30

TEHRAN, IRAN

Dr. Haydar Abbasi rarely left the base during daylight hours.

He certainly never went home for lunch. But the sun was high as he unlocked the driver’s-side door and climbed into his decrepit Volkswagen Passat. He turned the key and felt the diesel engine roar to life. Then he worked his way out of the parking garage and exited through the heavy steel gates.

Soon the military complex was in his rearview mirror and he was threading through midday traffic, his stomach churning, his temples throbbing. Abbasi cursed himself for allowing more than two full days to go by. Two senior U.S. officials were dead. Scores more Americans were dead or injured. And it would soon get worse. This he knew full well. He also knew he was being watched. They were all being watched. And Abbasi shuddered to think of the consequences if he made a single misstep.

A few minutes later, not thinking clearly, he made a wrong turn and found himself driving past the city square where the bodies of six Iranians dangled from construction cranes. That very morning, they had been executed by hanging for crimes against the state. Abbasi felt his stomach tighten. He could taste the gastric juices in his mouth. He rolled down his window and gulped in the cool November air.

He had no idea what offenses these six people had supposedly committed. Nor had he any idea if they were truly guilty. But it didn’t really matter. The regime didn’t bother itself with such minor details. Iran’s leaders meted out vengeance on whomever they willed. They had already executed 332 people that year, most by hanging. That worked out to more than one execution per day, and there was still more than a month of the year to go.

Tehran was on a war footing. The regime’s spending on war efforts in Syria and Yemen was skyrocketing. The treasury was also pumping huge amounts of cash into arming Hezbollah and rearming Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad after their repeated rocket wars with the Israelis. And of course, they had just spent most of the $150 billion the Americans had given them for agreeing to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (aka the Iran nuclear deal) to buy nuclear warheads from the North Koreans, only to watch that investment sink to the bottom of the East China Sea.

Meanwhile, the economic sanctions the U.S. had reimposed after pulling out of the JCPOA were having a brutal effect. Iran’s economy had already contracted nearly 6 percent, and projections for the coming year were worse. Unemployment was rising, as was inflation —particularly food and gas prices —not to mention the deficit. The value of the rial, on the other hand, was plunging. So were the nation’s foreign currency reserves, and fewer countries were buying Iranian oil and gas. People were suffering. Protests were breaking out all over the country, many of them violent. Yet the already-bloodthirsty regime was cracking down even further.

A feeling of paranoia was palpable within the highest echelons of the regime. Since the Americans had discovered the shipment of the warheads from North Korea, pinpointed the exact ship, and blown it to kingdom come, Iran’s intelligence services were beside themselves trying to figure out how the information had leaked and how to make sure it would never happen again. Only a handful of people at the top knew anything about the warheads, of course. But even low-level employees in sensitive agencies were being forced to take lie-detector tests. Some were disappearing. They simply wouldn’t show up for work, and neither their friends nor families had any idea where they had gone.

Finally pulling up to his efficiency flat on the north side of the city, Abbasi parked in the lot behind his building. He glanced around to see if anyone was following him before exiting the Passat and heading inside. Seeing no one but the doorman upon entering, he took the elevator to the ninth floor and locked himself inside his room. He closed all his curtains before turning on the lights. Then he turned on his stereo, tuned to a government-run radio station playing classical Persian music, and dialed up the volume somewhat louder than usual.

He headed for the walk-through closet that connected the main room, which doubled as his bedroom when he opened his foldout couch, with the bathroom. His heart pounding, he moved aside several suitcases and boxes filled with books and lifted a loose floorboard. There lay the satellite phone he’d been ordered by his handler to use only when absolutely necessary. He grabbed it, powered it up, and dialed the only number he had been given. When a voice answered at the other end, he provided his fourteen-digit clearance code from memory.

“Take this down, every word,” Abbasi said, nearly in a whisper. “I don’t have much time.”