The Increment (24 page)

A policeman stopped Jackie’s
Mercedes as they were spinning along the Resalat Highway. He was an upright young man with a bushy beard, who squinted at them with a busybody’s suspicious eyes. He didn’t like the looks of this European woman driving in a fancy car with an Iranian man. The driver asked what was wrong, and when the policeman said they weren’t wearing seat belts, Jackie almost laughed. But it wasn’t funny. The cop was asking to see the driver’s papers for the car, and then he was saying that something wasn’t in order and that he would need to call his superiors on the radio for advice.

The Iranian was nimble. He asked the officer if he could speak to him privately. He got out of the driver’s seat and walked to the back of the car, half hidden from the road. He talked with the policeman respectfully, humbly, and then said something that made the cop laugh. Then they were shaking hands, and Jackie knew that a bribe had passed from one man to the other.

“What did you tell him?” asked Jackie.

“I told him that you were a German whore, and that I only had a few hours with you. I asked him as a man to have pity on me. I told him I had borrowed the car to impress you.”

“And he believed you?”

“Of course he did,” said the Iranian. “I told him what he already believed. I made it a question of shame. If he detained me, I would lose face—not to mention my sexual pleasure. No Iranian will humiliate another.”

Jackie shook her head.

“Bollocks,” she said. “You were lucky. Don’t get stopped again.”

Karim Molavi wobbled down
the steps of the white building in Jamaran and took the first taxi from the queue across the street. He wanted to look feeble and unwell, but inside he was elated. His escape had begun. He told the driver to take him to Yazdeni Street in Yoosef Abad. His instructions had been to go from work to the bus station, but he had decided that was unwise. They would ask the cab driver later, when he didn’t show up at work next week, where he had taken Dr. Molavi. The pieces of the story had to fit right.

When he got to his apartment, he changed out of his black business suit into a pair of slacks and a warm shirt and jacket, and added a cap that would partially cover his face. He exchanged his leather slip-ons for some rubber-soled shoes, in case he would need to do some hiking. How did one escape from Iran? Over mountains or deserts? He had no idea. He added another pair of underwear and two pairs of socks to his kit, and put it all in a simple canvas bag, leaving the briefcase behind. He checked his wallet to make sure he had all his identification cards. The special phone was in his pocket. He was afraid to touch it. He wished he had his passport, but they had already taken that. His rescuers would have to improvise. He headed for the door and then stopped.

What else could he do, to make it look as if he had expected to come back? He put some food in the microwave, and he turned on the television set in his bedroom, with the volume low enough that it wouldn’t disturb the neighbors. What more? He wrote himself a little list of things to do—pick up the laundry, go to the dentist, buy a new shower curtain. He left it on his desk. Nobody thinks about buying a new shower curtain if they are planning to flee the country.

Molavi left his apartment by the back door and took an alleyway to the next street, heading north. That was the opposite direction from the one he usually traveled. He walked a few blocks to Farhang Square and waited for a taxi. A rusted orange Paykan, normally a group taxi, rumbled toward him. He called out his destination—the Eastern bus terminal. The driver shouted back,
“Dar baste?”
which meant “Closed-door?” It was an offer to drive the passenger alone if he would pay the single tariff. Molavi nodded yes. The fewer people who saw him on this trip, the better.

Molavi sat in front, next to the driver. There was a Koran on the dashboard, and a blue-colored ornament dangling from the rearview mirror, to guard against the evil eye. The driver wasn’t in a mood to talk, fortunately. The Paykan rolled east, spewing exhaust. The afternoon traffic was heavy, the air so thick with smog that it caught in Molavi’s throat. Now he was coughing for real. When they reached the Damavand Highway, the road opened up a bit and the air got fresher. Molavi looked at his watch. It was nearly four. He had no idea how often the buses left for Sari, but he wanted to find one quickly and disappear into the seat.

The Eastern terminal was at the far edge of the city. Molavi arrived a little after four and bought a seat on a bus that was scheduled to depart at four-thirty. There were police in the bus station, but nobody paid him any attention. He had an odd feeling of invisibility; people saw him, certainly, but they did not begin to understand who he was. He bought a magazine and a sandwich for the road, along with a bottle of mineral water, and waited to board. This bus didn’t have a separate men’s and women’s section, unlike the ones in the city. But women sat with women; men with men. Molavi took a lone seat near the back and hoped nobody would join him.

He settled into the seat. It was a new Volvo bus, a “super,” as the Iranians called it. The seat was comfortable. With a loud honk of the horn, the bus rolled out of the terminal. Nobody had claimed the seat next to him. Molavi took a bite of his sandwich. For the first time in twenty-four hours, he began to relax.

The trip was so
achingly beautiful that it made Molavi wonder for a moment if he really was ready to leave Iran. For the first few miles east, the road skirted forest parkland, rich and green. Soon they picked up the A01, the main route to the northeast, and the bus began climbing the steep slopes of the Alborz Mountains. The sun was low in the sky, and the majestic Mount Damavand was bathed in a golden wash of refracted light. They wound through the mountains for several more hours, the snow at the peaks faintly illuminated in the pale moonlight, so that the landscape looked as if it had been painted in shadow colors. He nibbled at his sandwich and sipped occasionally from his water bottle. He dozed off for an hour, and when he awoke the bus was descending from the mountains toward the commercial towns along the Caspian Sea. The bus stopped in Amol, and then Babol, and a half hour after that it rolled into the ancient town of Sari.

Molavi looked out the window. The town looked familiar. He had come here as a boy with his parents, before his mother became ill and it was impossible for her to travel. The bus passed the old part of town, graced by a white clock tower that gleamed in the floodlights. Did he remember this place, or was it the idea of this place that he was remembering? The bus stopped at the Sari main terminal, near the Tajan River. A few other passengers stumbled off, weary from the trip.

It was past 9:00 p.m., and the station was nearly empty. It had the desolate feel of a small bus terminal anywhere; it was a place people left to go to bigger cities, not a place they came back to. Molavi asked the station manager for directions to Golha Square and the Hotel Asram. It was just a few hundred meters south from the station, said the manager, an easy walk. Molavi walked along the bank of the river, thinking to himself: I don’t want to die here. I want to live.

The hotel was modern and ugly, two words that often went together in Iran. The concrete exterior was lit in red and green, which made the façade even less attractive. The desk clerk gave him a room on one of the upper floors, with its own bathroom and a view of the old city and its whitewashed tower. Molavi wasn’t ready to sleep, and the hotel made him uncomfortable. He found a café near the old city, close by a graceful fountain, and ordered himself a glass of fresh pomegranate juice. It was at once sweet and tart on his tongue. He went back to the hotel, washed his undershorts and socks in the bathroom sink, and hung them by the open window to dry. It was an act of faith that he would survive, washing his undergarments. He slept naked, the fabric of the cheap cotton sheets rough against his arms and legs.

Jackie and her Iranian
agent took the fast road north from Tehran to Chalus on the Caspian coast. They passed through Karaj and then climbed the spectacular highway through the mountains to the sea. In Chalus, Jackie and her friend stopped at the Hotel Malek and dined at the stylish hotel restaurant. The atmosphere was more relaxed here than in Tehran, and Jackie loosened her head scarf, as had many of the Iranian women seated nearby. In the ladies’ room, an Iranian woman said in perfect English, “I love your purse,” and asked where she had bought it. It turned out she had a flat in Paris.

The two travelers were conspicuous enough that a dozen people could have testified who they were—a rich Iranian traveling with his mistress along the Caspian Sea coastal road, bound for the east.

When they returned to the Mercedes after dinner, an additional passenger was waiting in the shadows. He was a Pakistani man, dressed neatly in a black suit and tie. He looked like he might be a personal servant to the Iranian man—a valet, or perhaps an office manager. He was carrying an elongated travel bag, of the sort tennis players carry. He placed it in the trunk of the Mercedes.

The three drove east along the coast road, stopping for the night in Babol, just west of Sari. The Iranian man and his German woman friend took adjoining rooms at the Marjan Hotel. The Pakistani continued east a few more kilometers.

Molavi rose with the
cry of the dawn prayers the next morning. He walked to his window and looked out on the city. It was uglier by day. The buses and cars were starting up, making a ferocious rumble as they moved through Golha Square toward the river bridge. They are out there, he told himself. It seemed impossible that they would come for him in this haphazard provincial capital, but he had bet his life on that unlikely rendezvous. He showered and dressed himself, and packed his meager belongings into his travel bag. He sat on the bed for a few minutes, to anchor himself in time. He was at the lip of the volcano now. Eventually he rose, and took the elevator downstairs to breakfast in the hotel’s café-restaurant.

He wanted to eat, and heaped his plate from the buffet table with meats and cheeses and a hard-boiled egg. But when he sat down, his appetite failed him. He scanned the room, looking for the Arab businessman, the “Mr. Saleh.” Several men seemed like possible candidates, but they were all concentrating on their breakfasts. None of them made eye contact. One got up from his table, a well-built man in a double-breasted suit, and for a moment Molavi thought this might be his deliverer, but the man quickly turned and left the room. A second gentleman left a few minutes later. Molavi had finished his breakfast now, and was drinking his second cup of coffee. Maybe something had gone wrong, and they wouldn’t be coming. What would he do then? That was the one thing he hadn’t imagined. The possibilities had been flight, or death, but never just sitting in a café in a remote provincial city and then picking up and going back home.

Molavi was staring forlornly out the window, stroking his prickly black beard, when the first of the men walked back into the dining room. Rather than returning to his old table, he continued walking in Molavi’s direction. The dining room was nearly empty. He stopped a few paces from the Iranian.

“Are you Dr. Ali?” he asked quietly. His manner was easy and friendly.

“Yes, I am,” said Molavi. He felt a kind of electrical charge moving its way up his body. His mind went blank for a moment, and then he remembered that he was supposed to offer a response.

“And what is your name?” asked the Iranian, in a voice barely above a whisper. He tried not to look around him, to see if anyone was watching, but he couldn’t quite manage it.

“I am Mr. Saleh,” said the Arab. He stuck out his hand and smiled, as if they were old friends and business partners. “Perhaps we could take a walk and see the city.”

“Yes,” said Molavi. “I think that is a good idea.”

The two men strode
down Taleghani Street toward the road that led to the coast, which was fifteen miles north. Karim Molavi began to ask “Mr. Saleh” who he really was, but the other man cut him off.

“We should not talk now, my friend. You will be safe. That is enough. We will talk later.”

Molavi nodded. They walked on in silence. The city was coming to life. The bazaar in the old city with filling with traders. Men were entering the local
hammam
to have their morning steam bath.

When they neared Shohada Square, Mr. Saleh turned right, down a side street crowded with parked cars. Mr. Saleh walked a dozen yards and stopped in front of a new Iranian Samand, with power windows and air-conditioning. He took a key from his pocket, clicked open the doors, and nodded for Molavi to get in the driver’s side. Molavi stood motionless. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do.

“You have an Iranian driver’s license?” asked Mr. Saleh.

Molavi nodded.

“Then drive, my friend.” He handed him the keys.

Molavi shook his head in wonderment.
“Kheyli zahmat keshidin,”
he said. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble. He drove slowly at first but he picked up speed and confidence as they left the town. They drove north, through orange groves and rice fields.

“How did you make all these things happen?” he asked Mr. Saleh when there were no other cars on the road and no sound but the hum of the wheels against the pavement.

“It is magic, my friend,” said the Arab with a wink. “That is what we do. We create illusions. You are living in one now. Relax, my brother. Enjoy your freedom.”

It took Molavi and
his Arab guardian nearly an hour to reach the coast. The shore road was busy with the cars of Tehranis who had flocked to the coast to get a last bit of fall sunshine. Holiday apartment buildings and villas were crowded along both sides of the road, filling every inch of space near the water.

They drove east through Farahabad and Gohar Baran. There were no police and, judging by the cars racing past, no speed limits. The seaside construction became a little less dense as they moved toward the Turkmenistan border to the east. Mr. Saleh was peering intently at the landscape now, looking for something.

“Turn left,” he said to Molavi, pointing toward a small paved road. There was a little flag at the intersection, decorated with the colors of the Esteghlal soccer club.

Molavi drove slowly down the road. He saw a house on the right—a dilapidated old beach villa that looked as if it hadn’t been renovated since the shah’s time. It appeared to be deserted.

“Stop,” said Mr. Saleh. He got out of the car and walked slowly to the house. On the way he grasped something from inside his coat and took it in his hand, pointing it straight ahead. It was a gun. He walked to the windows of the house and peered inside, one window after the other, until he was sure the house was empty. He returned to the front of the house and opened a garage door.

“Park the car,” he said to Molavi. “Then come inside.”

Two hours later, a
Mercedes sedan carrying three passengers moved down the same coastal road. It proceeded past the little banner for Esteghlal, but stopped at the next turn. Two figures emerged from the car, a South Asian man and a European woman. The woman was dressed in a black chador. Underneath she was dressed in black as well—black spandex that covered her arms and legs like a second skin. Her blond hair was tied in a tight bun beneath her veil. The man was dressed in simple peasant garb. The only modern touch was the big bag slung over his shoulders.