maybe others.”
“But Ian, you aren’t working for the bank. I am.” Her brow furrowed.
“Right, I asked them the same question. Lucky for me, the insurance policy said ‘Erikka Buhler and Ian Pour Laval, companion’- so they called me.”
“OK,” she said faintly, “I’ll be ready.”
I returned to my room. “Go ahead,” I told the man. “Go to her room. She’s in 411. I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”
“OK, she’ll be taken by another member of our team who’s waiting outside. I’ll bring her over to him.”
I quickly filled a small backpack and waited for Sammy. He arrived sooner than I expected, tapping lightly, and when I let him in, he slipped inside like a shadow. His voice was low.
“Please follow me. And make sure you have your documents and your money.”
He opened the door cautiously and, after checking the hallway, signaled me to follow him. When the elevator arrived, he ducked in and pressed a series of buttons for higher floors. “We’re taking the stairs,” he said brusquely, allowing the elevator door to close behind him. We took them all the way to the ground floor. “Where’s Erikka?” I asked, catching my breath.
“She’s OK. My man is moving her now.”
He used a key card to open a ground-level bedroom, and when I followed him in, I saw that it was empty. He strode across the room to a sliding door, which he thrust open, peering out at the swimming pool. Walking out calmly, as if he were the maintenance man, he motioned unobtrusively for me. I followed him through the bushes surrounding the pool area into the parking lot. A sleepy guard didn’t even raise his head. Sammy opened a car door and I jumped in.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Isn’t this my rental car?”
“Indeed it is. We’ve left a bunch of brochures in your room suggesting that you left early and drove to Mashhad.”
“But I was going to go to Mashhad anyway. How did you know?”
“When you rented the car you told them you were going there. Your shadow was standing right next to you in the line.”
I never bothered asking him how he got my car keys.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I learned to drive a car in Tel Aviv, where drivers fully believe they’re driving tanks, and the Mediterranean hand gestures make steering secondary. I live in New York, where stoplights are informational only, and anarchic taxi drivers set their own traffic rules every minute. But driving in Tehran made those cities look like Des Moines. Nothing had prepared me for the dangers of Tehran traffic in the early-morning hours. Heavy trucks, small cars, motorbikes, and even horse-drawn carts cross through all directions, honking their horns, regardless of any reason or rule. It seemed to be one of the few places in Iran where you could break the law and get away with it. No wonder Tehran ranks at the top of the list of world vehicle-fatality rates. I thought of a saying I’d heard from my driving instructor: “A man who drives like hell is bound to get there.”
Sammy glanced at the rearview mirror. “We’ve got company,” he said. “This time they’re not our men.”
He jerked open the glove compartment and tossed a. 38 gun into my lap. I grabbed it between my fingers. Our car suddenly tilted and stopped. We had been broadsided. Heart racing, I swiveled my head to see what had happened. A small car with what looked like two passengers had hit us. I slipped the gun under my windbreaker and took a better look. The other car wasn’t badly damaged.
Sammy, swearing under his breath, swung open the door and jumped out to examine the car. I heard the shouting, but understood nothing, staying in the car even as a small crowd quickly assembled to watch. Traffic whizzed by, and the Iranians shook their fists, their voices escalating.
With a shrug and an angry gesture, Sammy turned away from them and jumped back into our car. “They’re just con men,” he told me, starting the engine. The damage wasn’t that bad after all. “They stage accidents and try to blackmail unsuspecting drivers. Let’s go.” As he accelerated and pushed through, he nearly ran over one of the men, who was still yelling.
“Better to leave before the police get here,” Sammy explained tersely. “That’ll start a silent bidding war- who’s gonna bribe the cop with more money. We can’t risk that.” He made a left turn into another busy street and maneuvered through commercial areas. After driving for ten minutes in the congested streets, I noticed through the side-view mirror a beige sedan following us. I saw two men in the front seat, but there could have been others in the back seat.
“Sammy, are these guys behind us your men?”
He glanced at his mirror. “Shit. No, they’re the VEVAK. I recognize their car.”
It was a challenge to get through the thicket of jaywalkers, bike riders, and reckless car drivers, but Sammy found a way. Nonetheless, it was a grotesquely slow chase, at no more than ten or fifteen miles an hour. The VEVAK car was about six or seven car distances behind us. Through a quick and abrupt maneuver Sammy managed to pass a big truck, leaving our followers behind it, blocking their view. He continued passing cars on their right and left, stealing quick glances at the rearview mirror.
“I think we lost them,” he said. About two miles later he suddenly turned right into a large unpaved parking lot. “Come on, quick,” he said. “We’ll leave the car here.”
“Are we walking?” I asked, swinging the door closed.
“Not to worry, we won’t be overexerting ourselves,” he said wryly, pointing to a beat-up blue sedan, Japanese made, parked at the corner of the lot. “Jump in, and keep down.” I complied, watching Sammy with head down and eyes raised as he put a hat on and tore off a fake mustache. He started the engine and drove away through the other end of the parking lot, spraying gravel and leaving a cloud of dust behind us.
Keeping my head down, I heard Sammy dial a number and begin speaking in what sounded like Kurdish.
He snapped the phone shut. “They’re on to you,” he said swiftly. “The VEVAK is looking for you all over, including at the airport and train stations. We’ll have to change plans. You can’t leave through the airport, and we can’t smuggle you through the mountains to Turkey-the roads leading to the border are still blocked by snow. We’ll go to Plan B.”
I was lying on the back seat, alternately cursing the secret police, the Tehran city engineers who didn’t bother to maintain the roads, and the lousy car manufacturer who hadn’t managed to engineer a car that didn’t lurch over every pebble. I said nothing. What was there to say?
Thirty minutes of driving felt like eternity. Finally, the car stopped. Sammy got out and I heard a metal gate screeching. Sammy opened my door.
“You can come out now. You’ll be safe here.”
I looked around. We were in an enclosed yard, blocked from the street by a plate-metal gate, surrounded by a high stone wall.
“What is this place?”
“Your hideout until their search cools down or the weather warms up, whichever comes first,” said Sammy with a grim smile. I followed him into the dilapidated building. He produced a key to the wooden door from his pocket, and hinges squeaked as we entered into what looked like a deserted factory, perhaps for textiles. Rusty machines stood idle, like statues sculpted by an avant-garde artist. Remnants of textile bales were piled on the floor. Sammy went behind a huge machine and opened an inconspicuous trapdoor just underneath it.
“Come,” he said when he saw my hesitation.
I slowly went down wooden stairs. He closed the trapdoor above us and turned on the light inside by pulling a cord. I found myself in a spacious, windowless basement, with simple carpets on the concrete floor, a bed with once-clean linen, and a small kitchen with a table and an ancient refrigerator. I also saw a small radio and an old television set, probably black-and-white.
“What is this place?” I asked again. I was wary.
