The Primary Objective, page 38
It was Sergeant Fong.
She was as surprised as they were.
“Wow! How did you get in here? You are very brave. They will kill you if they find you. I came here to copy some material myself. I want to defect. Please take me with you. I can be useful. If you want to tell the world about what goes on here you need witnesses not just film. That’s why I can help you. I understand all the systems we operate on this site.”
“Who was the man you were with outside just now?”
“He is our chief engineer investigating the power problem. The base is on emergency supply which can be retained for up to six hours. He has that time to get the lights back on, but he is good. I don’t think it will take him long.”
“Where is Major Ho?”
“He is in a teleconference with Beijing for the next fifteen minutes. We are under strict instructions not to disturb him during these times.”
“Are we collecting the right material?”
“Yes, I think so. I have come to copy some of the medical reports which relate to the experiments you have recorded. Please let me use this main computer.”
Dave got up and moved to the door with Ehat.
“Make it quick, I don’t think Jafar will be able to keep us all in the dark for much longer.”
It was another ten minutes to collect what they needed. Dave and Amy Fong led the way out, Jo and Ehat following. They took the emergency stairs back to the surface entrance, which was only some sixty metres from the gatehouse.
A mixed group of Chinese and Iranian soldiers and workers were involved in a major disagreement about the power cable. Others were erecting arc lights over the area between the base generator and the guardhouse. Voices were raised and then a first blow before a melee ensued. It was the ideal environment for Dave and his team to slip into the shadows and away across the road, over the safety barrier and down into the anonymity of an almond orchard.
As the hours passed, Colonel Rahman was becoming more confident about not having to call Gharbieh. The prison at the base had been secured; thirty of the abscondees had been recovered. Moussavi had been rescued from a mob by promises of prison transfers and visits but only after his guards had shot five of them dead. He still had eight on the run, the mystery of the missing Buk unit and reports of fisticuffs at the Chinese compound to resolve. He called Ho.
“How are things, Major? I hear you’ve had a disturbed night. Is everything OK? Do you need any more help?”
Ho was under pressure but remained diplomatic. “I have always appreciated local people’s willingness to make us feel welcome and to help us when they can, but tonight has been a test for us all. Al-Fouadi’s men did a good job assembling the accommodation units for our construction teams next week but really made a mess of the service connections, calculating the cable loads incorrectly and blowing out the substation. We have been on emergency power for two hours now, which is unacceptable. When my chief engineer complained, one of the Iranian workers assaulted him. We have taken pictures, Colonel, and will expect you to make arrests.”
“But it has quietened down?”
“Yes, al-Fouadi’s son came by to check the work. He seems to have sorted the problem out – for now. Apparently, the man who threw the blow was one of your conscripted prisoners. I am told we should be on full power within the hour and the trench will be filled thereafter. If this is another example of the good faith of our Iranian partners I will be satisfied. If not, I will call you again in the coming hours.”
Yellow alert status would be retained until the morning.
Rahman needed a couple of hours’ sleep.
Fawaz was short on sleep too. In the course of the next few hours the mission would come to a close. The Peace International team would leave and he and his family would plan a new life in Ibrahim Sami, hopefully without a Chinese biological warfare factory on their doorstep. He was surprising himself by his ability to manage business at home without his father. If Fawaz was honest enough, he was becoming worried about his continued absence, as he found himself with daily decisions to make, everything from arranging for produce to be collected for market and buying feed for the sheep, to authorising weekly paycheques for his staff and trying to work out how to reclaim money from the government for organising local labour crews to supervise construction at the compound. He had called the family bank in Tabriz to explain that his father had been unexpectedly delayed on business and that there were urgent transactions he needed to undertake on his behalf. It wouldn’t be a problem as they had received certified copies of his identity and signature from his father only the previous week. It was one less thing to worry about. He recalled Dad refusing to take his mobile with him and knew he would be facing his own anxious moments, wherever he was. He understood too that the Alrakahthan visit was now over, as Rahman had sent a car to collect their bags, and knew Jafar had more or less completed the work at the compound as his father had instructed. He was also pleased that he had been able to smooth over the misunderstandings between Jafar’s workers and the Chinese military without the situation escalating. Now, all he had to do was to figure out what to do about Jack and his sister, Shimina. Firstly, he needed to get Jack out of the house before his father got back. He hit upon the idea of moving him into the mosque. Of course, Mullah Yusuf would be likely to object, but a friendly reminder about his special hotel stays should take care of that. As for Shimina, he would have to take some time to explain truthfully what was happening, but at least that could wait until the Peace International team had left.
He was about to leave home to visit the mosque when the phone rang.
“Fawaz, is that you? It’s Seyyed Jevadi, I run the truck workshop at Karranlo. I do some work with your dad over the border, now and again. I helped him get across the Aras yesterday to get to a meeting. I have heard there’s been a serious road accident over there and some of my own people who were travelling with him have been killed. I’m informed your farm manager, Hanif, is definitely one of the fatalities and your dad is missing. I’m really sorry, lad, I don’t know much about the circumstances, but the information is sound. When I get more I’ll call.”
The news had the same impact on him as he imagined it must have had on his father. He focused on Jevadi saying his father was missing, not dead. He must hold on to that for now and keep focused on the tasks at hand in the hours to come.
His conversation with Mullah Yusuf went as he had expected. He had started by saying his father’s working trip had been extended and that he was responsible for the al-Fouadi businesses in his absence. Although, by his own admission, he was not a regular attendee, he had taken the opportunity to tour the mosque and noted its improved interior decoration as well as joking that the new sound system to announce the call to prayer was now so loud he thought no one in Ibrahim Sami had a legitimate excuse not to attend. Both items had been funded by his father, perhaps, thought his son, as a method for compensating for his considerable personal misdemeanours. Yusuf replied that his father knew what it was to be a good Muslim. He, Fawaz, had enjoyed taking responsibility for his father’s diverse commercial interests and that the hotel had proved to be the most interesting, especially noting the calibre and frequency of its main customers. However, it was a busy place, and a friend of his had been beaten up in the street recently and needed somewhere quiet to rest where he would not be disturbed. His friend had a strong sense of shame and wanted to recover in an environment where ‘discretion’ could be assured. Could the Mullah offer suitable accommodation for a few days? It would be appreciated by the whole family. Yusuf could expect the man to be delivered to the mosque after midday prayers.
The main street was much quieter than it had been twenty-four hours earlier. There was no convoy of trucks, no audience waiting to watch it all go by. All that had been delivered and installed at the compound was ready for the next big influx from China due in the coming hours. Walking back to the house, he had bumped into Hashmi Kolani, ‘the Carpet King’, and decided to take coffee in the hotel foyer. It was a convenient moment for a brain dump – after all, Kolani was an old friend who had his own experience of hard times.
It had only been a couple of weeks since they last met but Fawaz was surprised how much more he had to share – he had talked about working for his father, his fears about his disappearance and his connections with Moussavi, Rahman and Ho.
“I just have a feeling he got involved in all this by accident and was out of his depth. I remember a few years ago he got involved with a raiding party that went into Azerbaijan and came back with all sorts of stuff: money, icons, girls, even some Russian missiles. It had been organised by Moussavi before he was appointed governor mayor. I know he rowed with my mother about it and he said he had to do it because he was broke. Since I went away, he’s clearly made a lot of money in a short space of time and having looked through his records, most of it now looks legit. The stuff that wasn’t seems to relate to his cross-border cash trades, which he only really discussed with Hanif, who is now dead, according to Jevadi. I don’t know how he can know that but if my father is still alive he must be trapped somewhere in Azerbaijan and I have no means of finding him.”
Kolani observed, “Your father has a big reputation round here and is nobody’s fool. He would understand the risks of going west, better than anyone. Certainly, if he is stuck over there he will be figuring out a way to get back. He would expect you to keep things running in his absence, so just do it, tell the family and let events take care of themselves.”
Fawaz estimated there was just four hours to go before the Peace International team would meet at his number three barn and prepare to leave the country. He had checked the mezzanine to see if their drysuits were ready for the trip back across the water. Apart from his own, he expected there to be one spare for Jack. He would need to tell Dave that Jack would have to stay on for a few days at least until he was able to make the trip. He also wanted the group out of the country before he told Shimina the full story of his return to Ibrahim Sami and the realities of his father’s disappearance. The previous twenty-four hours had felt tense in the town following Rahman’s decision to bolster border protections following the theft of the Buk missile system and the Posyan detention centre breakout. Word of mouth was much more efficient than the local newspaper and Fawaz’s neighbours were worried, despite house-to-house assurances provided by the military, that there were still eight ‘murderers’ on the loose in the locality. No one knew the route down to the Aras from Sami better than Fawaz but he was clearly aware more care would be required that evening given the increase of foot patrols. There was no way of knowing in the time available where and when the guards would be out so it would be a slow ‘caterpillar’ movement through the razor wire and minefield when the time came. Members of the team had been lying low since completing their operational duties the night before. For safety, they had sheltered outdoors at different locations in the vicinity and were set to gather at 21.00.
All arrived at the appointed rendezvous within a few minutes of each other and quietly got to work putting on their kit for their final trip. Fawaz told Dave about Jack, but Dave had asked for his drysuit anyway as Amy Fong was now one of their number. Given the increased patrols, Dave had also instructed that they wait for Gil to arrive to lead them to the river crossing. It was now time for goodbyes, hugs and promises to keep in touch, because, after all, that’s what people say at such times, regardless of whether they mean it. Together with Jo, Rodg, Anya and Gul, they strapped on their backpacks. They waited in anticipation in the semi-darkness of the ground level tubular light for Gil, watching the dancing shadows cast by the sheep jostling for their evening feed. Fawaz locked the main barn and returned under torchlight to the house, alone with his thoughts to face his own new and pressing personal challenge – his future relationship with his sister.
Entering the house, he found her, curled up on a settee watching a nature programme on TV.
“Shem – we need to talk. It’s important.”
“If you want to give me another lecture, don’t bother, I know the script,” she replied.
“No, there’s something really important to tell you. Hanif is dead and its likely Dad is too.”
She continued to stare at the TV.
“Did they go to Armenia?”
“I don’t know other than the fact they didn’t get there. Apparently, they were involved in a major road crash in Azerbaijan.”
“Why did you say Hanif is dead and Dad is likely to be?”
He told her about the call from Karranlo.
“And how does he know?”
“I think he got a tip-off from someone over there.”
“So Dad may be out there trying to get home and hasn’t bothered to take a mobile. And there’s no point in us going to search for him because he could be anywhere if he is alive.”
“Yes.”
“Great. What do you expect me to do?”
“Firstly, we must look after Mum. She will have no idea. I’m pretty sure Dad never talked to her about any of his trips across the frontier. It will be a complete shock. I think she is better staying at her sisters, so we need to plan to go and see her together if we hear nothing more in the course of the next few days. We must also speak to Khalifa.”
“And what else?”
“Until he gets back, I have to be head of the household and manage the business.”
“How boring is that?”
“Grow up, Shemmy – we both need to keep it together for Mum’s as well as Dad’s sake. I need your assistance, especially, making sure all the bookkeeping is done. Will you help me?”
“OK, but how about you helping me?”
“What do you need?”
“If you are going to be head of the family, you need to understand I am now a woman, not a girl, some piece of meat to be traded like the sheep in the barn. I am eighteen years old. So many of my friends have already been given to gnarled old men to be brides – raped and banished to a kitchen either to cook meals or have their horrible offspring. I am tired of going through the market on my own and being groped or leered at. I don’t want to be defined by my sexuality in our male-dominated society.
“Mum doesn’t really get it but it’s different for my generation. I want to study and get a good job. If I have to lose my virginity, so be it, but at least I should choose who and when. The way things are, I know my life won’t get better until I have slept with a man, when I can wear his ring and take control of my life. I am telling you I have met that man: he is your ‘spy’, Parviz, the one you took to the mosque earlier. This could be my best chance of happiness. If you can’t approve, please don’t stand in my way.”
Fawaz sighed. “His name is Jack. He comes from Manchester in England and has an Iranian granny. He’s a journalist and came here to write a story about the Chinese base. I travelled back here with him a couple of weeks ago. I don’t think he would be serious or has any intention of staying once he has the story, precisely because he could be arrested and put on trial for espionage.”
