Oath of Office

The drizzle abated by the time he reached the white subcompact car the embassy had assigned him. Dovzhenko threw his leather jacket in the backseat, which was hardly large enough for a briefcase, let alone a person with legs. He took a moment to light a cigarette before wedging himself in behind the wheel. It was illegal to smoke while driving in Iran, but the law was seldom enforced, and, anyway, Dovzhenko was much too disgusted to care. The pitiful little vehicle did not help his mood at all.

The Tiba—“gazelle,” in Persian — was anything but fast. It resembled a bloated peanut or, perhaps, a Volkswagen Beetle that had been left to melt in the sun. Those sentiments were surely too harsh, but Dovzhenko had too much experience with the little things to be rational. He’d been issued one the year before, during an assignment in Moldova. SVR recruiters tended to draw more romantic images of the life of a clandestine intelligence officer when they spoke to potential trainees. Dovzhenko knew better. The intelligence life was rarely a flashy one. Savile Row suits and Aston Martin sports cars drew unwanted attention. Utilitarian ruled the day, but this, this was ridiculous. The eighty-horsepower monstrosity was more reminiscent of Baba Yaga’s cauldron than a car. It was outside the bounds — for even a Russian spy. Dovzhenko was not alone in his assessment. The English-speaking clerk in the Tehran embassy motor pool had gone so far as to dub the little cars “Axles of Evil.”

But it got him to Maryam’s, so Dovzhenko kept his gripes to himself.

Maryam Farhad lived in Shahrak-e Gharb, an upscale neighborhood in the northwest part of the city, far from the drug rehabilitation center where she worked to the south, where homeless addicts hung in the shadows whispering, “Darou, darou…” Medicine, medicine. Selling drugs, even the green stuff, was a tremendous gamble. A usable amount of cannabis might be overlooked by the authorities, but as little as five grams of hash oil was a capital offense. As far as Dovzhenko could tell, the government had decided to combat the exploding opioid problem by handing out so much methadone that it, too, was now sold illicitly. Whatever Tehran’s master plan, he was glad Maryam didn’t live among the lost souls to whom she’d devoted her life.

Dovzhenko could have taken Valiasr Street north and then gone west on the Hemmat Expressway, almost to her doorstep — but he did not have the stomach to see the execution site again, and he wanted to shake any tail Sassani might have on him. IRGC trusted no one. It was the nature of spies. Liars were always the most suspicious of others. In this case, Sassani had good reason. Maryam was a single woman, a Muslim — and Dovzhenko was not. His position in the SVR would save him from execution, but their affair would surely get him expelled from the country, not to mention the black mark it would place on his record. Dovzhenko told himself it did not matter what happened to him, but the consequences to her would be swift and violent. A brutal whipping, reeducation, or, if a judge got it in his head that she was corrupting the earth — Dovzhenko had seen the pit behind the walls of Evin, the hole used to bury men up to their waists and women to their necks, the smooth stones the size of apples arranged in neat pyramids for easy access. Officially, Iran had done away with stoning. What a joke. The members of the Guardian Council did whatever they wished. If stoning went against an official edict, they simply issued a new one, granting themselves permission. World opinion didn’t stop them. It just moved the behavior indoors.

Dovzhenko worked his way north, tamping back images of what could happen to his girlfriend. They were both accustomed to risk. SVR had no rules prohibiting the consumption of alcohol, even in a Muslim country, provided one kept to oneself and did not overindulge. But attending one of Tehran’s numerous underground parties on anything other than official business was not only frowned upon, the prohibition against it was noted specifically in the documented rules new members of the Russian delegation had to sign upon arrival.

Dovzhenko found one on his second weekend, in the basement of a flower shop right in Shahrak-e Gharb, less than a mile from Maryam’s apartment. Enforcement by the morality police against these parties, where alcohol flowed and bodies swayed to Western music, came in fits and starts or not at all. Two of the young people at the first party he’d attended were supposedly sons of prominent mullahs. No one wanted to get crossways with them, so for the most part, the gatherings went unmolested.