Pandora's Ark

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Night had come to Tehran. And the old man lay on the ultra-thin mattress recalling the moments when such a luxury would have been a blessing in Vladimir Central Prison.

Just a simple item, he regarded, as he lightly brushed his fingertips over the coarse fabric. The little comforts that better a man’s life, he told himself, can be by the most minimum of degrees.

On that first day when the doors of the Vladimir Central Prison closed behind him, Leonid Sakharov couldn’t even begin to comprehend the meaning of hardship or fear or degradation, until the bodies of his comrades began to pile quickly at his feet.

After having his head shaved, the cuts and scrapes testament of a dull blade, he was then placed in a cramped cell with three other men. Two nights later, with the situation serving as a psychological breakdown as much as physical, they were ordered out of their cell to the showers, told to spread their legs and feet as they placed their hands against the wall, and beaten with a baton or rubber truncheon until they had little reserve left to drag each other back to their cell.

Those who later complained to the authorities of the brutality were singled out for worse punishment, which is why Sakharov remained submissively quiet by giving in to totalitarian rule that governed the system.

During the nights in his quarters when he froze and his bones seemed to be as fragile as glass, when not-so-alien screams sounded pained and distant, he kept his mind active and his eyes closed, drawing mental pictures of buckyballs and formulas in his mind before committing them to memory.

Often in the mud-laden yards, whenever possible, he would draw diagrams and formulas with the tip of his finger, finding it easier to actually see what his mind was conceiving, and then filing it away in his memory, if the concept was scientifically feasible.

The buckyballs, the formulations, everything was an escape in a world that was brutally harsh and unyielding. Cellmates came and went, always a different and interchangeable face on a seeming rotation to fill the gaps left behind by those who died by raging disease, torture or suicide. But Sakharov hung on while his body slowly caved to alternative sicknesses stemming anywhere from lung ailments to fever. And whereas his body began to regress, his mind continued to remain sharp.

On the climatic cusp of weather change, when the conditions were about to become abysmally cold due to the onset of fall and winter months, when the tines of his nerve endings began to ache in concert, redemption came to him in the form of a man he had never met before.

It began on a damp morning, the old man huddled beneath a threadbare blanket on his bunk, his knees drawn up in acute angles in a feeble attempt to keep himself warm. In the early morning light he could see the cold, wintry vapor of his own breath, causing him to pull the blanket tightly around him as though it were a second skin.

And when he heard the footfalls of the coming guards he closed his eyes, feigning sleep.

The door of his cell slid back, the un-oiled squeal of metal against metal as brutal as life inside Vladimir Central, and then the hard nudges against the old man’s side with the tip of one the guard’s baton.

“Get up and come with us,” he said in typical clipped Russian.

The old man learned long ago never to question a guard or to look him in the eyes. Laboring to his feet, shedding the blanket to one side, Sakharov stood and simply waited for the next command with his head submissively lowered so that his eyes were cast to the floor.

One of the guards pressed the baton across his backside and used it to usher the Old Man out of his cell. “Out and to the right,” he ordered.

Sakharov closed his eyes. ‘Out and to the right’ normally meant one of two things: either he was about to be beaten unmercifully with a truncheon, or he would be forced to act on behalf of the guards and beat another prisoner as they watched. He hoped it was the latter.

As they reached the far end of the right quadrant, the guard shoved the old man with the stick to drive him in another direction, towards the yard where inmates were allowed one hour of ‘outside’ time.

Once there, the old man was shoved into the yard and the door closed behind him. He was not alone. In a frozen muddied lot surrounded by twenty-foot concrete walls and a chain-link fence serving as a ceiling of sorts to prevent escape attempts, he stared at a man who was tall, dark and well dressed. His beard was perfectly trimmed, framing a thin face marked with the color and features of a man from the Middle East.

The man held his ground, appraising Sakharov with his hands deep inside the pockets of his jacket. His vapored breath came in equal measures. “Doctor Leonid Sakharov?” he asked in perfect Russian.

Sakharov looked immediately away, the man having been institutionalized long enough to be submissive at every encounter.

“Come, come, Doctor,” he said, taking a step toward the old man, “I’m a friend. There’s no need here to look away since we are equals, yes?”

Sakharov looked into the man’s eyes. “Why am I here?”

The well-dressed man circled Sakharov as if sizing him up, his hands remaining inside his jacket pockets. “You don’t look so well, Doctor. You look — what? Twenty, maybe thirty years older than when you first came here a few years ago?”

“What do you want?”

“I think the question should be, Doctor, is what we want from each other.”

The old man appeared small, the upper half of his body folding like the curve of a question mark, as he remained silent.

“You want what only I can give you,” the man added. “And in recompense, you give me what only you can give me.”

“And that would be?”

“Your skills, Doctor. What I want is your wonderful skills.”

“As you can see, I’m a broken old man. I have no skills.”

“I’m not talking about your body or soul. I’m talking about your mind.”

Now it was Sakharov’s turn to appraise the man, to size him up. “Who are you? What’s your name?”

The man smiled handsomely. “My name is Adham al-Ghazi.”

“And why would a man from the Middle East want with my mind, as you so pleasantly put it?”

“It is said that you possess the theories of a certain technology we are most interested in.”

“We?”

“The group I work for,” he answered.

“And what group would that be?”

The man’s smile diminished, but slightly. “A group that is willing to fund your way out of Vladimir Central Prison.”

Sakharov straightened up at this the same way the ears of a dog would perk up at something interesting.

“From the looks of things, Doctor, it appears that you won’t live another four months and we both know it. Now I can give you back the freedom and comforts of life, or I can leave you here to rot in this facility.”

“You want to know about nanotechnology.”

“I want to know certain applications of it, yes.”

Sakharov squinted in examination of the man and moved closer. “You know why I’m here, don’t you? You know that I was impatient and foolish, which cost the lives of two good people my government dismissed as collateral damage.”

“I won’t deny that.”

“Then you also know that I foolishly destroyed the subsequent tests because of the nature of the program — that it’s too powerful to manage.”

“You became a drunk who fought with and lost a battle with his own personal demons, Doctor. Don’t kid yourself. There’s nothing altruistic about your nature. You do what you do because you know that you can do what no other man on this planet can. This technology is too valuable to waste. If your government refuses to see that, then there are those who will value you for who and what you are… I can give you peace of mind, Doctor. Or as I said, leave you here to rot. It’s your choice. But if I walk away from this prison, then I walk away for good.”

Sakharov slowly bent back into position, his mind mulling over the proposition. He was a man dying by the inches, a man who often watched his cellmates come and go in a crafted box of cheap wood.

For years he formulated theories in his mind and stowed it away, only to get the chance to one day utilize it once again. For years he romanced and fantasized the idea of once again being in the lab to correct the errors of his past and to learn due diligence. It was the only thing that kept him alive over the past few years. Without it, he would have given up long ago like so many others who died without hope.

“Who are your people?”

“Is it important?”

“If I do this, then I need to know who I’m working with.”

“First of all, Doctor, you won’t be working with anyone. You’ll be working for me and the constituency I represent.”

Sakharov cocked his head studiously. “You’re from the Middle East?”

“I am.”

“Then why would I work for you? A man from the Middle East?”

“If you want your freedom, Doctor, then ask me no more questions and leave it at that.”

“Are you al-Qaeda? Do you want to use my technology for weaponry? Is that it? At least give me the courtesy of knowing the people I may work for.”

“Al-Qaeda is a strong word, so we’ll leave it at that, Doctor. And you’re running out of time. So give me your answer.”

The old man pulled in a breath of cold air, and his lungs rattled with an awful wetness. “What must I do?” he asked flatly.

“Simple: stay alive while my people negotiate a sum for your release. It may take awhile. It all depends upon the greed of these people. It could take a month, a year, who knows.”

“And if you can’t settle upon a sum?”

“Then you will die. But their greed is paramount, so I wouldn’t worry. The moment we attempt to back off, then they’ll give in. In the meantime, the guards will be paid to see that your accommodations are better, the meals more plentiful, and that you stay alive, if possible.”

“And if I’m released?”

“There are other hurdles my constituency is trying to solve at this moment in order to acquire the necessary accouterments and location to serve your needs. Once done, then I will locate you and request that you fulfill your half of the agreement.”

And once I’m free and disagree to fulfill my obligation to them? The answer was obviously clear to Sakharov: Then they will kill you in a manner far worse than Vladimir Central ever could.

“Your answer, Doctor.”

“If you could expedite the matter, then that would be greatly appreciated. It isn’t exactly the Ritz in here.”

Al-Ghazi gave a quick perusal of the area. “That’s quite apparent,” he said.

The man from the Middle East began to walk to the door and without looking back, he said, “In time I will find you, Doctor. Do not forget our agreement should the sum of your release be agreed upon.”

And that was the last time the old man saw al-Ghazi until the moment when the Arab showed up in his apartment to cash in his chips.

From that point after the meeting he was then ushered to a different cell that was larger, yet still cramped with the bodies of other prisoners, who were obviously told that Sakharov was a man walking with a ‘hands off’ policy. If anyone so much as lay a menacing touch on the old man, then not only would they fall victim to a guard’s truncheon, but most likely end up as pulp inside a pauper’s coffin. The gruel was plentiful by Vladimir Central’s standards, and a heater provided as promised. The greatest luxury, however, was not the warmth or the additional gruel, but the wafer-thin mattress. Instead of lying on a cold wooden surface, he slept in marginal comfort.

So here he was, in Tehran, on a mattress reminiscent of his time in a Russian prison, a mere luxury.

And until the moment the old man fell asleep, Sakharov was caressing his fingers over the mattress.