THE INCREMENT

by David Ignatius

  The officers led the young doctor to a new black Samand sedan and put him in the backseat. They asked if he wanted the air-conditioning on, and when he said yes, they turned it up full blast. There was a police radio in the front seat, and the driver had a fat pistol in a shoulder holster. On the dashboard was a red light and a siren, but they didn’t turn it on. The young man waited for the blindfold. It was whispered that when the security men took people away to interrogation, they blindfolded them. But not today.

  Outside it was high summer in Tehran. People with money had gone to their villas on the Caspian Sea or, if they had real money, to the Cap d’Antibes or the Costa del Sol. The city was a mélange of sounds and smells: ripe melons in the market stalls; kebabs grilling on outdoor charcoals in the parks; the birdsong of the car horns. In the heat, people didn’t try so hard to look pious.

  As they drove past one of the offices of the Ministry of Intelligence, the lead officer muttered a curse that sounded like, “Gooz be reeshet,” which meant, roughly, “Fart on your beard.” The young scientist laughed, despite his predicament. It was well known that the Revolutionary Guard hated the Ministry of Intelligence. It was a common joke around town—a rivalry like between Persepolis and Esteghlal in soccer.

  A silence settled around the car. It was a bubble, floating among other bubbles. The young man waited for the fear to come back, but it didn’t. Instead he felt an odd sense of power. He was in control. They were guessing; he knew.

  They took the scientist to a building he had never seen before. It was off the Resalat Highway, north of the airport. It was late morning, so the traffic was light. Nobody talked on the way over—not the driver, not the headman in the green suit, not his thickset assistant who sat alongside in the backseat and who probably had a gun, too, under his ill-fitting jacket.

  The young man tried to lose himself in the ordinary sights of Tehran out the window. The teenage boy talking on his cell phone on the sidewalk; the girls primping in the backseat of the car next to them, perhaps off to have their toenails polished or their legs waxed. The space needle in Nasr Park, so tall and ugly; which people imagined was really a big listening tower for the secret police. The noisy knot of young men outside the filmi shop in Sadegiyeh Square that rented the latest pirated DVDs. The kebabis beckoning people for a midmorning snack.

  The headman told the driver to turn right near the Azadi Monument on the edge of the airport. Azadi. Freedom. What a joke. Its four massive pillars had been built by the shah in 1971 to last for all the generations of Pahlavi rulers to come. That dynasty survived just eight more years. The young man’s father had come here to protest the shah, in the crazy days of the revolution. Ostad, the young bearded men had called his father. Honored teacher. The scientist was only a baby at the time, but he had heard the stories retold so often. He knew this was why the Revolutionary Guard and the MOI and all the other guardians of the new regime had trusted him, even though he was from the old elite. They reasoned that he was a child of the revolution. He would feed off revenge. And they were right in that, although not in the way they imagined.

  The car turned into a side street, and then another, and soon they were at a walled compound. There were guards at the front gate; and then, at a second gate, there was a more elaborate checkpoint. They searched the young man thoroughly, emptying every item from his pocket: his pens, his wallet, his eyeglasses. They patted him down and then, not satisfied, they took him into a room and a guard asked him to drop his trousers. That was unusual. Even in the most secret parts of the archipelago, they did not shame people in that way. As he pulled his pants back on a few moments later, he gathered what he imagined as an invisible cloak around him, the cloak his father had described as his solace and protection, which was woven of fear.

  The office was modern, like a doctor’s conference room. The interrogator sat behind a teak desk. He had the latest issue of The Economist in front of him, and a copy of the International Herald Tribune that was just a day old. He must be very powerful. As the young scientist entered the office, the interrogator was looking at a flat-screen monitor. He tapped in a few commands and then studied what appeared on the screen and smiled. A formula for interrogation, perhaps.

  The interrogator turned toward the scientist. He wore a goatee that was trimmed neatly, like a jazz musician’s, and there was an unlikely twinkle in his eye.

  “Hello, Esteemed Doctor,” said the interrogator. He said that his name was Mehdi Esfahani, and he showed the young man his identification card from his service, the Etelaat-e Sepah, as if that made it all proper. He looked very merry, almost as if he were trying to suppress a chuckle. He stared back at the screen and then laughed aloud.

  “I am sorry, Doctor. Do you like jokes? The American kind. From the Internet, you know. Jokes about blond women who are stupid. Jokes about priests, rabbis, and ministers. Jokes about people called ‘rednecks.’ I collect them, you see. People send them to me from all over. Even from America. Can you imagine that? Do you like them, these Internet jokes?”

  The scientist didn’t know how to respond. The question was so odd. What was the right answer?

  “A little, I guess. I don’t see them very often. My work—”

  “Yes, yes, I know. Your work. But you use the Internet of course.”

  “Yes, for my work.” What was he getting at? Did he know something? The scientist couldn’t tell, the man’s manner was so peculiar.

  “My favorite are the redneck jokes. Do you know this word? The Americans use it to describe someone who is not too smart. You know you’re a redneck when your wife has to move the transmission to take a bath. That is one.” He laughed aloud. “That is very funny, don’t you think? You know you’re a redneck when your house gets a parking ticket. Isn’t that amusing? They live in mobile homes, apparently, these rednecks.”

  Mehdi Esfahani was waiting for the young scientist to laugh, but there was silence.

  “You do not understand these jokes?”

  “I guess not, Brother Inspector. I am sorry.” The young man was confused, in addition to being frightened.

  “Well, pity, I had hoped you had more of a sense of humor. We have enough serious ones, I think. But you, a bright boy, good background. Studied abroad. Access to foreign literature. You should have a sense of humor. Be funny. Tell jokes. But you look so serious. You must be frightened. Is that it?”

  “Yes, I guess so. I mean, I do have a sense of humor, Brother Inspector. But not so much now.”

  “Because you are afraid?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “Of you, Brother Inspector. You confuse me.”

  “Don’t be a donkey, Doctor. Do know why you are here?”

  “No,” said the young man.

  “Yes you do,” said the interrogator. “Everyone who comes here knows why.”

  “And why is that, sir?”

  “Because you did something wrong. Otherwise, why would we have brought you? The service never makes mistakes. You do know what the reason is, and it is my job to help you find it.” He stroked the whiskers of his goatee. In another situation, he would have seemed entirely ridiculous, like an Iranian Inspector Clouseau. But in this case, the eccentricity only made him more menacing.

  “Tell me about your time at the University of Heidelberg,” said the interrogator.

  “I’ve already told the Etelaat everything I can remember, Brother Inspector. Many times. They questioned me once a week, for nearly a year, when I came home.”

  “Yes, yes. I know. But that was routine questioning. This is special.”

  “Why special, sir?”

  “Because you are special, my dear. You have knowledge that is a prize—one so valuable that all the gold in Tehran could not buy it. So please, tell me about Germany. Who was your best friend there?”

  “I told the others before. I had no friends. The German boys did not like me.”

  “Yes, I know. I have read the file. But there
was a girl, wasn’t there? A German girl.”

  “Trudi.”

  “Yes, Trudi. Why don’t you tell me about her?”

  “There is nothing to tell, Brother Inspector. I have explained before. She was very pretty. I thought perhaps she would, you know…”

  “Have sex with you.”

  “Yes. That was very wrong, I’m sure. She was not a Muslim. But she would talk to me, when no one else would. She would sit with me in the café sometimes. She would ask me about Iran. She would listen to my stories. I was very lonely.”

  “Did she have large breasts?”

  The young scientist sat back in his chair with a start. Was this his crime, that he had let himself imagine having sex with a German physics student?”

  “I don’t know. I think so. I never touched them. She wanted me to, perhaps. But I wouldn’t. I was too frightened. Then I stopped seeing her. She tried, Brother Inspector. But I was not impure. I knew that it would be haram to have her, even as a temporary wife. So I stayed away.”

  “Yes, that’s in the file. All that.” Mehdi the interrogator paused and fingered his goatee again. He leaned toward the young scientist. His eyes were flashing suddenly.

  “Did you know that she was an Israeli? This Trudi? Did you know that?”

  The color went out of the young man’s cheeks. The beads of perspiration formed immediately on his forehead.

  “No she wasn’t,” the young man answered. “She was a German. I met her father. He was a businessman.”

  “He was an Israeli, too. Two passports. An agent of their famous Mossad.”

  “How do you know this? It is a lie. If it is true, why didn’t anyone ask me about it when I first came home?”

  “We didn’t know it then. We know it now. We have our friends in the German security service, you see. We can recruit them, just as they try to recruit us. We can pretend to be Americans, just as they do. Israelis, even. Oh yes. We are everywhere.”

  “What did they tell you? My God! What do you know?”

  “Trudi was studying physics at the Max Planck Institute, just like you. But her job was to look for young Iranian students. Who were lonely. Who wanted to have sex with a German girl. Who might be useful later. The German service was watching. They listened to her phone calls. They monitored her mail. They watched her. It took us many years to get this file, but now we have it. There are several Iranian names, I am sorry to say. And yours, my dear Doctor, is one.”

  The young man was trying to find his balance. He knew that if this was his “crime,” he was safe. He had said nothing to Trudi, let alone her father. He had broken off contact. He had done just what a servant of the revolution was supposed to do, which was nothing. The interrogator was still waiting for an answer.

  “I have told you everything, Brother Inspector. I denied nothing, because there is nothing to hide. My father warned me about the foreign spies and their tricks. We talked about it before I left Tehran. Your people warned me. Before, during, after. That is why I was careful. That is why avoided the German girls.”

  “Who is Hans?”

  The young man shifted awkwardly in his chair. The sweat started again.

  “Who is Hans?” repeated the interrogator. “We know that Trudi received messages from him. But we think there was no Hans. We think this was a code name.”

  The young Iranian felt a rattle inside, a tremor that wanted to come out. It was like a suppressed sneeze that left you quivering. They knew. It was useless to lie. If this was his crime, he would survive.

  “I was Hans,” he said.

  “Why did you use a code name? If this relationship was so innocent and you had nothing to hide, why did you make up a false name?

  How could he explain? The truth was so pathetic. “Hans” was his imaginary name for himself. He had begun calling himself that in his mind when he first arrived as a student in Heidelberg. It began as a defense. He was embarrassed about his big nose, and his thick black hair that always looked greasy, even when he had just washed it. He wanted to have cold blue eyes and frozen blood in his veins, like the German boys, and not to have emotions that were always about to boil over like the water in a teakettle. He wanted a hairless body like the German boys, instead of his matted torso from the monkey world of the East. He wanted one of the big-breasted German girls who made him hard when he was sitting at his desk in the library, trying to read his physics text books. He was embarrassed about who he was, so in his mind, he imagined another person who was living inside this Iranian body, and that person’s name was “Hans.”

  “I was ashamed,” said the young man. “I was embarrassed to be an Iranian, so I made up this German name for myself. Trudi thought it was funny. So when I sent her an email or I called her, I would say, ‘This is Hans.’”

  The interrogator shook his head. “That story is completely absurd, Doctor. But that does not mean it is true.”

  Mehdi Esfahani continued with his questions for another two hours. He asked about details of the meetings with Trudi, and about what she had asked him. He asked the young man to repeat several times the story of how he had broken off his contact with Trudi, after she propositioned him, and he got him to admit that one reason he had done so was that he was afraid she was a spy. His father had warned him about spies, and yes, he was afraid that she might be one. She had tried to contact him again, several times, but he had not responded. That was the truth. That was what made it easy.

  The questions continued, but the interrogator already seemed to know the answers, and it became increasingly obvious that the real point of this interview had been to see if the young man lied. Their agent in the German security service, whoever he was, had told them that Trudi’s contacts with the Iranian boy at the Max Planck Institute had come to nothing. But they wanted to see for themselves.

  There was a pause, at the end of one more string of questions about Trudi’s efforts to reestablish contact, after he had broken it off.

  “How do you know when you’re a redneck?” asked Esfahani.

  “I am very sorry, sir. I am sure that I do not know.”

  “You know you’re a redneck when you light a match in the bathroom and it blows your house off its wheels.”

  The young man stared at the interrogator. Finally he understood. He tried to laugh, feebly.

  “Really, you are pathetic. No sense of humor. That is the only thing that is suspicious about you. A normal man has a life. He is married by now. He is not so careful. But you, I do not understand. What are you so afraid of? Why don’t you start living?”

  The young man felt light-headed that afternoon when he returned to his apartment in Yoosef Abad. He had a peculiar feeling of invulnerability, like a man who has been shot at close range and survived. It was not the time for him to be caught. He was a fatalist in that way. If it had been time, he would have panicked in the interrogation room and confessed to his real sin. If it had been time, he would have told a lie they could easily have discovered. If it had been time, he would be spending this night in prison.

  But it was not time. It was not God’s will that he should be caught, so it must be God’s will that he should not be caught. They were looking for him, but they did not see. He was invisible. If he could drop a pebble into the water, he could drop a stone.

  Late that afternoon, Mehdi Esfahani received a visit from a man he knew only by his Arabic pseudonyms. He was sometimes called Al-Sadiq, “the Friend,” but more often he was referred to as Al-Majnoun, “the Crazy One,” by the few Iranians who knew of his existence. That was the name Mehdi knew him by. His real name was Badr, or Sadr, or something else entirely, nobody seemed to be sure. Mehdi Esfahani was a powerful man in the intelligence service, and he was frightened of few people. But he was frightened by Al-Majnoun.

  Al-Majnoun was a Lebanese Shiite who had come to Tehran in the mid-1980s. It was said by the few people who claimed to know anything about him that he had been involved in the kidnapping and torture of the CIA station chief in B
eirut in 1984, and that he had needed to escape to Iran to cool down. He had taken up a kind of permanent shadow residence in Tehran, under the patronage of a wing of the Revolutionary Guard’s intelligence service. He operated independently of the normal bureaucracies—both at the Guard and the intelligence ministry. He was a lone wolf, an enforcer. It was said that he was sent on special projects, at home and abroad, and that he had unusually wide latitude. When people in the regular services tried to question his missions, or even to probe for details, they usually regretted it. In two cases, it was said that his rivals had ended up dead—in cases that were never explained even to officials at the highest level.

  That was why people in the bureaucracies were afraid of “the Crazy One.” It was clear that he had the most powerful patronage—some even whispered that he reported ultimately to the Supreme Leader himself and was his personal intelligence adviser. There were stories that the two men liked to visit together, and lie on the tufted cushions of the leader’s palace reading each other couplets of ancient Persian and Arabic poetry. But nobody knew. That was the problem. And so when Al-Majnoun knocked on Mehdi’s door late that afternoon, the interrogator worried that he had done something very wrong.

  “Allah y’atik al afia,” said the Crazy One, in Lebanese Arabic dialect. He had learned to speak passable Farsi, but he often lapsed into his own language.

  The Lebanese was not an imposing man, physically. He was gaunt and walked with a bit of a stoop and shuffle, as if he were an older man. He usually wore sunglasses, even indoors, which was partly to mask his appearance and partly to hide the scars from his surgeries. It was this plastic surgery that made Al-Majnoun such a singular person, and gave him a transient, elusive appearance. It was said that he had been operated on at least twice to disguise his appearance after he fled Beirut. The surgeries had left traces of two different faces. There was one above the mouth—the soft eyes, rounded nose, and prominent cheekbones of a European—and one below. That second face had a cruel Eastern set to the mouth and chin. It was a face that was going in two directions at once, it seemed, and there were the odd little lumps of tissue that remained from the several surgeries. It was more a mask, really, than a face.