Encouraged again, Abul put it back in gear.
43
While the vehicles themselves were mostly a decade or two old, the Iranian bus system would put those in many Western countries to shame. Bus lines crisscrossed the nation, and even in the worst traffic were within five minutes of the schedule nearly ninety-five percent of the time. The drivers were friendly, and helpful, even toward foreigners.
The bus Nuri and Flash took was nearly empty, its passengers mainly Tehran residents who worked in one of the large villas near the seashore. They were men mostly, and sat near the front of the bus; even on long distance routes the seats were segregated by gender, with women sitting at the back.
Nuri had the Voice play Farsi voice tapes over and over, until the sentences merged into a singsong that put him to sleep. The next thing he knew, Flash was shaking his shoulder.
“Hey,” whispered Flash in English. “You said we had to get off around here somewhere for the airport.”
Nuri jerked awake, angry at himself. He pulled up out of the seat and ran to the front, flustered.
He couldn’t remember anything in Farsi.
The driver looked at him as if he were a madman.
The word “airport” finally drifted from his mouth. In English.
“Imam Khomeini International Airport,” Nuri said.
The driver put on the brakes. “You missed,” the driver told Nuri, using English himself. “Oh, I am so very sorry. You need the other bus. You go back. Take bus.”
“How far?”
“One kilometer. You go back. I let you off. You fell asleep? Bad. Very sorry.”
Flash followed him off the bus with his bags.
“I’m sorry,” Nuri told him. “I didn’t realize I was so tired. I didn’t sleep in Sudan.”
“No sweat,” said Flash, who’d nodded off for a while on the bus himself. “It’s like a klick this way?”
“The bus we need is, yes.”
“Hey don’t feel so bad,” said Flash, pushing to keep up. Even though Nuri was short, he walked very fast. “One time I was in Afghanistan, right? We were doing this thing — we were flying into this valley where these guys had gotten themselves stuck between two different groups of Taliban assholes. We’re in this big Chinook, right? Anyway, the point of the story is — my lieutenant, he fell asleep and we had to wake him like sixty seconds from the landing zone.”
It was a slight exaggeration, but Flash figured the changes were worth it if they cheered Nuri up.
“That guy, man, he could sleep through anything. He was very cool,” said Flash. “Didn’t help him in the end, though. He got blasted the next time out.”
“That’s a real heartwarming story, Flash.”
“Hey, just trying to cheer you up.”
They made it to the bus stop a few minutes before the bus. The ride to the airport was only a few minutes, but Nuri took no chances of falling asleep this time, sitting forward in the seat and tapping his feet. He felt the energy starting to rev inside.
Imam Khomeini Airport, named after the Revolution’s great leader, was centered around a large, glass-faced terminal building. It was still relatively new, and an easy airport to navigate. What it wasn’t was a good place to wait inconspicuously for someone. There were only a half-dozen vendors in the large hall, and even at the busiest times there were no real crowds to get lost in.
Their bags presented a problem. No one coming to meet someone would bring luggage. Nuri didn’t want to risk leaving it outside, so he decided to go in through the departure area. From there the Voice could help them slip across to arrivals by looking at a schematic of the airport.
They walked in the front door and made a show of looking around to get their bearings. Security had two lines set up to check everyone entering the terminal, one for women, one for men. A handful of men stood on line, waiting for their turn to prove they had no weapons. Nuri had hoped to avoid the security check — generally the checks were farther on, just before the gates — but he had taken the precaution of printing tickets in Baku just in case.
“What do you think?” Flash asked, sidling up to him.
“I think we have to get through the security line. It won’t be hard. Keep your mouth shut as much as possible. Fracture your English. You’re Italian, don’t forget.”
“You had a great time, for an engineer. You like pipelines.”
“You have your passport?”
Flash had exhausted his knowledge of Italian, but it was unlikely the Iranians manning the security check would speak even that.
Both Nuri and Flash had EU passports that said they were from Italy, which was enjoying a spate of good relations with Iran due to a series of oil deals. Those deals were part of their cover; both men carried credentials identifying them as employees of a legitimate company that made and leased derrick and pipeline equipment. The company had recently sent over a thousand people into Iran, and the Iranian media had done several stories on them.
Nuri took the Voice’s command unit out of his pocket and double-clicked the center button, putting it into iPod mode just in case the security people became overly curious. Then he pulled the handle on his suitcase all the way up and wheeled it over to the line.
The guards who worked the terminal could be easygoing to the point of being neglectful. Or they could be excruciatingly thorough. Tonight they were being thorough, forcing each man to open his suitcase and rifle through the contents for them. The man in front of Nuri, an Iranian, had two suitcases with him. He objected to opening either, agreeing to do so only when one of the guards started to do it for him. Even so, he continued haranguing the guard as he undid the locks, growing more and more heated as he went.
Even the Voice had trouble deciphering all of the tirade, translating obscure curse after obscure curse. He was going to be late for his plane. The men had the brains of retarded goats. Holes drilled in their putrid skulls would improve their IQs one hundred percent. And on and on and on.
The guards were not deterred. If anything, the protest made them move more slowly. Each item of clothing was examined. The man’s Koran was opened — by him — and inspected. Even his toothpaste was squirted to make sure it was real.
We’re going to be here all night, thought Flash.
The guard began looking through the man’s second suitcase. He found a bag of mint candies and opened it to try one. This was too much for the passenger, who began stomping his feet up and down.
The guard flipped the candy back into the suitcase and closed it up. Then he grabbed the man’s arm, his companion grabbed the other arm, and together they dragged him, screaming and shouting, toward the security office on the other side of the hall.
Nuri looked at Flash, then behind him at the other passengers. He waited a few moments, then wheeled on past the now empty checkpoint. Flash followed. The rest of the passengers stared at them. Then, one by one, they went through the checkpoint as well.
“You think this is a good idea?” asked Flash.
“Tarid’s plane is landing in two minutes,” said Nuri.
Nuri walked past the check-in counters, again acting as if he were a slightly harried traveler trying to make sure he was in the right place. Then he walked through the corridor behind the counters, sidestepped a rope, and entered a corridor formed by a temporary wall. The path was a shortcut used by employees that would take him to the baggage claim area.
