The Last Run Read Free Page B

question him about anything, about the Greens, say, then let him go. That would do it, that would be all it takes.”
    “And how would that help defend the Revolution? We must see this through. Think about the result, think about what we will gain. For months we’ve been pressured to strike back against those who have struck us. This is how we do it. The result will more than justify the means.”
    Farzan Zahabzeh grimaced, scratched his chin beneath his beard. He was ten years Shirazi’s junior, still carrying enough of his youth that the job hadn’t begun to show on him. Full of energy and strength, not much taller than Shirazi, but larger, clearly stronger. But his junior nonetheless, and with a lot left to learn.
    Another knock, this one more forceful and somehow more formal, the hand of one of the guards, leading the prisoner into their trap.
    “It’s all or nothing,” Shirazi said.
    “All or nothing,” Zahabzeh agreed, and went to answer the door.
    The prisoner drew himself up in his chair, cast an angry glance at Zahabzeh standing beside him, then glared at Youness Shirazi.
    “Do you know who I am?” the man demanded.
    Shirazi considered the question, taking the man in. He certainly looked old, or, at the least, older, though Shirazi thought that might simply be the result of seeing him here and now, rather than as he appeared in photographs taken over thirty years before. Beard and hair both more gray than black, small eyes. None of the clothes of the ulema , the learned Shi’a scholars, but instead a simple buttoned shirt, tan, and even simpler black trousers. While he watched, the man began scratching at the back of his right hand with the nails of his left, an unconscious gesture that persisted for several seconds before stopping.
    Shirazi met the prisoner’s eyes, returned the stare with the practiced patience he had learned from twenty years in counterintelligence, unwavering, until the man’s indignation faded and the fear reasserted itself. Then, satisfied, Shirazi looked to Zahabzeh, and gave him a small, almost inconsequential, nod.
    Zahabzeh took up the stack of photographs and began laying them out in a roughly chronological line along the desktop, facing away from Shirazi, towards their prisoner. Some of the photographs had suffered with age, their edges yellowing and beginning to curl, and in the few of them that had been taken in color, that same color had begun to wash away, rendering the figures insubstantial, almost fictional, and dreamlike.
    Or nightmarish, Shirazi thought, as he gauged the man’s reaction. At first there had been nothing, blank incomprehension, perhaps bewilderment, but when his eyes fell upon the third photograph, the one with the two young men in the back of the car, everything changed, the reaction inescapable. The prisoner started in his chair, stifling an exclamation. He looked up and then, meeting Shirazi’s eyes, quickly away, to the side and down, as if hoping to find refuge somewhere between the cracks of the linoleum floor. Zahabzeh ran out of room on the desk, went back to the beginning, now laying the photos one atop the other. Somewhere, outside Shirazi’s office, a phone rang and was quickly answered.
    “That was a long time ago,” the man said. He brought his head up, looking at Shirazi again, and his voice touched on plaintive. “I was young. Very foolish. It was thirty years ago.”
    Zahabzeh finished placing the last of the photographs. Some of them were now stacked four-deep. Shirazi adjusted his glasses, rotated his chair to face the wall on his left, where a portrait of the Aya tollah hung. He pretended to contemplate it.
    “I was foolish,” the man said, softly.
    “You are a spy,” Zahabzeh spat, and Shirazi had to fight a smile at the savagery of the declaration. “A spy in service of the British.”
    “What? No!” The man twisted, unsure who to address, finally settling on Zahabzeh. “No, I swear!”
    Zahabzeh plucked one of the