A genuine smile spread over Reza Kazem’s lips. Soon he would not need Ghorbani at all.
Major Sassani had kept the information about Nima’s satellite phone call close-hold rather than turn it over to close IRGC detachment. Too much information was lost when it passed between too many ears and mouths. He wanted to pay the girl a personal visit, to hear from her lips where Dovzhenko had gone.
The 324-kilometer journey from Herat to Mashhad via IRGC Dassault Falcon 20 business jet took less time than the drive from the airport to the neighborhood near the Shrine of the Imam where technicians had vectored Nima’s probable location. Sassani arrived less than three hours from the time he first heard of the young woman’s call with the satellite phone believed to be in the possession of the Russian traitor, Erik Dovzhenko.
Though the technicians tracking the phone were unable to get a precise location, it was painfully easy to find Nima’s apartment. The first person Sassani asked, a scowling woman wearing a black chador and carrying a plastic shopping bag, pointed to the alley stairs.
“Har jaa’i,” she sneered. Literally “everywhere,” it was the Persian euphemism for streetwalker or prostitute.
The woman had on a considerable amount of makeup, leading Sassani to think she might be turning in her competition. He’d met and even employed the services of plenty of whores who wore the chador. Promiscuous dress certainly led to sinful behavior, but a scandalous heart often hid beneath conservative clothing. Sassani laughed inwardly at the thought. His own blushing bride was a perfect example of the impurity that could hide under a chador. He was reasonably sure she’d slept with several men before their marriage — but her virginity meant less to him than the connection to the general made possible by their union.
Sassani shooed the woman in the chador away and then stood in the alley, studying the painted staircase. He wondered idly how long ago Erik Dovzhenko’s feet had stood on the worn treads, if Ysabel Kashani had been with him.
The major put a finger to his lips, warning his lieutenant to be quiet as they crept up the stairs.
The door creaked open when they were nearly at the top. A face peeked out. She was small, looking like a child next to the door, young and pretty in the worn-out way that Sassani preferred. A green cotton headscarf was draped over her head but not tied.
“I am just leaving,” she said. She attempted to push the door shut, but the lieutenant bounded up and put his foot on the threshold.
She cursed, threatening to cut off vital parts of the lieutenant’s body if he did not remove his foot.
Sassani smiled serenely. “Let me speak with her,” he said, stepping up. When her eyes turned toward him, he leaned in as if to explain why they were there, and then punched her hard on the tip of her nose.
He followed the punch inside the small apartment. It smelled like a whore’s apartment — tea and makeup and stale cigarettes. Sassani found there was something earthy about the odor that deeply appealed to him.
Prostitutes saw more than their share of physical violence, and were not easily intimidated by it. Sassani had come prepared, and readied a syringe while the lieutenant tied the woman and threw her facedown on the bed. She pressed her broken nose against the sheets, attempting to stop the flow of blood brought on by the punch through the door. The lieutenant put a knee in the small of her back, grabbing her by the hair and yanking sideways.
Sassani found a vein in the side of her neck, not difficult, since fear and exertion caused them to bulge like purple cables under her olive skin. He injected the contents of the syringe, leaving a dot of blood as he withdrew the needle and stepped away. She thrashed for a few more moments, but the lieutenant kept his knee in place.
“Erik Dovzhenko,” Sassani whispered. “Is he coming back?”
“No.”
“Where is he?”
Nima broke like a cheap clay pitcher when the drugs began to take effect, spilling information so fast that Sassani and his assistant had a difficult time keeping up. The mixture of scopolamine and morphine wasn’t exactly a truth serum, but they did induce a state of confused drowsiness that threw the subject off balance, left her feeling out of control — more effective if less rewarding than physical violence.
In less than ten minutes Sassani knew Dovzhenko and the woman had gone to Akbar Children’s Hospital to find where someone lived. She did not appear to know the name of that person. Rather than continue with the interrogation, the major decided it was better to finish here and go on to the next location. The Russian was close enough to smell now. Sassani would find him — and kill him — tonight.
Sassani took another vial from his pocket and filled up the syringe.
“What… what… are you giving me?” The young woman’s speech was slurred as if she were drunk.
Sassani cocked his head to one side. “I’m afraid you’ll need to be an example.”
Tears ran down the young woman’s cheeks, mixing with blood and mucus. “You do not have to worry. I swear it.”
“Oh, we are beyond worry,” Sassani said. “This would have been so much easier had you only answered my questions before I administered the drug.”
Nima’s face screwed into a stricken grimace as Sassani injected the contents of the second syringe into the same bulging vein in her neck.
“But… you… you never… ask me anything… until after you drugged me.”
Sassani sat on the edge of the bed. “I didn’t?” he said. “Funny. I thought I did.” He patted her on the buttocks, giving his lieutenant a conspiratorial nod. “Oh, well. It is better this way. We have what we need and you are nothing but a corruption.”
57
Atash Yazdani answered the door on the first chime, as if he’d been expecting them. He was a slightly built man, with narrow shoulders, stooped by the weight of his son’s illness. He’d not always been so slight. His slacks were bunched behind two new holes that had been punched in a tattered leather belt as he’d lost weight. A collarless white dress shirt hung off his body, the sleeves rolled up over bony forearms. A quintessential engineer, he had a cheap ballpoint pen and three mechanical pencils in his breast pocket. The forelock of his dark hair was pulled upward to a mussed point, as if he’d been clutching it in thought while bent over a desk or table in his tiny apartment.
Dovzhenko had a pang of conscience when he saw the man’s bloodshot eyes.
He’d lost his wife to ovarian cancer, his son was gravely ill. Now they would offer salvation if he would only betray his country.
“May I help you?” the man asked, preoccupied — probably with the vagaries of life itself.
Dovzhenko smiled, hoping the guilt didn’t show.
“My friends and I have news that might help your son.”
One hand on the door, the other on the frame, Yazdani leaned half out into the hallway, looking to see who Dovzhenko meant by “friends.” Ysabel gave a polite bob of her scarf-covered head. The American smiled but kept his mouth shut as they’d planned.
“My son?” Yazdani said. “What do you know of my son?” Hope flashed momentarily in the man’s eyes but faded quickly, too overwhelmed with defeat to stay long.
“May we discuss it inside?”
Yazdani stood and stared for so long Dovzhenko was afraid the American might say something, if only to fill the void. Then the engineer suddenly opened the door and motioned them inside.
The interior of the small apartment was as shabby and sad as the harried engineer’s countenance. Ryan and Ysabel took seats on the tattered sofa, and Dovzhenko, who was to make the initial pitch, took the faded Queen Anne next to the wobbly dining room chair where Yazdani would sit. As per Persian custom, the host brought out tea and a plate of cake, along with a sharp knife to cut it. He apologized that he did not have more to offer.