Oath of Office

25

Erik Dovzhenko’s windshield wipers had no intermittent setting. They simply worked when they felt like it, wiping away enough rain now and then that he could mostly see to drive.

Dovzhenko rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger as he drove, trying to clear the fog from his head. He’d fled straight from Maryam’s apartment toward Imam Khomeini International Airport, pounding on the steering wheel, screaming at the windshield in between his attempts to call Kashani and warn her.

No answer.

Highway 7, the main north-south freeway through Tehran, was still relatively busy for the late hour, and he floored the Tiba’s sluggish accelerator in an attempt to merge with the river of red lights and thumping traffic. In the end, the driver of a crane truck, much like the ones used to hang the students, took pity and slowed to let him on.

He’d never met the woman, but he’d heard Maryam’s side of the conversation when they spoke on the phone, and knew this to be the correct number. The IRGC would eventually get it from Maryam’s phone records. Such information would not have been difficult to obtain in Russia. Dovzhenko imagined Iran would not be much different. The Persians were meticulous in their recordkeeping. He smacked the steering wheel again, hard enough to hurt his hand. One could not run from a cancer as pervasive as the Sepah. They had connections in every government office, most every business, and, through the interconnecting circles of Iranian society known as dowreh, to most families as well. There were IRGC fingers in every pie.

There was no point in going back to his apartment. Dovzhenko had what he needed — his Russian diplomatic passport and money. The rest he could buy or steal.

It was better that he keep moving, to get out of Iran as quickly as possible. That meant abandoning his post. He could feign illness.

Dear Comrade Chief of Station, I am much too ill to continue working, because my dissident Iranian girlfriend was murdered by our corrupt allies.

No. Spies did not call in sick.

And this business with General Alov, whatever it was, complicated matters — a high-ranking member of the GRU general staff meeting with the very people trying to overthrow the ruling mullahs. People had been shot for stumbling into situations that were far less strange.

Dovzhenko knew it was time for him to leave. Not just Iran, but the SVR. Russia. But defection was not easy. Even forgetting the emotional trauma of leaving his country behind, the Americans would not trust him. They would see him as a dangle — a double agent meant to provide misinformation. And anyway, what would he have to offer? The Americans would want someone they could use, not a burned spy who’d been caught up in an affair with a dead Iranian dissident.

A horn blared, pulling him from his anguished stupor. He looked sideways and caught the flash of white teeth in the headlights as the driver of a black sedan cursed and shook an angry fist. Guilty, he saw IRGC operatives everywhere. His hands convulsed on the steering wheel, startled that they had found him so quickly. Then the black sedan sped up, just another driver on Highway 7, pissed that Dovzhenko had drifted into his lane.

The Russian wiped his face with one hand while he kept the Tiba steady with the other, settling deeper into the seat as he focused on the road. He could not afford to have an accident now, or to get stopped by a traffic policeman for erratic driving. But he could not stop. A dog like Parviz Sassani would be relentless in his pursuit. Going to ground, even for a moment, to think, to make a plan, would only do half his job for him.

Sassani would be tied up for a few hours with the remainder of the investigation at Maryam’s apartment. She was naked, a sight most of these men did not often get to see. A painful sob caught in his chest. They would take their time collecting evidence and taking lurid photographs, all in the name of thoroughness. The most devout in any religion, Dovzhenko had observed, were often the last to see their own perversions.

He locked the Makarov and his two-way radio in the trunk of the Tiba, which he abandoned among hundreds of similarly ugly sedans in the Number 3 parking lot west of the starkly lit Novotel airport hotel. The sky bridge through the metro station took him across the road to the main terminal where a tired-looking man at the Emirates ticket counter tapped the requisite keys to book him on the next flight to Dubai.

Last-minute airline travel by people who paid with cash and had no luggage was a sure sign of something illegal, so Dovzhenko switched gears, pretending he was the hunter instead of the hunted, as if he were chasing someone and simply had to get on that flight. He exuded the official swagger they taught so well in SVR training — the look that said his business was of the highest import and that it would be extremely dangerous to know what he knew. The ticket agent looked over his diplomatic passport, read between the lines — though incorrectly — and issued his boarding pass so Dovzhenko could continue chasing whatever miscreant he was chasing.

He made it through security quickly, though the screeners were on high alert because of the recent student unrest, not to mention the ever-present threat of Jundallah terrorists for an independent Balochistan.

The flight to Dubai would leave just after one in the morning, leaving him a two-hour layover before he could catch a flight to Kabul. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had anything to eat besides a cigarette. The hangings had pressed a fist to his gut that made food unthinkable. He and Maryam had thought to eat late, but then…

He needed to put something in his stomach, even if he didn’t feel like it. Most of the shops here were closed anyway, so he decided to wait until he reached Dubai. The airport there was a riotous crossroads of cultures that was almost, but not quite, Muslim. The same way Vegas was almost, but was not quite, America. Or maybe they were both the real faces of the culture and the rest of UAE and USA were the façades.

Dovzhenko’s diplomatic passport would get him into most countries without a visa, but a record would still be made. Cameras, though, were ubiquitous in Dubai. Whether in the open or tucked behind the virtual aquarium at passport control, facial-recognition scanners were everywhere. Dovzhenko would be careful, but all he could really do was hope for the best. It would take time for Sassani to pursue a formal inquiry with his superiors, and he would need proof to do that. Wouldn’t he? Unless the chief of station saw Dovzhenko’s absence as prima facie evidence that he was guilty of something. In which case, he would be detained the moment he got off the plane, if not before it even took off.

It couldn’t be helped. Just another reason not to dally.

He alternately cursed for not shooting Sassani when he had the chance, and then consoled himself that he needed to stay alive in order to warn Ysabel Kashani. Sassani would pull out every stop to hunt her down, to find out her connection to Maryam. It was the way he worked, hopping from friend to friend, acquaintance to acquaintance, using his whips and torches to extract the next person who might have something to do with this uprising. Women, it seemed, were the faces leading the crowds of late. Ysabel Kashani was a friend of Maryam’s and a woman, which made her doubly suspect, though she was guilty of nothing beyond letting her friend stay at her apartment.

Dovzhenko had seen a few photographs of Kashani but knew little about her, other than she came from a wealthy family and that she and Maryam were friends. He guessed that the two women had met at the university, or possibly the treatment center, both working to help those affected by the torrent of opiates flooding the country from Afghanistan. Kashani was out of the country for the moment, doing something with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. But she was still well within the reach of the IRGC. The Sepah had men all over the Middle East, Africa, and Asia — Dubai, Damascus, Pakistan, and certainly western Afghanistan. Vast networks of paid informants that linked them to virtually every border guard in the Middle East and Central Asia.

What they did not have was Maryam’s notebook.

Ysabel Kashani’s address was written boldly on the second page, along with several phone numbers. Her office with the UNODC was on the outskirts of Herat, less than a hundred miles from the border with Iran. The government in Tehran would have a record of her employment, but, as with any bureaucracy, Sassani would have to know where to look in order to find it. As long as Dovzhenko got to her before she crossed a border or hit some other checkpoint that entered her passport number into a computer, he could get her out.

Dovzhenko sat down in a plastic chair and waited for his flight to board. It wouldn’t be long now. He would fly to Dubai, then on to Kabul where, even with his diplomatic passport, he would have to explain himself before catching the one-hour flight to Herat. He’d been there before, several times, overseeing the transfer of weapons to the Taliban on behalf of the Russian government.

It was often difficult to find enough food or medicine in Afghanistan, but years of war had made weapons another story. Dovzhenko had no doubt he’d be able to find a gun. Maybe even from the Taliban. Guerilla fighters generally preferred rifles, but they would have everything, from ancient Chinese grenades to Claymore mines if the price was right. And there would be some pistols — maybe an American Beretta, but even an old Tokarev would do.

Dovzhenko closed his eyes. He was too exhausted to think clearly, but in too much emotional agony to sleep. He sniffed away tears and steeled himself by thumbing through the notebook. His throat tightened, until he could hardly breathe, at the sight of Maryam’s precise handwriting — like an architect’s or perhaps a teacher’s. He traced Ysabel Kashani’s mobile number with the tip of his finger. A note written directly below it in flowing Persian said something like secondary contact. Her mother? Dovzhenko slammed the little book closed and bounced it nervously on his knee. Ysabel would not be difficult to find. Sassani would simply identify her family and then go ask them where she was on some false pretense. He could say he needed to talk to her about anything. She was not hiding. She had done nothing wrong, so she had nothing to fear. One of Sassani’s female troops would do it, so as not to arouse suspicion, saying she was an old friend.

The overhead speaker clicked, then crackled with a barely understandable call from the gate agent for early boarding. If he was going to warn Kashani’s secondary contact, it would have to be soon. Lost in thought, he nearly dropped the phone when it began to buzz in his hand.

It was Sassani.

Dovzhenko snapped a greeting, wanting to appear normal. “It is late.”

“It is indeed,” the IRGC thug said. “A busy night for us both, no?”

“True enough,” Dovzhenko said. He looked up and down the concourse, suddenly feeling a thousand eyes crawling over him. He glanced down at his chest, half expecting to see the dot of a red laser from a weapon sight.

“Where are you?” Sassani asked. “I had hoped to get your assistance with something.”

This was a first.

There was a better-than-average chance Sassani was standing in his apartment right then, so Dovzhenko went with a less verifiable lie.

“I went for a drive.”

Across the concourse, the gate agent lifted the mic to his lips to make another boarding call. Dovzhenko lowered the phone and hit the mute button an instant before the speaker boomed.

“Too bad,” Sassani said, still unaware. “I am on my way to the dead whore’s autopsy. This would seem a good opportunity for me to gain from your scientific experience.”

Maryam’s autopsy. The concourse closed in around him. Dovzhenko found it impossible to speak.

“Are you still there?” Sassani asked.

Dovzhenko took the phone off mute.

“I am sorry.” He summoned his last ounce of concentration in order to conceal his feelings. “The mobile signal cut out. An opportunity for what?”

“Your knowledge and experience,” Sassani said flippantly. “But we are fine without you. I only thought to extend the invitation. In case you are interested. The hospital is off Valiasr Street in the event you decide to change your mind. I find autopsies to be extremely revealing.”

“I am exhausted,” Dovzhenko managed to say.

“Next time, then,” Sassani said. “Sleep well, Comrade Erik.”

Dovzhenko ended the call. The IRGC didn’t need him talking to track his phone, but it would certainly make things easier.

Dovzhenko punched in the number for Ysabel Kashani’s emergency contact as he slogged toward the gate, wondering if Sassani would have the authority to turn a plane around once it was in the air.

A female voice answered on the third ring.

“Balay,” she answered, mumbling, woken from a sound sleep.

Dovzhenko spoke passable Farsi, but his Russian accent was evident, making it sound especially gruff.

“Ysabel Kashani?”

The voice softened. “Ysabel is not here.”

“Where is she?” Dovzhenko demanded, hoping to incense the woman at this late hour with his forceful tone. “I must speak with her at once.”

The woman whispered a few frantic words to someone beside her now, hoarse, strained, just as Dovzhenko had hoped. “He wants to talk to Ysabel.”

A male voice came on the line. “What is the meaning of this? Who are you, calling my home at this hour?”

“Who I am is none of your concern,” Dovzhenko said. “Where is Ysabel?”

The man hung up. With any luck, the call had spooked him enough to keep his mouth shut about the whereabouts of his daughter or niece or whatever Ysabel Kashani was to him — at least until Dovzhenko could get to her and warn her.