David Bruns: Death of a Pawn: A WMD Companion Short Story

Hashem drew them both fresh cups of tea, piling a saucer with sugar cubes for his brother. He stayed silent. It was an old trick of the clandestine operator — put an uncomfortable silence into a conversation in an effort to prompt your target to start speaking — and it almost invariably worked on Aban.

“How are things in the bunker?” Aban asked. He put a sugar cube between his teeth and sucked down a sip of tea.

Hashem’s lips twitched for a cigarette. “On track.” He resumed his silence. Aban wasn’t getting off that easily.

Aban fussed with his tea, sipping and stirring.

Hashem waited.

Aban cleared his throat. “I need your help.”

Hashem nodded silently.

“I’ve been working behind the scenes to find buyers for our oil. Buyers who are willing to go against the United States and their sanctions. If I can bring money into the Treasury, that will bolster my influence among certain members of the Council…”

Hashem sipped his tea.

“I’ve got Argentina lined up, but there’s a problem with the deal. That’s where you come in.”

Finally. Hashem pulled his pack of Marlboros from his jacket pocket and raised his eyebrows at his brother. Aban waved his assent. Hashem lit a cigarette and drew deeply. “How can I help?” he said on the exhale.

“The bombing of the Jews in Buenos Aires in ‘94, at the community center. Do you recall that event?”

Hashem chewed his lip and nodded slowly. He’d been only a junior intel officer in the Quds Force back then, but he remembered the Hezbollah fighters they’d trained and armed for the bombing in Buenos Aires. The Lebanese Shia patriots had impressed him.

“You know about the Interpol alerts against our officials. If these men leave Iran, they’re fair game for being arrested and extradited to Argentina. I’ve been negotiating to get these red alerts canceled, but their President is being held hostage by a special prosecutor who is still investigating the bombing.”

Hashem used his first cigarette to light another. “That was twenty years ago. Who cares?”

Aban opened the briefcase and extracted a file. Hashem tried not to stare at the stacks of US dollars in the case. Instead, he flipped open the file.

The label at the bottom of the 8 × 10 picture said ALBERTO NISMAN. Hashem studied the photo. Clean cut, mid-fifties, with a gaunt attractiveness and fiery dark eyes.

“This man.” Aban’s stubby finger poked Nisman’s photo in the forehead. “He’s a bulldog and a pain in the ass. For the last ten years, he’s been investigating the bombing. He claims Iran was involved, and President de Kirchner and her Foreign Minister will not sign the deal with us as long as this man—”

“So you want Nisman eliminated?” Hashem said.

“Yes, but that’s not all. I need Nisman discredited — silenced, but in such a way that the validity of his entire investigation is called into question.” Aban picked up his teacup and sat back in his chair. “Is there a way to do that, Hashem?”

Hashem let the smoke trickle from his nostrils.

“There is always a way, brother. There is always a way.”

Rafiq Roshed could not sleep.

Without waking Nadine, he slipped out of bed and padded from the room. He hadn’t bothered to set an alarm. Rafiq knew he shouldn’t get his hopes up, but these days just the anticipation of the monthly check-in with his brother was enough to chase sleep away for the night.

He looked in on little Javier. The boy, nearly three years old now, had placed his toy horse — the black one, just like his pony, Storm — on the edge of his bed. Rafiq moved the miniature horse and kissed the boy. His son’s dark curly hair snagged in Rafiq’s short beard. He breathed in the scent of his child, feeling the edge of anticipation wane.

Over the last few months, since his Lebanese mother had been killed by the Islamic State, Rafiq found himself lost to these warring emotions: the anger and the bloodlust of his life as a freedom fighter against the peace of his family.

He hadn’t even been able to properly mourn his mother. Traveling back to his hometown of Arsal for the funeral was out of the question — thanks to Hashem — and the only real contact he’d had with her in the last five years was via hand-carried letters. When he accepted this assignment from Hashem, Rafiq had known the costs: sever all connections with his former life in Hezbollah and Lebanon, including his mother.

Here, in the Tri-Border Area of South America, Rafiq made a new life, a life so far from the fight in the Middle East that he might as well be living on another planet. Wealth, land, family, love — it was all his in this magical alternate universe. His thoughts drifted to Nadine, still asleep in their bed…

A chill passed over him like an icy wind as the memory of his mother intruded on his reverie. His mother. Killed by a mortar shell as she sat in her own living room inside her own home — the home where he’d grown into a man.

Well, not a man, really. He was only fifteen when he joined Hezbollah and was selected for the Khobar Towers operation in Saudi Arabia. Oh, the attention that bombing had drawn to their cause! From that moment on, Rafiq was on the fast track to leadership in the Party of God. He smiled wistfully as he recalled the accolades of his peers and the jealous glares from his elders.

And then his chain-smoking half-brother came into his life. Hashem, a rising star in the Quds Force who hinted at ties to Ettela’at , intervened. “You are different, my brother,” he’d said. “Different from these glorified goat herders who want to die as martyrs.” He argued for Rafiq to attend university in America. Not in New York or Washington, DC, but in the Midwest, in the middle of nowhere. “You can be the greatest fighter in a generation, but you must complete your training first.”

Rafiq had agreed. Five years he’d spent at Carleton College in Minnesota before he was able to return to Lebanon. Five years as Ralf Faber, who graduated summa cum laude with a degree in international relations. Rafiq wondered what his professors at Carleton would think about his career choice as the leader of a terrorist sleeper cell in South America.

He cracked open the door to Consie’s room. The child gently sucked her thumb. He didn’t dare kiss her. She was a light sleeper — just like her father.

He shook himself into action. All this reminiscing left him barely enough time to make a cup of coffee before his scheduled Internet session with Hashem. Every month, his half-brother set up a secure chatroom to check on the cargo, a wooden crate that Rafiq had shepherded from Iran to the estancia in 2007. Since its arrival, the crate had sat unopened in a secret compartment inside the estate’s massive wine cellar.

When he’d arrived here, the cargo was Rafiq’s life. But his life had become so much more in the last seven years. Seven years? Has it been that long? Rafiq gritted his teeth in frustration. Lamenting the past was weakness. Better to be like the wolf, constantly moving forward, seeking prey.

Rafiq checked his watch and muttered a curse. 0157.

He hustled into the office, locking the door behind him. While the computer booted up, he retrieved the codebook from the safe. At exactly 0200, Rafiq clicked on the Tor software, which anonymized his online presence, then opened a message in his inbox. Had anyone managed to hack into his email, they would have seen a message advertising a porn website. Had they managed to bypass the page of naked pictures and blinking buttons and clicked on the link at the bottom of the screen, they would have gotten an error message. But had they clicked on that link at exactly 0200 on that exact day, they would have been redirected to a one-time-use chatroom.