Ghasem said, “instead of wasting your strength on lectures.”

“I don’t lecture; I just talk,” his grandfather said. “The students do not want to hear or think about the problems with Islam, and you know it. They have the perfect religion; they wish to hear about the strange beliefs and practices of infidels and pagans.”

Since he taught comparative religion, Murad was under constant, intense scrutiny. He had survived by refusing to discuss Islam at all and discussing other religions as if they were voodoo practiced by illiterate natives starving on an isle in the sea’s middle. Still, his classrooms were packed, and Revolutionary Guards were ever present, listening. Even discussing other religions was a dangerous game: Converting to Christianity was a capital offense in Iran, and if any of his students did it, Murad, the scholar, would be implicated.

A moment passed before Dr. Murad said, “I have almost finished the book.”

Now Ghasem stopped short and looked at the old man’s face. “When last we spoke, you said you were at least two years away.”

“Your cousin Khurram was there when you asked, if you will recall.”

Ghasem thought about it. “I remember.”

“I do not want Khurram reading it. Nor discussing it.”

Ghasem nodded. Khurram was very conventional, without a mote of intellectual curiosity. He was a chip flowing along on the fundamental Islamic stream that had ruled Iran since the fall of the shah.

“Nor your uncle Habib Sultani.” The professor paused, then added, “Why my daughter Noora wanted to marry him is one of life’s mysteries.”

“You gave your consent.”

“I did. Sometimes I wonder if Noora wishes I had refused.” Dr. Murad sighed. “I want you to read the manuscript,” he continued, returning to the subject abruptly. “Show it to no one, make no notes. Read it… and tell me what you think.”

“Yes, Grandfather.”

“I have made no copies. The one you will have is the only one.”

Ghasem nodded.

They came to the car. When Ghasem had the old man seated in the right seat, the windows open and the car crawling through traffic, Dr. Murad said, “A few more days, and it will be finished. Read it quickly. My heart is acting up again. My time is drawing to a close.”

After he dropped his grandfather at his house and helped the valet get him comfortable in a chair, Ghasem drove to the building where he lived. He shared a tiny apartment with a friend from the university, Mostafa Abtahi.

A licensed civil engineer, Abtahi had found a job at a printing firm that sold maps to tourists. He spent his days hunched over a drawing table updating maps of Tehran and the Iranian road system. His ambition, which he discussed endlessly with his friend Ghasem, was to go to America and get rich. Several months ago he had written to the American State Department requesting an American visa, and he was still awaiting a reply.

Tonight, as he and Ghasem shared a meager dinner-all they could afford-Abtahi launched into his favorite subject.

“My older brother has been in America for five years,” he said, as if this tidbit were really news. He had told Ghasem everything he knew about his older brother a dozen times. “He owns an automobile repair shop in New Jersey. When I get there he will hire me, and together we will repair automobiles.”

“What kind of automobilies?” Ghasem asked, to humor his friend.

“Taxicabs, mostly. Farrukh repairs a lot of taxicabs that are driven around New York by Iranians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Palestinians, Syrians, Saudis-men from all over the Middle East. They come to him because he speaks Farsi and Arabic and doesn’t cheat them too much. Some garages install used parts in customers’ cars and charge them for new ones, but Farrukh doesn’t do-”

“Why America?” Ghasem asked. He had heard about the car repair business many times before. “Why travel halfway around the world to live in a nation of infidels?”

“Ah, in America they are rich. The people may be infidels, but they are from all over the earth and they go there and make lots of money. In America, people willing to work hard can get rich. Farrukh sees rich people everywhere. The houses, the cars, the boats-”

“There is more to life than money.”

“True,” Abtani agreed, scraping the last morsel from his bowl, “and a person who has money can afford to enjoy all those extra things.”

“When you get to America, will you join a mosque?”

“Of course. The one Farrukh belongs to. He says it is a good place.”

“Are the members supporting jihad?”

Abtani eyed his friend, then said frankly, “No.”

“The Americans are fighting Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. Does that bother you?”

“That is not my fight.”

“What do you think of jihad?”

“I am not a holy warrior, and I do not want to be one. I think martyrs are fools.” He thrust out his lower jaw belligerently. “That is what I think. I want to find a good woman, get married, have children, have grandchildren, feed them all they want to eat, grow old and enjoy the life that Allah gave me.” He made a chopping gesture. “Allah made the world without my help, and I think He could handle the infidels, if He wished. He could snap his fingers and transport them all to hell or Paradise, if He wished. But apparently He does not so wish. I will live as my parents lived and trust in His mercy.”

“Perhaps that is the best way,” Ghasem said thoughtfully.

“I will go to America,” Abtani said stubbornly. “As soon as they send me a visa.”

Like the president of the United States, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used a trusted aide to keep close tabs on the intelligence community, both the MOIS and the Qods Force of the IRGC. Amazingly, in male-dominated, fundamentalist Iran, his aide was a woman, Hazra al-Rashid-not her real name but a nom de guerre. She had gotten her start during the Revolution ratting on her fellow university students, then torturing them. Her methods quickly got out of control, even for a third-world sewer like Iran, so she changed her name and was transferred to another prison. There she became a protégé of Ahmadinejad-ten years her senior-who was also earning points for Paradise by rooting out heretics and potential political enemies. He reined in her wildest impulses (which meant some prisoners lived a little longer) and drained off some of her sexual energy. They were made for each other.

Today, in the privacy of the presidential office, she told Ahmadinejad about the CIA’s approach to Professor Azari. “He has suggested that Rostram cooperate with the CIA’s spy in Tehran.”

As usual for women employed by the government in postrevolutionary Iran, Hazra was wearing a black chador and a black scarf that covered her neck and the top of her head. Only her face and hands showed.

“Who is the CIA’s spy?” Ahmadinejad asked.

“One of the new officers in the American Interests Section of the Swiss embassy. We have suspected him since he arrived, but so far he has done nothing.”

The thing about the chador, Ahmadinejad mused, was that it hid everything. Intended by the mullahs to prevent male temptation by completely shrouding a woman’s figure, it had just the opposite effect. Now everything was left to the imagination; women became mysterious figures who raised sexual tension wherever they appeared, even old women, the crippled, the lame and the grossly overweight.

“The American is named Carmellini,” Hazra said. “He is a tall, fit man who runs at least five miles a day.”

Instead of a sexless society where believers thought only pure thoughts, Iran had become the most sexually charged nation on the planet. The men thought about sex every time they saw a woman, fantasized about having sex with her and, even when she passed from view, obsessed about sex like a hormone-drenched teenage male. We are going to have to do something about chadors, Ahamdinejad mused. Even as he entertained the thought, he knew that course was politically impossible, as long as the Party of God remained in power.

“We are going to have one of our agents make contact with Azari,” Hazra said. “We must know precisely what he told the CIA.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad turned Hazra around, so she was facing away from him. Then he began lifting the hem of her chador.

Ahh yes, she wasn’t wearing anything under the black sack. But then, she never did. He also liked the fact that she shaved her legs in the European style.

“We must confirm that the CIA believes Azari is telling the truth,” Hazra said as Ahmadinejad pushed her gently down onto the desk and began stroking her buttocks and back. She spread her legs slightly, wanting him to stroke her vagina. She was already wet, ready for him. Ah, now she felt his hand.

“If they didn’t believe him,” she continued, “one doubts that they would want to talk to Rostram.”

“You have done well, my beloved,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said as he thrust his penis into her.

I was going to ruin my lungs if I kept running every evening. This evening the crap in the air hid the Alborz Mountains to the north.

I walked the last few blocks back to the hotel, trying to cool off. Occasionally I coughed, hacking up the goop from my lungs.

A block from the hotel I heard someone say my name. “Tommy Carmellini.” I turned, looking for the speaker… a skinny kid leaning against a building smoking a cigarette. He looked about eighteen. Smooth cheeks, medium-length hair, grungy trousers and a long-sleeve shirt and sweater.

I turned and walked toward him. “Those cancer sticks will kill you,” I said conversationally.

“I’m Rostram,” he said and took another nervous drag on his butt. I thought I heard a trace of a British accent.

I glanced right and left to see who was watching us. No one, apparently. I took another good look. Someone was jerking me around.

“And I’m the fucking Wizard of Oz,” I said, turning away.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey.” He stepped after me and tugged at my sleeve. “Don’t bugger this up, you bloody Yank. I’m Rostram.”

“Okay,” I said. “You picked a rotten place for a meet.”

“We must meet somewhere,” he said, sucking on that weed, “and no one is watching you. You’re clean tonight. Let’s go across the street to the park and sit down.”

I didn’t know what to think. I had been expecting some fifty-something bureaucrat or scientist who hated the regime, and instead I got this kid.

We jaywalked and didn’t get run over. Found a bench in the park. I sat on it, and the kid perched on the back. He lit another cigarette and blew smoke around. He was smoking Marlboros, I noticed, and he smoked like a beginner, nervously, very aware of the weed. I wondered where he got the damn things. His eyes were constantly moving, but at least some of the time he was sizing me up.

Then he made a gesture, reached up to brush some hair back off his forehead, and the revelation hit me like a hammer. This was no boy! Rostram was a woman!

I looked at my shoes, scanned the passersby, then looked at him again. Yep, almost no Adam’s apple, really clean cheeks, slender fingers and just the faintest hint of a chest.

Oh, man! The one thing everyone in the world agreed upon was that the Islamic fundamentalists were super-protective of their women. It wasn’t enough that I was a spy in the house of the saved. Oh, no. That goddamn Jake Grafton had sent me here to hook up with some Muslim traitor babe.

I sat there trying to keep my temper from going thermonuclear as I let the reality of the situation sink in.

“So how did you meet your pen pal?” I asked finally, when Rostram had smoked her weed about down to the filter.

“Pen pal?”

“The guy in America you correspond with.”

“Oh,” she said. “He was a professor at Oxford when I was there.”

“How old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Does your daddy know you’re out running around in men’s clothes, smoking cigarettes and talking to foreign spies?”

She flipped her cigarette away and gave me The Look.

“You had me fooled there for a while,” I told her.

“What tipped you off?”

“That thing you did with your hair. It’s a woman’s gesture.”

“Not my stride?”

“Nope. Fooled me there.”

She got out her Marlboros and kicked one out of the pack. Stuck it in her mouth and lit it like an English schoolboy who was pretty damn cool and ditching school and didn’t care who knew it.

“So how did you get into treason, anyway?” I asked, just to make conversation.

“My pen pal asked for my help. I agreed to do it because I loathe the fanatics who are running this country.”

“Passing military secrets to foreign spies strikes me as a bit more than a political protest.”

“These fools are about to start World War III.”

“They catch you, you won’t live to see it.”

“I know that. That’s why I’ve been watching you for two days, checking to see if anyone is watching you. They aren’t.”

“Or you just haven’t seen them.”

“You’re clean, Carmellini.”

“What’s your real name?”

“I’m not going to tell you. Rostram is enough.”

I nodded and looked casually around. No one seemed to be paying any attention to us, but that may have been only window dressing. For all I knew we were being filmed for a starring role on the six o’clock evening news. I could see the headlines now: american spy seduces islamic woman.

“Why are you in Iran spying on us?” she asked.

I tried the old Carmellini charm, which had apparently worked fairly well for dear old Dad or I wouldn’t be here. “Well, I had a choice. Several choices, actually. My boss wanted me to do this gig, but I could have gone back to Iraq for another tour of tracking down roadside bombers, or I could have resigned from the Company and joined my brother-in-law in his bagel business. Or I could have taken a banana boat to South America and become a beach bum until the money ran out or I ruined my liver, whichever came first.”

She was eyeing me while I ran my mouth, wondering if any of this was true.

“You worry a lot, do you?” she murmured. She was playing with the cigarette pack.

“All the time. Don’t you?”

“So what is it you want from me?” she asked. Her eyes darted around again, then lit on me. This was one nervous woman.

“Are you nervous because we’re doing a little treason, because I’m an infidel, or because you’re out and about with a strange man?”

“A bloody headshrinker,” she said disgustedly. “Let’s get to it. What do you want?”

“Who do you get your information from?”

“You want names?”

“Names and where they work.”

“Get their names from Azari. He set up the network, and he made promises to them.”

“Do these people know that you are a woman?”

She dropped the cigarette from suddenly numb fingers and stared at me with big eyes. “No,” she whispered.

“How do you get your information?”

“Dead drops.”

I tried to keep a straight face. If that was true, she had only Azari’s word that there even was a network. Nor could she verify any of the names Azari gave Grafton. Anyone could service drops, including the MOIS.

“We practice good security,” she said, almost as if she were trying to sell me. Or herself.

I rubbed my face with my hands to restore circulation. I was up to my eyeballs in it this time. There was absolutely no doubt in my criminal mind that the Iranian government controlled Rostram and Azari and the flow of information to the West. I would have bet my life on that. Then it occurred to me that I probably already had.

“Go home,” I said and waved my hand in dismissal.

“Don’t you want to set up another meet?”

“I’ll find you if I do.”

“But you don’t-”

“Get the hell outta here.”

She started to say something else, thought better of it and left. I watched her go.

Well, she had the stride right, anyway. She walked like a guy.

I went straight to the embassy, crawled into my soundproof booth and called Jake Grafton. “Rostram is a woman,” I told him when we finally got connected and the crypto gear had timed in. “Not only that, she doesn’t know who supplies the information she transmits to Azari. She picks it up from dead drops.”

“Oh, great,” Grafton said disgustedly. “Does she know she’s working for the Iranian government?”

“I doubt it. She thinks she’s doing a noble thing.”

“Who is she, anyway?”

“She refused to give a name. She says she’s twenty-five and studied under Azari at Oxford. She’s maybe five-five, dark hair, trim, boyish figure. How many of those girls could there be?”

“I’ll get you a name.”

“What’s my next move?”

“If you’re up for it, find out who is servicing the dead drops. Use the guys in country.”

“Okay. What then?”

“I’ll think of something, Tommy.”

I called Jake Grafton back twelve hours later, in the middle of my workday.

“I talked to the Brits,” he said. “They think her name might be Davar Ghobadi. If so, her father is the president and CEO of a big construction company that is building a lot of Ahmadinejad’s hardened factories and launch sites. Her uncle is Habib Sultani, the minister of defense.”

“So she’s somebody.”

“With a capital S,” he said. “She was also a math wizard at Oxford. One of the British profs said a brain like hers comes along once in a generation.”

“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.