They reached the lab, and Yusef made his way across the space warily, taking a knee in front of Aban. Yusef’s lazy eye was practically doing circles in his head.
“Salaam, my son,” Aban said softly. “You have done Allah’s work here.” When he touched Yusef’s shoulder, the man flinched. Aban threw a questioning look at his brother.
“Yusef likes his solitude. He finds the company of others disturbs his work,” Hashem said hastily.
Yusef got to his feet without meeting Aban’s eyes and gestured toward the cleanroom, where the guidance systems were fully assembled. His black curls, even wilder than usual, bobbed as he swayed his body. He edged further and further from Aban until he was speaking to him from the other side of the room.
Hashem’s jaw tightened; the man’s antisocial tendencies were getting worse.
Aban ended the interview with a chop of his hand. Yusef, now on the other side of the room, jumped at the gesture. “Thank you — Yusef, is it? Your work is much appreciated.”
He muttered to Hashem on the way out the door. “I hope he is a genius, Hashem, because he clearly has problems.”
If possible, the interview with Valerie was worse. For starters, the big Russian, stinking of vodka, tried to hug Aban. They gathered at the window of the cleanroom where Valerie’s alcohol-soaked breath fogged the glass as he spoke. The warheads lay on assembly tables, already packed inside their capsules, ready to be loaded onto the missiles.
Despite the chill of the room, Valerie’s shirtfront was soaked in sweat. He stabbed a finger at the closest warhead, leaving a sweaty smudge on the glass. “That is for my beloved Raisa,” he said. Then he began to cry, mumbling about Tanya and Little Valerie and how much he wanted to bomb the Israelis into oblivion.
Hashem intervened, guiding Valerie back to his desk and the half-empty vodka bottle. Aban’s eyes were wide as saucers as his brother led him back to the cart. They stood for a moment next to the booster sections. Aban rested his hands on the cool white metal; the touch seemed to revive his previous good spirits.
Hashem spoke first. “They are more than they seem, brother. Both are geniuses in their fields… you have seen them at their worst tonight.”
Aban nodded. “I trust your judgment. You know that neither of them can ever go back into society.”
Hashem pursed his lips. He knew it, of course, but he had also grown fond of these two men. Their faults aside, they had given their lives and their talents to make this project successful. The thought of killing them gave him no joy.
“I will do what needs to be done.”
Aban looked at his wristwatch. “May we walk outside before morning prayers, Hashem?”
Hashem watched his brother out of the corner of his eye as he drove to the cave entrance. The disturbing visits with Yusef and Valerie seemed forgotten, and his face had once again taken on a smiling, youthful look. They parked and exited the brightly lit cave through a personnel entrance, after passing through two blackout scrims.
The air of the desert night was chilly after the climate-controlled cave. The moon had set, but once his eyes adjusted, Hashem could see easily with only starlight.
“Do you remember when we found this cave, Aban? With Father?” Hashem said.
Aban grunted.
Hashem drew in a deep breath of the clean desert air, so unlike the dirty atmosphere of Tehran. For once, he didn’t want a cigarette. “It’s like we’ve come full circle. We found this place with Father, now we are using it to set our country back on the right path—”
“Stop with your sentimental blatherings about our father. He was an infidel, an adulterer, a man of loose morals. He worked for the Shah! And when the Shah fell, what did he do? Fled back to Lebanon and started another family, leaving us to fend for ourselves. This is the man you wish to remember? To honor?” Aban hawked and spat with ferocity on the sand before them.
A wave of loss welled up in Hashem, leaving a sour taste in the back of his throat. For a brief moment he longed for the brother who’d spoken with such passion about the discovery of this cave, and Hashem was glad for the darkness that hid the hot flush of shame on his face.
Aban drew a deep breath. “You have done well here, Hashem, very well. The next few months will be pivotal to our cause. Rouhani’s men will win the election, of that I have no doubt, but winning and governing are two different things. Men — even Rouhani’s men — can be bought. I am confident we can control affairs internal to Iran, it is the outside world I am concerned about. America has its own elections within the next year. Think what a coup it would be for a presidential candidate to be able to claim he had removed Iran’s nuclear weapons as a threat to the world.”
He paused, his breath rasping heavily in the dark. “That is where you come in. Israel has always been the one foe we can depend on to derail any possible peace negotiation, but if that snake Rouhani can convince even Israel to talk peace, then we will need to act — and act decisively.”
Hashem said nothing. He knew he should be glad to finally use the weapons he had spent so many years building, but the thought of ending this project made him sad. This cave, these men — as flawed as they were — were the closest thing to a family he’d ever had.
Aban turned back toward the cave.
“Come. Pray with me.”
CHAPTER 35
Hashem directed his driver to pull to the side entrance of Aban’s mansion. The opulence of his brother’s home, the clash between the cleric and the man, always made Hashem uneasy.
Maryam, Aban’s personal assistant, met him at the door. The dark eyes that peered up at him from under her headscarf were bloodshot and worried.
“Salaam, Maryam,” Hashem said. “How is he?”
“Salaam, Hashem.” She gripped his hand in both of hers. “Thank you for coming so quickly. He is in his study.”
Whatever gains Aban thought he had made against Rouhani’s forces over the last year had been swept aside in the previous day’s elections. With a voter turnout of over seventy-five percent, the Moderation and Development Party, led by Rouhani, had devastated the conservative opposition in the Iranian Parliament. Al Jazeera was berserk with the news, holding up Iran as the model of peaceful, democratic change in the Middle East, even further bolstering Rouhani’s reputation in the world and at home. They were already predicting progressive gains in the Assembly of Experts, and that election wouldn’t happen until next March.
Hashem tapped on the heavy carved door of Aban’s study before he let himself in. The room was thick with cigarette smoke and Hashem detected the sharp scent of whiskey. Aban sat in a leather armchair facing away from him, toward the window. The study overlooked the gardens of his home, and beyond that the skyline of Tehran. The first rays of the sun were lighting up the pall of pollution that hung over the city in beautiful tones of red and orange, hiding the ugliness and the poverty and the decrepitude that lay in that jungle of concrete buildings.
“Salaam, brother,” Hashem said. He lit a cigarette, not because he wanted it, but because he needed something to do with his hands.
Aban swiveled the chair around slowly, using his bare toes on the hardwood floor. He was slumped so deeply into the rich leather that his bushy beard touched the belly that domed up under his T-shirt. Dressed only in his underwear, with his scrawny white legs poking out of voluminous boxers, he looked like a sad clown. In his hand, he gripped an empty crystal tumbler.
“Salaam, brother.” His voice was wheezy and weak.
Hashem went back to the door and cracked it open. “Tea, Maryam. And a fresh robe.”