A gunshot echoed in the tunnel. Steve put his arms on Kella and Farah and forced them down. “How far is the next shaft?” he asked Naurouz urgently.
Naurouz started to move forward again, as he said, “Come! The qanat is built straight and they know it. They don’t even have to aim.”
Another shot rang out.
They resumed their crouched run, Naurouz leading and Farah last, with Steve constantly looking behind to make sure that she didn’t give up.
Several shots ricocheted off the walls past them.
Naurouz stopped abruptly and put his hand against the dirt wall. “I feel a tremor. Hurry, another hundred feet or so! He pushed Kella to the front.
Tremor? As more shots pinged off the rocks in the tunnel walls, Steve crouched further and kept running. But he recalled the earthquake in Tehran. It had only lasted a few seconds. Was this going to be worse?
Steve suddenly flashed back to the avalanche that had killed Vera, his fiancée. Was it his fate also to be buried alive? Had these Acts of God been meant for him? Unconsciously, he breathed more deeply.
Farah had slowed down, and Steve went back to help her. As he put his arm under her shoulders, he felt moistness. He first assumed it was from the water, but then knew he was wrong. Water was not sticky; it was blood.
He helped her to the ladder and pushed her up. Naurouz was now behind him. As they climbed, the walls of the shaft started to crumble. One side of the ladder lost its hold on the vertical surface under their combined weight. Then the earth shook violently, and Naurouz, pushing Steve up in front of him shouted, “Hurry! Hurry!”
They heard screams from the shooters in the tunnel in back of them, screams that were muffled and extinguished by tons of dirt. The clay core of the walls and roof of the tunnel could not withstand the tremendous seismic force. Then an overwhelming sound, like a giant wave, monopolized their senses.
Steve turned and reached for Naurouz as soon as he was on the surface. By grabbing one arm then both, he pulled Naurouz out of the hole just as the ladder was swallowed by the crumbling walls of the shaft, shutting the opening behind them.
Steve took a breath and turned to see Kella leaning over Farah, who was stretched out beside what had been the ventilation shaft.
“How is she?” He asked.
Kella looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “Oh my God! I can’t feel her pulse. A bullet! I think she’s dead!” She looked up at the starlit sky and seemed to stifle a sob.
Naurouz shouted to them to move away from the qanat. Seconds later, dirt and rocks erupted, riding a powerful jet of water. Carrying Farah’s body in a fireman’s carry, Steve ran behind his friends, everyone protecting their heads as best they could. The deadly rain ended suddenly. They stopped and looked behind them. The water jet had given way to a sinkhole. Its gaping mouth growing larger, swallowing whatever was on its widening perimeter.
53. The White House: Oval Office
Dorothea Langdon, dressed in a long pale dress matching her long grey hair, sat facing the president on a chair to his left as, fingers intertwined and hands resting on his stomach, he leaned away from his massive wooden desk in his black leather armchair.
She had requested the meeting out of concern that the president would be too forward leaning, too likely to get engaged, in the events following the Iranian elections. The brutality of the Basij, the militia assigned to control the demonstrators, had already taken the life of a young female student.
The President of France had become the leading voice of the Western World in his outspoken opposition to the primitive methods employed by the Iranian authorities while the American President had kept his distance. Langdon knew that he was being pressured to be more supportive of the demonstrators but she had other thoughts. Her wing of the party had made Candidate Tremaine into President Tremaine. The president would not be in the White House without them and they expected to be listened to.
“Mr. President, if I may be frank, we cannot get involved in Iran’s internal politics. The bottom line is that, when we have elections, the international community of nations pledges to deal with our duly elected officials. They elect a new president, and we’ll have to deal with whoever wins. To go further, to try to influence their vote or their process, is simply hypocritical.”
“Dorothea, I agree with you. I want to make it clear that I will negotiate with whoever is in charge. To say anything negative now would immediately foredoom any chance of talks with the Iranians. On the other hand, our party expects me to stay on the side of human rights. To fail to do so would hurt us in the next elections. We are, after all the party of the people. After my speech in Cairo, I have to appear to be sensitive to the killings that took place during the demonstrations yesterday.”
“Mr. President, we don’t know what is going on in Iran. Our Interests Section is practically closed. The Chargé’s wife, according to the Department, has disappeared. It’s very strange if you ask me. How could she disappear?
“In any case, I don’t recommend overreacting to the information we are receiving from Twitter and YouTube. It could all be orchestrated to make us act in favor of the demonstrators who, for all we know, are very few and not representative of the population. I wouldn’t be surprised if all these messages were being written by Langley.”
She saw Tremaine look at his watch and she said, “My second point, Mr. President, concerns the funding necessary for the so-called Operation RAMPART—another flag waving name invented by
