7
NOWHERE MAN
Hey, Jon, how goes it?”
Knox looked up from his flat screen. There in the doorway, lending some much-needed eye-appeal to the Spartan decor of Hamza’s once-and-future office, stood Jazmine McGovern.
He gave up skimming through screenfuls of Pairidaeza schematics. “Hey, yourself, Jazmine. Pull up a chair.”
“Thanks, I’ll stand.” She leaned back against the doorframe, cocked a hip, and looked him straight in the eye. It made for an altogether smashing effect, emphasizing her height and the classic lines of her buckled-jacket pantsuit ensemble. Unfortunately, it was also an altogether calculated effect. When Jazmine came on strong like this, you could bet there was an agenda behind it.
So it was not without some trepidation that Knox asked, “What brings you down here?”
“You, of course. I choppered in to see how things are going, see if you needed anything.”
“Other than the answer to this riddle and a plane ticket home, you mean?”
“We’ll get you back home soon enough, Jon.” She abandoned the pose she’d struck by the door and strolled over to his desk. “But for right now we need you to focus.”
“You think I’m not? It’s a kid’s life at stake, for chrissake! And not just any kid.” He paused a moment. “Fatimah Ansari’s not just a name in a dossier. It’s hard to explain, but she’s real to me somehow, a real little girl.”
Now that he’d put it into words, Knox realized how true that was. And how strange: It wasn’t at all like him to get this involved—this personally involved—with an assignment, no matter what its nature. Just as quickly as the thought surfaced, though, it was gone again.
What had he been saying to Jazmine? Oh, yes—
“Anyway,” he finished, “criminal investigation may not be the sort of skill-set I’d list at the top of my resume, but I’m giving it everything I’ve got. It’s just that—”
“That what?”
“Well, it’s occurred to me that my involvement here may entail some amount of risk.”
Jazmine was drumming her fingers on the desktop now. “How do you mean?”
He shrugged. “There’s got to be some legal exposure—for Archon, I mean—in having me conducting an inquiry I’m not remotely qualified for.”
“You think I didn’t go over all that last night with Richard?”—the Richard in question would be Archon CEO Richard Moses, of course—“It took a while to talk him around, but he sees things my way now.”
“And what way is that?”
“That whatever risk we’re running here is nothing compared to what we’ll be looking at if you can’t fix this, and quick.”
“You’re talking about Psyche canceling the QuMRANN contract? But the project’s dead already—you said so yourself. If that’s our worst-case scenario, well, it could maybe make Archon look bad, sure, but …”
“It’s not. Not our worst case, I mean.”
She began pacing the parquet in tight circles. “You honestly don’t get what’s at stake here, do you, Jon? You really don’t know Dave Ansari at all.”
“Well, it’s kind of hard to judge a guy on the basis of one meeting—”
“One very atypical meeting. He’s not himself right now, understandably.
But I’ve been working with him up close and personal for the past year and a half, and all I can say is, when he is himself, which is mostly twenty-four/ seven, the man can be a real ball-buster.”
“I’m still not seeing your point.”
“Think about it: Ansari’s bottom line is going to be taking one hellacious hit once his bean counters write off QuMRANN.”
“My heart goes out to him. So he drops a rung to world’s fifth richest man. So what?”
“So he’s going to be looking for a scapegoat, is what. To serve up to the stockholders. Media too, maybe. And as the system integrator, guess who’s the prime candidate.”
“You’re not talking about—” Knox began, but a glance confirmed she was. “—Archon.”
“We’re walking a knife edge, Jon. Screw up and your new best friend will sue Archon for more than our jobs are worth. More than the whole damned company’s worth, most likely.”
Knox swallowed audibly. “Um, that does put a different spin on things.”
“But you can fix it, Jon, fix this whole mess. I know you can.”
Now that she’d made her point, Jazmine switched back into friendly mode. Maybe too friendly. She stretched enticingly and said, “Whew! Getting warm in here.”
Fitting actions to words, she shrugged out of her suit jacket, threw it over the chair. She was wearing only a low-cut black camisole underneath. Now it was Knox’s turn to start feeling warm. The way her nipples were straining against the thin fabric, it was clear Jazmine had forgotten to wear a bra. Again.
There’d been a time, some years back, when she’d forgotten to do that a lot. When, on a succession of golden afternoons, office doors were closed and locked, calls were forwarded, and billable time was honored in the breach, so to speak.
Knox shook his head to clear it. Even back then he’d always had a hard time telling how much of Jazmine’s enticement was just another gambit in one of her power games.
And now it simply didn’t matter anymore. He was in a relationship, and he liked it that way. He might not know where that relationship was going exactly, but whatever it was he and Marianna had together had the advantage of being, for want of a better word, real.
All the same, it was just as well there was no chance Marianna would ever find out about any of this. She just wouldn’t understand.
Certainly she wouldn’t understand why Knox failed to protest when Jazmine sashayed around behind his chair and ran a fingernail lightly across the back of his neck. Nor when she leaned in close and whispered in his ear, “It’s like I said before, I’m here for you, Jon. What can I do to help?”
☯
Back in Pairidaeza’s ops center, Hamza was monitoring the real-time surveillance feed from Knox’s borrowed office, giving it perhaps more attention than warranted, considering the competing demands on his time.
It was good to hear confirmation that last night’s nanotrode infusion, minimal though it had been, was doing its work: subtly enhancing Jonathan Knox’s emotional commitment to his assignment. But even after that had been established, Hamza kept watching.
It was not, in itself, the spectacle of a man and a woman closeted in a private meeting that was at once so repellent and so fascinating. Even in Tehran, women were to be found interacting with men in the various professions: medicine, journalism, law. Yet always they were modestly garbed, comporting themselves with propriety, careful to avoid compromising situations.
Jazmine McGovern was cut from different cloth. Hamza had had occasion to observe her closely in the time she’d been working on the QuMRANN project, and he knew full well that she cared far less for how a situation might look than for the business advantage it might confer.
Nor was she above using her charms as a negotiating tactic. Even as she had done here, practically disrobing in front of the man. Indeed, it was a wonder he hadn’t torn off what little remained of her clothing and taken her right there on the office’s hardwood floor.
No, such provocative behavior would not be tolerated in Tehran, nor anywhere in the Islamic Republic.
It had not always been so. Before Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution had brought the blessings of Shariah—of God’s law—to Iran, one might have seen women as bold and brazen as Jazmine on the streets of Holy Qum itself. Might have seen one such in particular … Her name was Mehri, and she was—to a poor seminarian, at least—as unattainable as she was beautiful. Only seventeen, she was the favorite, spoiled daughter of one of Qum’s richest bazaaris, the merchant princes who ruled the secular economy of the shrine city. And Mehri was her father’s princess. A princess on a pedestal, as far above the nineteen-year-old Hamza al-Ahwazi as the stars in God’s heaven.
In his infatuation—no, his bedazzlement—with Mehri, Hamza could forgive her, almost, her wanton ways: her make-up and lipsticks and shamelessly uncovered curls, her miniskirts and cassettes of Western music.
He would sit every afternoon at the window of the small café across the street from her Western-style high school, swirling the cold, sludgy dregs of the one cup of Turkish coffee that was all he could afford on his student’s stipend. All this just to catch a glimpse of her walking home after classes. He knew that her dress, her comportment fell far short of the standards of modesty set forth in the Holy Quran. No matter, he simply could not stop watching her. He would sit there each day and spy on her all unseen, all unnoticed, as she strolled down the dusty streets of Qum laughing and chattering with her friends.
Friends of both sexes. The mere fact that she kept company with young men her age, unchaperoned by a male relative, was scandalous in itself. Hamza did not care. Three p.m., when school let out, had become the high point of his day, the moment he lived for, the moment when he might see Mehri once again.
So it might have gone on, with Hamza watching silently through the café’s smoke-filmed window, but—
The life of a seminary student was hard—a life of penury and abstinence for all but the well-born and favored, and Hamza was not among them. Add to that the hardships of living away from home for the first time, living in a dormitory full of other adolescent males, hormones raging. It was forgivable, almost, if some of his fellow students had sought relief in … in unnatural acts. Or in enlightenment, in the ancient, ascetic spiritual discipline of irfan, illumination, which might purge the flesh of its desires. For a while, Hamza had hoped this might prove his path to salvation. But even through the dimly perceived vision of a transcendent, illuminated reality, he could see Mehri’s ethereally beautiful face shining.
The first alternative was abomination, the second unavailing, try as he might. There was, however, one other option …
The first step was to meet her. This would have been no mean feat for any student of Hamza’s scant means, but in his case it was further complicated by both physical and social awkwardness. He was still growing into his giant frame. Someday that physique would project imposing, even fearsome, strength, but for the moment it just made him look ungainly and freakish. Even that paled into insignificance, though, alongside his disadvantageous ethnicity. For while he was a native-born Iranian, Hamza did not belong to the Farsi, or Persian, majority; he was a Khuzestani Arab from the southwestern port city of Khorramshahr. And while growing up in an Arabic-speaking household was of enormous help in his studies of the Holy Quran, his ethnic background also made him the target of prejudice and, at times, outright discrimination under the Shah’s Persophilic regime.
In the end it had proven possible to surmount these obstacles of body and birth only through the good offices of Ali Marashi, Hamza’s spiritual guide in his extracurricular study of mysticism. That much-emulated mullah was, as fate would have it, also a frequent and honored guest at the home of Mehri’s father. Who would think to question it if, on occasion, this eminent man was to bring along one of his most promising students to an evening’s gathering?
And so Hamza had secured his coveted introduction, but little more than that. His earnestness seemed only to evoke a cool amusement on Mehri’s part, which she barely troubled to hide behind a facade of politeness. He supposed that, from her feckless adolescent perspective, his devotion to Islam must have seemed a curiosity, an anachronism—a relic, perhaps, of some bygone era, even then being swept aside to make way for the new, Westernized Iran of the Shah. The Iran of the future, her Iran.
None of that mattered. All that mattered was that now they knew one another well enough to nod an acknowledgement when their paths crossed on the street. And well enough that, on those afternoons when she was otherwise unaccompanied, he might have the privilege of escorting her home from school.
It was all he had dreamed of, and yet it was not enough. He resolved to reach for more.
It was a chill, blustery day in late January 1979 when he accompanied her home for the last time. Her world, he knew, was being turned upside down: The Shah had left the country on the sixteenth of that month. Had fled like the cowardly dog he was and taken with him, like so much carry-on luggage, that secular vision of Iran’s future which Mehri and all her circle had unthinkingly embraced. Meanwhile, the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini was being eagerly awaited by millions. Millions! The next act in the resurgence of Shi’ia Islam was about to unfold.
And it was on that day that Hamza’s own world turned upside down as well, for it was on that day that he took it upon himself to propose temporary marriage to Mehri Khorasani.
The institution of nikah mut’ah—literally, “marriage for pleasure,” but usually rendered “temporary marriage”—had a long and honorable tradition in Shi’ia Islam. Indeed, it was sanctioned by sura 4 of the Holy Quran, and had been indulged in by the Prophet himself, peace and blessings upon him. Such an arrangement was no less legitimate and binding in Islam than a normal, permanent marriage contract, save that it was entered into for a specified period of time only. In that sense, he explained, it was far superior to the unregulated and promiscuous Western practice of “living together.”
Stammering, stumbling over the legalistic terms, Hamza attempted to convey all these nuances to Mehri on their last walk home together. Her face remained expressionless as he spoke. Try as he might, he could not penetrate that dispassionate demeanor to gauge what effect his words were having.
At last they were standing before the gate set in the wall surrounding her father’s home. It was there, his face burning with shame and desire, he had told her that if she would but make her declaration, then he would go with her forthwith and ask her father’s permission for her hand. As was required when contracting a temporary marriage with a virgin.
And it was to be a marriage temporary in name only, he assured her: He was just a poor student now, but his prospects were excellent, and once he had graduated and assumed his rightful place in the new, Islamic society, he pledged he would make her his permanent wife.
If only, he pleaded, she would declare herself to him. If only she would repeat the words of the time-sanctioned formula, saying “I surrender myself to your pleasure,” then his—no, their—happiness would know no bounds.
She listened silently, her hesitancy giving him reason to hope that this impossible dream might still be realized.
Finally, her lips parted to speak. And released, instead of words, a shriek of laughter.
“Who do you think I am?” She was giggling uncontrollably now, as if at some monstrous impropriety. “What do you think I am—A whore?”
Everybody in Qum, she said, knew about the seminary students and their “temporary” wives, their legalized prostitutes. He must be insane to think he might have her—her!—so cheaply. And with that, she had slipped through the entranceway to her home and slammed the iron gate in his face.
It was very nearly the last time that he would see her. The last but one.
But that final meeting would be different. Very different indeed.
Hamza heaved a sigh and went back to watching the two in the room. Back to his surveillance screens and his accustomed role: The silent, unobserved observer, watching from the shadows. The nowhere man.
☯
“What can you do to help, Jazmine?” Knox had stood up and stepped back, so as to reestablish a modicum of distance between them. “You could start by getting this Hamza guy to back off and let me do my job.”
“Why, what’s he been doing?”
“Well, take his theory of the crime, for instance: There’s something about this whole business of kidnappers dropping out of the sky that just doesn’t fit, but every time I try to bring it up, he cuts me off, tells me that how the crime was committed is none of my concern.”
“Well, you must admit, Jon, you do go off on some strange tangents from time to time.”
But Knox wasn’t listening. “And he … hovers: Like I’m not supposed to talk to any of his people unless he sits in. Okay, one unsupervised interview, but that was with a robot, for chrissakes! For the whole rest of the duty roster, all I’ve got to go on is transcripts.” He shook a bursting manila folder at her. “Transcripts!”
“Well, I’m sure Hamza knows his own—”
“It’s not just Hamza. Ansari’s so-called detail man—who- and wherever he is—is as bad if not worse. I mean, look at all this crap.” He pointed at the piles of paperwork littering his desk.
Jazmine bent to pick up a random sheet. She gave the paper a cursory glance before turning back to him. “Isn’t there anything at all useful here?”
“Maybe, if I had the time to dig through it. As things stand, it’s more a hindrance than a help. There’s no focus, no organization. Like, what’s that you’ve got there?”
She scanned the text. “It looks like, um, it’s about some shipment of metamaterial fabric that got itself misrouted.”
“See what I mean? What good does that do me?”
She shrugged and put the sheet back down. “Dunno, Jon—you’re supposed to be the pattern matcher. But, isn’t that what a detail man’s supposed to do, produce detail?”
“Not totally at random, he’s not. I wish I could at least meet with the guy, so I could tell him that to his face—and punch him in the nose.”
Jazmine giggled. “Now, that I’d like to see.” He looked up. “So, how do I get to meet him?”
“It’s not that easy, Jon. There’s all kinds of, uh, security issues involved.
You’d need Dave’s personal authorization.”
“Okay, then,” he said, “can you set up a call with Dave?”
Jazmine frowned, but said, “No need. You can Skype him in right from your desktop—just hit F-10.”
He stabbed the key she was pointing at and, sure enough, a window popped open on his flat screen displaying a Psyche Industries logo. He’d envisioned having to run a gauntlet of executive assistants to reach the man, but when the logo dissolved five seconds later, there was Ansari himself—still looking bone-tired, but maybe marginally more together than this morning—staring out at him. “Jon. What’s up? Progress to report?”
“Not exactly, Dave. In fact, progress is what I wanted to talk to you about: I can’t make any as long as I’m drowning in paper here. It’s getting so I can barely see the top of my desk.”
Ansari lowered his head and said something under his breath. Knox couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like “Nietzsche.”
He looked back at Knox again. “I’ll pass your comment along. Anything else?”
“Maybe I’m not making myself clear, Dave. I need to talk to whoever else it is you’ve got working on this case.”
Ansari didn’t reply immediately. He steepled his fingers and stared at them intently.
“Told you,” Jazmine said sotto voce.
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Ansari said finally. “What else?”
Sometimes, when the client was vacillating between yes and no, the best gambit was to just keep him talking and wait for another opening. So, what else did Knox need from Ansari?
“I, uh, I did have some questions about one of those videos of Fatimah you showed me this morning. The one the guardbot made just before she was, was taken.” Knox had seen that recording flash past in Ansari’s office at their first meeting, studied it more closely since.
A look of pain flitted across Ansari’s face, but all he said was, “Go ahead.”
“Well, for instance, who was this Freddie she was talking to?”
“Don’t worry about Freddie, Jon. That’s what Timah calls her, ah, imaginary friend. You know kids. Always making stuff up.” He tried for a chuckle but it caught in his throat.
“And the guardbot’s priority-override code, did she make that up too?”
Ansari blinked, then shook his head. “No,” he said slowly, “we’re still trying to figure out where she got that from.”
“Again, this might all be simpler if we could put our heads together.”
“You and my researcher, you mean?” Ansari resumed staring at his hands.
“I told you, I’d think about it.”
That about did it for Knox. “Well, think faster,” he said, “And while you’re at it, try thinking about your daughter too. Her life—”
“—is in danger. Don’t you think I know that?”
“Then help me out here.”
Ansari held up a hand. “Jon, believe me when I tell you, there are reasons. Reasons I need to keep this whole thing under wraps. And for those same reasons, I need it fixed, quick and equally quiet. All of which narrows down my options to you.”
“Look, Dave,” Knox said, “I’m ready to help you find your daughter any way I can. Only you’ve got to give me something to work with.”
“But not this, Jon.” Ansari sighed and shook his head. “I’d do it if I could, really. Just, it’s a question of national security.”
Security? Jazmine had said that too. And she’d said something else, when he’d first arrived here. About some project they’d been working on here, something really big and very hush-hush. Something to do, she’d said, with “real artificial intelligence.”
Add to that the excessive, almost obsessive attention to detail Ansari’s researcher had been exhibiting and—the last puzzle-piece slid into place.
Knox looked Ansari in the eye. “Security’s not an issue if I already know, is it?”
Ansari returned the stare. “Know what?”
“Your so-called detail man, I’m thinking it’s not a man at all. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s QuMRANN.”