“Yes, I did. I was starting to change my mind about what I was doing. Now that I think about it, when we met, I was unconsciously changing my mind, looking for someone to share my decision with. I still wasn’t sure that talking with my uncle was the right thing to do. You know, I didn’t want to create a problem for him, like, would he have to turn me in for not keeping my mouth shut? We played tennis and you seemed like a good guy. I thought that maybe I should tell somebody. Alert America, you know? The clincher was the election.”
“You could have gone to the U.S. Interest Section. You could have called me at the hotel.”
Firuz lay back on his mattress with his hands under his head looking toward Steve in the starlit darkness. “Yeah, right. I would have been in front of police interrogators within twenty-four hours. Anyway, I could talk to my uncle. So I opened up, and he could tell I was not happy with this project anymore. It’s one thing to play games with corporations like I did for good pay in California. It’s a challenge. I’m good at it. It’s another thing to cut America’s electronic lifeline. Did I sign up for that? Hell no!”
“What about sending the information you have by email to Washington?”
“It wouldn’t get through Iranian controls. I thought of sending the information to my former business partner in California and asking him to get it to somebody. Even if it got through Iranian Internet screens, I would have been identified as the source in a New York minute. I’m too young to die. My other option was you. So when Hashem asked me to drive you, that was my solution. I would give you the information. Hashem didn’t tell me everything by the way.”
Firuz smiled. “I don’t even know what ‘everything’ means. Well, here,” and he pulled a square plastic CD case from his bag. “I’m sure you can get these CDs to the right people.”
“What are they?” Steve asked hoping Firuz wanted to get the CDs to the proper authorities and not to a publisher or a DJ.
“All the attack codes and Trojan horses and viruses we’re preparing and that are more or less ready to go.”
Steve knew this was what he had come for. The information would help avoid a disaster much more harmful than Pearl Harbor or the 9/11 attacks.
“If I can get myself out of the country, I’ll make sure these reach the right people. Is there a date for this Armageddon cyberattack?”
“ASAP. That means around three weeks. We’re very close. We could pull the trigger now but it wouldn’t be perfect. I thought the other day that we were about to get the “Go” command. Recently, there was a near miss between an American ship and Iranian speedboats in the Gulf. I heard that the Iranian leadership is very frustrated at the U.S. naval presence in their Gulf, in the Persian Gulf. I wouldn’t be surprised if another confrontation causes the date to move up.”
They lay looking up at the stars in silence. Then Firuz said, “You know, Iran is not exactly what I had expected.” He paused, and Steve, whose eyes had begun to close, forced himself awake and waited for him to continue.
“The Iran I came to help is the Iran of Kurosh-e-Kabir, or Cyrus the Great, the leader of the world’s first superpower. The Persian Empire covered two million square miles, from Greece to India. He wasn’t just a military conqueror; he also invented tolerance, way back in the sixth century B.C.”
Steve said nothing but wondered if “tolerance” in the sixth century B.C. meant the same as it did now: “We’ll put up with you even though we know that you’re an inferior being who doesn’t belong here, until we change our minds.”
Firuz continued, “Persia was much superior to the culture brought here with the Arab invasions, and still is. Look at our poets, Jalaladin Rumi and Hafez for example. The Shah made many mistakes but he was Iranian; he cared for the country. The more I learn, the more I believe that the Revolution justified some ways for the excesses and the corruption, became an excuse to destroy the state of Iran and replace it with a platform from which to spread Islam throughout the world.”
Fighting sleep, Steve tried to listen as Firuz went on, “It’s funny. Both the Shah and Khomeini believed it was their divine right to rule. The Shah never claimed to be the temporary representative of the Twelfth Imam who is supposed to return at the end of time—Judgment Day.”
Steve was fully awake now as it dawned on him that Firuz was exploring and articulating, probably for the first time, his motivation, his reconsidered view of the path that his life should take.
“What about Khamenei, Khomeini’s successor. Is he simply pursuing his predecessor’s policies?” asked Steve.
“Good question. No, not entirely. I do know that people from his office, the Office of the Supreme Leader, are in all government and private agencies. Wasn’t that what the Soviet Union used to be like, with ideological commissars? That’s not the Iran of Cyrus the Great.”
A few minutes later, Firuz said, “I’m dead. I’m going to sleep.”
Steve, feeling that sitting in the middle seat all day had probably been the most tiring thing he had ever done, responded, “Let’s talk in the morning.”
He went to sleep, knowing he had to get the CDs to the CIA with the shortest possible delay. That was the only certainty in his mind. His other mental three-by-five cards only had questions.
What were SENTINEL’s Zoroastrian friends able
