Part 11 (1/2)
Ezra shuddered, as the too-present recollection of Evin Prison strangled him with memories of fear and death.
”Who knows how far the net of hatred may widen?” the man asked. ”Like ripples on a pool, the circle grows and grows. Today they shoot anyone who had close relations with the Shah; tomorrow, perhaps all who knew yesterday's victims. What is to stop them? I will leave this country and never come back, as long as its only law is the mullahs' greed and ambition.”
A silent moment of fearful reflection pa.s.sed before Ezra said, ”Like Scheherazade of One Thousand and One Nights, Alef Laillah, we could tell a thousand and one tales-of sadness, death, and injustice.”
Ezra glanced over the application form he had just completed. Again he stared hard at the question, ”How many people will be in your party?”
He had written a numeral 3 in the blank, after a soul-searching pause. Moosa presumably still had his American visa; Ezra did not want to further alert the Islamic authorities that his son was back in Iran.
Almost daily, the newspapers carried notices about hapless Americans taken hostage when their emba.s.sy was overrun by a student faction of the Islamic fundamentalists. Either the press quoted Khomeini, temporizing his inability to countermand an order given the students by Allah, or they printed stories of the American government fretting and fuming and doing nothing, to the delight of the anti-Western mullahs. And frequently they ran photographs of crowds in the streets displaying violent slogans against the erstwhile benefactors of the Shah. The tide of anti-American opinion had never been so strong or so virulent.
Ezra had decided to apply only on behalf of Esther, Sepideh, and himself. Moosa might travel with them, but he would do so with as little advance notice as possible.
Rising from the small desk, Ezra walked to the emba.s.sy aide. Glancing up, the young man inclined his head toward the consul's chamber.
Ezra laid the completed application on the Swiss consul's desk. The consul, a dapper, middle-aged man with a carefully trimmed goatee, smiled perfunctorily at Ezra and perused his application-the 400th he had reviewed that week.
”Hmm,” he murmured, placing his finger alongside one of the questions, ”this says you have traveled to Switzerland before, on business.” Peering up at Ezra, the consul asked in French-accented Farsi, ”Can you prove this, Aga Solaiman? As you must know, many people are applying for Swiss visas, and we must carefully screen all applicants.”
”Yes, sir,” Ezra responded, placing his pa.s.sport on the desk while saying a silent prayer of thanks that he had done frequent business with Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz Corporation, two large Swiss firms.
The consul nodded slightly, studying the dated Swiss stamps on the pa.s.sport. ”To what city do you and your wife and ... daughter intend to go?”
”To Geneva.”
”You intend to stay for how long?”
”Two days at most.”
”And your destination upon leaving Geneva?”
Ezra paused before answering. Glancing quickly about in habitual caution, he replied, ”The United States of America.”
The consul glanced significantly at Ezra. After his own thoughtful pause, he said quietly, ”As you know, Aga Solaiman, we represent the American interests during these ... these difficult times.”
Ezra nodded.
The consul leafed idly through the stack of applications on the side of his desk before again meeting Ezra's eyes. ”I'm sure you have your own reasons for not applying for American entry visas at this time.”
Again Ezra nodded, silently.
”Do you have a green card?” the consul asked quietly.
”No,” replied Ezra, averting his eyes.
Carefully spreading his fingertips atop Ezra's application, the consul asked, ”Why do you think you will be granted entry into the United States?”
”I ... I have a son who lives there.”
”There is no a.s.surance this will be accepted as a valid reason,” the official warned quietly.
After another silent debate, Ezra asked, ”What about money?”
The consul leaned forward on his elbows, making an arch of his fingertips. ”You must have a minimum of $400,000 in American banks.”
”We have that amount,” Ezra replied carefully.
The consul's eyes widened slightly. ”In American banks?” he repeated.
Ezra looked away, then back. ”It is en route there now,” he said. If this works, he told himself, the money will be enroute to the U.S., so I'm not lying. Not really. He hoped that in convincing himself he would be able to convince the consul.
The official gave a Gallic shrug, arching an eyebrow. ”If it is as you say, Aga Solaiman, you will have no problem.” He reached into the lap drawer of his desk and brought out a large stamp, which he inked from a pad on his desk. With the stamp hovering just above Ezra's pa.s.sport, he glanced up a final time. ”Good luck,” he said, and stamped the pa.s.sport, affixing his signature. As Ezra watched, his heart hammering with exhilaration, the consul repeated the process on the other two pa.s.sports.
Moosa waited in the green Volvo, its engine idling. Nervously, he drummed his fingers on the wheel, his eyes flickering back and forth, now in the rearview mirror, now through the winds.h.i.+eld. The car was completely dark; not even the dashboard was illuminated. They wanted nothing to attract a random glance at a car parked in the darkness of an abandoned alleyway.
Nathan had organized this action. They were parked behind the home of a certain Mullah Hojat who headed one of the revolutionary committees. This particular committee had played a prominent role in the campaign to arrest and confiscate the estates of wealthy Jews and Christians. Nathan and the two with him had been gone perhaps fifteen minutes, stealing quietly away from the car, after checking their weapons and the clips of slugs they each carried.
Sitting in the dark alley, Moosa reflected on the change-unlooked-for and, in his more reflective moments, unwelcomed-which had stolen over him since his return from America. He had come here only to help his parents and sister leave Iran; now he found himself involved in a deadly and probably futile effort to alter the course of the Islamic revolution. When he had flown into Mehrabad Airport, his only concern had been how soon he and his family could be on the next plane West. But now, despite his better judgment, he felt himself drawn slowly but surely into a tangled, dark maze of awful purpose. He could feel the heady wine of conspiracy working deep into his bowels, changing his mind and his will. Since his return to Iran, Moosa had begun a metamorphosis, and what he was becoming, he was not certain. That from which he had originally sought to deliver his family had arisen to claim him as its true son. His father, Moosa knew, moved eagerly toward the gentle, commodious beacon of the civilized West, while he, the westernized, UCLAaeducated son, became an unbridled throwback to some barbaric past, a tame horse loosed into the wilderness.
Why? He couldn't put his finger on the precise moment when the change had begun. His father's arrest had something to do with it, the grinding, impotent rage he had felt at hearing those ignorant, unwashed pasdars haughtily accusing his father of wrongdoing. That and the double injustice done to the Moosovi family had kindled within him a desire to strike out-partly in anger and partly in fear-at the source of the wrong. Nathan Moosovi had been less recruiter than midwife to the birthing of something that was already fighting to emerge from within Moosa. Once the b.l.o.o.d.y, steaming child of his rage was born, he felt helpless to deny it life. Now it fed eagerly and grew apace, suckling eagerly at the thrill of fear, which was becoming addictive, a loved and hated rush of sensation that he dreaded but couldn't deny himself.
Hearing the sudden scamper of feet behind him, Moosa jerked around to see several figures approaching the Volvo at a dead run. A surge of adrenaline tensed his sinews to a taut readiness.
Nathan and the other two yanked open the doors of the Volvo. ”Go! Go!” shouted Nathan before they were inside. Moosa's hands flew to the transmission lever, the headlight switch. As the Volvo squealed away, rifle slugs spattered on the masonry walls beside them, followed instantaneously by the crack! of the pursuers' firearms.
Moosa's foot pinned the accelerator to the floorboard as they raced toward the end of the alley and onto Abbasabbad Street. They were within perhaps fifty feet of the thoroughfare when three pasdars appeared in the opening. As if in slow motion, Moosa saw their arms rising, saw the quick blue-and-white spitting of their pistols.
The winds.h.i.+eld shattered. Moosa heard someone screaming. He fell over in the seat, trying to dodge the hail of death. The Volvo swerved in the narrow alley, slamming against the wall on the right, caroming back toward the center. Raising his head as much as he dared, he aimed the Volvo toward the alley entrance, roaring toward the still-firing pasdars. One of them didn't dodge quite in time; Moosa heard him scream as the front fender of the Volvo clipped him at the knees, rolling him over the hood and roof of the car.
He careened onto Abbasabbad, amid blaring horns and swerving headlights. Air was rus.h.i.+ng through the smashed winds.h.i.+eld; Moosa was covered with green pellets of safety gla.s.s. Only when he had driven perhaps half a mile, madly swerving through the traffic, did he realize that Nathan was slumped against him, blood pouring from a hole in his neck onto Moosa's shoulder.
”Aaron! Manuchehr!” he shouted, panic burning through him like an electric charge. One of the men in the rear roused, looked over the back of the seat, and gasped. ”Nathan-we must get him to a doctor!”
”It's too late,” said the other, who had risen from the rubble on the floor and pressed a hand into Nathan's neck. Shaking his head, he p.r.o.nounced, ”Nathan is dead. Our only course now is to take his body to his family and then get rid of this car, before we are caught.”
Forcing down the gorge in his throat, Moosa drove on into the night, seeking a place where they could stop long enough to a.s.sess the damage. A place where they might have the luxury to grieve. And to plot revenge.
EIGHTEEN.
Esther clasped the folds of the chador about her face as she threaded her way along the crowded sidewalk. Like the other pedestrians, she had to step around and past the rabble of street vendors clogging the teeming walkway. Since the revolution, the Islamic government did not have time to tend to such niceties as business permits or regulation of vendors. In this vacuum of official attention, the hawkers had proliferated to the point where they now ganged constantly along Tehran's busiest thoroughfares, noisily offering their wares to pa.s.sersby-when they were not fighting each other over the prime locations.
As Esther sidled through the mob, she felt the sweat running in rivulets down her back. The perspiration from her cheeks had drenched the folds of the garment, and her nostrils were filled with the smell of damp wool. For the thousandth time, she cursed the hateful black chador and the narrow-minded regime that forced her to wear it.
To her eye, Tehran was now a dirty, vulgar place. Where men once strode proudly in their well-pressed business suits, their silk neckties, and freshly shaved faces, all one now saw were bedraggled fellows in wrinkled, open-collared s.h.i.+rts, shuffling along with downcast faces, as if they sensed the embarra.s.sment of the country. Shoes.h.i.+ne stands, once so prevalent along the sidewalks of Tehran, were a thing of the past. Where once majestic statues of the Shah had stood, gazing serenely down at the people as they went on their way, now one saw ugly, jagged stumps, piled about with the rubble of s.h.i.+te vandalism. Instead of the patrician visage of the Shah painted on the sides of buildings, one now encountered the bearded, turbaned likeness of the usurper, Khomeini. It seemed to Esther that Tehran's pride of appearance had been replaced by statutory uncleanness, as if to be clean and proud was now a sin, another casualty of the Islamic revolution.
Reaching the lee of the building, she paused to make advantage of an eddy in the ma.s.ses of people. The weight of her market basket was beginning to cut painfully into her palm. As she s.h.i.+fted it to her other hand, she felt a touch on her shoulder. Turning, she found herself gazing into the face of a handsome young man.