“It seems to me that you have made a long journey,” Hamid said, “when a phone call would have sufficed.”
“Ah, but would it have?” Dovzhenko asked. “You do not believe me now. Do you truly believe you would have trusted me over the telephone?”
Ysabel dabbed at her tears with the hijab, wearing it like a shawl now instead of a headscarf. “So you are the one who called my auntie?”
“I am,” Dovzhenko said. “I hoped I could frighten her into being wary when the IRGC made contact.”
Ysabel smoothed the front of her dress with both hands and took a deep breath, composing herself. “One needs no warning to fear the Sepah.” Another tear, certainly not her last, rolled down her cheek.
Redbeard groaned in the corner but remained unconscious.
Dovzhenko nodded toward him. “Smugglers?”
“Yes,” Ysabel said. “You must have passed Fatima on your way in. She traveled seven kilometers on foot just to warn me that some of the local… businessmen… are unhappy with UNODC attempting to get more poppy fields turned into saffron crocuses.” Ysabel sighed, as if this sort of attack happened frequently.
“Smugglers are the least of your worries,” Dovzhenko said. “You have to leave, go someplace the IRGC will not know to look.”
Hamid gave another grunt. “I still do not understand what is in this for you.”
Dovzhenko spoke to Ysabel, ignoring the bodyguard. “Sassani will find you here. I am certain of it.”
Ysabel held up a hand to let him know she’d heard enough. “You have to admit how odd it looks that a person who attends torture sessions in Evin Prison, a person who stands shoulder to shoulder with the Revolutionary Guard at public executions, would make the journey to Afghanistan to warn a woman whom he has never met.”
“I told you,” Dovzhenko said. “He will throw me in prison, too. We have a common problem.”
“I have few friends left in government,” Ysabel said. “But I will return to Iran and straighten thi—”
“Please!” Dovzhenko said, stridently enough to bring Hamid up on his toes. Ysabel waved him down, a master telling her attack dog to remain calm — for now.
Dovzhenko continued, his passion unchecked. “You must believe me. We have to leave now.”
Hamid stepped forward. “We do not have to do anything.”
Ysabel said, “I’m guilty of nothing but being Maryam’s friend.”
“But you will confess to much more,” Dovzhenko said. “Sassani will make sure of that.”
“All right,” Ysabel said. “Say I follow you. Where do we go?”
Dovzhenko stood and looked at her, dumbfounded. “Honestly, I am not sure. I cannot go back. That is certain.”
“Because you can be associated with Maryam?”
Dovzhenko nodded.
“I knew Maryam better than anyone. You told me enough of the story that I can read between the lines,” Ysabel said. “They have evidence that you two were… together the night she was murdered?”
“They will,” Dovzhenko whispered. “Soon enough.”
Ysabel bowed her head for a moment and then looked heavenward, eyes clenched shut, coming to some painful conclusion. She heaved a heavy sigh. “Listen to me. Maryam spoke to me several times of a mysterious gentleman friend. I have had just such a friend in the past who was, shall we say, in your line of work, so I know something about it. What’s more, I’m smart enough to know that if you are a Russian operative assigned to assist the Revolutionary Guard, your coming here will be viewed by your superiors in Moscow as a gross dereliction of duty, if not treason.”
Dovzhenko closed his eyes. “That is true.”
“So,” Ysabel said. “You are running, too.”
“I am.”
“So you wish to defect to the West?”
“I am so exhausted.”
She gave a musing nod. “I take that to mean yes.”
Ysabel leaned against the wall, lips slightly pursed, eyes narrowed in thought. Stress and sadness caused her face to flush as if she were sunburned, making the pale scars on her face and neck contrast more than usual. Dovzhenko couldn’t help but wonder about the corresponding psychological wounds.
He glanced at the Vostok on his wrist. He’d been here less than ten minutes. She would need a time to process, but they had to move.
Ysabel groaned, seeming to come to some decision. “You risked a lot coming to warn me. I am grateful for that. You cannot go back to Russia, and you certainly cannot return to Iran.”
“He could ask the Italians for asylum,” Hamid said. “They are the ones running NATO forces for now.”
“Whatever I do,” Dovzhenko said, “I would prefer to do it from somewhere else. If only to avoid any of Redbeard’s friends.”
“At last you speak some sense,” Hamid said.
The two men followed Ysabel into the front office, where she retrieved a small daypack.
She draped the scarf over her head in preparation to go outside, and then stopped to stare Dovzhenko directly in the face, as if looking at the back of his skull. “Do you just want to run, or would you turn?”
“Turn?” He knew exactly what she meant but wondered if she did.
“Yes, turn. Flip, defect, provide your specific knowledge of what is going on inside the IRGC and Iranian politics to your counterparts in the West.”
A cold chill washed over Dovzhenko. The woman spoke not as an aid worker trying to stanch the flow of opium from Afghanistan to Iran but as one who was intimately familiar with the ways of intelligence services. The scars suddenly made much more sense.
Dovzhenko spoke deliberately. “As you might imagine, in my line of work it is extremely difficult to know whom I can trust.”
“That is true in any line of work,” Ysabel corrected. “At least in things that matter. I know someone who can help us both. He’s kind of a khar,” she said. “But I’m one hundred percent certain that he is a donkey we can trust. I will call him on the way.”
A hundred meters down the street from the yellow building that served as the UNODC office, a Pashtun man lay on the rooftop of a nondescript mud building, rendered almost invisible by the blowing dust. He wore the loose shalwar kameez. A flat pakol hat was pulled down over his brow, held in place with a gray headscarf against the wind. He had no idea exactly how old he was, but he guessed it was somewhere around fifty. Dark, wind-battered features made him appear well over sixty, but with the muscle and stamina of a man who walked for miles back and forth across the border with Iran, accustomed to much discomfort and heavy lifting. A pair of Soviet-era binoculars pressed against his eyes. He’d not yet made the pilgrimage to Mecca and could not claim the wisdom of the gray so his scabby beard was dyed orange red. He was, however, wise enough to know that this new man visiting the Iranian bitch carried himself like a Russian. Years of infidel occupation laid bare the subtle differences in the way Russians and Americans carried themselves. Russians acted as if they owned the world. The Americans simply owned it.
He watched the Iranian woman’s bodyguard come out and retrieve the old van and drive it up in front of the building, obscuring the view of the door.
The small radio with a whip antenna crackled at the Afghan’s elbow.
“Shall we take them now?”
“Hold,” the Afghan said. He hadn’t survived these decades as a smuggler by rushing into things. They’d come to take the woman, but the Russian added a new dimension. An alternative plan began to form in his mind. It would be lucrative but would take some time to set up. This Russian had somehow bested the two men he’d sent inside to take the woman. He could not be underestimated.
The Iranian woman was a thorn in everybody’s shoe. She stirred up trouble with opium producers, made the other women believe they deserved more than they were already given, and walked around a good deal of the time with her hijab cocked to expose half of her head. She was not just a whore but a meddlesome whore. The Afghan would make double the profit, earning from one side to get rid of her and the others who bought her for their pleasure — or to sell again. His tongue flicked out over dusty lips, thinking of all the money.