The Increment: A Novel - By David Ignatius Page 0,22
silence.
“You do not understand these jokes?”
“I guess not, Brother Inspector. I am sorry.” The young man was confused, in addition to being frightened.
“Well, pity, I had hoped you had more of a sense of humor. We have enough serious ones, I think. But you, a bright boy, good background. Studied abroad. Access to foreign literature. You should have a sense of humor. Be funny. Tell jokes. But you look so serious. You must be frightened. Is that it?”
“Yes, I guess so. I mean, I do have a sense of humor, Brother Inspector. But not so much now.”
“Because you are afraid?”
“Yes.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Of you, Brother Inspector. You confuse me.”
“Don’t be a donkey, Doctor. Do know why you are here?”
“No,” said the young man.
“Yes you do,” said the interrogator. “Everyone who comes here knows why.”
“And why is that, sir?”
“Because you did something wrong. Otherwise, why would we have brought you? The service never makes mistakes. You do know what the reason is, and it is my job to help you find it.” He stroked the whiskers of his goatee. In another situation, he would have seemed entirely ridiculous, like an Iranian Inspector Clouseau. But in this case, the eccentricity only made him more menacing.
“Tell me about your time at the University of Heidelberg,” said the interrogator.
“I’ve already told the Etelaat everything I can remember, Brother Inspector. Many times. They questioned me once a week, for nearly a year, when I came home.”
“Yes, yes. I know. But that was routine questioning. This is special.”
“Why special, sir?”
“Because you are special, my dear. You have knowledge that is a prize—one so valuable that all the gold in Tehran could not buy it. So please, tell me about Germany. Who was your best friend there?”
“I told the others before. I had no friends. The German boys did not like me.”
“Yes, I know. I have read the file. But there was a girl, wasn’t there? A German girl.”
“Trudi.”
“Yes, Trudi. Why don’t you tell me about her?”
“There is nothing to tell, Brother Inspector. I have explained before. She was very pretty. I thought perhaps she would, you know…”
“Have sex with you.”
“Yes. That was very wrong, I’m sure. She was not a Muslim. But she would talk to me, when no one else would. She would sit with me in the café sometimes. She would ask me about Iran. She would listen to my stories. I was very lonely.”
“Did she have large breasts?”
The young scientist sat back in his chair with a start. Was this his crime, that he had let himself imagine having sex with a German physics student?”
“I don’t know. I think so. I never touched them. She wanted me to, perhaps. But I wouldn’t. I was too frightened. Then I stopped seeing her. She tried, Brother Inspector. But I was not impure. I knew that it would be haram to have her, even as a temporary wife. So I stayed away.”
“Yes, that’s in the file. All that.” Mehdi the interrogator paused and fingered his goatee again. He leaned toward the young scientist. His eyes were flashing suddenly.
“Did you know that she was an Israeli? This Trudi? Did you know that?”
The color went out of the young man’s cheeks. The beads of perspiration formed immediately on his forehead.
“No she wasn’t,” the young man answered. “She was a German. I met her father. He was a businessman.”
“He was an Israeli, too. Two passports. An agent of their famous Mossad.”
“How do you know this? It is a lie. If it is true, why didn’t anyone ask me about it when I first came home?”
“We didn’t know it then. We know it now. We have our friends in the German security service, you see. We can recruit them, just as they try to recruit us. We can pretend to be Americans, just as they do. Israelis, even. Oh yes. We are everywhere.”
“What did they tell you? My God! What do you know?”
“Trudi was studying physics at the Max Planck Institute, just like you. But her job was to look for young Iranian students. Who were lonely. Who wanted to have sex with a German girl. Who might be useful later. The German service was watching. They listened to her phone calls. They monitored her mail. They watched her. It took us many years to get this file, but now we have it. There are several Iranian names, I am sorry to say. And yours, my dear Doctor, is one.”