The imagery was so vivid in her mind that she gasped. “Jafar, you must give me that tape. That’s not fair. What do you want?”
“The name of the CIA man. His name and you can have this tape. I need that name now, on the phone.”
“No, I don’t know.”
“You can find out, I’m sure. You have your ways, don’t you, my love.
Give me the name now, and I will destroy the tape.” “But how will I know if you destroyed it?”
When she spoke the words, Elizabeth realized she had just admitted that she knew the name.
Crying, she said, “You are horrible. I can’t do that. I can’t.”
“Your choice. If you give me the name, that will be the end. You’ll never hear of this again. No one will know. You can live your life as if nothing had happened. I’m already beginning to forget. Tell me and get it over with. Or live with the consequences.”
She whimpered but said nothing. She heard Jafar say, “Come on, a little effort, a few seconds more and it is over.”
She cried silently not wanting to give Jafar the satisfaction of hearing her. She took a deep breath, looked behind her to confirm that she was still alone and, in a barely audible voice, said, “Christopher Breton. Burn the tape. I don’t ever want to hear from you again!”
The phone went dead. She looked at it for a moment and put it back on its cradle slowly. She went to her bedroom, closed the door, then hurried to her bathroom and threw up.
44. Tehran: Farah’s Apartment
Steve, Kella, and Farah finished their dinner, cooked by Farah’s maid Zohreh, and were still sitting around the table having coffee. The fragrance of onions, garlic, and marjoram spiced the air.
They had discussed the elections over their meal. Farah hoped and prayed that Ahmadinejad would be defeated but was skeptical that the challenger would be allowed to win. After the vote, both candidates had declared their total confidence of victory. The country was waiting for the official count.
Steve got up to close the door to the kitchen. He came back to his seat and said, “Farah, we’re going to leave Iran, but the airports are most probably closed to us by now. In any case, it’s not worth the risk. We have to assume that the police will track us here one way or the other. I’m sorry. You could leave through the airport now before your name is added to the watch list.”
“I am not surprised,” Farah said. “It was inevitable. I can be ready to leave forever in twenty-four hours. I’d like to wrap up some loose ends, check with the bank, talk to the lawyer, things like that. In any case, even in normal times, flying out commercially is more difficult than you think. First you buy a ticket, usually a couple of months ahead of time. Then you give your passport to the airline which gives it to the government. And you don’t know whether you’ve been given an exit visa until you show up at the airport the day of your flight.”
Steve looked at Kella, frowning slightly, and turned back to Farah, “Okay. You’ll have to come with us. You have about twenty-four hours, but not to tie up loose ends. That’s only going to telegraph our move. Someone else is going to help us. Our first stop is going to be Yazd. What I’d like you to do is tell Zohreh that you’re going away for the next ten days or so to Tabriz. If she is questioned, that’s what she will say. They’ll think we’re trying to leave the country by using the smuggling routes to Turkey. Someone is going to pick us up day after tomorrow at five a.m.”
What he didn’t say was that, since Kella’s nightly transmissions from the hotel had been discovered, her transmissions from Farah’s apartment also would be located. However, since the signal was only a fraction of a second and was not more frequent than once a day, it would take Mousavi’s men time to find the new location. They were on the edge. Yazdi was going to drive them. He hoped that Hashem was not being too optimistic with his timing.
“Farah, remember the pharmacist you told me about a couple of days ago?” Kella asked. “The one who helped some of your father’s friends get out of the country through the Kurdish smugglers’ routes? Could you ask him to make the same arrangements for us, for you, I mean? The police must be aware of him by now. He’s probably one of the information sources that they’ll check with when they hear that we plan to go to Tabriz. Leave a respectful amount of money with him to give the plan credibility. While they look for us to contact the smugglers in Tabriz, we’ll be getting out through another exit. Right, Christopher?” she said using Steve’s alias.
Steve was looking at a map. “Right. Kella will give you money if you need it. On your next message to Headquarters, tell them where we’re going and say that, from Yazd, we’ll head west either to the Iraqi border or to the coast. They have to tell us where their capabilities are best, where they can pick us up. This was not in the plan when I was in Washington. We were going to leave the way we came, legally through the airport.”
“Farah, remember, you’re only packing for a ten-day absence,” Kella said. “No need for your Jean-Paul Gautier dress. Too bad. Nice dress. Use the space instead for good walking shoes. The first impression you want to leave with the counter-espionage people who come here is that you’re coming back.”
“I’ll need to
