Khomeini's Boy: The Shadow War with Iran

by Bryce Adams

  Soleimani finally accepted coffee when the prime minister himself offered it. He also accepted one of al-Maliki’s cigarettes. The prime minister smoked genuine Marlboros, full of whatever North Carolina tasted like. The general couldn’t get them in Iran, so he enjoyed them where he could and ignored the “made in America” stamp hidden somewhere along their packaging.

  They exchanged pleasantries for a while, then Soleimani crossed his leg wide, cowboy style, so the prime minister could see the sole of his shiny black shoe. Arabs hated that.

  “Why did you call me here, Prime Minister? You knew I was in Baghdad last week, yet you couldn’t make time to speak with me.” Soleimani looked al-Maliki straight in the tired eyes that hid behind his schoolteacher’s glasses.

  The prime minister cleared his throat and broke eye contact. “I’m sorry about last week, General. You know how busy things get around here,” he said lamely.

  “Yes.”

  Prime Minister al-Maliki cleared his throat again. “Yesterday I received an unexpected phone call from the American vice president himself.”

  “Oh my.” Soleimani raised his curved eyebrows politely.

  Al-Maliki frowned and responded, “As you say. The call lasted some time, and that man does go around and around once he gets talking on an issue where he feels knowledgeable.”

  General Soleimani smiled with his lips pressed together, then asked, “What did Joe Biden want, Nuri?”

  Al-Maliki rubbed his hands together. “Right. Well, he mentioned Quds Force, meaning…he mentioned you. By name. In particular.”

  The general leaned forward indulgently, like a psychotherapist. “And?”

  The prime minister slumped back in his leather swivel chair and threw his hands onto the desk, palms up. “And he said, verbatim, ‘Prime Minister, you need to stop letting that son of a bitch Qasem Soleimani use Iraqi airspace to resupply Assad’s army from Iran.’”

  “So are you?” Soleimani leaned back in his chair with his hands clasped.

  Al-Maliki took a sip from the blue porcelain coffee cup in front of him that had been empty for ten minutes. He licked his lips and cast his eye downwards as he said, “The vice president has the ability to make things very difficult for me, General Soleimani. He is still a very powerful man in America’s congress, and that means he can squeeze me when it comes to things that Iraq still needs. I can’t rule this country without that American aid flowing through Baghdad to the provinces. My Shiite constituency won’t support me if I make this country destitute, and that’s not even to speak of the Sunni sheikhs that I have to outright bribe to keep from throwing in their lot with al-Qaida to stop a Shiite like me from ruling in Baghdad.”

  “So are you?” Soleimani repeated.

  The prime minister rubbed his eyes. “Obama was sending a message by having Joe Biden call, you know. Ever since America invaded, he’s been the main person calling for this country to be split into three pieces: one for the Kurds, another for Sunnis, and a rump for us Shiites.”

  Al-Maliki tried to take another nervous sip from the empty blue porcelain cup. As he did so, Soleimani reached forward and gripped the cup’s equally blue saucer between thumb and forefinger. Then he gingerly pulled it back towards him, so the prime minister had nothing to hide behind. The saucer scraped across the table like a cheap ashtray on a bar top.

  “Four hundred and fifty million dollars U.S., Nuri. That’s how much you’re worth to me alive. That’s how much I paid to have you elected to your position, counting the bribes, threats, and military hardware I needed to fritter away on your rivals so that no one opened your throat at night. Do you know why I did that? Do you know why my Supreme Leader would authorize those kind of expenditures on a venal, balding has-been like you?”

  Al-Maliki looked at Soleimani, trying to play it cool as he rehashed a line he’d said behind closed doors a dozen times. He answered, “Master Khamenei spent that money because Iran lived in terror of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni dictatorship for thirty years. With American troops on Iran’s eastern doorstep in Afghanistan, you needed to secure Iraq by installing someone you trusted. You needed a Shiite politician who can work a local pro-Iranian constituency, and you realized I’m the best at all of those things, whether you want to insult me or not.”

  Soleimani pushed the blue china onto the floor. It broke with the tinkling clang of a falling wind chime.

  Soleimani continued, “I paid that much for you because I can read a map. If Iraq is sympathetic to Iran’s interests, then Iran can supply Assad while he wins the Syrian civil war. If Syria is secure, that means Iran can continue to supply Hezbollah in Lebanon. If Hezbollah is well-supplied, Iran can continue to threaten Israel. If Israel is threatened, Iran still has leverage over America. That’s it,” he shrugged and waved one hand towards the shards of blue porcelain on the ground, “So long as I can still read that map, the makeup of Iraqi government is incidental to us. You were the easiest Shiite politician in Baghdad to sell on the mass market. If this conversation keeps going the way it is now, I’ll make some calls and find out which of you is the second easiest.”

  Al-Maliki lit another cigarette and collected his thoughts before responding, “Am I speaking with the Revolutionary Guard, or with Master Khamenei right now?”

  Soleimani’s eyes narrowed. “You’re speaking with me. If that ever changes, it means your bald ass is about to be hanged then dragged through the streets like Saddam Hussein.”

  Soleimani reached into his pocket and took out a black clamshell mobile phone. He flipped it open and scanned through the directory. Every name and number would have been worth a fortune in Langley. He stopped towards the bottom of the alphabet and put his thumb on the green “call” button before holding it up to the prime minister.

  Al-Maliki said, “You can’t be serious. You’re going to replace me with Muqtada al-Sadr? That doughy little bastard who thinks he’s a king because his Mahdi Army conquered a slum in Baghdad then renamed it ‘Sadr City?!’”

  Soleimani offered a muffled laugh, “He is an insufferable little shit, but he has three edges you lack. First, as you noticed, he has a private standing army. Second, he’s ruthless enough to put his predecessor on a meat hook. Once I tell him to kill you, street dogs will be eating your carcass within an hour. Third, he’s an insufferable little shit with enough common sense to understand the principle of being bought, whereas you…” Soleimani shrugged and left it at that.

  He held the phone to his ear and prepared to make the call, because Qasem Soleimani never bluffed. But he did almost drop the phone when it rang on its own accord. He didn’t recognize the number, but with the flip-top of his phone open, he’d already answered the call automatically.

  Old habits die hard, so Soleimani answered the anonymous phone call by breaking into thickly accented Afghani Pashtun to give away nothing about himself. He said, “Identify yourself.”

  “Qasem, Sir—it’s Jamsheed. They did it to me again. They put me in a room with a video camera, they beat me, and they make me give a false confession before killing me. Were you part of it?”

  Soleimani’s eyes widened. His normally icy veins throbbed at his temples. The man on the other end of the phone sounded broken and insane. That wasn’t the voice of Jamsheed Mashhadi. Something had happened in Syria, and for once, Qasem Soleimani knew nothing about it.

  He replied, “Jamsheed, what happened? Speak slowly and collect your thoughts.”

  “Were you or weren’t you a fucking part of it, Qasem?!”

  Soleimani looked at Nuri al-Maliki, who understood enough Farsi to enjoy the show. Soleimani threw the Iraqi a look that could have set stone on fire, and replied, “I sent you to Syria at the personal request of the Supreme Leader, Colonel Mashhadi. That’s all I know. Now tell me: what has happened?”

  “You promised me, Qasem. You promised me that if I fought for you, those fucking parasites in their black robes would never get another chance to betray me. You lied.”

  The g
eneral stood up. Soleimani had less than a high school education, but he knew how to read men by their eyes, their faces, and the slightest timbre in their voices. Something had happened in Syria, and it had left his deadliest agent insane. Soleimani needed to stop him immediately.

  He said, “Colonel Mashhadi—Jamsheed—are you someplace with internet access? I’d like to video conference you for a moment so I can see what those bastards did to you, and we can work on getting you out of there.”

  “I’m in a truck heading north out of Damascus, Qasem. I killed the ayatollahs’ ambassador and blew up their embassy.”

  Soleimani replied, “Our embassy, Jamsheed. What did you do to our embassy?”

  “I knew you would side with them in the end. All you need now is a turban and a black bathrobe, you fucking traitor,” Jamsheed intoned venomously.

  Soleimani could read the man’s voice. There was nothing left inside Jamsheed Mashhadi to be reasoned with.

  The general said, “Jamsheed…you need to tell me what happened to you. That’s the only way I can make things right.”

  “You can’t make things right. All you can do is watch.”

  The call ended. Qasem Soleimani didn’t bother trying to call Jamsheed Mashhadi back. The man wasn’t going to answer. Instead, he searched through his numbers for a particular officer who commanded Vahdati Airbase outside Dezful, Iran. Vahdati Airbase was the closest Iranian air base to Iraq, and therefore the closest Iranian airbase to northwestern Syria.

  Orders were given.

  Qasem Soleimani ended the phone call and felt eyes on his back. Nuri al-Maliki was leaning back in his leather chair, smoking a cigarette. Little lines on the side of the Iraqi’s eyes told Soleimani that the prime minister was enjoying himself.

  “I need to ask you for something, Prime Minister.”

  Al-Maliki nodded his head in mock gravity, like a funeral attendee mourning a distant relative. “Of course, General. As long as I hold this office, I will always be a staunch friend of Iran and the Revolutionary Guard.”

  Soleimani picked up his cheap chair and threw it across al-Maliki’s desk before the prime minister knew what was happening. It shattered into pieces of compressed wood when it hit the balding man, who fell out of his chair with a groan.

  Nuri al-Maliki theoretically commanded an army of one million American-trained soldiers. Iraq was a country of twenty-five million people sitting on the world’s second largest oil reserves. None of that mattered to Soleimani as he walked around Nuri al-Maliki’s desk and put one of his black wingtip shoes under the Iraqi’s jaw. Soleimani ignored the blood on al-Maliki’s head and the starry, concussed look in the man’s eyes that probably kept him from understanding the gravity of his situation. Soleimani just cocked his ankle back, so the tip of his shoe forced al-Maliki to look upward.

  Soleimani told him calmly, “Keep Iraqi airspace open for me, Nuri. I’ll have jets crossing it soon. Now go clean yourself up and tell people you fell down the stairs drinking last night. And never look at me that way again, or I’ll take out your eyes.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Ambrose parked their open-top truck on a hill two miles east of the city of Qusair, about fifteen minutes before dawn. Qusair sat in the bottomland of a semiarid valley just a few miles from the Lebanese border, where a chain of foothills on the horizon indicated the starting line of Hezbollah’s hidden labyrinth of bunkers. The city beneath them was a graveyard of buildings that were either toppled entirely or left standing with their guts blown out and pillars of smoke rising from within them. War had bleached them all the whitish grey color of campfire ash. It reminded Ambrose of his boyhood in Oregon, where he’d seen the chalky remnants of an old growth forest on the California border right after the biggest forest fire of the decade.

  “You agreed to take a child into that,” Celestine murmured in English.

  Ambrose had only slept for a few hours in the mineshaft before they got on the road. He didn’t have the energy to argue, so he just said, “We’d be going there with or without him. Remember it’s your boss who told us we’d get information about Tuva from Hezbollah in Qusair.”

  She looked at the boy, who slept in the back with his arms cradled around his rifle. “According to you, Gideon only said that because you’d already decided we were all going to Qusair,” Celestine replied.

  He grunted and looked through a set of field glasses they’d found in the glove box, which was the only piece of useable military equipment al-Qaida hadn’t stripped from the rig. Beneath him in the valley, the morning light revealed a strange line of dust-covered shapes trickling towards the city from the hills all around them. They were armed men wearing every type of clothing imaginable, so long as it was tattered: suits, military uniforms, jeans and T-shirts, even the flowing robes favored by Saudis and other Gulf Arabs. Many of them had headbands reading “God Is Great” in Arabic lettering, while others showed their piety by counting on prayer beads and murmuring Quranic verses as they trudged into the burning city. One of them carried a black, green, and white banner indicating they fought for the Free Syrian Army, the largest militia opposing Assad. The rising sun kept revealing more of them, until Ambrose realized that hundreds of rebel fighters were converging on Qusair with pistols, rifles, rockets, and swords.

  “Nah, I agreed to take us all into that,” Ambrose said. He turned to the back seat and spoke in Arabic, “Hey kid, wake up. You’re home.”

  The boy responded with the calm voice of a person who had learned to wake up and function instantly. “Good.” He pointed a finger down into the valley, where his young eyes could clearly make out some of the men beneath them, despite the fact Ambrose had needed binoculars to do the same. “Take me towards the one with the banner. I fought for Abu Mansur’s brigade, and he had friends in the Free Syrian Army.”

  Celestine gingerly cleaned her cracked glasses, taking care not to hurt the things further. “And how do you propose we do that without getting shot up in the process? This still looks like a Syrian Army truck, boy,” she observed.

  He made that skeptical Syrian clicking sound then said, “Actually it looks like an al-Qaida truck. That’s what the black stripes along the side mean.”

  Celestine muttered something in French then started talking to the kid, but Ambrose sat with his fingers crossed, tapping on his lips and thinking. Then he broke in, saying, “That’s a bunch of devout Muslims down there, isn’t it kid? A pretty manly, pious bunch?”

  The boy hummed in a thoughtful, preternaturally adult way before responding, “Many of them, but not all. Abu Mansur was, but the Free Syrian Army is supposed to welcome every man who wants to fight.”

  Ambrose chuckled for a second, even though his sternum and ribs hated him for it. “Every man who wants to fight. Perfect,” he turned to Celestine and said, “Alright, Mademoiselle Lemark; time to climb on the hood.”

  She’d been midway through lighting one of his cigarettes with the sterling Zippo, but she took her finger off the fire and snapped at him from the side of her mouth. “Come again?”

  Ambrose motioned for her to finish lighting the thing so he could also have a drag. The cigarette situation had reached the point that sensible rationing was required. “Think about it: we’re driving an open-topped jihadist jeep through the middle of a civil war that’s drowning in homoeroticism. The absolute last thing you’d see on an actual al-Qaida jeep is a woman sitting on the hood like it was a Def Leppard video,” he said with a smile.

  “What in the fu—“

  The boy broke in with his tyrannical young voice, “No, he’s right—he only made it sound stupid. If I was on lookout and saw a truck driving towards me with a woman on its hood, I’d only take out the tires or put a hole in the engine block. I wouldn’t kill them until after Abu Mansur interrogated them.”

  It was a lousy endorsement, but Ambrose would work with what he had. He raised his eyebrows to show off both big blue eyes and shrugged innocently. Celestine cursed them both as she
climbed onto the passenger’s side of the hood, gripping the manifold tightly with both hands. Ambrose tried to hide his smirk as he thought of how shitty a time she’d have as their jeep rumbled over those shattered roads. The boy didn’t make a sound. He just wrapped his hands tighter around the stock of his rifle.

  * * *

  Ambrose didn’t mind frontal assaults against long odds—he’d done it twice in two days, if getting arrested in Latakia counted—but he could admit to himself that their present course of action wasn’t exactly sound. He had a French-Israeli spy being jostled six ways from hell across the hood of his truck, a child soldier in the back seat eager to get back to killing people, and he was driving into a herd of pious militants as they marched towards a burning warzone, all on the assumption that somewhere on the other side of that warzone, there would be an enemy commander capable of telling him where Ambrose could find the deadliest man in Syria. But that slice of madness would come later. First, there were his new best friends in the so-called Free Syrian Army.

  He wasn’t taking any chances. Once Ambrose started driving, he realized that the kid was right; they were such an odd scene that no one had opened fire on them yet. After crossing the no man’s land between the crest of the hill and the flatland where the militants marched, he slowed the truck to a crawl and they approached the middle ranks of the gunmen in a slow-motion cloud of dust. He stopped in front of the most respectable-looking guerrilla he could find—a man of forty, or maybe twenty-five plus three years of civil war. He wore green fatigues with holes where Syrian army badges of rank should have been. There were enough to indicate he’d been an officer, and the other soldiers left him a big enough space bubble to indicate he still had an officer’s aura of command around him.

  The ex-officer spared a cursory look at Celestine on the hood before walking over to the driver’s side. He had thick stubble, and the hairless parts of his face were grimy with sweat and smoke to the point that it might have taken a decade to scrub him clean. He had the sad, tired eyes of a graveyard shift hospice worker standing vigil without coffee. He took in Ambrose just as nonchalantly, then he spoke to the boy.