The Enemy Within

The staff clustered around Kazemi as he recounted the first reports flowing in: The convoy ferrying the new head of the Revolutionary Guards to the conference had been smashed in a swift, violent street ambush wiped out by some auto-weapons fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The only clues to the crime were some pamphlets scattered over the scene. Written in Kirmanji, they demanded independence for Kurdistan.

Taleh sighed audibly, and inside, the knot of tension almost disappeared. “Very well, Captain. We’ll move the meeting back an hour. The Pasdaran will need some time to appoint new representatives.” Kazemi asked, “Should we cancel the session altogether?”

Taleh shook his head. “No, Farhad, everyone else is already enroute. Unless the Imam directs otherwise, we will meet.”

He glared at the rest of his staff. “There’s nothing we can do about Rafizaden. Everyone, back to your tasks.”

The cluster of officers and civilians dissolved. Taleh turned back to his aide. “Do the police have any clues to the assassins’ identity?”

Kazemi shook his head. “Nothing much. Nothing more than a description of wellarmed men in civilian clothes. The entire attack was over in just a minute or two. They promised to send anything else they find to our intelligence office.”

Taleh allowed himself a small smile. “Good. Carry on, Farhad. You know your orders.”

The captain nodded crisply and hurried away.

The general also nodded, but inside, to himself. Over the next few weeks Kazemi would make sure that the Special Forces troops involved were transferred to other units in other provinces. As highly experienced soldiers they would be welcomed by their new commanders. At the same time, Taleh’s net of die-hard loyalists in the Army would grow.

That was a sideshow, though. The most important thing was that Rafizaden was dead, and the Pasdaran would be confused and leaderless.

Taleh looked at his watch. In a little more than two hours, the President, Prime Minister, the remnants of the Defense Ministry bureaucracy, the armed forces, and the Pasdaran would meet to decide on a response to this latest American attack. He now anticipated little serious resistance to his proposals. Though they were both mullahs, the President and the Prime Minister were also canny politicians, adept at setting their sails to ride out every shift in the Republic’s stormy factional politics. Neither man would choose to confront the man who led their nation’s armed forces not without assured backing from the Revolutionary Guards.

No, with the Pasdaran crippled, Amir Taleh would dictate Iran’s future course.

MARCH 4

Defense Ministry.

Perched on a small settee outside Taleh’s private office, Hamid Pakpour waited in mounting dread. He mopped the sweat off his brow, cheeks, and neck with a large handkerchief, acutely aware that his nerves were stretched to the breaking point. Why had he been summoned here? What could the head of Iran’s military possibly want with him?

Certainly, he was a prominent merchant and one of the richest men in all Iran. But he had always been very careful to stay out of politics. Just as he had always taken pains to make public his intense devotion to Islam and to the Revolution. Many in the government had received tangible proofs of his devotion discreet gifts of land or marketable securities.

Could that be the reason? Pakpour wondered uneasily. Did the general want his own “assurances” of the merchant’s loyalty? He prayed fervently to God that was so. Anything else would be disastrous.

Only the blind and the deaf could not know that Taleh had emerged from the chaos of the past month as He power behind the President and the Parliament. Security duties once the exclusive province of the Revolutionary Guards were increasingly performed by Regular Army units. The Pasdaran was little more than a pale shadow of its former self. Its best men were being transferred to the Army. Many of the rest were simply being pensioned off. A few, the most radical, were said to be under lock and key detained for certain unspecified of fences the state.

“General Taleh will see you now. Come with me.”

Pakpour looked up to find an Army officer standing beside him. Sweating again, he rose hurriedly and followed the taller man into the next room.

Even for temporary quarters, Taleh’s office seemed spartan. Beyond a single desk and two chairs, there were no furnishings. Maps of Iran and its neighbors covered the walls. The general’s desk held nothing more than a phone, a blotter, and a personal computer.

Taleh himself looked up from reading a dossier and nodded towards the chair in front of his desk. “Sit down, Mr. Pakpour.”

The merchant obeyed, conscious of the taller Army officer still standing almost directly behind him.

“Your family? They are well?”