The Command

The driver wasn’t from Mashhad, but he’d driven the route several times, practicing, in the sedan. Still in the near darkness, threading among the groups of pilgrims as they gradually converged on the huge tomb and mosque complex, he drove slowly, at no more than thirty miles an hour. Then, a quarter mile short of the golden dome, the truck pulled to the left and descended a ramp.

The Datsun kept straight on, passing the central square. Malik peered through the windshield. Thousands of pilgrims gazed up at the glowing bulbs outlining minarets and domes, the colonnade, and the arched portal that led to the interior and ultimately to the holy burial chamber in a sparkling wonderland of light and beauty.

He’d visited that chamber. Had entered, men separating from the women as they did so. Had checked his shoes and strolled in stocking feet through the marble paved courts, the silver balconies of supplication, examining the inlaid tiles and mirrors, the intricate inscriptions. Had prostrated himself before the magnificent golden zarih that protected the ancient tomb. Had watched the other pilgrims with sad eyes, noting as they entered from this direction and that.

And had smiled, heart racing with excitement, as he realized how it could be done.

* * *

The truck was underground now. The three sat crowded together in the cab. One reached under the seat from time to time, stroking the steel buttplate of an assault rifle. He kept hoping for the tranquillity that was supposed to come to the martyr. But only touching the gun seemed to give him any comfort. The driver concentrated on driving; the one sitting in the middle held a hand-drawn map on his lap, directing him. It had been drawn by a man on the second team, who’d taken a job inside the shrine, repairing the plumbing in the pilgrims’ washrooms.

The tunnel road circled the immense complex, leaving the spacious courts and open areas at ground level free for the pilgrims to enter and congregate and wander from porch to porch and shrine to shrine. It was a service access, the walls neither enameled tile nor fine marble but rough concrete spaced with fluorescent tubes covered with yellowing plastic. Signs pointed to various exits from the ring.

“Dar al-Sa’adah,” said the man with the map suddenly, pointing. The driver pulled off, and the truck twisted into a maze of smaller passages. At last he downshifted to first gear. The motor slowed, laboring as it pulled its weight up a short, steep incline.

* * *

On the porch between the Golden Balcony and the dome of Hatam Khani some three hundred women and small children were gathered, waiting.

The porch — actually an enclosed hall of access — gleamed with semiprecious stone and shining gold. The floor was smooth, brightly colored marble, scrubbed and waxed to spotlessness. A shallow trough showed where millions of feet over the centuries had passed through a golden door. The walls were covered to head height with thousands of intricately carved tiles incised with verses from the Holy Qur’an. Above that, across the upper wall, the sixty-six couplets of the elegy Malk-ush-Shu’ara Saboori Mashhadi had pronounced over the murdered imam were inscribed in the lovely intricacy of Nastaliq script. The whole interior was brilliantly lighted by hundreds of bulbs nestled in immense nineteenth-century chandeliers of the finest Bohemian crystal.

The golden door, closed now but about to be opened, led into the Zari-i-Mutahhar, the Holy Burial Chamber itself. The women peered toward it, praying and speaking in hushed voices. An infant cried out, but was hastily rocked and kissed back into a restless, fidgeting silence.

* * *

The bearded man in the gray suit coat stepped on the accelerator again. The minarets, the lights fell back in his rear view. He drove south, careful to avoid the throngs that spilled now onto the streets. They were singing. The words came indistinctly through the closed glass. Glancing again at his watch, he turned on the radio. Leaned to tune it to a local station, and increased the volume till it drowned out the hymns. He examined the mirrors again, looking for police or any sign of interest in him. There was none.

Lighting a cigarette, listening to a discussion on the radio about milk production, he drove slowly and carefully out of town.

* * *

The man who’d kept touching the Kalashnikov pulled it from beneath the seat and chambered a cartridge. He slammed the door open, jumped down, and walked back to guard the rear of the truck.

Inside the cab, the driver, sweat running down his face, reached behind the seat to pull a thick cable into the light. It was made up of four fuses. Each was covered by transparent plastic surgical tubing. Their ends stuck out, cut and frayed apart to expose the core. The driver flicked a lighter several times. But no flame emerged. Finally the other pressed in the cigarette lighter, on the dash. Seconds later it popped out, glowing cherry red.