Oath of Office

Javad was on his back, hands tied behind him so he teetered on his fists, unable to lie flat. Legs up, his ankles were bound to a wooden board set between two posts. Stiff cords kept the soles of his bare feet pointed upward. They were already swollen, black and blue from earlier treatment. Sassani himself swung the three-foot length of willow branch, roughly the diameter of his little finger.

Foot whipping was a favorite of secret police the world over. Parts of the feet could, by necessity, withstand a large amount of stress. Other parts — small bones, the toes — snapped with relative ease. When meted out by an expert, bastinado could cause maximum pain, with damage that was hardly visible but for a little pink and swollen flesh. Turn up the force and it could cripple. This often led to a perverse relief when a prisoner saw he or she was going to be bastinadoed instead of receiving a treatment that left more visible scars and marks. “Perhaps they will only whip my feet and let me go…” Such thoughts flew quickly after the first agonizing blows.

Major Sassani used the treatment as a fallback, when he tired of breaking ribs or stubbing out cigarettes on exposed skin. He swung the willow branch from over his head, causing it to whir through the air and allowing the poor boy time to anticipate the blow, doubling the agony.

These three prisoners had been here for the better part of a week, with Sassani getting right to work almost from the moment the doors clanged shut behind them. They had told him everything they knew within the first hour. Even trained operatives eventually talked, but these students leaked like broken vessels, spilling everything they knew at the mere sight of the torture chamber. Through snot and tears and terrified sobs, they confessed to sins from grade school.

In the end, it did not matter.

Javad stopped thrashing after the fifth blow. His feet looked like great purple balloons with toes. Sassani hit him twice more to make sure he was truly unconscious. Satisfied, he tossed the willow branch on the desk in the corner. He nodded to his two IRGC companions and then hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the hanging men.

“Allow this one to rest,” he said. “And bring me another. The fat one will do.”

The heavier of the two students, a man in his early twenties named Babak, began to whimper. A swollen eyelid fluttered open.

“Comrade Erik,” Sassani said, rubbing his hands together in front of his chest like a housefly. “I am sorry that we did not wait for you.”

The Russian waved away the comment. Sassani knew full well that Dovzhenko despised him. The feeling was surely mutual — if only because Sassani appeared to hate everyone.

The Iranian was younger by five or six years, perhaps thirty-four or thirty-five. He’d been promoted quickly in the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Dovzhenko supposed the IRGC rewarded cruelty, so long as it was focused in the preferred direction. His own SVR was not so different in that respect, which was likely why Dovzhenko found himself stuck working with the likes of Parviz Sassani. His superiors obviously thought he needed some sort of lesson in cruelty.

Dovzhenko knew little of Sassani’s background. His father had apparently been martyred in the war with Iraq, and he was highly regarded by the mullahs and ranking IRGC members. His father-in-law was a ranking IRGC general. He must have learned English in the UK or some commonwealth country, because he spoke it with a British accent — like the devil in an American movie.

Sassani was slightly taller than Dovzhenko, with dark, wavy hair and a coal-black beard he kept trimmed only slightly longer than a five-o’clock shadow. He wore fine suits, even during interrogations, hanging his jacket inside a metal locker along the wall by the door. Several flecks of blood spatter dotted the breast of his collarless white shirt, the tail of which had come untucked during his exertions with the willow rod.

He rolled down his sleeves, producing a pair of gold cuff links from gray woolen trousers, along with a dark blue pack of Gauloises. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth and spoke around it while he fastened the cuff links.

“What do you hear, my friend?” He searched deeper in his pockets until he found a disposable lighter.

Dovzhenko kept his eyes on the IRGC men who were busy tying Babak’s feet to the board.

“There are rumors of bombing,” he said. “Some sort of government building.”

Sassani clicked the cheap lighter, to no avail. “I have heard this as well,” he said, giving up. He gave a little chuckle. “At least we do not have the American flu. A plague on the Great Satan for her fight against God.”

Dovzhenko wondered how the Iranian squared the earthquakes and illness in his own country, but he kept the thoughts to himself.