of his doorstep.
Hakim stepped forward, into the shadows, and handed Molavi the book, open to the marked page. Molavi read the passage and shook his head. He muttered a phrase in Persian. “Gheyre ghabel e fahm.” It is incomprehensible.
Hakim moved closer, and in a quick motion, brushed the folded index card against Molavi’s hand. The Iranian, despite his fear, took it.
The Pakistani immediately returned to his posture of humility. In a broken mix of Farsi, Urdu, and English, he apologized that he had the wrong house and backed away toward the street. The index card was in Molavi’s pocket now, and in another moment, the Iranian was inside his apartment.
TEHRAN
Karim Molavi sat in an easy chair in his apartment, trying to calm himself. The impossible thing had happened. They had come to him. The tips of his fingers were still tingling from where he had touched the foreigner’s hand. He put the buds of his iPod into his ears and selected some Indian sitar music, hoping that it would calm him, but he couldn’t concentrate.
He looked again at the index card, and the words at the top. We are working on vacation plans. We will bring the tickets to you. They had promised that they would come, and now they were here. He read the instructions about where to find the “device,” and saw that they hadn’t specified a precise hour to collect it. “Tonight,” the message said. Molavi decided that he would go right away, before the ministry had time to think or wonder, before any of the neighbors could tell the basij about the dirty foreigner on the street after dark, before his own panic began to set in.
He found a leftover lamb kebab in the refrigerator. He put it in the microwave and wrapped it in a piece of bread, but he was too nervous to eat. Reflexively, he took one of the photo albums down from the shelf and looked at a picture of his father as a young man. His father’s eyes were fierce and fearless. Never let them see that you are afraid, his father had told him. Fear is your ally. Embrace it. Do not be afraid of fear, or they will see it.
Molavi found his street atlas of Tehran. He studied the page for Mellat Park until he thought he knew where the location was. He pondered the safest way to get there, and blocked out the route in his mind. The index card was sitting on the table, next to his chair. It was glowing, radioactive, neon white. He took the card into the bathroom and burned it in the sink, and then flushed the ashes down the toilet.
The young man looked at his face in the mirror. The swirl of black hair. The almost-pious beard. The eyes wide with fear and yearning. What was he afraid of? This was his moment. He had dropped his little stone in the water months ago, and the waves had rippled back to carry him away to his “vacation.” His hands were shaking. He extended the palms outward and held them steady. He went to the closet and put on a jacket against the night chill. He buttoned his coat and headed for the door and then, in an afterthought, returned to the pantry and found a small flashlight, which he put in his pocket.
Molavi walked out of his villa. It was a clear night, with only a small crescent moon. Even amid the smog and the lights of Tehran, you could see a few stars. The quickest route north to the park was the Kordestan Expressway, but he decided against that. He walked to the Moffateh subway station, nearly a mile away, and took the train north to the last stop at Mirdamad. He didn’t bother to look for surveillance. They were either following him or they weren’t. He walked a few blocks and then took a taxi to Piroozi Square, just west of Mellat Park. Then he walked, slowly and deliberately, along the southern edge of the park until he reached the pathway that led up to the Martyrs’ Pond. Something like calm had settled over him. He was a young nuclear physicist, lost in thought as he took his evening stroll in the woods. Who could say that it was anything else?
Molavi turned into the pathway. A young couple was coming out, giggling. The girl was tugging at her manteau, pulling it down so that it covered her bottom. This was