The Increment (14 page)

Karim Molavi’s door was
open just a crack inside the white building that housed Tohid Electrical Company. Dr. Molavi had left it that way on purpose—neither open nor closed. He worked on secrets, but he was not secretive. That was the message his door told. They had given him less work the past few weeks, and that made him wonder: Did they trust him less? Had they put his name on a watch list? But those were questions you couldn’t think about for very long. They made you weak.

The young scientist repeated to himself the passage from the Koran that the regime took to be its guiding precept.
Amr be marouf, va nahi az monker.
Promote virtue and contain vice. That was what he did every day. He had just turned the idea inside out, supplanting the liars’ definitions with his own. He had to be smarter than they were, every day and every minute. That had always been his protection, that he could see things before the others and process them more quickly in his mind.

Molavi was dressed in his usual white collarless shirt, but without his father’s gold cuff links. He had put them in a box and hidden them in his apartment a few weeks earlier. He wasn’t sure why. The jacket of his black suit was neatly placed on a wooden hanger on the back of the door. He had cut his hair so it wasn’t as thick and lustrous; he had looked too elegant before, he feared. People would notice. And he had let his beard grow. Good grooming for men had become dangerous in recent months. The police were visiting the barber’s shops now, warning not to trim men’s eyebrows or the hairs in their nose. It was against God’s will. When Molavi thought of that, it made the idea of betrayal seem easier. Who could not betray such lunacy—the idea that God commands us to have bushy eyebrows?

On his desk were several articles he had printed out from journals in the West. He was underlining them; yellow ink for information that would be useful for the university institute where he lectured once a week as part of his cover; red ink for information that would be useful for his secret work at Tohid. He walked to the window and pulled back the dark curtain. It was so bright outside; it was another world. The push of the traffic, the babies in prams, taken by their grandmas and nannies for a morning walk. The rich men who lived in Jamaran and the poor men who served them—whose biggest secret, nearly all of them, was the dream of what lay between a woman’s legs.

“Karim?” There was a rap at the half-open door and then a push, and his boss, Dr. Bazargan, entered the room. Dr. Bazargan wore a white coat, as if he were a medical doctor or a laboratory technician. He was stupider than the people who worked under him. That was why they had given him the job.

“May God grant you good health, Director,” said Molavi.

“And to you. Thanks God.” Bazargan hovered awkwardly, unsure whether to stand or sit.

Molavi rose and offered him a chair, but the visitor declined. It wasn’t that sort of courtesy call, evidently.

“People have been asking more questions about you, Karim. I thought I should tell you.”

The young scientist blinked, his eyelashes falling like a curtain.

“What are they asking?” said Karim as confidently as he could manage. “Do they wonder how I do my work? Do they read my papers and wish to discuss them?”

“No, Karim. It is not that. I do not think these people are scientists.”

Molavi remained standing. There was a roar in his ears.

“Who are they, then?”

“They are with the Etelaat, I think. Like the men who came before.”

Molavi understood. The Etelaat-e Sepah. The intelligence service of the Revolutionary Guard.

“And they asked more questions?”

“Yes. They wanted to know things I could not answer. I did not know. I told them they would have to talk with you.”

“They are welcome. My only wish is to serve the revolution and be faithful to the teachings of the Imam. They are most welcome.”

“They will come soon to see you, I think.”

“How soon?”

“Well, Karim, they are here now, actually. They told me to come get you. I am sorry.”

How like Dr. Bazargan this charade was. He could not say the thing itself; he tiptoed up to it. He was almost trembling now. Indeed, he looked more frightened than Karim Molavi, as if something terrible was about to upset his world of privilege here in the Jamaran district. He was not a good liar. He had not embraced his fear and learned to hide in it.

“They are most welcome,” repeated Molavi. He took his coat from the hanger on the door, put it on carefully, and followed Dr. Bazargan out the door.

They put on the
blindfold this time, more to scare Karim than to hide where he was going. When they took it off, he seemed to be in the same walled compound off the Resalat Highway. But this time they deposited him not in the modern wing that looked like an Ikea showroom, but in another building. It was older and darker. Even the light inside seemed to have been pressed and shuttered. The walls of the room were decorated with stern posters of the revolutionary martyrs, and with warnings against the treachery of the
monafequin,
the hypocrites.

Mehdi Esfahani was waiting
for Molavi, tugging at his goatee. He shook Karim’s hand when he arrived, but there was a cold menace in his eyes.

“We meet again,” said the interrogator. “What a pity that is, for you. No jokes this time. No laughs at all. I am sorry, but you have disappointed me.”

“I have done nothing wrong, Brother Inspector. You are mistaken, whatever you think.”

“Do you know why we have summoned you?” asked the interrogator.

“No,” said Molavi. He shuddered slightly at the word “summoned.” It sounded almost like “arrested.” He wanted to protest that it was an outrage, bringing him from his office for no reason. But he held his tongue. Any sort of embellishment would only make him look more guilty.

“Of course you know,” said the interrogator.

Karim kept his silence. He had heard this invitation to self-incrimination before.

“Something is not working in your laboratory, and we want to know why. Some of your colleagues think you are the cause.”

“It is not my fault, Brother Inspector. Truly. We may have problems, it is true. The instruments do not always work. But I cannot tell you why, because I do not know.”

“I do not believe you, Doctor. I have an intuition that you are lying to me, and I am very rarely wrong. But we shall see.”

The interrogator had papers,
from the Tohid laboratories and from other places. The questions were very technical. He wanted Karim to explain the calculations performed by some of the instruments Tohid used. He showed him a list of numbers from the measurements of an oscilloscope operated by Tohid, and then asked him to compare those measurements to ones taken with an identical oscilloscope operated by a university in Britain.

“Do you see any difference, Dr. Molavi?” asked the interrogator.

“Yes, of course. They are measuring different things, so the numbers are different.”

“That is not what I meant, Dr. Molavi. Do you see any difference in the sequence and accuracy of the readings? That is what I want to know.”

Karim looked more closely at the documents. He was breathing a little easier now. His worst fear had not been realized. He had thought that someone would confront him with copies of messages to a foreign website, and that he would be in the torture room before nightfall. But that hadn’t happened.

“There are small discontinuities in measurement,” Karim said eventually. “But I cannot tell whether they are due to what is being measured, or to imperfections in the measuring equipment. I am sorry.”

The interrogator started again with another set of documents. This second set also involved aspects of measurement and testing in Tohid’s work. So much of their work involved computer simulation that it was difficult to establish real effects and the simulation of those effects. Karim tried to explain. The interrogator listened, and then asked more questions. They went on that way for several hours. The interrogator seemed intent on trying to identify something. He gave a hint of what he was after just once, as they were reviewing data provided by a simulation of the triggering mechanism of the secret, monstrous object Tohid was helping to design.

“Is it better than it looks from the measurements, or worse?”

“What do you mean, Brother Inspector?”

“The measurement says that our device will not work. That we are not able to make the trigger work. But do we trust these measurements? Or are they a lie, to make us doubt our success? Which is the way out of this puzzle, I am wondering…”

Esfahani’s voice trailed off, and when Karim asked him again what he meant, he wouldn’t answer.

Molavi requested lunch, but
the man behind the desk said no. Did they think he would be more cooperative on an empty stomach, sitting in an uncomfortable chair behind a locked door? Esfahani continued the interrogation until late afternoon.

“Can I ask you a question, Brother Inspector?” said Molavi finally. He was nearing the point of exhaustion. “What is it that you are looking for?”

“We are looking for lies,” said the interrogator.

“Which lies?” asked Molavi.

“The ones we cannot see. The ones in the machines, which will deceive us without even a whisper. The ones from the scientists who are hiding things. We are at a crossroads, Dr. Molavi. The signs point us in different directions. Esfahan is two hundred and eighty kilometers south of Tehran. Kermanshah is four hundred kilometers west of Tehran. But we do not know if the signs are accurate. Do they point us toward the right places? Do they give us an accurate measurement of distance? Or do they lie?”

“And why do you ask me about this, Brother Inspector?”

“Because I do not trust you.”

“And why is that?”

“That I cannot tell you, my dear Doctor. It is enough for you to know that you are under suspicion.”

Molavi felt a shiver. He shook his head to say that the interrogator was mistaken, then looked into his eyes.

“I have done nothing wrong.” He said it with utter sincerity. But the interrogator just shook his head.

“Khar kose!”
he muttered. Your sister’s cunt. It was a crude remark, out of place even for an interrogator, and it startled Molavi.

“We will have more questions for you another day. Harder questions, I think. Perhaps with harder men asking them. I am sorry. But we must know where the lies are.
Alhamdollah.
It is God’s will.”

The interrogator asked Molavi
if he had his passport. Yes, of course, said the young man. He carried it with him always, as most Iranians did. Just in case. The interrogator asked him to surrender it, for safekeeping. “It will be easier that way,” he said. Molavi asked when his passport might be returned to him, but the interrogator did not answer.

When Mehdi Esfahani was
finished with his interrogation, he left his office in the complex near the Resalat Highway and traveled west toward Karaj. He was driving his own car, and trying to follow the directions he had been given to a villa in one of the new suburbs near Bahonar, where the Quds Force had a training camp. He got lost once, and was late arriving. The shutters of the villa were closed, and there was no answer when he first knocked at the door, so that he thought he had come to the wrong place. But eventually the door opened a crack, and in the shadows Esfahani could see the shards of a ruined face.

The interior of the villa was dark and dusty. The only light filtered in through slats in the shutters that were not quite tight. The dank light, illuminated by these few, tiny beams, made the room feel as if it were underwater, with motes of dust floating in the murky space like plankton. The room had the smell of a stale box.

Al-Majnoun sat down on a worn couch and bid his visitor do the same. He was smoking from something that glowed in the dark with each puff; it was the bowl of a hookah pipe. He offered Esfahani a pipe stem attached to a serpentine cord, but the visitor refused. The sound of the bubbles as he sucked down each breath was like the noise of a deep-sea diver. Al-Majnoun didn’t speak for a minute or so, while he drained whatever was in the pipe, and then he put aside his mouthpiece. His voice had a higher pitch than usual.

“What did he say?” demanded Al-Majnoun. The voice was almost squeaky, as if he had been breathing in nitrous oxide from the pipe instead of smoke.

“Too much, and too little, General,” answered Esfahani.

“Do not tell me riddles, Brother Inspector. Does he know anything? Does he understand why these tests are failing?” The voice was deeper now, as the effect of whatever Al-Majnoun had been smoking began to dissipate.

“I do not think so. If he does, he is a very good liar.”

Al-Majnoun roared an oath and kicked at the pipe in front of him. There was the sound of breaking glass as the bubble chamber shattered.

“Of course he is a good liar, you fool. He is an Iranian. But does he know anything?”

Mehdi Esfahani didn’t know what the right answer was. Was he supposed to suspect this young man of treasonous activities, or was he supposed to clear him? Al-Majnoun gave no clues as to where the truth lay in this most secret investigation, and Esfahani could only guess.

“I think he is guilty of something,” said Esfahani. “I see it in his eyes. They are too proud. They know a secret. Otherwise, if he had done nothing, he would be more afraid. That is all I can report. You will have the transcript of my interrogation tomorrow, and you will see. He knows that the tests are failing; I think he is not unhappy that the tests are failing. But I do not think he knows why.”