Oath of Office

After two and a half hours of photographing and fingerprinting, Sassani had ordered the body transported to a small hospital, less than five kilometers north of where he’d supervised the hanging of the three students. He was no monster, but they were, after all, traitors, and their plaintive choking when the cranes made them fly skyward brought him no sadness.

Sassani had come alone to the hospital, glad to be rid of the constant weight of the rest of his team. They were good men, but sometimes he felt as if he were dragging them along. In truth, he preferred his own company over that of anyone else, even his wife, who was always angry about one thing or another.

The smell of paint and disinfectant hit him in the face as the doors to the freight elevator slid open. The fluorescent lighting in the hall had seen happier days. Several bulbs flickered off and on at irregular intervals — something Sassani used to great effect in the isolation cells at Evin. Some were burned out entirely, giving the place a ghostly feel.

Sassani walked slowly down the hallway. Pondering the day before him.

This business with the Russian was puzzling. Dovzhenko had surely known the dead woman. The signs were clearly there — the hollow look in his jowls, the fleeting, not-quite-concealed flash of anger in his eyes. And where had he gone? The Russian was a spy, and spies traded in information. Some of the men had gone out for tea after they’d wrapped up the death investigation. Any spy worth his salt knew that the chatter around tea was as good a place as any to glean intelligence. But Dovzhenko had vanished, to lick his wounds, or perhaps to conceive a clever lie for his superiors to extricate himself from this mess. Sassani was willing to bet that this man was Maryam Farhad’s lover. He’d gotten there too quickly, flushed, agitated. Where did a heartbroken spy go in a city that was not his own? He’d not gone home. Sassani had men watching both his apartment and the Russian embassy. No matter, he would turn up soon, and when he did, Sassani would have the necessary evidence to have the Russians turn him over to the IRGC or recall him home to deal with the issue themselves. A delicious thought made Sassani smile. Perhaps he could persuade the Russians to send one of their interrogators to Iran and they could work on Dovzhenko together.

Reaching the end of the hallway, Sassani pushed open the double doors. He did not knock, which drew an irritated look from the woman hunched over Maryam Farhad’s body. There were fewer than five hundred forensic medical examiners in Iran, and only a handful with the implicit trust of the IRGC. The number of female doctors in this already small group could be counted on one hand. Sassani knew Dr. Nuri, and realized the necessity of her position. Nuri recognized her importance as well, and pushed Sassani further than he was accustomed, certainly by a woman.

The examination room was well lit compared to the hallway, and felt cramped, with long, stainless-steel sinks, and tables forming an L along the back and left-hand walls. Metal doors, like small refrigerators, checkered the wall to Sassani’s right. The bodies of the traitors would be behind three of them, awaiting a cursory glance by a male doctor and a quick burial.

Maryam Farhad was laid out on the metal exam table — more of a large tray, really, with a sort of metal gutter around the edges to catch any fluids or bits of evidence that overran the paper sheet. A white towel covered her ashen body from just below the navel to the middle of her thigh. She had bled a great deal after being shot, but what little blood remained was already pooling at the lowest points, giving her buttocks and shoulders a bluish hue in contrast to the chalky white of her face and belly. A paper tag hung from her toe on a piece of string. The bullet holes — and there were many of them — were cleaner than they were the last time he’d seen her, the effects of the swabs Dr. Nuri had used on the external examination. A rolled towel propped up her head, lifting her chin. The lid of her right eye was half open, as if she were peeking to see who’d just come into the room. Sassani took an involuntary step backward. It was an odd thing, even to him, that he could eat a sandwich while walking the dungeons of Evin Prison, but here in this place, death crawled up his shoes.

The scalpel in Dr. Nuri’s right hand caught a glint of light as she hovered over the dead woman’s chest. Nuri was a small woman and looked somewhat like a child, standing over Maryam Farhad, who was at least five and a half feet tall, with the touch of extra weight of a woman in her late thirties who chose convenience over nutrition when it came to diet.