“You know as well as I why I was allowed to command the Basij instead of being executed, Hoseyn — the Supreme Defense Council was hoping some enterprising young radical Islamist would assassinate me so the mullahs could disavow any responsibility for disposing of me,” Buzhazi said. “There were ten thousand such crazies willing to do it.”
“You made sure any dissenters were eliminated.”
“You’re wrong, Hoseyn — I didn’t have anything to do with the so-called ‘purges’ in the Basij,” Buzhazi said. “What I did was simple: I showed the youth of Iran what real leadership was. I gave the really dedicated kids direction, and I isolated the rest. I turned that organization from nothing more than prowling gangs of murderers and extortionists into a real fighting force.” He shrugged and added, “When the true soldiers realized how badly the radicals and Islamists were hurting their organization, they took action. No one had to order them to clean house. It’s nothing more than natural selection and survival of the fittest.”
“It was a purge, Hesarak — that’s what everyone believes,” Yassini said. “You may or may not have ordered it, but you certainly were the inspiration for the purges, and you did not punish the offenders as harshly as the Supreme Defense Council wished.” It was Yassini’s turn to shrug. “But, because of your record of service and your considerable political connections, you survived anyway…”
“I survived, Hoseyn, because even the deaf, dumb, and blind idiots on the Council saw that my forces did exceptionally good work,” Buzhazi said. “While the Pasdaran and Air Force were busy scratching their crotches and fingering worry-beads, my national guard forces were capturing infiltrators and shooting down American spy drones.”
“They were in the right place at the right time, nothing more,” Yassini said — but he knew that, again, Buzhazi was right: the Basij, what Buzhazi wanted to call the Internal Defense Force, had done some remarkable work in the past few years. Their biggest achievement was setting up an ambush for an American Predator-A spy drone near a nuclear research facility. Buzhazi set the trap, computed when and how the little unmanned aircraft would approach the target area, and set his forces in place at precisely the right moment. It was only a Predator-A, the lowest-tech version of the unmanned remotely piloted spy plane, but the catch yielded lots of valuable data on the plane’s capabilities and systems. Buzhazi’s forces had shot down another Predator-A and uncovered dozens of remote data collection and relay devices in the deserts as well, shutting down a good portion of America’s covert spy network in Iran.
Yassini’s aide came in, bowed politely to Buzhazi, and handed Yassini a memo. Here it comes, Buzhazi said to himself — this whole conversation had been nothing more than a way for Yassini to stall until a decision had been made…“General, the Supreme Defense Council has ordered you to be placed under arrest until the conclusion of its investigation into the attack on Orumiyeh,” Yassini said tonelessly.
“If you have me put in prison, Hoseyn, the investigation will get bogged down and nothing will ever happen except the obligatory rounding-up of the ‘usual suspects,’” Buzhazi said. “Let me, or the members of my staff, lead a special forces team into Iraq and Turkey. It was Kurdish commandos, I know it. It won’t take long to…”
“The investigation is already underway, General.”
“Who is in charge?”
“I am.”
“No, Hoseyn — I mean, really in charge.” The commander-in-chief’s face turned stony with anger. “Listen, General, you have some discretion here. Put me under house arrest — that way I can continue to receive reports and coordinate activities with…”
“That’s not possible right now, Hesarak,” Yassini said. He hit a button on his desk telephone, and his aide entered the office, followed by two security guards with AK-74 rifles at port-arms. “Someone has to pay for what’s happened. There was a major breach of security protocols, and the Supreme Defense Council believes it was a lack of leadership and attention to detail.”
“Sounds like they’ve already made up their minds,” Buzhazi said. Yassini said nothing in reply. Buzhazi knew he had only one chance left. “Listen to me, Hoseyn,” he said, stepping close to the commander-in-chief so he could lower his voice. “Don’t play along with this. Imprisoning me is just a knee-jerk reaction to a much broader problem. Iran is concentrating too much on foreign affairs and neglecting internal and frontier security — you know this as well as I. They’re masking their inept military policies by blaming it all on me.”
“No. There will be an investigation. I will…”
“You know how these so-called ‘investigations’ turn out, Hoseyn — you’ve conducted just as many as I,” Buzhazi said. “The report is dismissed and destroyed as soon as it reaches the Council. The Supreme Defense Council — check that, the mullahs on the Council — have already decided who’s to blame. I’m the scapegoat, nothing more.”
“I will conduct a thorough investigation,” Yassini insisted, “and if it’s shown that you did all you could to prevent the attack, you’ll be exonerated and restored to duty with all privileges.”
“Have you ever known an officer to be returned to full active duty status after landing in prison, Hoseyn?”
“Yes — you.”
“I wasn’t sent to prison, Hoseyn — I was stripped of my rank and privileges and sent to the hinterlands to be killed by young radical Islamists,” Buzhazi corrected him. “Some of the mullahs thought I defended the republic adequately — all the others wanted to see me dead.”
“I think you are becoming a bit paranoid, Hesarak,” Yassini said. “I’ll protect you the best I can, my friend, but sometimes I think you are your own worst enemy. Serve your detention in silence, accept responsibility, appoint one of the Council member’s deputies to take your place, beg for forgiveness, and I believe you will be given a short time in a work camp and then a common discharge. You have served this nation well — they won’t punish you severely unless they find true negligence or criminal misconduct.”
“The deputies serving for the Council are nothing but brainless spoiled rotten sycophants…”
“Maybe you deserve to spend a little time in prison, General — a little hard labor might improve your attitude.” He shook his head and wrote orders on the message he received from the Supreme Defense Council. “You are to be sent to a Bureau detention facility. I’ll see to it that…”
“A Bureau facility?” Buzhazi retorted. This bit of news really scared him. The Edarehe Hefazat va Ettelaate Sepah, or Intelligence Bureau, was the Pasdaran military and internal intelligence agency, run by a Pasdaran two- star general. If the Pasdaran itself was fearsome, the Intelligence Bureau was a hundred times worse, because it was from their intensive espionage and monitoring activities that the Pasdaran derived its power. Even though the Pasdaran itself had been officially merged into the unified military command, the Intelligence Bureau still operated quite separately from the military. “I thought you said you were handling the investigation? Why don’t you assign me to your staff investigation directorate? Why aren’t they handling the investigation if you have been assigned the task?”
“The Pasdaran handles investigations involving possible security breaches inside military units…”
“No, the Pasdaran handles the ‘wet work’ for the mullahs,” Buzhazi interjected. “You might as well just put a bullet in my brain now, Hoseyn. They’ll come up with whatever verdict the mullahs want.”
“Be sure not to say any of that at your deposition, General,” Yassini said, nodding to the guards to take him away.
The Pasdaran headquarters, including their directorates of operations and intelligence, was located at Doshan Tappeh Air Base on the eastern outskirts of Tehran; the heavily fortified installation was also the headquarters of Iran’s air force, air logistics command, and several aircraft maintenance, repair, and modification centers. Buzhazi was taken inside the Pasdaran headquarters compound, a thirty-acre walled fortress on the northwestern side of the air base, and turned over to a very large, burly, bearded jailer who looked as if he lived in the subfloor jails. He was ushered into the central building, down two flights of stairs, and down a long corridor to the detention facility. He was taken past several dozen locked solid steel jail cells to an in-processing room, which had a fingerprint station, desk, computer, stainless-steel examination table, file cabinets — and, Buzhazi noted, sound-deadening tiles on the walls and ceiling.
“Strip, prisoner,” the big jailer ordered after his handcuffs had been removed.
“As you were, Corporal,” Buzhazi said. “You’re speaking to a general officer.”
“I said strip, prisoner,” the jailer growled again.
“My name is General Hesarak al-Kan Buzhazi, commander in chief of the Iranian Internal Defense Forces. You will address me as ‘sir’ or ‘general.’” The jailer reached out to grab Buzhazi, but the general deflected the jailer’s
