Revenger

Prologue

It started with a kiss.

Abou-Ali Bakhtiar had always been a quiet, well-behaved schoolboy, much liked by his teachers and never any trouble in class. As a student at the University of Tehran’s faculty of literature and humanities he continued to be a credit to his family, and his grades were consistently excellent. Sex outside marriage is strictly forbidden in Iran, as it is in most Islamic societies, so the fact that Bakhtiar was untroubled by the desperate, frustrated urge for women that plagued his male friends was in many ways a blessing. And then, in his penultimate year at university, that blessing became a curse.

A friendship with another young man called Mehdi deepened over the course of several months and, like a plant that blossoms from a seed into a flower, turned into something new. First came the realization of a love that went beyond mere affection. It was swiftly followed by the exchange of a hesitant kiss that deepened, intensified, set light to Bakhtiar’s heart, sent the blood pulsing through his body and filled him with an exultant joy unlike any he had ever known. The two young men spent a night together. They were the most wonderful hours of Bakhtiar’s life, only to be followed in the morning by a crashing hangover of shame and fear.

Here he was, a law-abiding model of propriety, engaged in an activity that was both a sin against God and a crime punishable by death. But why was it a sin to love like this? And how could one do wrong when one did not have the choice of doing right? From the moment that Bakhtiar discovered his homosexuality, he saw the whole of his life up to that point from an entirely different perspective. So much that he had not understood before was now explained. He had, he was quite certain, been like this all his life. He could no more become a ‘normal’ man now than he could suddenly turn his eyes blue. And if he had been made this way, then that must have been God’s will. In which case, how could it possibly be criminal?

For both their sakes, Bakhtiar ended the relationship with Mehdi and begged him not to find another lover; the risk was just too great. In public Bakhtiar remained the same friendly, popular, studious figure he had always been. But the endless hours he spent in the university library were not all occupied working on his final dissertation. Instead he pored over the theological debates that had taken place on homosexuality over the centuries, concluding that neither the precise degree of its sinfulness nor the rightful severity of its punishment appeared to have been definitively established. There was, he discovered, a long tradition of homoerotic love poetry in both Arabic and Persian literature, and some of the greatest rulers of the Islamic world had displayed homosexual proclivities. Even Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, was said to have taken beautiful young men to his bed along with his many wives and concubines.

Bakhtiar entered into these researches as a private exercise, an attempt to reconcile his sexuality with his faith and thus soothe his mind and his soul. It never even occurred to him to participate in any protest against the authorities that had demonized him. But then Mehdi, the lover he had cast aside, was caught in bed with a boy of seventeen. Both were arrested. The boy’s father, a senior army officer, insisted that his son had been forced to have sex against his will. The court chose to believe this claim, saving the boy but condemning Mehdi to death.

Two days later, Mehdi was hanged without the knowledge of his lawyer or his family. The first that anyone knew of the execution was when it was announced on the evening news. Bakhtiar sat and watched in anguished despair as pictures were shown on screen of Mehdi blindfold on the gallows, and hanging in mid-air next to thieves and drug-dealers.

It was then that Bakhtiar changed. He saw that it was not enough to hide away. He had to do something to change the society in which he lived. And so the process of radicalization started, as he joined a students’ group involved in pro-democracy campaigns and demonstrations. Shortly after his graduation from the university, he graduated as an activist, too, making contact with emissaries from Mujahedin-e Khalq, or the MEK: an exiled dissident group, denounced by some as terrorists, but lionized by others as courageous freedom fighters against the Iranian regime.

For years there had been rumours that the Israelis used members of the MEK as hitmen to carry out their assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. Now the group were planning to escalate their anti-government actions to an entirely new level. The search went out for martyrs willing to take part in suicide bombings.

Bakhtiar was a man in despair. He saw no future for himself. The only man he would ever love was dead. His only hope of joining him was to die himself and pray for a meeting in paradise. He put himself forward for martyrdom, and his application was gratefully accepted. On a balmy evening in late April, with the city still fresh and green from the spring rains, Bakhtiar was ordered to make his way to a nondescript workshop on the outskirts of Tehran to meet with a senior MEK officer.

The man introduced himself as Firouz, and showed Bakhtiar a laptop on whose screen was a satellite picture of an apparently unexceptional patch of landscape. A road ran diagonally across the screen from top left to bottom right. In the middle of the picture, next to the road, an area of ground had been outlined.

‘This is the highway between Gazran and Khandab,’ said Firouz, pointing at the road. His finger tapped on the outline. ‘And this is the IR-40 nuclear complex. See, it looks like a pig’s head!’

Bakhtiar smiled. He was right. The likeness was uncanny.

‘Here is the pig’s snout, up against the highway,’ Firouz continued. ‘And this is the line of its mouth, which is the road from the highway into the heart of the complex. Now… there is one barrier here, by the highway, and another at the other end of the road, where all the really important buildings are located. That road is approximately one kilometre long. It is absolutely vital for you to get as far up it as you possibly can before you detonate your bomb. The closer you are, the more damage you will do. It is a very powerful device. But it cannot work miracles.

‘So, here are your targets. On the right, in the pig’s cheek, you have a heavy-water production plant. That’s water enriched in a deuterium isotope, often referred to as deuterium oxide…’

Firouz caught Bakhtiar’s look of blank incomprehension.

‘Not a scientist, huh? OK… Heavy water helps them create plutonium-239, the radioactive material at the heart of a nuclear weapon. Now, observe this structure here, above the heavy-water plant. It looks like the eye of the pig, does it not? Well, this is a nuclear reactor. Here is another picture of the reactor, from the side. See how it has a great round dome, and beside it a thin concrete tower?’

‘Almost like a mosque and minaret,’ Bakhtiar suggested.

‘Yes… although here it is not God, the most merciful and compassionate, to whom they pray, but the devil. For this reactor is where the heavy water will be used to create the plutonium. That plutonium will go in an atomic bomb, and then the ayatollahs will stay in power for ever, because no one, anywhere, will dare challenge them.’

‘You say the heavy water will be used. You mean it isn’t yet?’

‘No, the plant is not operational. There have been many, many delays. Some of these, I am proud to say, were due to us. Let’s just say, they had a problem retaining staff.’ Firouz smiled at his witticism and Bakhtiar joined him, though it seemed strange to regard death as a laughing matter.

‘However, it’s finally due to start the process of going operational within weeks — two or three months at the very most,’ Firouz went on. ‘That’s why we have to strike now. But I must ask: are you still with us? Are you willing to sacrifice your life as a martyr for our cause?’

Bakhtiar felt almost physically sick. He thought of his family, whom he loved, and of all the years that still lay before him. And then he thought of the sorrow and deceit that would fill those years and, in little more than a hoarse, dry whisper answered, ‘Yes, I am.’

The following morning, well before dawn, Bakhtiar set off on the five-and-a-half-hour drive from Tehran, south-west along the Saveh Freeway to Arak, the capital of Markazi Province, and then north towards the IR-40 complex. He travelled in an old Toyota Hilux truck. The cargo area of the truck was covered with a tarpaulin, beneath which were some sacks of cement, a bundle of wooden joists and an oil barrel. Within that barrel there was a bomb.

For most of the journey Bakhtiar was a passenger. The target was almost four hundred kilometres away, and the leaders of the MEK felt it was too great a risk to expect anyone to drive that far, with nothing but their own thoughts and fears for company, and then have the energy, or the will, to mount a desperate suicide attack against an armed target. So Bakhtiar sat in the passenger seat while an older, more experienced MEK fighter drove, talked to him when he considered it right, or at other times let him alone with his thoughts.

They passed along a river valley where the local farmers’ lush green fields clustered together in the flatlands between two ranges of dusty brown hills. At Gazran they stopped for cups of sweet mint tea. Then they drove a little out of town till they found a turn-off where they could spend a few minutes undisturbed.

Bakhtiar’s companion helped him screw a metal plate across the inside of the windscreen, precisely shaped to the dimensions of the glass. It had a narrow slit, allowing him to see out. But unless a lucky shot happened to pass precisely through this gap, the front of the truck was effectively bullet-proof. As an additional precaution Bakhtiar put on a motorcycle helmet. It would not fully protect him against a direct shot, but it would keep out any ricochets or flying fragments of metal or glass.

‘I will leave you now,’ his companion said. ‘Would you like me to pray with you before I go?’

‘Yes, I would like that very much,’ Bakhtiar replied.

Together, they turned to Mecca, got down upon their knees, prostrated themselves and said the words of Al-Fatiha, the prayer that is to Muslims what the Lord’s Prayer is to Christians: the most basic, fundamental profession of faith.

In the name of God,

The most compassionate, the most merciful,

Praise to God, Lord of all the worlds,

The most compassionate, the most merciful,

Lord of the Day of Judgement,

You alone do we worship, you alone do we ask for help,

Guide us on the right path,

The path of those in your grace, not of those whom you have cursed, or who have gone astray,

Amen.

When the prayer had been said and his companion had departed, Bakhtiar got back in the truck, in the driver’s seat this time, and turned right on to the road towards the nuclear reactor. He did not have far to go, three kilometres at most, and he was surprised to discover how calm and at peace he felt. It was as though Mehdi was in the passenger seat where he himself had been just a few minutes ago. He was smiling at Bakhtiar, and the thought of his face, his bright eyes and his gentle good humour was like a soothing balm to Bakhtiar’s soul.

He drove the truck to the turn-off that led to the IR-40 complex, and when he saw the first barricade he picked up the small, handheld controller that would activate the bomb, depressed the switch and held it down. From now on, there was no going back. The moment Bakhtiar relaxed his grip on the switch the bomb would detonate.

The switch was in his left hand. The wheel of the truck was in his right. Bakhtiar floored the accelerator and the truck leaped forward.

It took the guards a couple of seconds to realize what was happening, and a couple more to bring their weapons to bear. But by the time the first bullets were hammering into the truck, Bakhtiar had smashed through the barrier and was racing down the dead-straight road that led to the heart of the complex. By now he was under heavy fire from the guards at each checkpoint, in front of him and behind.

Bakhtiar had gone two… three… four hundred metres down the road.

The glass in the front and rear windows had all been blown out. The metal plate in front of him was clanging like a steel drum to the constant beat of the bullets hitting its surface. His own head was ringing with the deafening noise all around him and the constant patter of debris against his helmet. The engine was smoking like a steam train and screaming in protest at the wounds it was enduring.

Another three hundred metres raced by beneath his wheels, and then the truck slewed wildly as one of the rear tyres blew apart under the relentless fire. Bakhtiar found himself skidding off the road. There were high security fences on either side, and he was heading straight for one of them.

The truck smashed into the fence, which gave way under the impact, collapsing all around the truck and wrapping it in chain-linked wire and concrete posts. Bakhtiar heard more shots clattering around him, then the sound of men shouting as they ran down the road towards him.

He looked to his right.

Mehdi was there. He was telling him not to be afraid. They would be together soon. Their love would last forever.

Bakhtiar let go of the switch.

There was one important detail that Firouz had neglected to tell Bakhtiar.

The device in the oil barrel was an updated version of a fifty-year-old US Army weapon with the designation W54 SADM. It was cylindrical in shape: about 60cm tall, with a diameter of 40cm. It weighed around 70 kilos. The designation SADM stood for ‘Special Atomic Demolition Munition’, for this was a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb, and it was the culmination of many years of strategic thinking, war-games and military exercises.

For more than three decades, the Israeli government had made it plain that it would not allow any of the hostile states in the region to possess atomic weapons, nor even the capacity to build them. Nuclear installations in Iraq and Syria were bombed, and Iran was given unequivocal notice that it was next in line. An Iran Command was formed within the Israeli Air Force. Its jets flew up and down the full length of the Mediterranean, sometimes even as far as Gibraltar, practising long-range missions.

Everyone knew what the Israelis were doing, not least the Iranians themselves. That’s why they buried their uranium-enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow deep underground; impregnably so, they claimed. To most Western analysts, it was a question of when, not if, Israel would mount airstrikes at the dozen or more key installations on which Iran’s nuclear weapons programme depended. But from Israel’s point of view, that was the problem: everyone knew.

Surprise would be impossible. Deniability non-existent.

So Israel boxed clever. It used the MEK as its proxies for this strike, as it had for others before. Because of Iran’s refusal to halt its nuclear weapons programme, it was under a punitive regime of international sanctions. But where there are sanctions, there will also be smugglers. Mossad agents used those smuggling routes to infiltrate four SADM bombs into Iran.

The 10-kiloton bomb Abou-Ali Bakhtiar detonated beside the IR-40 reactor blew a crater seventy-five metres wide by seventeen metres deep. It created a dazzling fireball from which blew a scorching hurricane. At least half the people within a five-hundred-metre radius were killed instantly, and those that survived received fatal doses of radiation. Human bodies and inanimate objects were transformed into lethal missiles. The blast reduced the heavy-water plant to rubble, and caused sufficient damage to the reactor to render it entirely useless.

Above all, the IR-40 complex was so heavily soused in nuclear fallout as to be unapproachable by anyone unless they were wearing full protective gear. Even then, a stay of more than a few minutes could result in a dangerously high dose of radiation. And that, from the strategists’ point of view, was the other great benefit of this form of attack. It was not necessary to destroy Iran’s impregnable underground sites. The ground above or around them just had to be turned into toxic wastelands through which no human could pass, and they were effectively useless. The IR-40 nuclear reactor, the two uranium enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow, and the Nuclear Technology Centre at Isfahan were all rendered inoperable. The Iranian weapons programme was cut off at the knees.

Meanwhile, not a single Israeli Air Force plane had been involved in any hostile action whatsoever. Deniability was ensured. It was a strategic triumph for Israel… and an unmitigated disaster for the rest of the world.

As its nuclear sites lay blanketed in radioactive dust and debris the Iranian government looked for a way to strike back, not just against the Israelis, but also their allies in the West. Iranian naval forces immediately launched a series of missile attacks on the Strait of Hormuz — the shipping lane through which one-fifth of the entire global oil trade passed — hitting several vessels and sinking a massive supertanker. Maritime insurance premiums immediately rose to a level that made any passage through the Strait prohibitively costly, even assuming a ship owner or crew was willing to risk the voyage. With that crucial supply-line cut, the resulting spike in the price of oil had a devastating effect on an already battered global economy, ending any slim hopes of recovery. Meanwhile, conflict spread to the streets of Europe as the Continent’s Muslim populations rose up in outrage at the Jewish assault on their Iranian brothers and sisters.

It was difficult, however, to distinguish these Muslim riots from all the other forms of civil disturbance tearing the EU to pieces. Repeated bailouts of the Mediterranean states had drained the Continent’s treasuries while failing to address any of the fundamental causes of economic failure. Indeed, they had simply made that failure even more acute. The grinding austerity demanded by Berlin as the price for supporting the failed economies of southern Europe had created economic damage that would take decades to repair. As the second Great Depression took hold, once-flourishing businesses collapsed, governments were unable to meet even their people’s most basic needs, and yet more millions of Greeks, Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese were thrown out of work to add to those already on the breadline.

Greeks had long been familiar with the sight of government buildings going up in flames. Now Rome, Madrid and Lisbon were burning too. The French alliance with Germany fractured as the new government in Paris refused to accept the current self-flagellating orthodoxy, and embarked on a policy of spending more government money, not less, risking credit-agency downgrades, rising borrowing costs and even national bankruptcy rather than cutting spending to the bone. And slowly it dawned on the German electorate that by beggaring their neighbours they had destroyed their own most important export markets, harming themselves economically as well as reigniting old anti-German hatreds that the EU had been created to bury for ever.

Little by little the fabric of Europe unravelled. Some of the crises were of minimal significance in any financial or geopolitical sense, but their symbolic weight was crushing. The Champions League, for example, was suspended as the explosive tensions on the streets of Europe’s major cities made it impossible for tens of thousands of supporters from different nations to gather together for a competitive event without the near-certainty of violence. Without that revenue source many of the major clubs collapsed under the crushing debts they had amassed in the pursuit of glory.

Meanwhile Britain’s relative immunity from the crises of the euro counted for less and less. The EU’s implosion acted like an economic black hole, whose gravitational field dragged more and more of its neighbours into the same plunging death-spiral. The first generation of nine-thousand-pounds-a-year students graduated to find that their fees had been wasted: there weren’t any jobs for them to take. Their parents were no better off. As their property values plummeted and their painfully accumulated pensions were rendered worthless, so the respectable middle-classes of suburbia became as angry as the underclasses in the sink estates.

The riots that had seemed like a single, exceptional outburst in the summer of 2011 were now a chronic condition, like a bad cold you just can’t shake off, or a cut that refuses to heal. No one knew where the next bricks and bottle-bombs would be thrown, or which once-peaceful shopping street or housing estate would find itself under siege. But almost every night, something seemed to kick off somewhere, until the festering anarchy became so commonplace that it took an event of exceptional violence — a policeman killed, or a well-known building razed to the ground — for the media even to acknowledge that anything had happened.

National governments were helpless in the face of such unrelenting disorder, and as conventional politics failed to provide any answer to the chaos, siren voices started making themselves heard. They belonged to populists and demagogues promising simple, understandable explanations for the incomprehensible collapse of the old world order. They offered bogeymen to blame and hate; pat solutions to put things right. In their desperation, voters listened to these voices. They longed for strong, decisive leaders who could bring order to the anarchy and make everything work again.

Yet even in the worst of times, whether beset by war, natural disaster or economic collapse, people have to get on with their lives. They strive to find work. They do their best to look after their families. They seek whatever comfort they can in their friends and lovers. And they can always console themselves with the knowledge that the sun still shines, the wind still blows and the world keeps turning, whatever mankind might do…