An antiseptic glow beckoned to a room with walls of blood-smeared tile. It bent his gaze to the floor, away from the bank of bulbs shining down on a hospital bed. An operating theater, he would have thought, but for the thick straps dangling from the railings. A cardboard sign read:
USE OF SALT FOR DECONTAMINATION IS NECESSARY.
“Take off your shoes and socks,” his guard commanded.
The tiles were cool under his bare feet. Given the chance he would perch on this small, safe spot forever. He was shoved into the glare and slammed facedown on the mattress, which smelled of blood and stale urine. The straps were buckled around his wrists and his feet elevated slightly and tied over the rail at the end of the bed. His modest wish was that he had been assigned to a disinterested, impartial torturer, who would not perform as effectively as a zealot.
A man came in treading heavily over the tiles, and walked around the bed. His broad shadow eclipsed the bright light in Darius’s face. Darius stared incredulously at Baraheni, who, preoccupied with other things, did not look back. He was surprised, and yet not surprised, his capacity for astonishment overwhelmed. Had they brought in a trained ape to work him over now, he would only shrug and ask if it was done all the time.
The guards did not order Baraheni about. Darius noticed that he still had on his shoes, black brogans like those he always wore. He rolled up his sleeves, and rubbed his hands over his burly forearms. From a hook on the wall he removed several long strips of electric cable. The way he gripped each piece individually as he measured the degree of flex reminded Darius of an American baseball player deciding on a favorite bat. When he found a length to his liking, he whipped it around his head. The humming sound it made accelerated into a shrill whine, and then a whistle. He examined the cable again, and, still not pleased, used a curved blade to whittle the insulation from the frayed bundles of copper wire at the ends.
What was apparent to Darius was inconceivable; so it followed that everything was a hallucination. Why trust his senses that he was strapped beneath the broiling lights of the whipping bed, when it was as easy to accept he was taking the sun on a tropical beach? Nothing was more real than that—certainly not Baraheni lending his skills to the fanatics.
“They’ve turned you,” Darius said. “How? What tortures were
your
weakness?”
Whistling filled the air, and then the soles of his feet were on fire. The guard jumped on his back and stuffed a filthy cloth in his mouth to catch any screams. The cable lashed out again as he struggled for breath, and white-hot pain ran up his legs and settled in his hips.
“You still don’t understand what I’m doing here?”
He saw Baraheni looking at him with the same measure of disgust he’d had for Rajab when his cellmate tried to teach him the things that were essential to know in Evin.
“… Why there are no answers that will end your agony?”
The cable shrieked in his ears. His legs twitched, but the point of impact was the middle of his back.
“The trick to this,” Baraheni confided, “is to leave you wanting to talk, and still able to. If I had hit you a couple of centimeters closer to your kidneys, you would piss blood for a week and be in no condition to say much of anything. Plenty of trial and error went into perfecting my stroke. You will forgive me if I am rusty. To answer the question of why I have no questions—I’m warming up.”
Darius felt the presence of another person in the room. Baraheni, for all his inventiveness, was a puppet who did not act without guidance. He raised his eyes, but saw only the copper plaits glinting in the light as the cable swung in a widening arc. The skin tearing from his feet was not a hallucination, nor the fire in his legs that flared hotter and brighter until it went out suddenly, and he thought his nervous system had overloaded.
“The perfect means of inflicting pain is yet to be discovered,” Baraheni said. “Even the whipping bed has its drawbacks. After one hundred, one hundred and fifty strokes, the most obstinate man’s legs go numb, and it is wasted effort after that.” The cable came down higher on Darius’s back, and the guard slid off and stood behind Baraheni to watch. “And so secondary areas of sensitivity must be utilized. I can beat you across the shoulders all night, but the pain has nowhere to travel. You might still resist talking.”
Darius’s head bobbed up and down as the cable slashed the nape of his neck; but he was unconscious, and Baraheni was talking to himself.
Opening his eyes in blackness, he feared that he had gone blind. The pressure of the blanket on his back brought tears. Someone was talking to him from far away, though he could feel hot breath in his ear.
“You see, you see—” He recognized the voice as Habibi’s. “I am the only one you can trust.”
When they came for him again he couldn’t stand, and toppled over when he was put on his feet. More guards were called to carry him to the interrogation room.
“It was Leila Darwish who stole the mycotoxins,” Bijan said, “but I do not have to tell you. If she yielded to the entreaties of a foreign power, or the Mujahadeen hypocrites, or if she had reasons of her own, or just went insane, you were in the best position to find out.”
“I was unable to learn,” he answered mechanically.
“That will be examined fully. Leila Darwish was an obedient member of Hezbollah who had prepared for a martyr’s fate. Her defection was an insult to God. I personally blame the Lajevardi woman for turning her head. She was the corrupter who spoiled everything.”
“My investigation did not lead in that direction.”
Bijan leaned across the desk. “There is no alternative explanation. Maryam Lajevardi’s disloyalty is not at issue. Among her lovers was a Russian agent working to deprive the Islamic Republic of a powerful chemical weapon.”
“If you hadn’t killed him, he would have told me where the mycotoxins are.”
“Do you think we are idiots? Maryam Lajevardi had tricked him as she tricked you. He knew nothing. He was eliminated because he had made an obstacle of himself in affording her the protection of his privileged status in Iran. She was playing for higher stakes than a Russian boyfriend and a communal apartment in Moscow. By providing our enemies with the mycotoxins, she hoped to make herself a millionaire many times over.”
“This is the first I’ve heard.”
“Please, spare me your denials,” Bijan said. “It is out of character for the brilliant homicide chief of the National Police to be so badly informed about the subject of a major investigation. We know of the time you spent alone with the Lajevardi woman, that you became her protector after Rahgozar was gone. She drew you into her confidence with the promise of her body and of untold riches. But she would have betrayed you as she betrayed her former comrades, her lover, and her country. Although it is too late to save yourself, you can still tell us about the mycotoxins and earn the gratitude of all good Muslims. Or would you rather I returned you to the mercies of Baraheni?”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know.” Darius heard Maryam’s words, but without her coyness, her charm.
“No?” Bijan pushed back in his chair. “Then maybe you will tell him.”
Darius clenched his teeth, held himself so tight that the muscles in his shoulders went into spasms. The cable, humming softly, spun a long, lazy arc, then crashed against his soles. His body rocked with the impact, and he convulsed against the straps. Pain was an afterthought, what he guessed it must feel like to be consumed gradually by flames.
“You are beginning to show signs of neurological impairment,” Baraheni said. “Nerve tissue does not regenerate once it has been destroyed. You may never be able to walk again.”
“Am I going somewhere?”
The cable screamed in air. “Well, is he?” someone asked. Baraheni dropped his arm, and the cable coiled like a black snake around his ankles.
A cold hand rested on Darius’s shoulders. “You are to be commended on your perseverance, if not your intelligence.” Icy fingers drummed against the quivering muscles, but did not relax them. “SAVAK training has stood you in good stead. It is always gratifying to see someone who puts principle ahead of pain.”
The straps were unbuckled. Darius rolled onto his back and looked up at Ashfar.
“The tragedy in this sorry affair,” Ashfar said, “the tragedy that unites the three of us, is that we did not come together again under more favorable circumstances. We could have restored Iran to its former greatness, saved it from itself.”
“We tried,” Baraheni said.
“Yes, we did. We have nothing to be ashamed of. Do you, Darius? Are you blushing? You’re all red.”
“Why aren’t you dead?” Darius said.
Baraheni laughed. “We owe our lives to you. Without you, we
would
be dead.”
“Dead a long time,” Ashfar said. “Did I once tell you we lost our democratic zeal in our first days back in Teheran? To be precise, it was at the moment of our arrest. We had been betrayed by someone in our organization. The nature of émigré groups is that they are havens for spies.” He picked up the cable, and slapped it repeatedly into his palm. “When we were brought to Evin, the fanatics were in disarray. Their precious mycotoxins had just been stolen, and they were frantic to have them back. Everyone in counterintelligence was executed immediately after the Revolution. And then suddenly here we were. The deal they broached to us was extremely attractive: return the mycotoxins, and we would be allowed to live. Otherwise, you see for yourself how vindictive they can be. We’re pragmatists at heart, Darius—hardly the idealist you are. How could we say no?”
“It can be done.”
“But why? What is in that for us besides an early grave? It’s easier to give them what they want—or to hunt for it.”
“They told you where to look for Leila Darwish,” Darius said.
“They couldn’t find their ass in the dark. All we had to go on was that three girls were missing, and with them the mycotoxins. Through Saeed, we already had turned up Sousan Hovanian. And Sousan knew where Leila was. They thought we were geniuses, bringing such quick results.”
“You mutilated her because she wouldn’t talk.”
“Leila knew less about mycotoxins than we did,” Ashfar said, “less even than you. Her interest was strictly in the heroin. We concluded it was the third girl alone who understood the real purpose of their mission to Afghanistan. Leila was hurt so that Maryam Lajevardi would see what was in store if she didn’t cooperate with us.”
Baraheni had gone away from the bed to scrub his hands in water from a steel pitcher, and now he came back and said, “I was experimenting with infibulation in the old days, but regrettably never had the chance to try it in the field. You would be amazed at the anxiety it creates in women who are threatened with it, the despondency that sets in after the procedure has been performed.”
“Yes, amazed,” Ashfar muttered. “We never got near Maryam,” he said to Darius. “Rahgozar was constantly at her side. But we knew she had received our message through Leila. When Maryam continued to shun us, we went after Leila again. She was near death from an overdose of heroin when we found her. We put a bullet in her head so that our warning could not be missed, and left her body in the courtyard on Saltanatabad, where Maryam would have a good, long look at it. Then Rahgozar took it upon himself to move Maryam out of the apartment. We didn’t know where.
“Still, we were not at a dead end. Sousan, after all, had been to Afghanistan, and we went to her place to ask again about her journey. Her boyfriend was touchy about late-night callers. He misinterpreted what we were there for. Baraheni killed him before he could tell us what we wanted to know. This, you may remember, is a recurring problem with Baraheni, but never mind. Sousan became sulky after that. We had no choice with her.”
Baraheni patted his hands in a fluffy towel and left the room.
“We are not policemen. Our talents are in other areas. Maryam Lajevardi had vanished, and we needed you to locate her. Obviously, we couldn’t tell you why, so we said it was the dope we wanted. The Komiteh had begun pressing us, they thought we were stalling. Then you tracked down Rahgozar, and for my partners and I it could not have come at a better time. You could have taken forever looking for Maryam, as long as there was progress for us to report.”
“But I found her,” Darius said. “The Komiteh doesn’t need you much longer.”
“It infuriated us. What right do you have to put us under this kind of pressure? If we don’t come up with the mycotoxins soon, we will be in the same sorry spot as you are now.”
Baraheni had returned wheeling a cart on which a bulky object was hidden under a white cloth.
“What’s this?” Ashfar asked him.
“Something I picked up on Firdowsi Street.” Baraheni whipped away the cloth from a samovar whose brass urn was badly in need of polish. He started a flame that burned with hard, blue light.
Darius felt the boiling samovar already strapped to his back. Baraheni let some water run out of the spigot onto the back of his hand. “Soon it will be ready.”
“After reasoning things calmly,” Ashfar resumed, “we came to realize what an advantageous position we are in to be this close to the mycotoxins. Who can say what avenues of opportunity will open up when we have them in our possession? Like Maryam Lajevardi, we view them as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to become extremely rich. It would be a pity if Iran does not meet our price. But we have no control over that.”
Darius had not stopped staring at the samovar, which began to emit gray puffs of steam and to chug like a pocket locomotive.
“It’s time,” Baraheni said.
Darius’s chest was hammering with a violence that made torture a secondary concern. Praise Allah, he thought, for small victories. Ashfar produced two glasses from the cart, and polished them with the fluffy towel until the last water blemish had been erased.
“I apologize for not having fine china to serve you,” he said as he filled them. “These will have to do.”
A guard entered with a woman wearing a tattered prison chador. The hood pulled low over her forehead did not conceal masses of blonde hair, the greenish glow of moist eyes.