Ahwaz was a sink. You couldn’t get clean in it. It collected dirty things needing a wash. After a while, you were one of them. The city’s best hotel, the one overlooking the river, was dank. It had bath towels as thin as sheets, and sheets as rough as washcloths. The mini-fridge verged on tepid and was empty except for a faded red pitcher of water. Would anyone drink such a mystery? Hoseyn wanted to take it to the front desk and demand it be tested. That would have been conspicuous. That was what he couldn’t be.

Here in Iran, he couldn’t call anyone. He had to avoid the windows. He couldn’t leave the room. He couldn’t eat room-service food. He couldn’t open the door to anyone. He was no longer sick. It would have been better to be sick. It would have been better not to have called his wife from Dubai. It would have helped if he’d rented a car on his own. All of his outfoxing had cornered him. He could try to blame someone not himself. But he didn’t bother. He had made this purgatory. He would have to sit down in it.

He had come to Iran for one reason: to see, precisely, who came for him. He chose this loo of a city to control how he met whoever followed the transistor. Here he could tell friend from foe before actually laying eyes on either. If the Dubai driver worked for foe, for Tehran, someone would arrive quickly. If the Dubai driver worked for former friend, the Americans, no one would show. Or it would take them a while. They couldn’t get into Iran quickly. They could rejigger an identity fast enough, send a muscled spook on a tourist visa, but even that visa, the easiest one, took a minimum of a month for approval. The Iraq border was sealed to casual travel. There were parachutes, and ironmen who could land them on dimes, but then what? Walk. Turkey, same. Armenia too. Turkmenistan, Pakistan, and Afghanistan borders were sieves, but from each an American would have to walk or, most likely, most desirable, fastest, drive across the length of Iran to Ahwaz without any Farsi. It was at least three days of travel.

Anyone would rather fly, but commercial flights had to stop in Tehran to connect with a flight to Ahwaz. Mehrabad and Khomeini airports were impossible to slink in and out of undetected. An American rent a car at an Iranian airport? Stealing one would be easier. For the right guy, even that would be easy. But once you were on the road, then distance was so great you’d have to get gas. With rationing now, government-printed vouchers were required. How do you buy a voucher on the black market without Farsi? You’d have to steal even gasoline.