The persian, p.6
The Persian, page 6
“Hossein—” Roya began.
“He approved it,” Mina cut in. “It’s in your inbox.”
Roya nodded. “I’ll get into it this morning.”
Mina finished her tea, but instead of placing the glass on the tray, she left it on the counter for Roya to clean up. Roya made a note to dump a few glasses of water in her trash can before Mina completed her rounds that afternoon.
Next Roya brought tea to Major Shirazi. His room, one of the largest in the office, was always locked, and she brought the tea regardless of whether he wanted it. A keypad had been installed on the door, and she did not have the code.
Tea tray in hand, she knocked, and called through the door, “Major?”
“Roya, why did you go through so much trouble?” Then the major carefully swung open the door to wave her in. The room—which had been a generous study—included a window but the shades were always drawn. One wall was covered in columns of servers, another by a long desk with six computer monitors, which the major and his team always flipped to blue screen savers when she brought in the tea. After they had denied their thirst, and she had insisted, the major’s two lieutenants accepted. The major wore a headset with goggles. She had wondered what it was, but she knew better than to ask. Indeed, she’d yet to speak a single word to the major that was not about the tea. Today was no different.
The final stop, her favorite, was Hossein’s office. His door was open. He waved her in, asked her to take a seat, have tea with him while they managed the list. She slid his cup off the tray.
“How is Alya?” he asked.
“She is well, thank you. Full of energy. Happy.”
Hossein had not touched her; he had not officially propositioned her. But—and he was doing it right now—from his gaze it was plain how he felt. What she did not know was what he planned to do about it. In her experience he was a decisive man. Direct, clear, respected by the others, including Colonel Ghorbani. And what did she want him to decide?
“A few things for this morning,” he said. “Maybe take notes?”
She fetched a pen and notebook from her office and returned to take a seat in front of Hossein’s desk. A strand of hair had slipped from her hijab; she tucked it back in.
“The colonel is making a trip to Basra next week. He will need twenty million Iraqi dinars before he leaves. Can you get that by Monday?”
“I will handle it today. It will be done.” She scrawled the command, shorthand, on her sheet, and looked up at him with what she hoped was a decisive nod.
Hossein looked at his own notes. “We will need an apartment in Paris, for two weeks, from the ninth through the twenty-third.” Her heart fluttered. Would she travel to Paris? Her hopes had risen so quickly that she might have dared to ask had he not immediately shot them down.
“No prep visit will be necessary. Everything else is sorted. Just be sure that the major has the relevant details. No later than Tuesday morning, let’s say.”
“Certainly.” She was focused on her notes, but her mind was in Paris.
Paris!
More than anything she wanted to see Paris. Or maybe Los Angeles, where one of her uncles lived, but that would never happen. Paris could, one day. She felt a sudden wave of hopelessness, but she tried to brighten her eyes so it would not show.
“The major has neighborhoods in mind. Talk to him before you book anything. Yes?”
“Yes.” Bookings, unlike requests for money—to say nothing of cryptocurrency—were relatively straightforward.
“And let me know if you run into any problems with the crypto for Mina.”
“I had no idea data was so expensive,” Roya said, meaning nothing by it.
Hossein smiled kindly, but he seemed to harden. On the Niavaran compound, questions were not encouraged. They turned officemates to ice.
Hossein said, “When the sellers have stolen it, be it from the police, or their employer, they tend to charge a premium.”
“Of course.”
“Now, in fact, let’s go have a chat with the good major. We can collect his thoughts on neighborhoods. Get a head start.”
They walked back to the major’s room. One of the major’s men answered, ushering them in with what Roya thought was a look of extreme annoyance. Roya hesitated, but Hossein motioned for her to come in, too. The major was standing, facing the bank of servers, wearing the headset. In his hands was a controller with several joysticks. The other men were watching the screens, no longer static blue but bright with color. The view was beautiful—a city from a great height. Then, swiveling: a surrounding countryside of hills, olive groves, and limestone. She did not know where it was, but it was not Tehran. When the camera turned, she glimpsed a golden dome that . . . was it? . . . the sight prickled her arms to gooseflesh. Hossein should not have brought her in here; the major’s men had become tense. Please, she thought, time to go. Hossein was oblivious. She looked down at her shoes and fussed with her blocky manteau.
“Paris, Major,” Hossein said. “We’re going to book it today. You have a location in mind?”
“One moment,” he said, irritated.
She saw Hossein roll his eyes.
“Three,” the major said. “Two. One.”
The major flicked the joystick. One of his men, seated at the computer, said: “Tilt observed at eight-eighteen and twenty-one-point-two seconds local.”
The other one scribbled numbers on a paper. Roya felt sweat gathering on her upper lip. She wanted to leave.
“Three-point-one-second delay,” the one doing the math said. “The cluster is tight at this point. All within a tenth of a second.”
“Good,” the major said. “I’m going to land it.”
“You’re busy. I’ll come back,” Hossein said. The major did not respond. The dome had vanished from view. On the screen she saw a billboard advertising something to do with cars, the message written in a language which she could not read, but, as with the dome, thought she recognized. The knowledge in here was dangerous; she resolved to return only for tea deliveries. She beat Hossein to the door, and when they were out, it clanged shut behind. Shuffling through the hallway, she wiped a finger over the sweat beading on her upper lip and contemplated the blissful experience of working through her list, ignorant of the purpose behind the team here in Niavaran, most of all whatever the major was planning for that strange and lovely city.
CHAPTER 8
Tel Aviv
IN THOSE DAYS King Ahasuerus sat on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan the capital. In the third year of his reign, he made a banquet for all his princes and his servants, the army of Persia . . .
The string on Glitzman’s mask was digging into his ears, the plastic was running with his sweat, and the air was stale with his hot, trapped breath. Tugging it off, he set the mask in his lap so that its face—the bland face of Mordecai—pointed at the synagogue ceiling. The service was dragging. For him, anyway, and by all appearances for Oriana, who was fidgety, all hopped-up on candy. He sighed, and Tzipi shot him a look. Though he was bored, Purim was one of the few services he could tolerate. Glitzman did not believe in God, but could see value in a holiday devoted to reminding everyone of the enduring threat of Persian annihilationism. A bonus: the megillah, in a tip of the cap to Glitzman’s atheism, itself did not once mention God. Earlier in the day, he had tried to arrange a deal in which he would attend the reading and skip out on the carnival in favor of a night working in the office.
“What sort of message would that send Oriana?” Tzipi had scolded.
“The right one,” he’d said. “That history will repeat itself if we Jews are not vigilant, if we’re out drinking at carnivals and toasting the past.” Arik Glitzman’s belief in parties was thinner even than his belief in God.
The look he’d received had been so withering, the debate—most unusual for the Glitzman home—had stopped right there. Tzipi, whose beliefs included both God and parties, and not in that order, had spent the rest of the afternoon drinking wine and baking prune-filled treats for Oriana to pass out to their neighbors.
Drink, the Purim injunction went, until you cannot tell good from evil. Your right from your left.
Well, Glitzman thought, sitting on the bench between his wife and daughter for the evening reading, feeling very agitated, it’s a fucking Tuesday. He figured that half of Caesarea Division would be hungover tomorrow, and they had ops to plan and run, did they not? We’re going to spend a day slamming booze to celebrate our escape from genocide at the hand of a Persian lunatic a few thousand years ago, are we now, even as we inch closer to the same fate today?
Had Glitzman said all of this in the office that morning? He had. Had he been booed, loud as the congregation was hissing and booing now, to drown out the mention of the vizier, Haman? He had. The service, Glitzman saw, was going to dribble along for a good while.
. . . wherefore Haman . . .
“Boo, boo, boo!” shrieked Oriana, who in place of a more traditional Purim mask was wearing a unicorn tiara and a ballerina costume.
. . . sought to destroy all the Jews that were throughout the whole kingdom . . .
Glitzman’s thoughts drifted to Amir-Ali bleeding out in that van; to Qaani’s final cry for mercy . . .
And Haman . . .
“Boo! Boo! Boo!” cried the congregation. Oh damn, thought Glitzman, get on with it.
. . . said unto king Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom; and their laws are diverse from all people; neither keep they the king’s laws: therefore it is not for the king’s profit to suffer them. If it please the king, let it be written that they may be destroyed . . .
A totally unoriginal plotline, Glitzman thought. Were it a movie, it would be part one of a blockbuster franchise—sequels upon sequels upon sequels—and with each installment the director would be forced to ratchet up the gore as compensation for the rehashed, overworked storyline: madman sets out to kill all the Jews. Though, he must admit, the scale of Haman’s threat seemed laughable in comparison to the present circumstance. Caesarea Division had Kurds and a Swedish dentist— there were no assets nearly as well-placed as Esther, who’d been consort to the king. Plus, back then the Persian despot hadn’t gone along with the madness.
. . . And the letters were sent by posts into all the king’s provinces, to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day, even upon the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, and to take the spoil of them for a prey . . .
Glitzman, after a yawn, rearranged his mask. He tuned out for a while, thinking of reasons he might concoct for skipping the parties, and drawing only blanks.
. . . And in every province, whithersoever the king’s commandment and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews, and fasting, and weeping, and wailing; and many lay in sackcloth and ashes . . .
At Oriana’s age, Glitzman’s parents had witnessed this very scene in Poland. Two of his four grandparents had not survived.
. . . Then said the king unto her, What wilt thou, queen Esther? And what is thy request? it shall be even given to thee if it be half the kingdom . . .
Half the kingdom to a concubine? Glitzman smiled to himself. You had to appreciate the historical consistency of this Persian bullshit. Glitzman could recall meeting with an Iranian agent in Istanbul, complimenting one of the guy’s rugs hanging on the wall, and the Persian told him to take it, please, I insist, I insist, I am your servant, it is yours, and Glitzman—who then had been green as could be, this was a hundred years ago—had relented, and his old boss and mentor Zohar had said, after the meeting, are you crazy, accepting that? He insisted, Glitzman said. He kept on insisting. And Zohar said: That doesn’t mean it’s true.
Glitzman tuned back in with Esther’s plea to save her people, the plot twist of hanging Haman on his own gallows, and, finally, the revenge of the Jews against their enemies, which was Glitzman’s favorite act in the story, in no small part because it was near the end.
. . . The Jews had light, and gladness, and joy, and honor. And in every province, and in every city, whithersoever the king’s commandment and his decree came, the Jews had joy and gladness, a feast and a good day. And many of the people of the land became Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them . . .
Glitzman was pretty sure most of the story was not true, but this part? Lunacy. “If such things were possible,” he whispered to Tzipi, “Gazans would be rabbis by now.” He could sense a menacing glare forming even under her Esther mask. He quickly turned away.
. . . Thus the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and slaughter, and destruction, and did what they would unto those that hated them.
Amen, thought Glitzman. Amen.
CHAPTER 9
Jerusalem
WHILE PURIM REVELRY UNROLLED outside, Glitzman’s deputy Meir Ben-Ami and his wife Yael sat in their study in Jerusalem. He was reading a Persian novel, trying desperately to focus over the noise from the carnival, and contemplating whether earplugs might be necessary to properly cocoon. Having abandoned a last-ditch attempt to convince her husband to join a party at her cousin’s, Yael, curled in the chair, was subjecting her notebook to a withering series of venomous pen strokes. Hacking at the paper was more like it.
“You really should go on to the party,” Meir had said. “I’ll be fine here.”
Yael’s reply was a noise that seemed to stay lodged in her throat, the words perhaps too vile to show themselves. Then she fired off what Meir thought was a several-hundred-word message to someone on her phone, so long did she stand there glowering while she typed. Now ensconced in the chair, Yael’s invective had become longhand in that notebook, though still at an impressively blistering pace.
Disengagement, Meir knew, was the surest road to recovery and eventual redemption. Burying himself back in his book, he pinned a lump of sugar in his teeth and raised the small glass teacup gingerly to his lips. They had moved to Jerusalem a few years earlier, suffering the traffic to be closer to his elderly parents. Turned out that in addition to Yael’s frustration with his antisocial tendencies, he was also suffering the neighbor’s dog, a mutt whose barks and howls—a regular annoyance— were now rising above the din of the party.
His flow again interrupted, Meir laid the book on his desk and stepped out the front door, where he listened to the shouts of partygoers, the thump of the music, and the yowls of the damn dog. Outside, despite the noise, his thoughts briefly drifted to wonderment at how close it all was. Israel was so cut off from its neighbors and yet his grandparents’ old home in Aleppo would have been less than a day’s journey, were it still standing.
Though he had not heard his neighbor’s shouts or scolds, the dog had stopped barking.
Meir made his way back to his desk, where the book stood waiting like a cold meal. Yael, still in the chair, had traded her notebook for a novel. Meir opened the small safe under the desk and slid out a trim notebook containing his first attempts at a short story. A work of fiction, at least to Meir’s mind, though he was not sure Glitzman would agree.
Meir had helped kill a lot of Persians—he put the number at fourteen—but lately he had come to believe that the price of walking about without feeling guilt or shame was to write it all down. At first he’d considered going chronologically, and he’d written a few grafs about the day Glitzman had appeared at Meir’s desk and they’d gone for coffee at GREG. Glitzman had explained that he’d been tasked with standing up a group to do things inside Iran, and he wanted someone who was “just the right amount of Persian.” Meir was a lifelong student of Iran, and was afflicted by a strain of Persophilia that had him entering romantic entanglements exclusively with Persian Jews (Yael the capstone), writing his university thesis on the Shahnameh, and joining Mossad to devote his life to targeting Iranians. Meir had been flattered by Glitzman. He still was.
This story took place well before the development of satellite-linked robotic guns of the sort used to kill Abbas Shabani. In those early days of hunting Iran’s nuclear scientists and engineers, Mossad relied on operatives who would glide through Tehrani traffic on motorbikes and smack magnetized limpet mines on the side of the victim’s car during the morning commute. Glitzman liked to call the operations “divine interventions.” Meir’s story concerned the fifth such smiting.
The scientist’s wife had not once been in the car during the entire three weeks of surveillance, and the kill order was clear: no collateral damage. That was what distinguished Mossad from the Qods Force. The Office would not approve an operation that killed a target’s family. Qods would greenlight anything, the more dead Jews, the better.
But that day, as the operative puttered by the scientist’s car and slapped the mine on the driver’s-side door, he saw—too late—that the wife was sitting in the passenger seat. The scientist would die instantly. His wife would nearly die, too, from massive blood loss, but in the end she would only lose her left arm from the elbow down.
Because she had survived, the Office conducted no formal review, and as time went on, the operation was lost to the files and no one in Caesarea spoke of it again. Now Meir was trying to write his story from the perspective of the wife, but as he looked over the first page, he was worried he had no talent for it. The opening lines read a lot like one of his cables.
He was contemplating starting over when he first heard the high-pitched buzz. His brain, fixed on the story, processed the noise first as racket from the festival, then the whine of distant machinery. Yael, he saw, had not even glanced up. Meir took a sip of the now-lukewarm tea, looked out the window, then picked up a red pen and crossed out a few lines of clinical prose. Should he write from the standpoint of the assassin instead? But the thought was interrupted: the buzzing sound was growing louder.
