Satan's Spy (The Steve Church saga Book 2), André Gallo [ebook reader color screen .txt] 📗

a free pass, for a few days anyway. Remember, I met with Mousavi and we bonded. Me and the Persian butcher, imagine!” He laughed.

“How about your friend Farah? What if you moved in with her? How would that work? I could join you later if I have to. Would she be up for that? Until it’s going to complicate communications. We could meet during the day, maybe even have lunch together. Two foreigners striking up a friendship? As long as neither of us is under suspicion, why not?”

“I think that I would surprise her by asking, but she would probably welcome it,” Kella said. “I’ve been seeing more of her lately, and we get along. She has a tragic background. Her father was executed by the new regime, and she’s the only family member hanging on in Iran. I think its pride; she hates the thought of letting go of whatever family property that hasn’t already been confiscated. She said that she sometimes regrets not having left to go live in Paris or in Los Angeles long ago.”

She walked to the TV set and changed the channel to a handball game. “This twenty-four hour soccer channel is driving me nuts,” she said.

“Don’t even think about moving in with us,” she teased. “She’s a beautiful woman. I’m afraid you’ll be distracted and that your judgment will be clouded. Then, who knows, maybe you’ll decide to stay in Iran, too.”

“You’re the one who needs to be careful. Haven’t you read about how the women in the harems would turn to each other when the sultan ignored them?”

“Men’s fantasies,” she smiled, shaking her head. “For now, we better inform Headquarters of what’s happening.” She fished the make-up case out of her bag.

After Kella left, Steve smiled at his life. He had tried so hard to have a different life than his father and yet, here he was, skating on the edge just as his father had done, in the same country doing the same thing but more than thirty years later. Steve still remembered saying goodbye to his father as he, his mother and sister got on the bus driven and guarded by bearded young men with guns who took embassy dependents to the airport. Congressional pressure from constituents had finally forced the ambassador to allow embassy families to leave Iran.

When his father left the country a few months later after moving about the city to avoid capture, he brought back a large poster of the Ayatollah Khomeini in his suitcase. It replaced the dart game target when they moved back in their house in McLean.

Would Mousavi interpret his move out of the hotel—and he would learn of it—as an admittance of guilt? There would be no looking back once he moved to Farah’s apartment.

 

29. Washington: Tribune Building

The Tribune’s editorial board walked out of Aaron Glick’s office. Glick didn’t mind confrontational meetings; they had their uses. They showed the members’ true colors, their weaknesses, their alliances, and their discords, all factors that Glick could use to his advantage.

He relished being above the fray, able to observe the peons below bloody each other. It reminded him of a reality TV show. Without seeming to, he could usually sway the consensus opinion his way. Except today. Acrimonious discussion without a clear winner. He had counted on two of the board members to be vehement in wanting to print the story. However, they had not won the day, even after he brought Bonifacio in to testify. He liked that word, “testify.” It elevated him to a status above a mere reality show host. The decision was exactly back where it was an hour ago before the meeting, in his lap. His attempt to use his board to finally surface the Iran CIA story had gone nowhere.

“Georgene?” he called loudly through his closed door, “get me Representative Langdon on the phone.”

He had found in her an ally over the years. She shared his view that international terrorism was only a natural reaction to American militarism and unilateralism--chickens coming home to roost, as someone had said. Countries had their own set of values developed over thousands of years.

Wasn’t the United States the junior member of the world community? By 1776, the civilizations of Europe, China, India, and the Middle East were already mature and had produced their own philosophers, religions, and political systems. Those who dated the origin of the word “assassin” to the Ismaili killers of eleventh-century Iran from “Hashshashin,” because they were drugged prior to their missions, just made no effort to understand Middle East culture. If America were only more respectful of those much older cultures, flexible, and benevolent, there would be peace in the world.

Georgene knocked on his door before opening it. “Ms Langdon is not in her office.” She responded. “She’ll call you back.”

He got up from his desk, his paunch sagging between resolute red suspenders, and looked out his window. He pondered the Bonifacio story, his unusual height making the ceiling appear too low. It was late, he looked at his jacket hanging from the portmanteau and was moving toward it when Georgene knocked again and stuck her head in his office.

“Dorothea Langdon on the phone, sir.”

He picked up his phone and Langdon’s secretary said, “The Representative will be with you in a minute.”

How many times had he told Georgene to wait until the other party was on the phone? Let the other person hear those condescending words, “Mr. Glick will be with you in a minute.” He waited, tapping his nails on his desk to the rhythms of the William Tell Overture.

“Aaron, how are you? I thought only the peoples’ representatives worked late on a Friday. You are lucky to catch me. I usually leave every Thursday night for California and come back on Monday afternoon. My constituents are very demanding and deserve all of my support, so I