The next step involved his few allies in the diplomatic corps, who must strike a deal worth kicking the Chinese out for. Sattari did not feel that would be too difficult; the Chinese were not liked, even by the black robes, and they had already brought the country considerable pain. Nor did the Americans want much from Iran, beyond the assurance that they would not help Saddam—an assurance very easily given. Some small thing might move the talks along—an American air crew downed near the border and recovered, turned over after being treated as honored guests.
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With the Chinese gone, Sattari could move on to the third and final phase of his plan—restoring the military, and the air force, to its proper place.
Sattari did not want power in the government. Nor did he necessarily believe that his plans would succeed. Ever the realist, he saw them as fulfilling his duty rather than his ambition. For the alternative—the Chinese, the black robes—meant quasi-servitude, if not death for his country.
And certainly death for himself. The ayatollahs blamed the Americans for Buzhazi’s death. It was possible—
Sattari had flown with them during the early days, and knew their cunning. They had certainly helped foil General Buzhazi’s plans. But it was just as likely that the black robes themselves had killed the general, or at least allowed the Americans to do so.
Sattari did take some satisfaction in the fact that his country’s enemies would be used to liberate it. He hated Iraq beyond rational measure. It was not enough that Sattari’s younger brother died in the Martyrs’ War; the bastard Saddam had killed his mother and father with a Scud missile attack against their city. The day the American President Bush had stopped the so-called Gulf War without killing the dictator even now rated among the saddest of Sattari’s adult life.
The general walked back to his Range Rover, nodding at the driver before getting in. Two other SUVs with handpicked bodyguards sat twenty yards back on the road, waiting. Another was traveling about a quarter mile ahead.
“To Anhik,” he told the driver, using the name of the village near the laser compound. “As planned.”
The driver nodded and silently put the truck in gear.
Sattari turned his attention to the countryside over the course of the next hour, studying the mountains as they shrugged off the last of the winter snow. Ice mingled with 278
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bursts of green. A small herd of animals—goats, most likely—moved along the side of the road, prodded by a pair of young women dressed in heavy peasant garb, except for their boots. As a child, General Sattari had heard stories that made the Kurds out to be demons. As a young man he had looked down on them as ethnically inferior louts. But his experience with them following the Martyrs’ War had shown they were at least as competent and brave as any other Iranian soldier—high praise, in his mind. The fact that his complex at Anhik was staffed pri-marily by Kurds was in fact something of a comfort; he knew the men could not be corrupted by either the Chinese or the black robes.
The two men at the gate waited until they saw him nod before stepping back to let the Rovers pass. They held stiff salutes despite the wind-strewn dirt.
The site had been built during the Shah’s last years, with the intention of constructing a tractor factory; it had in fact been used to construct some mowing equipment but had lain idle for at least two years before Sattari acquired it as one of the air force’s top-secret warehouse sites. It had housed a stockpile of Russian air-to-air missiles. These were now long gone, some expended in the futile Persian Gulf action, and more, Sattari suspected, stowed aboard the Chinese vessels that had sailed from the country after the struggle that brought Buzhazi down.
A debt to be paid, along with many others.
They had started building the laser here nearly eighteen months before, when overtures by the Chinese made it clear that the hills kept it shadowed from American spy satellites. It was not completely bereft of coverage, of course—no place on earth seemed to be—but the Chinese intelligence had made development possible.
The laser had been Buzhazi’s most closely guarded se-
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cret and his prized weapon. It was based largely on plans for the American “Razor,” an antiaircraft weapon which, at least according to the specifications Sattari had seen, was considerably more accurate at a much farther range than his device. Razor was also considerably smaller, and mobile. It wasn’t just that the Americans had better computer technology; they had found a way to propagate the energy beam much more efficiently and with different gases. And their superior manufacturing abilities undoubtedly played an important role.
But his scientists were doing well, better even than they had expected. The laser was housed in a long shed-like building with roof panels that could be slid open to target an aircraft. The mechanism looked as if it had been pilfered from a planetarium—and a sewage treatment plant. Pipes ran in two large circles and from both sides of the plants. Wires crisscrossed thick cables. Computer displays stood in two banks on steel-reinforced tables; more work stations were said to be networked here than in all the rest of Iran, outside the capital.
Sattari, not a particularly scientific man, had been somewhat disappointed on his first inspection. He’d expected to see something more like the devices in the American Star Trek movies. When the inventors described the use of the chemical gases to create a focused beam, they sounded more like cooks than weapons specialists.
Nonetheless, he could not be happier with the results.
His caravan passed a small battery of Hawk missiles and headed toward the main building. Hidden under camo netting, the missiles dated from the Shah’s era, and the crews manning them had never been able to launch one, even in training; they were too precious. Their best protection was stealth and the Americans’ obsession with Iraq. The laser could not be protected against a concentrated air attack, and he had quartered a hundred-odd men 280
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here to guard against the Chinese and black robes, not the Americans, who in any event wouldn’t attack by ground.
Because of the secrecy of the project—and also because some of the scientists who worked here were not as en-lightened about Kurds as Sattari—the soldiers were kept from the main compound by a double row of barbed-wire fence.
Sattari’s vehicle stopped near the underground tunnel that led to the laser shed as well as a bomb shelter off to the side. He liked to start his inspections here, as it allowed him to get into the very heart of the laser shed almost immediately, in effect taking the scientists there by surprise. But today it was his turn to be surprised, for as he got out of his vehicle, two figures stepped from the underground steps. One was Sattari’s commander here, Colonel Kaveh Vali. The other, considerably more ominous though nearly a foot shorter than the colonel, was Shaihin Gazsi, Ayatollah Khamenei’s personal representative to the air force.
Sattari felt the blood vessels in his neck pop as Gazsi approached. Khamenei had shown his considerable disdain for Sattari by appointing a woman to represent him.
“General, I see you have finally arrived,” said Gazsi.
Barely thirty, she seemed to rise above the traditional feminine garb, her veil and headdress fluttering behind her as if struggling to catch up. Her nose might be a half centimeter too long, but otherwise she would be a perfect beauty.
If she weren’t such a bitch.
“And you? Why are you here?” he said. He was, of course, surprised to discover that his secret was no longer secret, though this was the best he could do to hide his shock.
“You will address me with respect,” said Gazsi. “I am the Ayatollah’s representative.”
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His whore, perhaps, though Sattari doubted the old bastard could get it up.
“Why are you here?” he repeated.
“The Ayatollah wishes to speak with you immediately.”
“I am at his service,” said Sattari. “I will leave in the evening.”
“You will leave now,” she said. “My helicopter is prepared for you.”
“I will leave this evening,” said Sattari. He caught the worried look on Colonel Vali’s face. “Or sooner, if my business here is completed before then.”