grew stronger and the guardians of the faith grew older.
Support for the government was crumbling. The popularity of the nuclear program that was so broad a year ago had succumbed to the pressure of the outside world. Iran’s youth would rather have portable music players and political freedom than strength and faith.
“I’ve known you since you were a child, Mehrak. You have more to say.”
He pondered his words for a moment before speaking. “I am beaten, Excellency.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“Farrokh and his people have an inherent understanding of technology that I can’t replicate.”
“I don’t expect you to personally understand everything, Mehrak — that’s for God alone. What I expect you to do is build a team who can defeat him.”
“How, Excellency? The people with that kind of expertise in our own country are sympathetic to the resistance. I could bring in consultants from outside, but how can I trust them? With the rest of the world and America lined up against us, how can I give someone that kind of access without knowing if they’re being paid by the CIA? No, we can’t outplay him at his own game. There is no barrier I can erect that can stop Western ideas and values from flooding us.”
“But you can stem the tide.”
“Today, yes. Somewhat. Tomorrow? No.”
The confusion on Khamenei’s face was painful to watch. But this had to be done.
“What are you saying to me, Mehrak? That we should give up? That God is powerless against America’s seduction? You should have fired into the crowd. You should have shown the resolve of our faith.”
“Shooting into the crowd was impossible, Excellency.”
“Impossible? Why?”
“Because I can’t guarantee the loyalty of the police and military.”
“If you suspect traitors, find them and arrest them.”
“It’s not as simple as traitors. These men love their country, but many of them come from a new generation — they don’t remember the shah; they weren’t alive during the revolution. They don’t understand what the Islamic Republic represents. What they see is thirty percent inflation, isolation from the rest of the world, and double-digit unemployment. If some of them were to join the protesters, we could be firing the first shots in a civil war.”
“It is Farrokh. If we—”
“It’s not Farrokh,” Omidi said, daring to allow the volume of his voice to rise. “He’s important, but ultimately he’s just a figurehead. Even if we capture him — and I have no confidence that we will — he will have people who can carry on in his name.”
The old man’s confusion deepened, and Omidi once again cast his gaze down. It was hard to see him this way.
“Farrokh is an agent of America, of the CIA. We just have to make people understand that—”
“No one believes it anymore, Excellency. President Castilla has been very clever in his policy of noninterference. The West is responsible — but only through its existence and attractiveness to our youth. There is no direct intervention. And even if there were, it wouldn’t matter. Farrokh portrays himself as a nationalist with no great love for America.”
“You’re telling me I am powerless in my own country, Mehrak.”
“No, Excellency. Not powerless.”
“And what weapon have you left me?”
Omidi once again focused on the cleric. “Caleb Bahame.”
They’d spoken of it before, but Khamenei had been noncommittal.
“The Ugandan.”
Omidi nodded, pulling an envelope from his pocket and arranging the photos it contained on the floor. “The dead white men were killed by Bahame’s people near his camp. The other photos are from an American newspaper article about a training accident that recently killed a group of special forces operatives.”
Khamenei squinted through his glasses. “They’re the same men.”
“Yes, Excellency. The Americans sent them to assassinate or capture Bahame, and when they failed, they lied about the circumstances of their deaths.”
“Then they know something. What?”
“We’re not certain. I don’t believe they understand the potential of Bahame’s discovery, but they soon will. We have to act now or face the possibility of losing our ability—”
“To bring down the Americans and Jews,” Khamenei said, finishing his thought.
“Not just to bring them down, Excellency. To unleash hell on them for all the world to see. To make people remember the terrible power of God.”
The holy man sank into thought a moment. “I want you to go personally.”
“Of course,” Omidi said, hiding his elation at Khamenei’s change of heart and attributing it to the hand of God. As with all great things, this path had significant risks. The rewards, though, were nearly infinite. Nineteen seventy-nine had been nothing. The
22
Jon Smith jogged to the top of the stone stairs and turned toward the pillared building that dominated the University of Cape Town’s lush campus. The craggy mountain that framed the nearly two-hundred-year-old college seemed almost too perfect to be real — a patchwork of gray and green beneath an unbroken blue sky.
The temperature had climbed into the mid-eighties, but a cool breeze coming off Table Bay rippled across the thin cotton of his shirt as he threaded his way through backpack-toting students in search of Dr. Sarie van Keuren.
After a few wrong turns, he found the door he was looking for and entered, scanning the lab for the meticulously groomed Betty Crocker look-alike depicted on the school’s website.
He’d almost decided that she wasn’t there when a bulky young man in a rugby shirt wandered off and revealed the woman behind him.
Granted, all faculty photos had a certain staged quality to them, but they’d taken it to another level with her. In real life, the wavy blond hair was well on its way to winning its fight with the tie trying to contain it. Her face was a slightly sunburned tan that faded into a yellow bruise on her left cheek. The nose that had seemed so regal from the angle the photo was taken hinted at an old injury and was just crooked enough to keep her face from devolving into generic California surfer girl.
She looked up from the clipboard in her hand and he immediately started toward her, hoping she hadn’t noticed him staring.
“Can I help you?” she said in a pleasant African drawl.
“Dr. van Keuren? I’m Jon Smith.”
“Colonel Smith! I was starting to think you’d gotten lost somewhere over the ocean.”
“We spent some time sitting on the tarmac in London and got in a couple hours late.”
He offered his hand and she pumped it energetically, the athletic outline of her body hinted at beneath the flow of her lab coat.
“Well, let me be the first to welcome you to our beautiful country, then.”
“Thanks. And thanks for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice. Every time I ask someone about parasites, your name seems to come up.”
She ignored the compliment. “Never a good idea to refuse a request from the most powerful military in history. USAMRIID, right? A virus hunter from Maryland. I’ve only been to New York and Chicago. I want to go to Montana, though.”
“Being African, you might find it a little cold right now.”
