Close Quarters

TWO

Arash Bagheri had the taste of blood on his lip and a swelling on his cheek where he’d been hit before being bundled into the black sedan. It was just one of many bruises he’d sustained and he knew there were many more to come.

He also knew that he would never see freedom again.

He had known within a split second of seeing the car waiting at the far end of Kandhar Street that he had made a grave error; that somehow he’d been betrayed. The vehicle was shiny black with tinted windows, and hung low on its suspension, a sure-fire sign of reinforced bodywork and bulletproof glass. Only one agency used such cars and he didn’t even like to think of its name for fear he might utter it aloud. Secret police were the same no matter what they called themselves, and this lot were as feared as their cars were sinister looking, and with good reason.

He had stopped walking, his legs turning to liquid. The car was stationary, a large black bug. Maybe he was wrong and they had come here for somebody else. But who? The street was empty. Then he saw a puff of exhaust smoke and the car began rolling along the street towards him, a flash of sunshine bouncing off the windshield as if to greet him. A touch of irony, he decided, on a bad day.

He turned to run back the way he had come, to lose himself in the maze of narrow streets where people would provide the best cover and where he could duck into a doorway, God willing. But he realized his legs wouldn’t carry him far enough or fast enough; there was no escape and nowhere he could go that would be safe.

He made a noise deep in his chest and wondered about his friend, Farshad, the man he had come to meet. Farshad had suggested they meet today at this very place, telling Arash that he had vital information to give him of new weapons being created in the ‘laboratory’, including small explosive devices that could be concealed in very restricted spaces such as hand luggage. Arash had expressed doubts about the location, preferring somewhere else. But Farshad had been insistent. He was certain he was being watched, he said, by security officers in the government laboratory where he worked, and was expecting to be questioned any day now. Somebody, he feared, must have noticed his interest in weapons development and had reported him.

Keen to secure the information, Arash had convinced himself that he would be safe among the crush of people and traders and traffic that clustered around the bazaar in great numbers. And in exchange for the information there would be money waiting that would be Farshad’s safeguard to a better life.

In any case, they were old friends meeting up for a chat. What was wrong with that?

It struck him now that he had been stupidly naïve.

The sedan had stopped alongside him, the motor humming with suppressed power. The front seat passenger had stepped out and slammed him against the wall before punching him with vicious force in the stomach. Arash dropped the bag of fruit and curled away from his attacker, a heavy man in plain clothes, feeling a rain of blows descending on his head and back, and a heavy blow from another man hitting him in the kidneys. He felt his knee split on a piece of stone as he fell to the ground, and wondered if this was to end here.

‘What are you doing? Why are you? What—?’ He tried to protest, even though he knew it was useless. Protests of innocence were all he had left, but they never worked with such people, who only knew everybody as guilty, if not in deed then by intent. The men continued their beating without saying a word, their breathing growing heavier as they spent their energy in the growing heat of the sun, punching and kicking him with almost casual detachment as if he were no more than a punch bag in a gymnasium.

Then he was grabbed by his arm and spun around to face the car. He immediately saw the face of his friend Farshad staring out at him from the back seat. For just a second Arash felt a flood of relief. At least Farshad wasn’t hurt; there were no signs of violence, no bruising or bloodshed, no face like death. That was good, surely …

Then he realized that Farshad was smiling. And he knew he was finished.

The two men dragged him across the sidewalk and threw him into the back alongside Farshad. But he couldn’t even look at the man he’d once valued; the friend who had espoused the same anti-government beliefs as himself and talked often of how he wanted to get out of the country to America, where he could begin a new and exciting life.

For Arash the betrayal was too much to bear and he tried to shrink away until one of the men jumped in after him and elbowed him aside.

There were three men in the car apart from himself and Farshad: the two who had attacked him and the driver. None of them spoke, although the one sitting next to him kept using his elbow, striking him viciously in the side of the head for no reason other than that it seemed to be something to do.

It was the silence that scared him most. If they had raged at him, spat on him, accused him of being a traitor and a criminal, threatened him with certain death, it would have been easier to take. But this wordless violence was the most frightening of all, in that it carried no message.

As the car pulled away and accelerated, he caught a last blurred glimpse of the outside world, his bag of fruit spilled across the sidewalk and already of interest to one of the many dogs roaming the neighbourhood. He assumed the driver was heading towards the expressway, no doubt on their way to MOIS headquarters where he would disappear, like so many others had done before him. He sank down in the seat, trying to control his bladder and wondering what would happen to his sister and brother, now his only living family who had a house far to the south of Tehran. Would they also be dragged in, bruised and beaten, victims of his desire to make a difference in the country, later to disappear? Or would they simply never hear from him again and be left forever wondering at his fate?

The driver and the front seat passenger were talking quietly and smoking, the air heavy with harsh tobacco fumes and adding to the stale smell of perspiration and unwashed clothing. Farshad and the man alongside him were silent, each looking out at the passing scenery.

The journey was surprisingly brief. Arash looked up. They were nowhere near the MOIS headquarters, but turning into a wide street in a quiet commercial district not far from where he had been picked up.

He looked around and felt his stomach flip. He knew of this place; he’d seen and read of people being taken here into a compound located at the far end of this street, never to emerge.

It was a place of death.

He moaned softly, earning another sharp elbow dig from the guard. The passenger in the front seat turned his head to say something, but was interrupted by the driver, who cursed and slowed sharply.

A couple had made to step into the road maybe thirty metres ahead. The man was nondescript, dressed in a dark jacket and tan pants. Alongside him was a slim figure in a long dress and a scarf covering her head, being supported by the man’s arm.

‘Drive on!’ the passenger snapped. ‘Let them wait. We don’t have time.’

The driver shrugged and hit the horn, and the heavy car surged forward, visibly possessing its space on the road as a warning. As it did so, the man on the sidewalk stepped back a pace and watched it approach.

Just before the car drew level, the man hurled the woman into the road.

Someone inside the vehicle screamed like a girl, and Arash wondered if it had been himself. There was a loud bang as the woman’s body surged over the radiator grill and bounced off the windshield, shutting out the sunlight for a brief moment. Then she was gone, leaving her scarf snagged on the radio aerial and snapping in the wind like a pennant.

The passenger cursed. A single finger was trapped behind one of the wiper arms and pointing accusingly at them all.

The driver swore repeatedly and stamped hard on the brakes, throwing them all forward and ignoring the other man’s orders to drive on regardless. Alongside Arash, Farshad had doubled over, striking his head on the back of the front seat and was now throwing up in the footwell. The guard on his other side was swearing and reaching for the gun at his waist.

Then the rear passenger door was flung open and a figure appeared. It was the man in the dark jacket. He was holding a pistol with a large bulbous shape over the end of the barrel, and Arash noticed that the ground around his feet was scattered with fragments of pale plastic; an arm, a foot and part of a leg. And rolling into the gutter was a head with the empty, sightless eyes of a mannequin.

The man shot the armed guard once in the head, then pulled Arash out of the car, before turning to fire with absolute calm three more times into the interior.

The engine died and was silent.

‘Come,’ the man said urgently, and hustled Arash away to a small car parked back down the street. They climbed in and the man drove away, steering into a maze of streets until they were lost to any possible pursuit. As they drove up a ramp on to the expressway and joined a mass of other traffic, Arash finally found his voice.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said weakly. ‘Who are you? Where are we going?’

‘I was sent by Langley,’ the man said, and smiled. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a passport and a driver’s licence, which he handed to Arash. ‘Remember that name; it’s yours until we get out of this country.’