Desert Fire Read Free

Whalpol there never could be safety.
    When he had come to her in California with his proposition, the timing had been right. She was lonely and frustrated and miserable, and despite the fact that she was a U.S. citizen, she didn’t fit in. She was an Iranian. Among other things, Iranians were stupid, lazy, deceitful and fanatical. Her parents were dead, and she had no sisters or brothers. There were some cousins in Tehran, but even if she could get there she doubted that she would be able to find them, or if she did, that they would accept her.
    â€œWe would like for you to help us,” Whalpol had said. He had picked her up after work, telling her he had known her father very well in the old days. They stopped at a small coffee shop just north of the Van Nuys Airport. There were only a few other customers, and Whalpol led her to a booth in a far corner. He was a tall, thin man with a hawklike face. His suit was dark green wool, with narrow lapels set high on the jacket.
    â€œMy father never mentioned you,” Sarah said over their coffee.
    Whalpol shrugged. “Those were difficult days. The Shah’s regime was coming apart, and your father, bless his heart, went through a difficult period with the Colonel.”
    Colonel Massedegh worked for SAVAK, the feared Iranian secret police. He was the bogeyman in her house, and as a little girl she’d been very respectful of the name because whenever it was mentioned she could see fear in her father’s eyes.

    â€œIt was I who interceded on your father’s behalf to get him and your mother safely out.”
    â€œYou’re not Iranian.”
    â€œI’m German. I’ve been sent here to ask you to come to Bonn. We’d like you to take an engineering position with Kraftwerk Union. You would be a project supervising engineer.”
    Sarah was startled. Kraftwerk Union was Germany’s largest manufacturer of nuclear-powered electrical generating systems. The company was at the forefront of international concern and debate. Some years ago the huge firm had built a nuclear generating plant in Brazil, despite world opinion that Brazil almost certainly would use the technology to construct nuclear weapons. She wondered what the company was involved with now.
    Whalpol beamed. “I can see that you are definitely interested.”
    â€œThere must be dozens … hundreds of engineers better than me who are currently available. Why have you come here?”
    â€œYou would be the dark horse. The unknown.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYour job, Fräulein, would be two-pronged, in a manner of speaking. On the one hand, you would work directly for me.”
    â€œYou?”
    Whalpol reached into his jacket pocket for a thin leather wallet, which he opened and passed across the table. It contained an official identification card. The German eagle, its wings spread, was embossed on the card. For a moment she was afraid to reach out for it. She had a visceral feeling as to what it would be. Whalpol had helped her father and mother with SAVAK, and now he’d come to America to see that the debt was repaid.
    The card identified the bearer, by photograph, as Ludwig Herbert Whalpol, Bonn, a major in the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the BND, the German Secret Service. She dropped the wallet.

    He smiled as he stuffed it back in his pocket. “We would ask that you keep an eye on certain foreigners on the KwU engineering team.”
    â€œI am to spy?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhy me, Major? Why not a fellow German? I’m an American.”
    â€œYou’re an Iranian, Sarah. A nuclear engineer. And a woman. A rare combination.”
    â€œAre you building a reactor for Iran?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen for who … Iraq?”
    Whalpol nodded.
    â€œYou people are insane. The UN has finally cleared out the last of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear research facilities … and my God, how long has that taken? … Now you