“Lotfan be man ye bihess konande bedin.”

Baz laughed.

She’d asked for an anesthetic. Politely.

Will fished in one of his pockets. He brought out a khaki-colored curl of plastic. Baz looked at it, dumbfounded.

Mary started laughing and pulled out her own, tucked in her old pockets.

“Nashenava hastam,” she said—I’m deaf. “Hastad shekaste,” she said, pointing to her hearing aid—It’s broken.

18.   TO EXERCISE MY
DEPLETED FURY

They reached the crater lake at dusk. From its sinter shore they could see another dormant volcano. Baz said that cone was dry. This crater’s water, underground-fed and mineral-glutted, was too dense to swim in. It had sucked men down. Mary watched one of its tight waves. It looked like mercury lapping.

They were adrenaline. This was the leg of the mission that required driving past night into day. They had been on the road eighteen hours. Baz went to work in a courtyard north of the fire-shrine redoubt. Mary thought they should help him stake the tent. Will said talking was more important. They were now one day from Ahwaz.

She knew the sequence. They would go to Ahwaz for the maid. Those who talked to her believed she might have helped Hoseyn, but she refused to talk to any Iranians the Sacred Sons sent her. Someone, possibly Hoseyn, had instructed her to talk only to an American.

Will believed Hoseyn was dead. He thought the maid’s role was simple. She was a trap designed to deliver Will to the regime. He would pursue the alternative scenario as long as safeguards were in place. He reviewed them with Mary one more time. As always, he asked her if there was anything she thought they were missing. Just then Baz came running.

“Someone,” he said, breathless.

They followed him to a colonnade on the north side of the plateau. He pointed to the curling road they’d used to reach the lake. They saw a convoy of trucks—four of them—along with two motorbikes and a car.

Will shrugged. “A road people use,” he said to Baz. “Farms—orchards.”

Baz pulled out binoculars and handed them to Will. “Look,” he said.

“Okay,” Will said. “Okay. The truck.”

Mary looked for an explanation, but he wouldn’t give it. He’d been tense the last hours of the drive. He hadn’t laughed since the hearing aid.

They dismantled the tent and reloaded, then pushed the truck into a leafed-over gully near the tin roof protecting the southeastern gate. They hiked to a bluff and camouflaged behind scrub. It seemed they wouldn’t have enough time, and then they had too much. The waiting kept lengthening. Then the first nose of a motorbike came through.

Now she saw. One driver in fatigues opened a door. Then another. Their passengers ducked out with assault rifles.

“Safirs,” Baz whispered, naming the tactical jeeps.

“Basij?” Mary wondered. A young man’s paramilitary force.

Baz shook his head. “Haqqanis.”