Solomon's Gold

CHAPTER 11

In a fifth floor walk-up on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Amin Kazemi was brewing tea in a brass pot on the gas stove. He'd found the pot in an open air flea market on Third Avenue. It was inscribed with designs of flowers and leaves and reminded him of home.

The stove was an old model, with white porcelain handles to control the burners. It had been installed in the early twentieth century, when the area had been popular with newly arrived immigrants. Most of the new arrivals from Iran and the Middle East now chose Long Island or Brooklyn as their destination, but Kazemi was happy that the apartment was located in the hive-like anonymity of Manhattan. It was easy to disappear into the crowd in Manhattan. The last thing Amin and his brother Hamid wanted was to be noticed.

The two brothers had entered the United States through Canada, using passports that identified them as citizens of the UK. The passports were real enough, although the names and addresses on them were not. Those identities were gone. New ones had taken their place.

The apartment had been waiting for them when they arrived in New York. It was adequate, if not especially clean. It was small and sparsely furnished, with a kitchen table and two chairs, a secondhand couch and chair in the living room, and mattresses laid on the floor in the bedroom. Amin left the light on at night, to discourage the cockroaches that resisted all his attempts to exterminate them. He thought of them the way he thought about Jews: vermin, befouling whatever they touched.

The tea was ready. He put the pot and two cups on a metal tray and carried it into the living room, where Hamid sat in the chair reading the Pars Times, the biggest Persian newspaper in America.

Amin sat down and put the tray on a scarred coffee table in front of the couch. He poured a cup and handed it to Hamid.

"Mam'noon," Hamid said.

"Why are you reading that garbage?"

"It is good to know the enemy. Besides, I like the pictures."

Amin sipped his tea. "It would've been better if you had not killed the guard," he said.

"Let's not go through this again. I had no choice. The police were coming, the guard had a gun. What was I supposed to do?"

"I'm not blaming you. I would probably have done the same thing. I'm only saying it would've been better."

"It was just bad luck. Bad luck for him."

"I wonder why Dayoud wanted the document?"

"Better not to ask," Hamid said. "He was pleased, that is all that matters."

The two men sat for a moment, drinking tea.

"I grow tired of waiting," Amin said.

Hamid set his cup down. "It will be a great day, a day the Great Satan will never forget."

"God willing."

"It will take time for their new President to gather all the strings of control together. Now is when they are most vulnerable. He will need to appoint new members to his cabinet. There will be vacuums in leadership. It's a perfect time for this operation."

Amin said, "I long to see my family again. My daughter's second birthday is coming."

"Perhaps we will be home by then."

"Perhaps martyrdom will not be necessary."

"As God wills," Hamid said.