The Enemy Within

With as much patience as he could muster, Hamir Pahesh lounged in one of Tehran’s many bazaars and waited for his contact to appear. He found the waiting difficult.. The normal frenzy of the marketplace was nothing compared to the sense of urgency he had felt for the last several days.

His last radio conversation with the CIA controller he knew as Granite had sent him straight back to Tehran at the best speed he could manage. The journey had taken him longer than he had planned. At every major road junction, he’d fought congestion as military convoys rolling the other way strained Iran’s primitive road net. The soldiers and their vehicles all seemed to be heading south for the coast, most for Bandar-e Bushehr.

The Afghan shook his head. Meeting the CIA’s needs for this mission had proved extraordinarily difficult.. Right now, the only thing more important to Iran’s armed forces than an empty truck was a full one.

Luckily, there had been many empty trucks returning north, some of them driven by his own countrymen. Among his fellow Afghans, he had found two men he knew and two friends they trusted. All four had some experience in moving illegal goods, and they were all less than pleased with the Shiite Iranian government. They had agreed to collaborate with him on an unspecified, though very profitable, undertaking. They would join him soon.

In the meantime, though, he had other details to attend to. Two of his recruits were off buying enough black-market gasoline for their five trucks.

That left the not-so-small problem of papers. Five trucks traveling together, empty, without travel papers, were sure to be stopped at the first roadblock. He got enough grief from the Pasdaran swine even when his papers were in order. Luckily, the comings and goings of the regular military should provide the perfect cover. If, that was, the man he was waiting for came through…

“Hamir! My friend! Hello!”

Pahesh turned abruptly. Ibn al-Juzjani, an old acquaintance, if not truly a friend, had silently appeared beside him.

Stealth was a valuable skill in the smaller man’s line of work. Pahesh knew him from his days as a mujahideen, but al-Juzjani wasn’t a fighter. The little man had helped smuggle weapons across the borders between Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. He was still in the same line of work.

“Peace be with you, Ibn,” Pahesh greeted him languidly. It took considerable effort to appear disinterested. “You were successful, I hope?”

Al-Juzjani’s sly brown eyes twinkled. “Yes, with the blessings of God. Come, follow me.”

The smuggler preferred to transact his business out of a nondescript shop near the edge of the bazaar one of many in this district selling televisions, transistor radios, and VCRs. The proprietor, a third or fourth cousin in al-Juzjani’s extended clan, reserved a private room for his use.

Once they were out of sight of prying eyes, Pahesh scanned the documents the smuggler offered him. There were two sets of forged travel orders one for a trip out of Tehran and another set for the return journey. They weren’t perfect, but he’d seen enough real travel documents to know these would pass.

He nodded in satisfaction. “Good enough, Ibn. These will suit me very well.” Ordinarily, he would have expected to sit, drink tea, and talk over old times with al-Juzjani, as was the custom when doing business, but he had no time left for pleasantries. He held out a wad of rials.

The other man held up a hand. “Alas, my friend, you know better than that. Rials are worth less than the paper they are printed on in my line of work. Besides,” he said slyly, “my suppliers were so busy with their other endeavors that I had to pay extra to persuade them to complete your little task.”

Pahesh swallowed his impatience and his resentment. He had expected nothing more from al-Juzjani. He sometimes thought the man only breathed because the air around him was free. He arched an eyebrow. “How much more do your suppliers require?”

“Another one hundred American dollars.”

Pahesh considered that. Even with the clock running, it would be a mistake to simply accept the smuggler’s first price. Folding too easily would only tell the little man just how important those papers were to him.

He snorted and spread his hands wide. “Alas, Ibn, that is impossible. My funds are wholly tied up in this small enterprise of mine,” he lied.

“I see. What a pity.” The smuggler stroked his chin and then shrugged.

“Perhaps I can persuade them to accept ninety-f~ve dollars.”

They haggled pleasantly for another few minutes before settling on a mutually acceptable, if extortionate, price. He was not worried about using American currency to settle his debt with the smuggler. Tehran’s black market used dollars exclusively and Iranian banks exchanged it freely though at a terrible rate. In truth, he had never expected al-Juzjani to accept Iranian rials.