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

details of how she had come. He wanted to get out of sight before “Brown Laces” showed up. They walked quickly to the corner and got in Farah’s car. As they pulled away, he lowered his head until they were a block away.

In the car, Steve said little, not knowing exactly what Kella had told her friend. Once they reached the apartment, Farah played her role as hostess, showing the apartment quickly and offering Kella and Steve a fruit juice. The three of them sat in the kitchen at a small table.

“Kella has been your very able and very impressed public relations agent,” Steve said. “She has convinced me that you are smart, kind, and beautiful. I can tell already that she was right.”

Farah laughed and Kella rolled her eyes, “Easy, Romeo.”

“You are at home here,” Farah said. “Stay as long as you like. Kella also told me good things about you.”

Steve wanted to hold her hand to reassure her but restrained himself, realizing that he didn’t know how she would react to physical contact. As if she had read his mind, Kella reached for Farah’s hand and held it.

“You also need to know that associating with us could be dangerous,” Steve said.

He looked at Kella and she nodded. It was time to reveal the results of the trace request to CIA Headquarters. “Farah, when your father was in touch with the U.S. Embassy, he was acting on behalf of his country but also helping America by sharing what he knew. His purpose was to help Iran by making sure that the United States had a good understanding of the situation. Unfortunately, events moved too fast.

“I know about him. I know that he said that he was loyal to his country and would serve Iran no matter who was in charge. I know that he was held in Qasr prison and that he was executed on the rooftop of the Alavi #2 High School. He made the ultimate sacrifice out of loyalty, not to the Shah but to a greater call: his country.”

“How do...?” Farah stuttered.

“Don’t ask. No country could have had a more loyal citizen. I know you are proud of him. Because happenstance has put us together—maybe it wasn’t just luck—you need to know that your father had a Swiss bank account. And the interest, the magic of compound interest, grew the amount until his closest family relative could be found. You’re found. Here is the account number and the bank name.”

He handed her a three-by-five card, on which was printed: THE NPB NEUE PRIVAT BANK AG, LIMMATQUAI 122. On that back, she found, handwritten, “Balance $782,450.”

Farah was speechless for a moment. She looked at Steve and then at Kella. Farah clearly loved Kella’s outgoing personality, her confidence and her insights on the outside world—two smart career women connecting. She might have guessed there was something about Kella and her friend Christopher she did not know. If she had suspicions before, they had not influenced her decision regarding Kella.

Steve tried to interpret Farah’s stare at Kella. Obviously, she was trying to compute the new information. She probably wondered about the money, he thought. What had her father done to earn it? The ayatollahs had executed him for it.

Steve also knew from Kella that she disagreed with her government on many things. She considered its repression of women, of the entire population really, through the implementation of Sharia Law to be medieval. She had told Kella that she was afraid of its violent stand against Israel. What if, acting out of existential fear, Israel attacked preemptively? Steve knew she was faced with a conclusion she had been able to avoid earlier: Kella and her friend Christopher were probably spies, for the Americans, meaning the CIA. Could anything be worse than to be a CIA spy in Iran? The level of risk would now be the same for her as for them. Kella’s friend Christopher was forcing her to face reality. It wasn’t too late. She could tell them to get out. Steve wondered which way Farah was leaning.

Sitting at the kitchen table, Farah shared her memories of her father’s death. She was too young at the time to really understand, but she knew that he wasn’t coming back. She had been afraid for a while. It wasn’t until she was a teenager that she understood the politics, the unfairness, of her father’s death. She realized now that, all this time, something had been missing from her life.

“Did I really stay in Tehran to save our family property?” she asked. “It was my rationale. I realize now that it was about my father. I had to do something to finally close that chapter. I didn’t know what.”

Her lips tightened and her jaw became firm. She lifted her eyes and looked at her guests, now her allies. “I don’t care about the money. It’s time I acted to revenge my father’s death. Thank you.”

She stood up and hugged Kella. Steve got up and patted her on the back. They stayed silent for a long moment. Farah’s eyes were wet but she held her tears.

They moved out of the kitchen into the living room. Farah took a bottle of wine from a cupboard and started pouring when Steve said, “You wouldn’t have a beer by any chance?”

Farah went to the kitchen and came back with a green bottle of Kingfisher beer from India. Steve thought that the distribution and sale and alcohol were the country’s best-kept secret.

Farah busied herself, turning the lights on and moving a magazine from a chair to a small table next to the sofa where both Steve and Kella were sitting. “I was very young when they killed my father,” she said standing.

She sat in an armchair across from Steve and Kella and continued. “I learned later he was in contact with someone from the American