Oath of Office

He’d seen Maryam Farhad fifteen minutes into his first visit. She was about his age, a few years older than most of the college-age kids who smoked and drank absinthe and explored the heady stuff of free thought, even if it was in secret. Dovzhenko had worn his best shirt, open at the collar. Unlike most of the young men at the party, he was old enough to know that wearing a little less cologne and no gold chains caused him to stand out as being more mature. Maryam had smiled at him as soon as she’d removed her coat. Her hips swayed to the music before she’d taken two full steps — as if she’d contained them as long as she possibly could. She wore a silk blouse, tight enough across the chest to pull the buttons just a little and expose an inch or two of lace underneath. This happened all the time in Russia or the U.S., but in Iran, where women wore mandated headscarves and ill-fitting clothes, the look was scandalous.

One of the male officials at the embassy had lamented what he called the nos — grudi paradoks—the observation that the Iranian women with whom he was acquainted who possessed decent breasts also had extremely large noses. Conversely, the more delicate and beautiful the nose, the more barren the landscape when it came to bosom. Dovzhenko had dismissed the sentiment as nekulturny—boorish — but was ashamed to note that Maryam Farhad was a beautiful exception to this apparatchik’s imagined paradox. And as boorish as it was, the thought of her body only made him want to see her more.

But they had to be careful.

Now he used the slow pace of the stop-and-go traffic to keep an eye out for any telltale signs that he was being followed. He felt reasonably sure he was clean by the time he turned west on the Hakim but took the time to get on and off the highway twice, one eye on his rearview mirror, the other on the evening traffic. It seemed that every other car was a Porsche, each a testament to Iranian resiliency in the face of Western sanctions.

He’d seen nothing out of the ordinary in his mirror since leaving Valiasr. It took several cars to conduct rolling surveillance, even against an untrained target. And Dovzhenko knew the tricks. He’d be able to smoke out any IRGC goons like cheap cigarettes.

He got off the Hakim Expressway at Pardisan Park, a collection of wooded trails and unfinished gravel pits that served as home to monkeys, rabbits, and strange, small-eared wildcats that Maryam called cute but Dovzhenko thought looked alien. They’d come here once before, never holding hands but walking side by side, thrilled and terrified at the notion of getting caught socializing as an unmarried couple. They spoke of her love for opera, of great books, and Rome, where he had spent time but she had not.

He drove around the park twice now, as if he were lost, then stopped to check his rear tire at the top of a gravel hill with a good 360-degree view.

Clean. Or as clean as one could be in a place where toxic air turned a white shirt yellow inside a month’s time.

Maryam’s apartment was on 2nd, a dead-end street. Dovzhenko parked the Tiba in a business parking lot on 5th, giving him more than one exit, and walked the block and a half. He enjoyed the walk. Recent rains and the near-constant breeze here in the north kept the air cleaner than in other parts of the city.

Dovzhenko let himself inside with his key. The apartment was well appointed like much on the hillside. Garbage washed downhill, so most things were nice here in the north of Tehran. Still in his damp leather jacket, he slumped in a living room chair and lit a cigarette. A driftwood sculpture dominated the center of a glass coffee table. Pictures of seascapes covered the freshly painted walls. He’d thought it odd at first. Maryam didn’t seem to care so much for the water, and then other inconsistencies cropped up over the course of his visits. It had once taken her several minutes to find the closet where she stored extra toilet paper. And then she could not locate the five spice. This rose petal — based seasoning was ubiquitous in Iranian kitchens, and misplacing it was akin to a Russian wife saying she couldn’t remember where she kept her tea.

Maryam had finally admitted that the apartment was not actually hers, but borrowed from a friend who was traveling. Recalling that conversation now made Dovzhenko feel guilty for smoking, and he stubbed out the cigarette in a clay ashtray beside the driftwood centerpiece. He slipped the extinguished cigarette butt into his jacket pocket, a habit drilled into him by his mother before he even went to training. She could have warned him not to smoke instead of teaching him to erase the clues of his presence, his saliva, his particular brand of cigarette — but such were the lessons of a mother who was also a spy.