Pandora's grave

With Rebecca Petras in the picture, he very much fancied himself still in hostile territory. Or at least less than friendly.

From the looks on the faces of his fellow team members, he knew they were thinking the same thing. Such was the world of an operator. Caught on the knife’s edge between the cold, hard facts of life in the field and the political maneuvering of bureaucratic desk jockeys more interested in advancing their own careers than protecting their country’s interests.

Not that it mattered in the end. Going in, they had known the score. They had done the job they had been given to do. Now the trick was to survive the fallout.

“What’s our play, boss?” Hamid asked.

Harry smiled. It was sometimes difficult to imagine the football-crazed Zakiri as a kid growing up in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. As with most of those who’ve learned English as a second language, Hamid’s speech was very proper and correct, but when slang slipped in, it was invariably sports-related.

The question remained. “Keep our mouths shut,” Harry replied, answering it. “Answer everything they ask-volunteer nothing more.”

“It’s our duty to help them in any way we can,” Davood blurted out, a look of surprise on his face as he glanced up. “We’re all on the same side.”

Harry and Tex exchanged a quiet smile, then Harry responded. “You think so? Get a few more missions under your belt before you go drawin’ those conclusions. We’re a team. We think like a team, we act like a team, we depend on each other. Why? Because no one’s on our side-and don’t fool yourself into thinking any different. Each other-that’s all we can count on. Do you understand?”

Davood looked from one team member to another, then responded with a quiet, “Yes.”

With the same grim smile on his face, Harry reached out and clapped a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Good. Let’s stick together on this. We’re a team.”

Yet even as he said the words, Harry could see the doubt in Davood’s eyes. He was young, he was inexperienced, and perhaps worst of all, trusting.

Just above them, the “Fasten Seatbelts” light came on and the men retreated to their seats to prepare for landing. Harry watched the young agent out of the corner of his eye as he collected his personal effects. Recognizing the danger there.

Trust. It was the currency of human relationships, perhaps the most basic and sacred element of personal life. Extended to the wrong people, he had seen it kill. Often enough to question whether there were any “right” people.

Harry turned away, looking out the window as the Starlifter’s wheels touched down on German soil. These were his people. His team. And he would do whatever it took to protect them. They would do the same for him…

12:23 P.M. Tehran Time

The Holy Shrine of Hazrat-e Ma’sumeh

Qom, Iran

The last echoes of the muezzin’s call had scarcely died away when an attendant scurried forward to retrieve the prayer mat. Isfahani rose, looking toward the golden dome of the shrine.

He cast a sidelong glance at the man rising next to him, a cool appraisal. The ayatollah had long prided himself in his ability to take the measure of a man in a single glance.

Major Hossein was proving measurably more difficult. He was a tall man, his features undeniably Persian.

Farshid. His name too was Persian, not Islamic, taken from the secular Shahnama saga, and meaning “bright as the sun”.

Bright as the hope flickering in the ayatollah’s heart.

They made a strange couple as they, flanked by Isfahani’s bodyguards, walked across the square toward the mural-bedecked cemetery of the Martyrs.

The holy man and the warrior.

“You understand why I have brought you here, do you not?” The ayatollah asked a few short moments later, gesturing to a mural of a slain fighter, fallen, like all the rest in this cemetery, during the Iran-Iraq War.

The major nodded, his face well-nigh expressionless, the only trace of nervousness visible in the twisting of the coral beads between his fingers.

He is not a religious man, Isfahani realized with a sudden start, recognizing the awkwardness with which Hossein handled the tasbih, the Muslim equivalent of the rosary, a beaded recitation of the hundred names of Allah. For a moment, doubt smote his heart, but he pushed it aside with an effort. The will of Allah would be fulfilled regardless.

“They died fighting, major. Fighting their fellow Muslims. Your own father among them,” the ayatollah finished, a warning lurking in his words. A warning that Hossein’s past was an open book.

A nod was the major’s only reply, for Isfahani had gone on without waiting for one. “It is happening again. Think of it, my son, if these forces were but united against the infidel.”

“ ‘I against my brother,’”quoted Hossein, “ ‘my brother and I against our cousin-my brother, my cousin, and I against the infidel.’”