Standing on the patio, Hamedi was centered in a quarter acre of smooth stone, this fronting a swimming pool the size of a tennis court. The whole arrangement was framed by verdant landscaping, plantings incorporated in flagrant contradiction to the desert flora outside the perimeter wall. It was all quite symbolic, he supposed, representing well the detachment that those who frequented this place held with their country. The palace—a boy from the squalor of south Tehran could think of it as nothing less—was twenty miles from the Qom facility. Rarely were those who worked the technical side of the operation permitted here. The compound was reserved, Hamedi knew, for visiting dignitaries, the religious and political elite who came to either marvel at Iran’s great technical achievement, or complain about the billions of petrodollars being funneled so deep into a pit in the earth. Hamedi had been here twice in the last months, once for an audience with the president himself, and tonight invited by the Guardian Council to speak to a group of concerned Majlis legislators. That job done, he’d left the legislators inside to posture and gossip and drink—as such men did when clear of the mullahs.

Hamedi tilted his head to one side and kept listening. The distant crackling noises that had frayed the night air were completely gone. The racket had carried on for a full ten minutes, ebbing in the last seconds at a decisive rate to be finally absorbed by the desert’s indifference. The ensuing silence seemed resounding, even if the outcome had never been in question. All the same, Hamedi closed his eyes and listened. He heard cicadas buzzing and the soft flush of the breeze though palms that had likely been imported from Africa or Indochina. Then his eyes flicked open as he registered a new sound over his shoulder, something even more out of place than the tropical landscaping. The tinkle of ice cubes in an empty glass.

“I think our excitement has ended,” said Farzad Behrouz.

Hamedi did not turn, preferring to imagine the rutted image of the man who headed Iran’s state security apparatus. It had long been Hamedi’s opinion that men of prominence were carved from one of two blocks. They were either imposing and handsome, or caricature oddities, men who had likely suffered cruel childhoods and were thus numb to life’s trials. Behrouz was firmly in the latter group. He was small and pale, short legs carrying an androgynous torso. His eyes were too close together, split by a pinched nose and framed by shallow, pockmarked cheeks. Presently, Hamedi pictured that face in a mask of cruel satisfaction. If a troll could be made to smile, that would be Farzad Behrouz.