Oath of Office

“She’s resurrecting tired allegations about your investments and the SEC,” van Damm said. “Everyone knows you were cleared of all wrongdoing.”

“Not everyone,” Ryan said.

“Chadwick does,” Mary Pat said. “Bringing the investigation up without clarifying that, leading people to believe otherwise, that’s an outright lie. Someone should prosecute her.”

“For what?” Ryan scoffed. “Making me cry?”

“Okay, the vaccine thing, then,” van Damm said. “Fomenting panic with half-truths has got to be illegal.”

Ryan shook his head at the chief of staff. “Listen to yourself. Don’t you find it more than a little ironic that you want to get behind a revolution that would bring freedom of speech to Iran when you’re trying to throw Chadwick in jail for speaking her mind?”

18

The crowd on Keshavarz Boulevard, west of the roundabout known as Valiasr Square, numbered more than two thousand. At least a third were there to protest the hangings. The Nīrū-ye Entezāmī-ye Jomhūrī-ye Eslāmī-ye īrān, or NAJA, Iran’s uniformed police force, had set up a broken skirmish line in front of the ones who were brave or foolish enough to be vocal in their protests, but Erik Dovzhenko was certain there were even more among the spectators. He doubted the protesters would use violence in the demonstrations. That would only give the NAJA an excuse to respond with violence of their own — as if they needed an excuse. There would be no rubber bullets here. The slightest act of civil disobedience would be adjudged a capital offense. The riot squads were dressed for battle—“hats and bats,” the Americans called it. It would take little more than a cross word, an unholy wink, to bring two hundred hickory sticks down on the protesters’ heads in a “wood shampoo”—another American term Dovzhenko found a better description than anything he had in Russian.

Three crane trucks manufactured by Tadano of Japan sat idling in the gray drizzle, blue plastic nooses dangling from their booms, empty for another few moments. Dovzhenko stood on the roof of a cinema across the street, along with two IRGC minders, watching the scene below through his personal pair of Leupold binoculars. A drizzling rain matted the Russian’s hair and dripped from the tip of his nose, prompting him to turn up the collar of his horsehide jacket and snug it tighter against his neck. He couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to wipe the rain out of his eyes.

Down on the street, IRGC executioners readied the condemned at the rear of a waiting van. Given the recent groundswell of protests, officials had seriously considered holding the executions behind the secure walls of Evin Prison. But when the chance for civil unrest was weighed against an opportunity to make a public show of force — the show of force won out. The Guardian Council and the Supreme Leader himself had agreed. The observations of justice would be good for everyone who attended the execution. Protest the regime and you got the rope. In public. In front of your friends. In front of your parents. The West could go piss up the rope you were hanged from if they did not like it.

Any of the nearby parks or sports complexes would have offered more room for people to witness the hangings, but though the authorities were cruel and inflexible in the theocratic rule, they were not completely stupid. The intersection at Valiasr Square would provide choke points their troops could exploit and high vantage points for snipers and observation, making it much easier to control.

Dovzhenko’s assignment, along with the two IRGC men with him on the roof, was to scan the thousands of people who milled three stories below and watch for any protesters hidden in the crowds. The Supreme Council of Cyberspace had already banned Twitter and Facebook, and recently followed Russia’s lead and blocked the popular messaging app Telegram. Other social media platforms had been slowed to a debilitating crawl. Instagram posts from the Ayatollah still went out, but that was about it. Cellular service in downtown Tehran had been cut, leaving any would-be protesters unable to communicate for two hours preceding the hangings.

At last count, more than a thousand dissidents had been killed by police and IRGC thugs over the last three weeks at various rallies across the country. While publicly urging peace, the Supreme Leader made it abundantly clear in private that he was prepared to wipe out tens of thousands to ensure the survival of the theocracy. In Iran, God did indeed move in mysterious ways.

Dovzhenko played his binoculars from face to face in the crowd. Some looked appropriately horrified at what was happening in their country. But many stared sleepily at the simple metal chairs and black body bags that had been readied below the cranes. Theirs was a numb half-interest, something to do before taking the kids to the park or evening prayer. After all, they weren’t the ones being hanged.