Kasem had regained use of the helicopter, despite Maloof’s edict to stay away from it. Things had happened fast in the night while the old man slept. The national order from the Supreme Council to find the murderer of a NAJA officer had given Kasem the license he needed. Maloof couldn’t very well stand in his way now, not with that kind of scrutiny.
When the train had arrived at Tehran in the wee hours of the morning, Kasem had been there with his lieutenants and a thick cadre of armed NAJA officers. The Iranian National Rail train, which had skipped all of its stops until arriving at the capital, was kept sealed as officers searched car by car. Eventually, after finding the dead officer with the bullet through his head, the NAJA men had taken each and every one of the passengers into the station for questioning by the busload. Only Kasem knew it would be a massive waste of time. He kept that knowledge to himself.
It was dawn in Saqqez. The sun was rising toward an overcast, hues of gold light cast beneath a gray ceiling. Kasem was the only passenger. Over the internal microphone, he directed the helo’s crew to land on the dusty soccer field of a secondary school on the outskirts of town.
The captain of the local IRGC garrison who had been charged with the search met him there. He drove Kasem to their operational center, updating him along the way. Kasem kept signaling his comprehension, but struggled to pay close attention. He couldn’t stop thinking of Kasra.
He’d gotten ahold of her before boarding the helo. She’d been in a deep sleep, but the tone of his voice caused the fog to lift quickly.
Without much time, he’d gotten right to the point. Given his position in the security apparatus, he was relatively sure their communication was secure. He’d done a secret internal search for any record of surveillance on Kasra and, thankfully, come up empty. He’d gone to great lengths to conceal their relationship. But who knew if he’d actually succeeded?
“Get to your aunt’s house up north,” he’d said when he was sure she was really awake. “Right away. Tell them you’re sick at work, but tell no one where you’re going. Tell no one about us. Get a different phone. Use cash—make sure no one can follow you in your travels. Stay with your aunt until you hear from me.” He realized how crazy he must have sounded.
“Kasem, you’re out of your head. What’s going on?”
“Kasra, azizam, you know who I am. You know what I am. You must. Believe me when I tell you, you need to go. Today. Please, Kasra, my azizam, please.”
The pleading went this way for a while. Eventually she relented, nominally at least. She’d grown up in a police state where she’d seen others rounded up by the police, only to disappear. Though she didn’t yet understand the circumstances, she understood the stakes. But a part of him worried she might not have taken him seriously enough. He’d texted again before the helo soared out of range over Tehran, assuring her that he was completely sincere, a matter of life and death. She hadn’t replied immediately, and then he’d lost the cell service as the aircraft rose above the cell towers. The entire flight west, he’d wondered what she must have been thinking of him.
But on landing in Saqqez when the signal came back, his phone had buzzed with a reply. He was relieved to see it was from a different number, a new one. The message said: I will go. A surge of relief had washed over him as he slipped his phone back into the cargo pocket of his IRGC uniform trousers. Now as he rode along in the Toyota four-by-four, he couldn’t stop thinking about her, worrying about her passage to her aunt’s home on the Caspian. But the young officer in charge of the search wouldn’t shut up.
Still talking, the captain produced a steaming mug of tea for Kasem, who wore an IRGC lieutenant colonel’s uniform. They were in a portable classroom, a trailer, close to the soccer field. It was pleasantly heated with forced air. The school had been closed, momentarily taken over by the IRGC with no explanation to the staff or students. Maps were pinned to the wall. A few white Toyota pickups were parked outside amid a jungle of radio antennae and a few towed heavy machine guns on trailers. The captain had cleared the room of the enlisted men to brief the lieutenant colonel who’d arrived from Tehran.
Kasem listened now, setting aside thoughts of Kasra. Her safety was linked directly to his mission.
The search had been exhaustive. Except for the one suspected surveillance photo, they’d come up empty for the past few days. But they had their suspicions. This was Iranian Kurdistan. The people weren’t always cooperative here, at least without coercion, according to the captain. The search might take a little longer, but they’d eventually get their man. They’d just have to be a little harsher, like in the old days.
Kasem took it all in, calculating what he thought might happen. The man he knew as Reza would be here soon; of that, he was dead certain. Reza would find Rahimi. Together they would escape from the country. Unless Kasem outwitted them. It had to happen—or Maloof would win.
As the captain went on with more detail than Kasem cared for, the Quds officer studied the map. They would attempt to cross the border, he thought, into Iraq. The Americans had Iraq as a permanent base now. It seemed obvious that they would go that way, slip in under the protective dome of US military might.
Without relaying any of his reasoning to the earnest IRGC captain, Kasem explained the reason for his visit. He removed a folder with both the LinkedIn and Van train station photos of Reza Shariati.
“This man will be in the search area. He will be attempting to meet with Rahimi and move them southwest, somewhere down here toward the border.”
Kasem stood and sketched the approach to Saqqez from the northeast, from Tehran.
“Set up a cordon around here,” he told the captain, tracing an arc to one side of the city. “You can find him as he enters, if he hasn’t already. And we’ll need to beef up security patrols all along this border road. I suspect he will try to lead Rahimi into Iraq.”
A mile southwest of Saqqez, where the roads turned to dirt or vanished altogether, three men warily watched the approach of the MI-8 Hip helicopter circling the town. They were up high with a good vantage over the city, crossing a ridgeline, moving slowly over the jagged rocks, twelve witless sheep bleating around them.
The men wore long draping shirts and checkered scarves to ward against flying grit. The lead man gripped a battle-scarred AK-47 and signaled for the other two to dive under the brush. If they were spotted from the air, the sheep would have to serve as their cover, again. But that was okay with Zoran, their forty-six-year-old leader. He’d been playing this game for a long time.
The helicopter slowed and descended, over near the school. It raised a large cloud of dust that swirled away like a mini tornado. The leader gave the men the all clear. They reappeared and continued on their way.
Zoran was the local commander of the militia of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, the PDKI. He’d spent five years of his life executing guerrilla raids against the IRGC to little effect, until he’d given up altogether for want of other volunteers.
It hadn’t always been this way. There’d been a time when the separatist Iranian Kurds had had international support, as they did in northern Iraq and Turkey. At the PDKI’s peak, he’d commanded thirty men. But the Americans had since sold them out. As a quiet concession of a 2014 nuclear nonproliferation deal, the Americans had officially declared the PDKI a terrorist organization. Zoran had found that rich with irony.
Under the threat of an emboldened Iranian government, his militia band had shrunk. Predictably, the IRGC had stalked them, scaring them farther into the hills, running for their lives. Even courageous Zoran himself had gone underground, returning to his life as a jute farmer, forgetting about the cause, burying his trusty old Kalashnikov.
But when the IRGC had descended on the town a few weeks ago, one of his former compatriots, a farmer like himself, had come to him. He’d urged Zoran to leave, to go hide in the hills, like back in 2014. The IRGC’s burgeoning presence—blocking the roads, inhabiting the schools—surely meant a new offensive on the PDKI. It was just a matter of time before they’d arrive on Zoran’s doorstep.
For what?
Zoran failed to see the connection. They were hardly a militia anymore. They hadn’t had a meeting in five years. They’d effectively declared defeat.
But then he’d seen the helicopters for himself. He’d seen the weapons towed through the streets, the soldiers questioning villagers in a house-to-house search. That hadn’t happened since the days before the American sellout.
Whatever was causing it, Zoran saw it as the recruitment opportunity of a lifetime. He’d put out the word that he was looking for men quick. They’d take to the hills and defend themselves. Whatever the hated IRGC had in store from them, rest assured, he’d told his contacts, they’d be in the hills waiting for a chance to strike back.
As word had gone out, something odd had come back. There was a rumor, fourth- or fifth-hand, that there was a man hiding among them. He might be a high-ranking member of the Iranian Defense Ministry. Though shadowy and vague, he seemed like a man on the run looking for help.
Zoran and his men had found him sleeping on a door stoop, playing the part of beggar. It didn’t fit. He looked like a Persian. When they’d roughed him up, but not too much, he’d told them a story. It had taken a while, but Zoran believed him now. There was something noble about the gentleman with the ragged beard and aquiline nose.
The gentleman had confessed that he was looking to defect across the border, that he was on the run from the IRGC. Among other things, he’d said he was looking to tell the Americans the true story of the Iranian policy toward the Kurds. Based on the way he spoke, the things he knew, Zoran assessed him as educated, worldly, a man who could testify as to the wrongheadedness of the American policy. The man admitted that he’d had a brother who had died in Evin Prison back in the eighties. He’d been a supporter of Rajavi, the socialist revolutionary.
Those were sufficient bona fides for Zoran. Under the nose of the searching IRGC, he and his men had taken the gentleman in, given him the burner phone he had asked for. He needed it to get in touch with the Americans, he’d said. Zoran was delighted to have a mission again. Farming jute was not all it was cracked up to be for a man like him.
“Get me to Alut,” the man had insisted after his second phone call on the burner. “Get me there safely and I will personally fix everything with the Americans.”
They had ninety kilometers to go.