The Increment (23 page)

He said, “Is it good or ill these signs portend?

When will my earthly life come to an end?

Who will come after me? Say who will own

This royal diadem, and belt, and throne.

Reveal this mystery, and do not lie—

Tell me this secret or prepare to die.”

That was Hakim’s recognition code. A bit of Persian poetry Karim Molavi had sent out of the ether, many weeks ago. If the target didn’t recognize the poetry, then the mission was to be aborted.

The October sun was
low in the sky, almost gone. Soon it would be dark, and it would be dangerous for Hakim to remain on the curb. People would ask questions about a foreign laborer after dark. He looked at his watch. It was nearly six. The ops plan said to wait until six-fifteen and then leave. The minutes ticked by too slowly. Hakim glanced up at every footstep along the sidewalk now, as men and women returned home from work. The few people who looked at him did so with an air of disgust, and one person muttered
“Boro gom sho!”
—Get lost!—but didn’t do anything about it.

At six-ten, Hakim saw a well-built man in a black suit approaching the villa. He was still wearing his sunglasses, even in the dim light of dusk, so it was hard to see his face. He was walking quickly, as if he wanted to get home. As he neared Hakim, he turned onto the concrete walkway that led to the villa at No. 29. Hakim stood and walked toward him.

“Dr. Molavi, I have some poetry I would like you to read,” he whispered in perfect English. “Perhaps you will remember it.”

Hakim’s demeanor had changed in an instant. He now stood tall, with his back arched; all the submissive gestures of the subcontinent had disappeared. His accent was so precisely English, it might have been Professor Henry Higgins speaking.

“A bit of poetry, sir,” whispered Hakim, showing the cover of the Ferdowsi book.

A startled Molavi had taken several steps back toward his home when Hakim spoke his first words. Now he removed his sunglasses and looked the Pakistani in the eye, uncertain what was happening, but wondering, thinking.

“Come here, boy,” said the Iranian, who by now was close to the safety of his doorstep.

Hakim stepped forward, into the shadows, and handed Molavi the book, open to the marked page. Molavi read the passage and shook his head. He muttered a phrase in Persian.
“Gheyre ghabel e fahm.”
It is incomprehensible.

Hakim moved closer, and in a quick motion, brushed the folded index card against Molavi’s hand. The Iranian, despite his fear, took it.

The Pakistani immediately returned to his posture of humility. In a broken mix of Farsi, Urdu, and English, he apologized that he had the wrong house and backed away toward the street. The index card was in Molavi’s pocket now, and in another moment, the Iranian was inside his apartment.

Karim Molavi sat in
an easy chair in his apartment, trying to calm himself. The impossible thing had happened. They had come to him. The tips of his fingers were still tingling from where he had touched the foreigner’s hand. He put the buds of his iPod into his ears and selected some Indian sitar music, hoping that it would calm him, but he couldn’t concentrate.

He looked again at the index card, and the words at the top.
We are working on vacation plans. We will bring the tickets to you.
They had promised that they would come, and now they were here. He read the instructions about where to find the “device,” and saw that they hadn’t specified a precise hour to collect it. “Tonight,” the message said. Molavi decided that he would go right away, before the ministry had time to think or wonder, before any of the neighbors could tell the
basij
about the dirty foreigner on the street after dark, before his own panic began to set in.

He found a leftover lamb kebab in the refrigerator. He put it in the microwave and wrapped it in a piece of bread, but he was too nervous to eat. Reflexively, he took one of the photo albums down from the shelf and looked at a picture of his father as a young man. His father’s eyes were fierce and fearless. Never let them see that you are afraid, his father had told him. Fear is your ally. Embrace it. Do not be afraid of fear, or they will see it.

Molavi found his street atlas of Tehran. He studied the page for Mellat Park until he thought he knew where the location was. He pondered the safest way to get there, and blocked out the route in his mind. The index card was sitting on the table, next to his chair. It was glowing, radioactive, neon white. He took the card into the bathroom and burned it in the sink, and then flushed the ashes down the toilet.

The young man looked at his face in the mirror. The swirl of black hair. The almost-pious beard. The eyes wide with fear and yearning. What was he afraid of? This was his moment. He had dropped his little stone in the water months ago, and the waves had rippled back to carry him away to his “vacation.” His hands were shaking. He extended the palms outward and held them steady. He went to the closet and put on a jacket against the night chill. He buttoned his coat and headed for the door and then, in an afterthought, returned to the pantry and found a small flashlight, which he put in his pocket.

Molavi walked out of his villa. It was a clear night, with only a small crescent moon. Even amid the smog and the lights of Tehran, you could see a few stars. The quickest route north to the park was the Kordestan Expressway, but he decided against that. He walked to the Moffateh subway station, nearly a mile away, and took the train north to the last stop at Mirdamad. He didn’t bother to look for surveillance. They were either following him or they weren’t. He walked a few blocks and then took a taxi to Piroozi Square, just west of Mellat Park. Then he walked, slowly and deliberately, along the southern edge of the park until he reached the pathway that led up to the Martyrs’ Pond. Something like calm had settled over him. He was a young nuclear physicist, lost in thought as he took his evening stroll in the woods. Who could say that it was anything else?

Molavi turned into the
pathway. A young couple was coming out, giggling. The girl was tugging at her manteau, pulling it down so that it covered her bottom. This was where young Iranians went when they couldn’t afford a place to be together. The police patrolled the park for that reason. But surely they wouldn’t pay attention to a solitary man out for a stroll. He walked north, counting the number of benches on his left as he headed up the path. Another swooning couple was cresting the hill. They eyed him warily. Perhaps they thought he was an undercover policeman.

He had a moment of panic when he got to bench number 14 and didn’t see any stand of trees off to the left. Had he miscounted? He walked one more bench, and just over the rise of the hill he saw what might be the grove. It was hard to tell in the nearly moonless night. He turned toward the trees and walked the prescribed fifty paces, trying to make them American steps.

When he reached the trees, he searched for the maple with the chalk mark. In the dark, it was hard to see. He reached for his flashlight but then thought better of it. He examined the trees one by one, his nose almost up against the bark. He heard sounds from the pathway and froze until the footsteps had died away. His heart was beating too fast now; his fear was taking control. He had examined all the trees without finding the mark.

He bit down hard against his lip, to check the fear. He started looking again, and as he examined a tree toward the back of the grove, he at last saw a yellow line, lower on the trunk than where he had first been looking. He grasped the tree as if it were a lifeline and moved to the other side. Crouching now, he felt for a rock that was not a rock. He picked up one, and then a second, and then he touched one that wasn’t stone but plastic. He put it quickly in his pocket. As he stood up, he felt a kind of vertigo. Now he was truly a spy, an enemy of the state. What he had in his pocket was a death sentence.

He made himself take a step, and then another, until he was back on the main pathway. More young lovers were coming down from the lake, and a policeman was following them. Molavi tried to control his fear, and make each twitch and shiver a jolt of strength. The policeman was approaching him. He was a beady-eyed young man with a thick beard, the kind who liked surprising young lovers in the woods. Molavi stopped. His palms were moistening. The policeman was speaking to him. What was he saying?
“Movazeb bashin!”
Be careful! The park would be closing soon. Only one more hour, please.

Molavi looked at the policeman dumbly; then he nodded.
“Hajj agha, nochakeram.”
I understand, officer. Thank you. He turned and walked back the other way, toward the exit. If this policeman was scolding him that it was late, that must mean nobody else was watching him.

Molavi thought about where
to make the call. His apartment was a bad idea; they might have planted a bug there months ago. His office was out of the question. A restaurant or café was impossible. The best place might be right here, in the outdoors. He walked past the Engelab stadium; a few people were milling about, but on the other side, in the formal gardens of the park, it was nearly empty. He found a bench that was secluded, hidden away in the shadows. He sat down and took the plastic rock from his pocket. He twisted it one way, then another, looking for a seam, and then it came open. Inside was a phone. He saw the keyboard and pressed the number “1.” He put the phone to his ear and waited for someone to answer.

Jackie was sitting in
the garden restaurant on the rooftop of her hotel when her special phone rang. She was eating alone tonight. The waiters were off helping another table. She put the phone to her ear and spoke the words carefully, in German, a language she knew Karim Molavi would understand.

“We have come to take you on your vacation,” she said. “Listen to me carefully, and do exactly what I say.”

“Yes,” said Molavi. His hand was shaking as he held the phone.

“Leave work early tomorrow afternoon. Tell them that you are feeling sick. Then go to the Eastern Terminal Bus Station. Go carefully, you understand? Take the bus to Sari, on the Caspian coast. The trip will take about five hours. Don’t tell anyone at work where you’re going.”

“Yes, all right,” said Molavi. He was surprised that it was a woman’s voice giving the order, and speaking in German. But that was the mystery of these Americans. They could assume any form.

“When you get to Sari, book a room in the Asram Hotel in Golha Square. The next morning, go to breakfast in the restaurant. An Arab man will approach you and ask if you are Dr. Ali. He knows what you look like. Ask him for his name, and he will say that he is Mr. Saleh. When he leaves the restaurant, follow him. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said Molavi.

“Repeat it, so that I knew you have it right.”

“Bus to Sari. Asram Hotel. Mr. Saleh.”

“You will be safe soon, my friend.”

Karim Molavi was going to ask where they would go after that, but the phone had gone dead. He quickly put it back in his pocket. He dropped the plastic rock in a pond by the edge of the park. It floated for a moment and then sank, mercifully. As he walked toward the lights of Vali Asr Avenue, he felt as if something were fizzing in his stomach.

The next day, Molavi
went to the nameless white building in Jamaran where he worked. He carried his black leather briefcase in his hand, as always, but today he had filled it with two extra pairs of undershorts, a toothbrush, and a stick of deodorant. As he entered the door and passed beneath the first of several surveillance cameras, he nodded to the receptionist and the security man. This might be the last time he ever saw them.

He walked slowly, almost shuffling, in the manner of someone who was coming down with a bad cold. As he passed through the lobby, he coughed loudly—a percussive sound almost like a sneeze.
“Afiyat bashe,”
said the receptionist. Bless you! She asked if he was okay.
“Zaif,”
he answered.
“Larz daram.”
Weak and shivery.

The receptionist looked at him sweetly, as if she wanted to mother him. Poor boy, she said. He was still a boy here to the older workers—the bright young physicist with the sweep of dark black hair, who kept to himself.

Molavi stopped at the office of the director, Dr. Bazargan, coughing again as he entered the room. He apologized for not shaking the director’s hand, but he didn’t want to pass along any germs. The director nodded sympathetically. He pretended to be busy, but he had little to do. He was a custodian more than a real boss. Dr. Bazargan asked how his research was going, and Molavi said it was going fine. In truth, as the director well knew, he was spending most of his time reading journals these days. They hadn’t given him anything new to do in a month. Molavi coughed again and the director said perhaps he should go home until he was feeling better.

Maybe he would go home later, said Molavi.
“Sarma khordam,”
the young man said, shaking his head at the world’s misfortune, and his own. I’ve caught a cold.

He sat at his desk for more than an hour, reading. First the newspapers, then the science magazines from America. He coughed occasionally, for effect. He turned the pages, past the bright advertisements, reading of the latest discoveries in the laboratories of America. How could it be that this giant cash machine of a country worried or cared about a little, deceitful nation such as Iran? Perhaps the Americans could explain it to him. He closed his eyes and thought of being on an airplane, flying away from Iran to somewhere else. To Germany, perhaps. He thought of the German girl who had befriended him at the University of Heidelberg. “Trudi.” Her breasts were very big. He wished that he had touched them, when she asked. She was even more alluring now that he knew she was a Jew.

He opened his eyes. The morning was almost gone. He coughed again, a spasm that made his throat hurt. What else could he do to cover his tracks? He called his cousin Hossein, the former senior officer in the Revolutionary Guard. He proposed that they have dinner next week. Why not? His cousin agreed and named a day. His voice sounded far off, as if he had already smoked his first pipe of opium for the day.

“Bashe?”
asked Molavi. Are you okay? That was a nice touch. Whoever was listening to the phone call would think that he had been planning ahead, to take care of his unhappy and ill-used cousin from the Pasdaran.

Jackie’s Iranian friend arrived
early that morning at the Aziz Apartment Hotel to collect her. She came downstairs to greet him, draping her arms around him in a way that made the desk clerk and bellman uncomfortable. She would be leaving her room for a few days, she told the desk clerk in her singsong German-accented English. Her friend was taking her to Isfahan, the beautiful town in central Iran that was his ancestral home. She would leave some of her luggage at the Aziz Hotel, to collect when she returned. She took a wad of hundred-dollar bills from her big purse and peeled off two thousand dollars to pay for the room charges so far, which totaled less than half that amount, and to hold the room for when she returned.

The desk clerk said he couldn’t possibly accept so much money, but then he did, quite happily. The bellman loaded two of her Louis Vuitton bags into the trunk of her Iranian friend’s Mercedes, and they left two bags for storage. They got into the beautiful new car; the Iranian opened the sunroof, and as they drove off, the wind blew off her scarf, exposing for a moment that silky thread of blond hair.

Molavi went across the
street to a
kebabi
for lunch, and brought the food back to his desk. He looked so forlorn now that even the security guard at the door, a burly man whose face had been badly scarred in the Iraq-Iran war, told him that he should go home and rest. Perhaps later, murmured Molavi.

They would be relieved tomorrow when he didn’t come to work. He was taking care of himself, they would say, and keeping his germs at home. If they called his home and got no answer, they would think he had gone to the doctor, or even the hospital. And then it would be Friday and the Muslim weekend. It would be a week before anyone really missed him.

He sat at his desk until it was nearly three. He buttoned his coat up tight around his neck as if he were suffering from chills, and then picked up his briefcase and headed out the door. He stopped by Dr. Bazargan’s office but the director was out, so he told the secretary that he was feeling ill and going home. The secretary suggested that he should see a doctor. Molavi said he would do that tomorrow if he didn’t feel better. He shuffled down the hall to the receptionist, who gave him one more piteous look as he gingerly walked out the door.