Andy McNab - Exit wound

‘Hello, who are you?’ He spoke, of course, with a slight American accent. They were all around the same age; somewhere in their early twenties.

I told them the truth – well, sort of. I flashed my IranEx badge at them. ‘James Manley, British aerospace and defence journal – Aerospace and Defence Technology Monthly .’ They exchanged doubtful glances with each other until I handed over my business card.

The guy with the baseball cap studied it, then looked at me. ‘You work for ADTM ?’

‘You know it?’

‘Sure.’ He took a step forward and shook my hand.

I missed the names of his mates, but I caught his loud and clear.

‘Ali.’

Under the peak were two very clear and excited brown eyes. He kept smiling, like he was waiting for something from me as he held onto my hand and kept shaking. ‘Iranianmetalbird.net, you know it, yes? That is why you are here?’

One of Ali’s mates, a beanpole around six-four, spoke to him in rapid-fire Farsi. He didn’t like me at all.

‘There a problem?’

‘He wants to know what a foreign-defence reporter is doing at IKIA – a civilian airport.’

‘Not entirely civilian.’ I pointed to the military-transport aircraft I’d seen alongside the northern perimeter fence when I landed. I could still see them there, way in the distance. As a piece of point-scoring, it wasn’t up to much but it bought me a few seconds. ‘I came here to find you.’

He took a step backwards. ‘Me?’

‘Your website. It’s pretty well known in defence publishing circles back home. My magazine has been meaning to approach you for a while. IranEx gave me the opportunity to look you up. I take it that you’d be happy, Ali, if we could agree the right terms, for us to reprint some of the pictures that you post on the web, maybe even write some articles for the magazine?’

Ali looked at his mates, then at me. ‘You are offering me a job?’

‘A contract, possibly. But let’s see how good you are.’ I gave him a smile. It wasn’t going to be much of a test. ‘An aircraft, white private jet, took off from here a short while ago. Do you know what make it was?’

I liked his enthusiasm a lot more than the scowling glances I got from his mates.

‘Sure. A Dassault Falcon 7X.’

‘What can you tell me about it? Does it have a history here?’

Again, the beanpole interrupted him. This time, the conversation between the three got heated. Whatever was being said, Ali was clearly in the minority.

‘Is there another problem?’

Ali pulled a face.

I pointed at the beanpole. ‘What’s up with him?’

‘He wants to know why a foreign-defence journalist is interested in a commercial aircraft. A corporate jet, of all things. This has nothing to do with the military, he says. Perhaps he is right.’

‘I’m interested because it’s registered to a Russian aerospace company that’s exhibiting at the show – at IranEx.’

Ali smiled. ‘You mean, a Russian missile company that’s exhibiting at IranEx.’

‘You know about this company?’

‘There’s not much I don’t know about the aerospace business, Mr Manley.’ He beamed. ‘It’s my hobby. You could say it’s my life. Why else would I be up here?’ He flung his arm around the expanse of tarmac and desert as another 747 rumbled down the runway.

He stopped playing helicopters and pointed towards a low building faintly visible through the dust of the construction work on the other side of the airport; the building I’d seen the Dassault parked in front of when I’d touched down yesterday. ‘That’s M3C’s own private terminal. From the air-traffic movements of its corporate jet fleet, it is very obvious to us that M3C is doing a lot of business with my country. We are not stupid. If we posted the movements of M3C aircraft on our website, we’d find ourselves in a lot of trouble.’

‘You have data?’

He smiled. ‘We see everything that flies in and out of this country.’

The other two shifted uncomfortably.

‘I’m doing a story on this company, Ali. Aircraft and the weapons that can take them out the sky, that sort of thing. I need to know where that jet has been over the past few days. It gives the article a bit of excitement – you know, international company jetting around the world, that sort of thing. Did you see any of the people who boarded the plane?’

Ali shook his head slowly. ‘No, it was on a pan the other side of their terminal.’ His voice went up an octave. ‘But isn’t the 7X a great bird? It only entered service in 2007. This is the very first one we have seen in Iran.’

It was still as hot as an oven and we’d been standing out here long enough.

‘Ali, I’d like you to show me everything you’ve got on that jet.’

‘I can show you its flight paths on my computer at home.’

‘Let’s go, then. Where do you live? The magazine will pay you, of course.’

He smiled again. ‘That’s good, Mr Manley, because I drive for a living. And, to be honest, it’s not much of a living right now.’

He lived in a southern district of Tehran; a journey, he said, that would take us around an hour from the airport. We drove there in his sparkling white Paykan. He told me proudly that it was nearly fifteen years old, but it looked almost new. His father had lovingly maintained it. The taxi really belonged to his dad, but now he was ill and Ali had had to interrupt his studies at Tehran University to drive it and help make ends meet.

He seemed like a decent enough lad. As we left the airport behind, I apologized for the trouble I’d caused him with his mates. They’d gone one way in the car park and we’d gone another. When they’d parted, you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.

As we drove through the desert on the southern approaches to Tehran the rift still seemed to hang in the air like smog.

After a long silence, Ali finally sparked up. ‘Do not feel bad, Mr Manley. The thing that unites us is our mutual interest – planes, aerospace, technology. We get on, but they are not like me. There are – how do I say? – differences between us.’

‘You’re all geeks like the rest of us, aren’t you? What’s not to like?’

‘I am a Kurd, Mr Manley.’

‘A Kurd and so a Sunni, eh?’

With both hands on the wheel he shrugged and smiled.

‘Not much going for you here, is there?’

He shook his head slowly. ‘A minority in my own country, Mr Manley. Qasim and Adel, on the roof, do not feel this way themselves, but their families certainly do. Their fathers do not like them to spend time with me.’

‘Know the feeling, mate.’

‘I do not feel Kurdish. I consider myself an Iranian, a proud Iranian. But not everyone looks on me the same way.’

‘Know that feeling too, Ali. Almost like being invisible sometimes, yeah? They want to get in your taxi because they want a lift, but don’t really want to be seen with you…’

We passed another poster of Bush with vampire teeth. Ali kept his eyes on the road, glancing occasionally in the rear-view. ‘Do you believe Iran will go to war with the West?’

It was already, but in a cleverer way than he was thinking. ‘Dunno, mate. You?’

‘Our economy, Mr Manley, is deteriorating and unemployment is a disease. I believe it is one of the key reasons why our rulers are spoiling for a fight with the West. When your world is falling apart, it is always preferable, is it not, to blame someone else? Especially Great Britain.’ He looked across to me for some encouragement.

‘Always. It’s what people do.’

He liked that. ‘My father always says that if you trip over a stone you can be sure the British man put it in your way.’