‘Of course. I would be honoured to receive it.’
Which was the truth. Advice would not be given lightly, or be ignored when offered by a man of such seniority.
Blunt words, the veneer of concern stripped off. ‘You cannot return there.’
‘I am sorry, did I misunderstand you? It is where my wife is-’
A searing interruption. ‘Whether your wife is alive or dead, whether she is happy there, whether she likes to view the water and count mosquitoes is, brother, not of importance. A man of your value should be better protected. You will not go back there.’
This brigadier had been in place for some four months. The Engineer did not know him well. He could not argue, remonstrate or dispute. If she survived, she would be devastated. It was unthinkable that he should challenge a decision by so senior an officer.
‘Of course.’
A wintry smile. ‘I would suggest that if the Americans invade you go to the deepest hole you can find that a fox has dug and settle in it. Hide for as long as you can, and emerge when you have a new identity. If the Americans come, the shockwave will likely bring down the regime of the Islamic Republic. Revolution will rule. Do you watch CNN, brother? You do not. You are good, patriotic and disciplined. I watch CNN and I see the demonstrations in Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz and Mashhad. We attack the websites and the mobile-phone links, but we cannot prevent the images escaping our borders. We can hang people, abuse them and lock them away, but when revolt has taken hold it cannot be reversed. There is an expression, ‘a house of cards’, and I fear that is what we will be. We conceive martyrs, we shoot at unarmed crowds but we do not cow the masses. When their time comes, when our authority is fractured, they will rise up, as the crowds did in the last days of the imperial family. The officials serving the Peacock Throne were shot by firing squad, butchered with knives or hanged in the Evin gaol. If our regime collapses and I am still here, I imagine I will be led out to the nearest streetlight and a rope will be thrown up. I will be hanged, as will most of us gathered here today. We appear invulnerable but strength is often illusory. You, brother – maybe you would be on the streetlight beside me. If the Americans come, brother, how many will face the prospect of a rope over the arm of a streetlamp and will trade information to save their neck from being stretched? What better piece of information to give up than the identity of the man who designed the bombs that crippled the Great Satan’s war effort inside Iraq? An American said once, of Serbs who were hunted and accused of atrocities, ‘You can run but you cannot hide.’ It was a popular phrase. It frightened men, intimidated them. You would be named, I would be named and most of the men in this room would be named.
‘There is, of course, a solution to the problem of regime collapse and vengeance turned on former influential people. I can go abroad. I am authorised to fly to Damascus. Under deep cover I can travel to Dubai or Abu Dhabi. The American consulate in Dubai is in the World Trade Center, and the embassy in Abu Dhabi is located between Airport Road and Coast Street. They would not, if I walked in cold off the street, treat me like a friend, but they would show me respect, and I would avoid the rope suspended from the streetlamp. If you were to take a similar course when you go abroad, you also would be safe from the rope. Could you do that, brother, to save your neck?’
He saw that a trap yawned in front of him.
First there had seemed to be sympathy, then there had been honesty and, last, conspiracy. He was not one of them. He did not wear uniform, and was inside no inner circle. They were military men and he was a scientist in the field of miniaturised electronics. They used him. A trip wire might have lain across his path. If he had snagged it he would have gone into the prepared pit.
The Engineer said, ‘I am completely devoted to the Islamic Republic, its leaders and its future.’
He was rewarded with a smile, slow but broadening.
He went on, ‘I am devoted to my God, my country and my work.’
‘I hope your journey is fruitful, brother. We will be waiting to welcome you home and pray God for the best outcome.’
The brigadier was gone from his side. He realised he had been taunted, also that he had been warned against making unwise contacts outside Iran. He could not remember when, before, he had felt such keen anger towards a senior officer of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. They mocked and threatened him. While they strutted on parade grounds, lined up their men across wide streets, then ordered baton charges or the firing of live rounds to disperse crowds who protested that an election had been stolen, he – the Engineer, Rashid Armajan – had been creating the weapons that defeated an enemy that was a super-power. He could not tell the brigadier to go fuck his own mother because that man had to initial the final authorisation for the journey in search of a consultant. He felt blood on his lip, and realised how hard he had bitten it, how much pain he had absorbed. He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief and hoped no stain remained.
They were called into the next session, and the brigadier did not catch his eye as they went back into the operations area.
Badger had rested, but not slept. He had eaten some biscuit and drunk sparingly, had defecated into a bag and urinated into a bottle. He had done all of that within six inches of Foxy, without disturbing the leaves spread over the hide. He had thought more about the woman in the plastic chair across the expanse of water than he had about Alpha Juliet.
She was still there. She might have moved, or not, in the three hours he had had his eyes squeezed shut while the sun was still crystal bright.
Her children were close to her. Their toys were out. He thought the kids more subdued, less raucous, than the previous day. Once, the girl fell and screamed and her mother did not move, but the old lady came out, waddled to the child, swept her up and cuddled her.
The smell hung rancid between them, around them, with no wind to drift it.
‘Anything happened? Anything said?’
A slight shake of Foxy’s head, insufficient to rustle the dead stuff over him.
‘Nothing?’
The slightest nod.
The flies crowded above them and surged on his hands as Badger lifted his binoculars and adjusted the focus so that he could see the mess of reed leaves and stems where the microphone lay, then sweep on from the bund line to the barracks and a few of the soldiers playing basketball, then across the palm trees. He saw the head goon sprawled on a sunbed, and picked up the house and the kids, then the old lady who banged dust from rugs. He went by the flowerbed, abandoned, and reached the chair.
It annoyed Badger that he had twice asked the question and not been answered, annoyed him that he had felt it necessary to make bare, semi-civilised talk – like it was a weakness in him. He had ticks on his legs – could have been three bites or four. If he scratched hard, broke the surface and drew blood, the itch would be worse. They had to be endured. He would not fidget, give Foxy the pleasure of seeing his discomfort.
He wasn’t proud of himself. He didn’t ask, just pulled the headset from under Foxy’s head covering. To achieve that he needed to get his fingers across Foxy’s face, touch his cheeks, then go up to the crown and drag forward the arch linking the earpieces. His wrist was gripped.
‘On induction courses, do they teach wet-behind-the-ears recruits, rookies, that courtesies matter?’
He had a hold on the headset.
‘If they don’t, they should run one for beginners in basic manners. Fucking ask.’
He didn’t. A stand-off moment. Badger had hold of the headset and Foxy had hold of his wrist. Three seconds, five, ten. Badger let go and Foxy let go, and managed to choreograph it so that neither was the outright winner nor loser. He was given the headset and slotted it under his camouflage covering with small, slow movements. He thought he had lost high ground, which seemed – hard up against his oppo – to matter. What also mattered was his own inadequacy. He could watch the front of the house across the lagoon, and track the movement of the wife, her mother, the kids, the officer and the other guards, but if she spoke, and he was the one on stag, he must break into Foxy’s rest time. It hurt him that he was reliant on the older man, hurt more than the tick bites bothered him.
She was very still.
There were birds on the water in front of her and they fed, ducking and diving. An otter swam close to the main wall of the reeds: the first he had seen that day. He knew otters from the islands off the west coast of Scotland. Only a glimpse, and then it dipped, showing an arched back and a stubby tail.
