The Temple Mount Code

43

Miriam woke cold and alone in a dark concrete room. Shackles bruised her wrists and she hung on a chain from a thick metal ring mounted on the ceiling. She could barely touch the concrete floor with her toes, but if she didn’t, her weight made it feel like her arms were slowly being torn from her shoulders. She muffled a cry of agony, not wanting to give her captors the satisfaction of hearing her in pain.

A shadow moved against the wall. She barely made out a man’s form as he knocked on a metal door.

A metal plate slid across an opening, allowing a square foot of hard white light to filter into the room.

‘What?’

‘Tell Colonel Davari the woman is awake.’ Light glinted off the machine pistol slung at the shadow man’s shoulder. Both men spoke Farsi.

Miriam knew she’d been taken by members of the Revolutionary Guard — the language and her surroundings removed any doubt.

She was cut off from Katsas Shavit and the Mossad. All alone in enemy hands. The worst enemy hands, because even more damaging than being a spy, she was a woman.

For long minutes, Miriam hung there with the chains biting into her numbed wrists, her calves and toes ached and cramped from standing on her toes, no relief in sight.

Finally, dead bolts clanked on the door, and it slid out of the way. The sudden blaze of light was so powerful it felt scalding on her eyes. Heart pumping wildly, adrenaline spiking her system and temporarily lessening some of the pain, she watched as the grim-faced man in a Revolutionary Guard uniform strode into the room and stop in front of her. His insignia identified him as a colonel.

‘Miriam Abata, you are in Iran as a spy.’

‘No.’ Miriam wanted to be more articulate, but the frightened animal lurking in the back of her mind exploded out of the darkness and took control. She didn’t want to die. She didn’t want to be tortured. ‘I am a student. I am here to study. I am not a spy.’

The colonel put his hands behind his back and gazed down at her. ‘You are lying, spy.’

‘I am a visiting scholar. Check my passport.’

With insane speed, the colonel backhanded her across the face.

Pain spiked through Miriam’s brain as her head snapped back. She sagged at the ends of the chains and felt the raw fire of the links biting into her wrists. She tried to get her feet under her again as the salty taste of blood filled her mouth.

‘Your passport is as full of lies as you are.’

‘No. I am an Israeli citizen. You must let me go.’

‘We execute spies in Iran. I’m sure your minders told you that before you accepted this mission.’

‘I am a visiting scholar.’ Miriam swallowed blood and felt two of her teeth loosened by the impact. Her face was already swelling, her right eye closing a little. The man hit very hard.

‘Where is the book? We know Lourds found it.’

‘The American professor brought many books. Which book are you—’

Colonel Davari didn’t move as fast this time. He slowed himself intentionally, letting her see it coming. Miriam ducked her head into her shoulder, but in the end, it did no good. He punched her in the stomach hard enough to drive the air from her lungs and make her vomit. The stinking mess ran down her clothes.

Davari gestured to two of his men. ‘Get that off her.’

At first, Miriam thought they were just going to remove the vomit. Instead, they both drew knives. The blades flashed as they yanked at her clothing. Each movement was excruciating to her wrists and calves. Her stomach throbbed from Davari’s punch. They didn’t work carefully. As they cut her clothing from her, various nicks and cuts tracked her body.

They dropped her blouse and pants at her feet in rags. One of them slid his knife between the cups of her bra and pulled. The lacy material parted, and her bra fell to the floor as well, leaving her naked and unprotected except for the gauzy red panties that barely kept her modest.

Another man unwound a water hose from a wheel on the wall. He turned the water on and used the spray attachment to hose her down. The cold deluge felt near freezing and took Miriam’s breath away. She cried unashamedly then and screamed in pain and fear and helplessness. The man directed the stream at her face and forced her to shut up or drown.

Finally, the colonel raised his hand, and the man turned the water off.

Sodden, shaking, her teeth bloody and chattering, Miriam hung at the ends of the chains and hoped the fiery pain in her arms and legs would cause her to black out. Unconsciousness eluded her, however.

Davari stepped back into her face again. ‘Where is the book?’

‘Lourds has it.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You know which book I’m talking about?’

‘The professor brought many books with him. If the book you’re looking for is one of those—’

Davari hit her again. This time blood trickled from her nose. ‘Where is the book?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You’re being a very foolish girl.’

‘I am a visiting scholar. Not a spy.’

‘You are a spy, and you don’t know enough to save your own life. The Mossad will wipe their hands of you.’

Miriam knew that was true. Before she had left Jerusalem, Katsas Shavit had told her that the Mossad could not risk much finding her if she was taken. Miriam had never thought she would be captured. They weren’t doing anything dangerous, nothing that would make them stand out.

Then she realized that Lourds had been right. The men at the airport had been coming for them. Colonel Davari and the Revolutionary Guard had known she and Lourds were coming, and they’d lain in wait. She wondered if they had Lourds, but she didn’t dare ask.

No one would be coming for her. She could only hope that she died soon, and with as little pain as possible.

Davari leveraged a callused finger under her chin and lifted her battered face up to his. ‘You know this is true, don’t you, girl? You know not to cling foolishly to the hope that you will be rescued by your compatriots.’

Miriam didn’t say anything. She knew anything she said to demean him would only be used against her. And it was futile. Mostly she was afraid he would be encouraged to hurt her some more.

‘Do you know how I know you were a Mossad agent?’

She didn’t rise to the bait.

‘Because I know your father was a Mossad agent. He told me so in the final minutes before I killed him.’

A scream erupted from Miriam and carried with it a strength she didn’t know she possessed. Hauling herself up on the chains, she lashed out with a foot, delivering a kick to Davari’s face.

The colonel staggered back, blood trickling from his split lip. Then he clenched a fist and lunged forward, driving it into her face, finally delivering the blessed unconsciousness she was seeking.

Lourds got off the rapid-transit metro with the rush of morning workers. He was frazzled and worn, sick with worry, and still didn’t have a concrete plan for finding Miriam Abata, getting Namati’s al-Buraq, or getting out of Tehran. At the moment, all of those tasks seemed impossible.

The Imam Khomeini Metro Station was located at the junction of Line 1 and Line 2. He skipped the elevator because it was filled with Muslim women who wouldn’t allow a man to ride with them. He’d almost made the mistake of trying to enter the last car on the train earlier. The first and last cars of every train were set aside for women who didn’t want to ride with men.

He took the stairs up the sixty feet to the surface and stepped out into the station’s main area. With all the burqas and hajibs swirling around him, Lourds felt alienated, an obvious outsider in a foreign — and definitely hostile — land.

Hitching his backpack over his shoulder, Lourds crossed the polished floor laid out in a pattern of brown tiles in the midst of white toward the entrance, bypassing the phone banks and cash machines. Even the beautiful Persian artwork on permanent display couldn’t distract him.

He’d spent the night away from the hotel, hanging in cybercafés that didn’t deserve the name because they had limited access to the world. He’d searched for any news of Miriam, but there was none. Nor was there any mention of an Israeli grad student disappearing from the Ferdowsi Grand Hotel.

While thinking desperately, Lourds had considered calling the Tehran police, but they were essentially the Revolutionary Guard, the same people who had ‘disappeared’ Miriam. The United States didn’t have an embassy in Tehran. Neither did Israel. The Canadians maintained ambassadorial relations, but Lourds knew they wouldn’t want to get involved in his current predicament.

He was on his own, and he was hardly an army of one.

Outside, Lourds took a deep breath and gazed out over the square. In the past, the neighborhood had been called the Shah Square. For a time it had been known as Toopkhaneh Square, literally translating into cannon house. Dar al-Funun, Iran’s first modern college, had found a home there during the nineteenth century, and it had been a place where regal state ceremonies had been conducted.

Those glory days were basically over. Protestors often gathered there to rebuke the Ayatollah and suffer the harsh wrath of the Revolutionary Guard and the Basij militiamen. Those brave Iranians standing up for self-government had paid for their courage with blood. Protestors had been maimed, terribly injured, or died there.

The telecommunications building on the south side of the square didn’t even pretend to mimic Muslim influence. It was serviceable and massive, a gray wall that shadowed the square. On the other three sides of the square, small shops and boardinghouses fought for space where the poorer families in Tehran lived.

Lourds felt the heavy despair that filled the neighborhood. He also drew several curious stares from passersby.

In the end, he knew what he had to do. Just as with Miriam, he had to trust someone, and there were precious few in Tehran to trust. But something had to be done. He took his satphone from his pocket and called Reza.

‘Miss Abata was taken from the hotel?’

Across the small café table from Reza, Lourds tried to maintain his calm. ‘Yes.’

‘By whom?’

‘I have to assume it was the Revolutionary Guard.’

For a moment, Reza looked panicked. The reaction made Lourds feel a little better. Anyone who felt threatened by the mere mention of the Ayatollah’s bullies had to be close to being on his side.

‘I shouldn’t be here.’ Reza started to rise from his chair.

Lourds leaned forward and put a restraining hand on the young man’s forearm. ‘Reza. Please. If something isn’t done, I’m certain those people are going to kill Miriam. I need help.’

Reza stood a moment longer, halfway between rising and sitting. Finally, he blew out a breath and sat back down. ‘What have you done that would call the Revolutionary Guard down on you?’

‘Have you heard of Lev Strauss?’

‘Of course. I’ve read many of his proposed peace agreements regarding the Middle East.’

‘You know about his death?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have reason to believe he was killed by the Ayatollah’s death squads because of something he was working on. Now I’m working on it.’

‘This is what you were talking to Professor Namati about yesterday?’

‘Yes. I excluded you because I know that many of the students are spies for the Revolutionary Guards.’

‘And if I am such a spy?’

Lourds shook his head. ‘Then I’m caught, and there’s nothing I can do.’

Reza regarded him in stony silence. ‘Trusting you with my secrets is equally dangerous, Professor Lourds.’

A tremendous weight seemed to drop off Lourds’s shoulders, and he felt like he was in free fall.

‘If you want passage out of Iran, I can take you through the Kurd lands. The way will be harsh, but staying here may well mean your death.’

‘I don’t want passage out of Iran yet.’

‘Then you’re a fool.’

‘I can’t leave Miriam behind if there’s any chance to save her. I got her into this mess, and I need to get her out.’

Reza grinned mirthlessly. ‘You can’t even get yourself out of the city.’

‘I don’t know that yet. What I do know is that I don’t have a prayer of finding Miriam if I’m constantly having to stay out of sight.’

‘I understand. Professor Lourds, there are many of us in Iran who love democracy, but we haven’t yet had the chance to embrace it. We yearn for it. We die for it.’ His face crumpled a little, and his voice turned hoarse. ‘Less than a month ago, my girlfriend Liora was killed by the Basij during a peaceful demonstration. She was an innocent, barely eighteen years old.’

‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

‘As am I.’ Reza’s eyes gleamed wetly. ‘Liora’s death wasn’t for nothing. I won’t let it be for nothing. More and more of us, not just the students, but adults as well, who were once afraid to show their distrust and dislike of the Ayatollah, are standing together. We know we must act against the tyranny of the theocracy in Iran, but at the same time we cannot forget the importance of being good Muslims and being faithful to God.’

‘I understand.’

‘After all these deaths, there are some in the Revolutionary Guard who are beginning to disagree with the Ayatollah. They do so secretly, but we are able to work through them. We can get more information these days. They know change is coming for our people, and they want to be on the right side of history.’ Reza leaned back. ‘If it is not too late, we will help you find Miss Abata. Then we will see about getting you out of Iran.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Just promise me one thing.’

‘If I can.’

‘Whatever it is you are working on, if it will help undermine the Ayatollah’s regime, get it done.’

Thinking of Lev’s murder and now Miriam’s abduction, Lourds nodded grimly. ‘You’ve got my word on that.’