The DMZ Read online

  “But”—the ayatollah graciously made his own concession—“it would seem that Allah himself has a purpose for the apostate and has made him a part of this. Insha Allah. It is the will of God. But the man must not be allowed to interfere further with the carrying out of the mission.”

  Parviz Gangi shifted nervously, drawing his feet up under his robe. His plump face had been growing steadily less happy as the conversation wore on. “Uncle Akbar—Ayatollah, I do not like this. Perhaps if there is truly such danger of discovery, we should think further. Is it not possible that this is a sign from Allah? After all, the world has changed since we began this mission. Is not our government even now reconsidering our relationship with the Americans? And it is clear that the infidels are weakening toward us. In my own ministry, they have made many concessions of foods and products that may now move between our two countries. May it not be that our president is right? That the Americans can be made of more benefit to us as allies? If we do not rush to destroy our boats behind us too soon.”

  The venom of Nouri’s spat-out curse matched his mentor’s. “Allies! Benefit! Parviz, you are as always a fool! And you forget who it is that rules in this country. Not the president nor the parliament, for all the rumblings of elections and reforms. It is the Guardians of the Faith who determine the course of our nation. And that course will never lie with the Americans. To use them, yes! But never forget that this is not the first time they have come with soft speeches because they coveted our oil and our support against enemies they hoped would be our enemies too. They betrayed us then. They will betray us again. The servants of Allah do not treat with traitors. They destroy them as the infidels and sons of Satan they are. No! No matter what lies and manipulations the Americans may come with to deceive us, we will not swerve from our just and holy path.”

  “But … I was just thinking, have you considered the consequences to us, to our people, if we are discovered? If the mission fails? Or even if it succeeds, the effect on the economy and our exports, the retaliation if they ever find out …”

  Gangi’s stammering appeal trailed away under Nouri’s withering glare. Khalkhali did not even deign to consider his nephew’s nervous pleas. He had been only an adolescent in 1953 when the Americans’ Central Intelligence Agency had staged the coup that brought down Iran’s prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, freely elected by the Americans’ own democratic rules. They had forced back onto the Iranian people that corrupt and venal ruler, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a man his own CIA puppet masters despised as a coward and a fool, yet supported simply to ensure their own masters’ control over Iran’s oil.

  The Iranian people had suffered another quarter century under the godless oppression of the shah until the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned from exile to lead the nation to Allah and freedom in the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Khalkhali had spent much of that intervening quarter-century in the shah’s rat-infested detention cells for his own role in Khomeini’s crusade to turn his nation’s course from the greed and decadence of the West to the unswerving allegiance Allah demanded of his children. The sessions in the SAVAK’s interrogation chambers, as much as the teachings of his spiritual leaders, had burned into both flesh and soul just who was the true enemy of his people, and though he was now an old man, the steel forged by decades of hate still blazed unabated from his eyes and stiffened his backbone with the carriage of a man far younger.

  This new generation of gutless leaders who thought only of their stomachs and the comforts of life might talk of making peace with the infidels Khomeini himself had correctly labeled the Great Satan. But Khalkhali never would, and if he accomplished nothing further in his long life than to strike a blow—with Allah’s blessing, a mortal one, though even a serious wound would eliminate their interference in Iranian affairs—then he would leave this life content.

  And now they were so close. The signatures were barely dry on the Colombian peace initiative when they had made their move. They had chosen a site deep into rainforest so heavy and wet and tall that it had perhaps never known human footfall except from the primitive aborigines whose few remaining descendants still roamed its depths. Impenetrable, people called the place, and they believed it. But where there were rivers for transport and a limitless budget, anything was possible. They had worked slowly and cautiously, under the protection of the guerrillas themselves—though even their leaders did not know exactly where or what they were protecting. Nor would they necessarily approve if they did know. After all, they too were godless infidels.

  And now it was done. A local village of aborigines had been conscripted for the heavy labor. The new airstrip in San Ignacio, ostensibly built to facilitate the meat-packing plant, had provided a runway heavy enough for cargo planes. From the runway’s edge, the Ipa River fed into the jungle’s own maze of streams and lakes and swamps. Only when the site was complete had the Iraqi madman whom Allah, in some dark twist of humor, made their unlikely ally—only then had he consented to release the weapon. The involvement of his own followers was the unpleasant condition he had set for his prize. The blunders of these last weeks should not, perhaps, have been such a surprise. Their neighbor, after all, had a history of rushing across bridges without considering the consequences.

  Still, however annoying these recent incidents with the Americans, they did not really change things so much. Only a few steps remained to be taken before their enemies’ own tool of destruction would be turned back on them. Then the United States would cease to exist—or at least be crippled enough to remove it forever from the center arena of world affairs.

  Raising a hand, Khalkhali made a sharp negative gesture. “No! No, Parviz, we cannot allow fear and doubt to delay our holy mission. On the contrary, we will advance its day of unleashing so that even if the Americans do uncover what is hidden, they will come too late. Taqi, you will go personally to see that this is done and that neither of our allies interferes further with the successful accomplishment of Allah’s judgment.”

  He rose to his feet with a movement surprisingly swift and smooth for his years, indicating the conference was over. His companions scrambled up to join him.

  “I will fly out tonight,” Taqi Nouri informed his master. “But there is one other matter. Our Colombian allies are not happy about the deaths of the three Americans. They object to being blamed for acts of terror they have not themselves committed. So they have invited outsiders to where the bodies were found to see for themselves that this was not their doing. There is little we can do to stop this since we have not considered it prudent to inform their leaders of the true purpose behind the eliminations. But the Americans will use the opportunity to send in another spy. I know. It is what I myself would do.”

  The ayatollah looked thoughtfully at the minister of intelligence. “They will find nothing there. So what is it you suggest?”

  “It is not that I am concerned,” Nouri answered carefully. “It is not possible that the Americans will uncover the truth before it is too late. Still, it would be useful to have someone of our own to observe this gathering. If possible, even to determine who their spy is that we may establish our own watch upon him. Then we need have no fear of the eyes and ears of their satellites and radar and other technology.”

  Khalkhali nodded agreement. “Your caution is right, Taqi. When the stakes are as high as this, even the smallest risk must be smoothed away. But whom do you think to send? We cannot openly send an observer of our own people. The Americans are looking now at the guerrillas, but they are not such fools that we dare dangle a puzzle piece under their very noses.”

  Nouri smiled faintly. “I have already considered this, and I have just the person. One of the finest we have. Not once has this operative shrunk from any mission no matter how difficult or …” he hesitated over the word—“unpleasant. Already I have made the arrangements, and even now the operative is en route to Colombia. And this I promise you. Not in all the thousand and one nights of Sheherazade herself will the Americans
ever conceive that this one is ours.”

  The ayatollah’s grunt of approval dismissed the two men. But as Parviz Gangi plodded off with an ungraceful flopping of robes across the vast mosaic floor, Khalkhali stopped his second-in-command. Quietly and without inflection, he remarked to Nouri, “My nephew’s heart is no longer entirely with us.”

  The head of the Iranian secret service didn’t even blink.

  With the same, even inflection, the ayatollah went on, “Allah has given us an opportunity never before envisioned by man. It is not his will that anything be allowed to interfere with its completion.”

  The two men’s eyes met in perfect understanding. Then Taqi Nouri followed his fellow minister out of the conference room, his own strides swift and silent.

  * * *

  The headquarters in Washington, D.C., of the Wildlife Conservation Institute were a restful enough sight, its abstract angles and the blues and greens of its glass shell designed to blend gently into the ecological balance of its ten acres of botanical gardens. Pastel walls, country scents vented through the air-conditioning, “nature” music playing softly in the background—all were carefully calibrated for a maximum soothing effect on visitors and ecologically conscious sponsors.

  But the soothing effect ended abruptly at the door of the office of Norm Hutchens. Inside, the walls were bare, the filing cabinets cold metal. From behind a desk scarred with cigarette burns and piled high with stacks of paper and files, the editor of WCI’s quarterly magazine, Our Earth, glowered at his youngest staff writer.

  “Blast it, Julie! When are you going to be reasonable?”

  Norm “Bulldog” Hutchens had earned his sobriquet as much for the tenacity associated with that canine breed as for his squat body and drooping jowls. That tenacity had never been so evident as when a doctor’s orders forced his retirement from the rat race of the Washington Post for the less stressful life of overseeing WCI’s printing needs. Channeling his resentment into the institute’s money-losing periodical—at the time little more than an in-house information newsletter—he had in short time transformed Our Earth into America’s most widely read environmental magazine.

  He hadn’t done it by being nice. The acidity of his tongue had prompted more than one sloppy staff writer to tear up his journalism degree for a less dangerous profession, and his glower above the heavy jowls that really did bear an uncanny resemblance to the canine species was enough to set assistants, staff writers, and even lowly graphic artists and typesetters caught in its path scrambling to look efficient.

  The “bulldog look,” as his underlings irreverently termed it, had never been more pronounced than at the present, his small eyes narrowed to an intimidating slit above the fat cheeks, every one of his multiple chins thrust forward pugnaciously. But the young woman facing him across the untidy surface of his desk showed little sign of wilting under the heat of his gaze. A cloud of cigar ash rose with a puff as she slapped a crumpled green memo slip down onto the pile of newspaper clippings in front of him.

  “Don’t you talk to me about reasonable, Norm Hutchens! You’re not going to get away with this. Did you really think I wouldn’t find out? Well, for your information, I do watch the news, and the murder of those activists has been all over it. With the environmental angle, I knew you’d be angling for a place on that team. So there I was, rooting around for my passport, and I find out that even the cleaning staff knows you’ve assigned Bob Ryder to the story, while I get a memo shipping me off to British Columbia! Are you trying to tell me Our Earth is wasting space on some stupid beetle with an extra stripe turning up in logging country? Or is this your sneaky Machiavellian method of getting me out of the way?”

  Julie was a third the age of Hutchens and barely more than a third his weight. But it was the editor who shifted his gaze first. “Now, you see here, Julie Baker!”

  “No, you see here! You’re cheating, Norm Hutchens. Just like you’ve been cheating since the day you hired me. You promised me the Latin America beat. I’m the one with the background and culture. I’m the one with the language. And what have I gotten so far? Puerto Rico protesting New York’s garbage being dumped in their territorial waters. Interviewing Florida orange growers as to their opinions on the spread of citrus canker. Meanwhile, Bob Ryder gets Peru. And Ecuador. And Venezuela. This is a guy who thinks ‘native’ is some sort of obscene linguistic terminology and whose Spanish would make a high school language teacher cringe!”

  The old newspaperman glanced around for an ashtray, failed to locate it under the heap, and stubbed out his cigar on the edge of the desk, adding another scar to its wood finish. “Now, wait a minute! Those hurricanes in Ecuador and Venezuela were rough business. The relief teams were working in water and mud up to their waists. The press had to travel rough. As for Peru, have you forgotten that the coca growers were rioting? All those road blocks and clashes with the army? Not to mention terrorists? It could have gotten ugly.”

  “It did get ugly,” came the implacable retort. “When Bob Ryder tried to interview the cocalero leader and—accidentally or not, I’ve never been too sure—ended up calling the man’s mother a—”

  “Language!” Hutchens remonstrated mildly.

  “The point is, the police had to intervene to pull the guy off Bob, and you had him shipped home the next day. You ended up having to send out Chris Walter to finish the job. With an interpreter. As for traveling rough, I’m not the one who turns in written complaints over hiking a mile in the mud. Or gets sick eating refugee camp food.

  “Besides, the man can’t write, no matter how many years he spent typing up corporate brochures and yearly reports. You tell me how much of that last article you had me rewrite for him. I could have done a better job with my hands tied behind my back, and you know it. I heard you tell Ken Jackson so yourself, when he came up to review the magazine’s finances.”

  Hutchens chose to ignore that. Ken Jackson was his own boss, president of the Wildlife Conservation Institute.

  “And now we finally have a story worth sinking our teeth into! I mean, how often do we get a story that combines politics and some genuine suspense with environmental issues? And world attention too—the team’s going in with a UN contingent. Even better, the press slots are limited. Not even your pull would have gotten us a seat if it hadn’t been for C-PAP’s connection with the institute.” An accurate evaluation the editor again chose to ignore. “Which means the story could be picked up by other magazines, maybe even the big news weeklies. Who knows, maybe even National Geographic. And in Colombia, of all—”

  “Oh, no!” The old newspaperman raised an imperious hand, the ponderous shake of his head setting his jowls to waggling. “Let’s not get started on that. You want to argue Peru and the others, fine. Maybe I should have sent you instead of Bob. You certainly couldn’t have done worse. But you’re not going to Colombia, and that’s that! The situation there is just too volatile. Have you forgotten these people were murdered? They’re flying right into the heart of guerrilla territory. Who knows what the security setup is going to be like? No, you can give me that puppy-dog look of yours all you want, but there’s no way I’m going to be sending a green reporter with the ink still wet on her diploma into a war zone. I’ve got to think of the safety of my staff, and for that I have to choose the most qualified and experienced man for the job.”

  “But I am the qualified man … woman! Bob doesn’t know the culture. Or the political situation. He’s never even been to Colombia! I know those people. I know that area. If anyone would be safe there, I would. More to the point, I’m not a six-foot towhead who screams ‘gringo’ from a mile away and shoves his foot down his throat every time he opens his mouth. Unless I choose to broadcast it, no one, guerrilla or otherwise, will ever know I’m not a local.”

  Hutchens made no attempt to argue the point. Sinking his jowls into his neckline in a manner that shifted his animal kingdom equivalent from a bulldog to a squatting toad, he studied his youngest staff member wit
h an eye no less observant for the gold-rimmed trifocals advancing years had forced him to adopt.

  What he saw was a slim girl somewhere in her early twenties and of average height. A mass of curls dark enough almost to be black tumbled to her shoulders where it had escaped the hair clip in which she had confined it that morning, and her long-lashed eyes were almost as dark, when not blazing molten copper with anger. Allied to an olive complexion that owed itself more to a healthy tan than her natural skin tone, Julie Baker could pass for a good percentage of the world’s ethnic groups from her actual Irish/Welsh/French roots to Mediterranean or Hispanic. Norm Hutchens was already acquainted with her language proficiency, of an idiomatic perfection attainable only in childhood.

  But the wholesome directness and honesty in her face was to his thinking a drawback in today’s cutthroat field of communications. Her empathy and just plain niceness might be responsible for Julie’s success at personal interviews, but it clashed badly with the hard-boiled reporter image she tried to project. And her defiantly tilted chin did little to conceal a vulnerability that would rouse the protective instincts of any decent male—a fact that would have horrified this independent young woman, if she’d had any inkling.

  Julie Baker was, even to her editor’s cynical old eyes, a very attractive young woman. And so he told her.

  “You think the guerrillas are going to care if you’re an American or a local? All they’re going to see is a pretty girl. And down in those macho parts, pretty girls don’t go wandering the outback on their own. Not unless they’re asking for trouble. Besides, you always said you never wanted to go back to Colombia. I thought you hated the place. After what happened to your parents, you vowed you’d never set foot there again. I took you at your word.”

  Julie lifted her shoulders impatiently. “I was sixteen. Things change. Little girls grow up. I’m not making any plans to retire there, but that doesn’t mean I’d turn down a story that could put my career on the map just because of a few less-than-pleasant memories. This is the biggest story our magazine has ever had. Maybe even a prize winner. And I’m the best person you have to write it. I’ve earned this assignment, and I want it!”