by Ted Peters
“What did you learn? Did all thirty of you come from the same place?”
“No. From the murmuring I heard that day, these alleged spies were rounded up from all over Iran and brought to this particular place. I guess my name had been on the bottom of the list and was the newest in the arrested group.”
“Then what happened?”
“The guy in charge stepped down to talk on his cell phone. Perhaps an hour or so passed. We could talk with one another. Those I spoke to were clearly CIA. Then, Mr. Man-in-Charge stood up again. He reiterated in Farsi that we would be held in individual cells until the White House would personally confess to the world its mistreatment of Iran. Further....”
Leona’s cheeks glistened with rolling tears.
“He said that President Akbar Golshani had already placed a telephone request to the White House and was awaiting an answer. We should hope President Andrew Dodge had better honor the Iranian request soon. Why? Because each day one of us would be executed until this request would be honored. Each of us in our cells would not know when we went to bed at night who would be the next one to be executed. We, who survived, would be told each morning which among us had been sacrificed.”
24 Wednesday, Chicago, 8:34 pm
Graham began to writhe on the sofa. But he did not interrupt.
Leona broke the silence. “It’s going to get worse, Graham. Before we go on, maybe I should get us something to drink. If you need a bio-break, go ahead.”
While Graham headed for the bathroom, Leona went to the kitchen to pour some wine, two glasses of cab. She placed some Italian crackers in a small bowl. After her turn in the lav, the two returned to the living room.
Leona leaned back in the La-Z-Boy. Then, she leaned forward once again and spoke with a deliberate cadence. “I was taken to my cell. Very small. Maybe six by eight. Only a low three-legged stool to sit on and a rusty bucket for urine and feces. The floor was wooden planks. Old. Musty. Dank. I slept on the floor with one thin blanket. Sometimes unidentifiable insects kept me company.”
“What about food?”
“We were given an adequate supply of bottled water. Food once a day. Usually yogurt with some wedges of cucumber. The yogurt was nearly or already spoiled. I tried to eat it before it went rancid. I was successful only occasionally.”
“What could you see?”
“Through the barred window in my wooden door I could see a few bare light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. Some were burned out. Those that worked were off most of the time. I had to endure the dark. The wall boards had a few separations, so I could see through the cracks enough to determine when it was night and when it was day. I had my watch, but my mobile was taken away.
“Did they interrogate you?”
“Almost daily. I would be taken to a small room. Two or three interrogators would question me.”
“In English? Or Farsi?”
“English.”
“Did you tell them what they wanted?”
“Yes. They threatened harm to the max. So, I thought, why not give them what they might already know. I told them about my background and my assignment.”
“Did you disclose the, what shall we call him, saboteur?”
“No. It appears they were unaware of him. That was a relief. They never asked me. It was easy to avoid divulging anything about it.”
“So, what else happened?” Graham asked.
“Our cells were lined up in a row with a single hallway leading to each door. We could not see the other prisoners. When the guards left us alone, I tried to engage in conversation with the occupants of the cell on my right and the one on my left.”
“Did you get to know anything about them?”
“Yes. On my right was a woman, Aryānā Golshani. Her family name is the same as Iran's president. She was probably in her early twenties. She had grown up near Mosha, northeast of Tehran. When she was only nine, her father gave her as a bride to a neighbor, a deliveryman twenty years her senior. Part of the deal was that the husband would honor her virginity until at least one year into her puberty. He did not wait. She was raped. When she begged to go back home, she was beaten and held hostage in her new house. Because the community supported these arrangements, she had no oasis to flee to.” Leona sighed. “Oh, Graham, I’m digressing, I think.”
“No, Leona. Take your time. Any detail may be important.”
“Well, as you can guess, I came to like Aryānā, really like her. Even though I could not see her when we were secretly talking through our cell walls, I remembered what she looked liked from the earlier gathering.”
Leona picked up a tissue and dabbed her eyes. She placed a cracker in her mouth, but seemed unaware of the crackling noise it made during her chewing. Graham waited patiently until Leona spoke again.
“Here's Aryānā’s story. When she was twelve, her husband was accidently killed in a truck accident. She was told about the death, of course. While the family was grieving, Aryānā escaped and ran to a courthouse. She asked to speak to a judge. She told the judge her story and pleaded to be returned to her natal family. The judge made this possible and, so, Aryānā went home.”
Graham listened intently, filtering through his mind the precious personal qualities of this amazing creature sitting before him telling such a gut-wrenching story.
Leona continued. “Aryānā told her father how she had been mistreated. Then she demanded better treatment from her father. She told him she wanted to go to school. The father took pity on her. Maybe the father felt some guilt as well. Anyway, he made arrangements for Aryānā to attend school, an elite private academy. She excelled. She was eventually admitted to Sharif University where she studied linguistics with a major in English language and literature. It was there that she met a CIA agent—someone who had preceded me—and was recruited. Aryānā was angry enough at her own experience and feminist enough to rebel against her culture and against the political regime that supported it with police power.”
“Her name is Golshani. Is Aryānā a member of the president’s family?”
“Yes, but distantly. Too distantly for it to have made a difference. As you may know, Iran’s president is only second in command. The Suprene Leader, the Ayatollah, uses the president and the executive branch to police Sharia, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Well, as you can imagine, Aryānā was ripe for CIA recruitment. She had not been working long undercover when she, like me, was rounded up and imprisoned.”
“So, who was on the other side of your cell?”
“In the cell to my left was Bruce Belk. At first, Bruce tried to tell me all this was an unfortunate mistake. He said he was in Tehran on a tourist visa, on vacation. He claimed he had nothing to do with the CIA and that his arrest was a miscarriage of justice. After the executions began, Bruce confessed to me that this had been a lie. He had been planted in Iran by the Station Chief, just as I had been.
“Executions? Did they...?“
“Yes, they did. But let me finish. Bruce was forty-eight. A wife and three daughters. He was working as a nuclear engineer at the Seabrook Nuclear Power Station south of Portsmouth, New Hampsire. He had previously served a stint at Los Alamos. His specialty was uranium enrichment. He had been invited by the Golshani government as a consultant on the Bushehr One reactor. This opportunity was too good for the CIA to pass up. Belk became a temporary agent. I think he underestimated the risk.”
Leona paused, unceremoniously sipped her wine, and reached for another cracker.
“Go on,” said Graham following suit.
“Now, to the executions. On the morning of the third day, the guards walked past each cell. They were wheeling a gurney. On it was a body. It was one of the men I’d seen but not talked to at the opening meeting. His eyes were open, staring upward. His shirt was ripped and he was bleeding from the chest and head in multiple places. I surmised he had been executed by firing squad. Maybe three bullets total. The guards made certain each of
us knew that this man was dead because our president, the U.S. president, had not agreed to acknowledge us as spies in their country.”
Leona looked down. She wiped her eyes with the back of her index finger. Then she continued. “It was a dreadful moment. This man was dead. Never again would he see his wife or children, if he had any. I adopted the logic of my captors: he died because our president in Washington was willing to lie to Iran and lie to the world about us. All he would’ve needed to do was acknowledge that we belonged to him; and then we could’ve gone home. Evidently, our president was willing for us to die rather than confess what was true about the CIA in Iran.”
25 Wednesday, Chicago, 9:03pm
Leona stood up. She walked around in a small circle, then reached for a straight back dining room chair. She banged the legs on the floor, placing it with the back directly in front of Graham, who was still on the couch. She straddled the chair and looked her new confidant in the eye.
“Graham, I have a machine mind. I bet you have one too. It’s a pattern of thinking and acting that is impervious to feeling. I switch it on when I’ve got a job to do. But when there is no job, I switch back to my human heart. Sitting twenty-four hours a day, day after day, in a dark and dank cell is not the right time for a machine mind. I was in my heart. And my heart was sinking, sinking into a black hole of unfathomable depth. I had no influence, let alone control over the needless deaths of these operatives who thought they were serving our country. Nor would I have any control whatsoever regarding my own fate. It’s a form of excruciating mental torture, Graham.”
“Yes, I know.” Graham lifted his chin slightly, indicating he wanted Leona to continue.
“The next morning,” Leona went on, “it happened again. The guards showed up shortly after dawn with another body. This time the executed man had been beheaded. His head was sitting next to his feet to dramatize the point. Again, we were told that this execution was unnecessary. It was due to our president in the White House.”
“Ugh,” muttered Graham.
“This became the daily routine. Each evening we would wonder: ‘Will it be me they’re coming for tonight?’ Then, in the morning, we would see who turned up dead. Most were executed by firing squad. A few were beheaded. One was drowned. I began putting hash marks on my cell wall. Later, I discovered that others had done this too. On the morning of what would be the fourteenth execution, I tapped on Aryānā’s wall. No answer. I began to fear what this meant. I tapped again, and again. No answer.”
Leona began to cry out loud. Graham waited patiently.
“When the guards walked by with the gurney, it was Aryānā. Her head had been severed. She was naked. I could see some bloody wounds in her lower pelvis. I can only imagine what perverted cruelty they must have exacted on that poor girl.” Leona began sobbing. Graham leaned forward and grasped her right hand in both of his. He waited.
“I can see why Ulla was so thrilled to have you hold her hand,” she remarked.
Leona removed her hand from Graham’s and pounded the coffee table. “This went on for twenty-seven goddamned mornings!” She pounded the coffee table repeatedly, harder with each pound. “Twenty-seven! Twenty-seven executions! Bruce Belk died on execution day twenty-three. By that time he was petrified. I could hear him crying on the night they came to take him. Twenty-seven!”
“Who survived?”
“Me, obviously. The other two I came to know only on the trip back to the U.S. Whatever Washington and Tehran had agreed on, I simply didn’t know then or even now. It came as a shock. Late on the evening of day twenty-eight, I heard the key slip into my lock. ‘Oh, God!’ I thought. ‘I’m next’.”
Graham winced again.
“My cell door banged open. At first the hall lights blinded me. This was it. I knew it. Two guards aggressively grabbed me and pulled a black hood over my head so I could not see. This had to be the procedure leading to torture and then execution, I thought.
“What then?”
“No handcuffs. Their strong hands clenched my arms, and they escorted me out. No one spoke to me. We walked the length of the corridor, and I thought of myself as dead woman walking. We exited through a door and I could feel the fresh outside air. I was thrust into the backseat of some kind of vehicle, perhaps another SUV. When the car stopped and I was pulled out, I found myself boarding a helicoptor. Still only blackness under my hood, but I could feel the wind and hear the roar of the rotor. No one spoke a word. I remained mute.”
Leona’s two hands formed a single fist on the chair top. Graham reached forward and placed his left hand on hers.
“My hood was only removed minutes before we landed at an airfield, Mehrabad International Airport. Then I realized that there were three of us prisoners. Within moments we were rushed aboard an Emirates plane to Riyad, Saudi Arabia. From there a U.S. Air Force transport took us to Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. After a cursory debriefing, we were simply sent on our way. Simply sent on our way! Imagine that, Graham!” Leona paused. “I resigned from the CIA on my way out. My resignation was willingly accepted. The divorce was mutual. Uncontested.”
“How did you feel?”
“At first it was a moment of grace. Exactly why I was spared has never been explained to me, at least not fully. But to have stared into the black hole of death and then to see the sun shine again, well, I don’t have the words. It was the gift of life, the ultimate gift.”
Graham slipped his hand away from hers, but their eyes remained locked on one another. “What a gift you are, Lee. God knew what he was doing when he spared you. Although I’ve only known you for a couple of days, I’m feeling grateful. Now, is that too schmalzy?”
“Yes, much too schmalzy and much too quick. But thank you, anyhow. You see, gratitude is not all I feel. I’ve also got some anger, anger big time. Although it was a moment of grace for me, I don’t know what to think about the others: the twenty-seven who suffered such horrible deaths in that prison. It’s so unjust. So unfair. So cruel. I feel as much anger as I do gratitude.” And even more despair.”
“It sounds like you're suffering from moral injury.”
“Injury! More like moral obliteration! Before I went to Iran my moral metaphysic was as tight as the gears in a Grandfather clock. Everything worked together. It chimed precisely when scheduled. Then a demon on top of the John Hancock Building threw it off. I watched it go down and down and down, until I lost sight of it. But I know that when it hit bottom, it splattered across the pavement. It will never get put back together again. When my universe broke, my soul broke with it.”
Leona looked away before reengaging. “Actually, Graham, it was the catalyst in me for a crisis of faith. How could I believe any more in America if my country—even in the name of global peace—would stand by and needlessly watch the shedding of innocent blood. And, what about God? God is bigger than America. I know that. But these persons suffered such cruelty and terror. I can’t comprehend it. Where the hell was God?”
Graham was empathetic with the emotional Leona but felt he needed to press his business. “Who were the other two survivors?”
“I will not mention their names. I will tell you, however, that shortly after our release one committed suicide. He hanged himself. When President Dodge found out about the suicide, he summoned me to the White House. I was escorted by plane from Berkeley—actually Oakland—to Washington. That’s how I first met the bastard of the Oval Office. We talked alone. I thrashed him over this outrage, this tragedy, this wanton sacrifice of twenty-seven human beings who were serving him and this nation. The blood of twenty-seven persons—actually twenty-eight by then—was on his hands. We did not see eye to eye, as you can imagine. He sent me home, actually back to seminary, with my sworn promise not to tell this story to anybody. Anybody! I have kept that word—almost but not quite totally—until this moment. Two others know. But I’m not going to tell you who either is.”
Graham was shaking his head, eyes glassy. “Oh, Leona, what you�
��ve gone through. This is so painful.”
“It’s worse than painful, Graham. It’s like falling into a pit, a pit with no bottom. Think of Aryānā. She was robbed of her childhood. Then, just when she made it to the university and had a glimmer of hope—some larger purpose in life—she was dismembered and left to die in ignominy. And this applies to all twenty-seven, twenty-eight counting the suicide. What does this mean, Graham? Does it mean we can’t trust our president? No, something worse. Does it mean that the good ol’ red, white ‘n’ blue is not worth shedding blood for? No, something worse. What does it mean? It means nothing. And this nothing doesn’t just sit there doing nothing. No, this nothing is aggressive and vicious. It rises up and grips my soul and drags me down and down toward the abyss of meaninglessness. I think I now know what hell is.”
The two sat quietly, neither looking at the other. A minute passed.
Leona spoke first. “Dirty, that’s how I feel. Covered with scum.”
“Lee, you did not pull any triggers. You did not perpetrate any violence. Others did the dirty work, not you. You were a victim.”
“Victim or no victim, I feel contaminated by evil. You know how a woman feels after she’s been abused or raped? She feels violated. But there’s more. She feels polluted. Her innocence has been taken away by force. It doesn’t matter that she’s a victim, that somebody else has done the crime. I feel like I’ve been raped. Not literally, but figuratively. And I’ll have to trudge through the rest of my life feeling filthy.”
Graham listened. Fidgeting, he picked up the pillow with the Luther seal and placed it on his lap. He kneaded it, as if he were baking bread.
