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

Moments after the blast, residents all over Buenos Aires reported hearing a violent thunderstorm pass over the city. Except what they heard hitting their roofs wasn’t rain — it was bits of concrete and brick and glass from the Jewish Community Center, known to locals as AMIA.

Mixed in with the fragments of building materials, some residents even found tiny bits of flesh.

The blast wave caused the façade to buckle inward, making the concrete roof and floors collapse down on one another like pancakes. Those not crushed in the blast itself were buried under tons of debris. A few survivors were rescued; the rest succumbed to their injuries, suffocated, or died slowly from dehydration.

It took a full day before the smoke and dust cleared the area of the explosion and weeks before residents had cleaned their houses of the ultra-fine dust that settled on every horizontal surface as a tangible reminder of the bombing. When the official death toll was finally released, eighty-five citizens of Argentina were dead and another three hundred wounded.

The press quickly concluded that it was another terrorist bombing, with Argentina’s Jews once again the target, just like the Israeli embassy bombing two years prior. The authorities issued stern press statements about bringing the culprits behind this heinous crime to justice.

One year after the AMIA bombing, five arrests were finally made, all Argentinean nationals. In 2001, seven years after the bombing, the men were tried and found guilty.

In the trial, the prosecution hinted at a link between the men standing trial and the terrorist group Hezbollah, but every time the prosecution got close to a connection, the trail ran cold.

The Tri-Border Area was the most poorly kept secret in all of Buenos Aires. Named for the point of Argentina that thrusts up between Brazil and Paraguay, the Tri-Border Area — or TBA, as it was known — was a no-man’s land of loose laws and looser law enforcement. In this anything-goes climate, criminal organizations found safe haven, including Hezbollah.

But if the criminals in the TBA were good at anything, it was paying off politicians to enforce the status quo. And so, the investigation of the AMIA bombing went no further than the conviction of a few low-level Argentinean nationals, and the link to Hezbollah and its Iranian benefactors stayed hidden.

But one prosecutor refused to give up on the AMIA case. Alberto Nisman joined the investigation in 1997 and kept at it long after the 2001 trial. A well-respected professional, Nisman had served as a prosecuting attorney pursuing narco-trafficking, government corruption, money laundering, and international terrorism cases, and also as a law professor in both Buenos Aires and Belgrade. He came to know many survivors of the AMIA attack, and he pledged to them that he would not rest until he brought the real criminals behind the bombing to justice.

In 2004, Nisman was appointed Special Prosecutor in charge of the AMIA bombing investigation. In 2006, he formally accused the government of Iran of ordering the bombing in retaliation for Buenos Aires’s decision to suspend a nuclear technology contract with Tehran. Hezbollah, with their strong presence in the TBA, was accused of carrying out the bombing. Within a year, Interpol had placed six Iranian officials on their “red alert” list in response to Nisman’s accusations. Any of the named officials who traveled outside of Iran would be subject to arrest and extradition to Argentina for questioning in the AMIA bombing investigation.

Still, Nisman’s investigation continued — and drew closer to home, alarming many in the Buenos Aires political elite. By the end of 2014, it was rumored that Alberto Nisman was getting close to announcing a scandal that reached the highest office in the land, a level of corruption the likes of which Argentina had not seen in half a century.

A date was set for him to deliver his report to Congress: Monday, January 19, 2015.

Alberto Nisman, with his eyes set on the goal of rooting out the corruption in his own government, was blind to the fact that he was now a pawn in a game of geopolitical chess.

And he never could have guessed that his fate would be decided half a world away in a small teahouse in central Tehran.

Hashem Aboud took a deep pull on his cigarette, savoring the taste in the back of his throat.

The muted TV was tuned to Al Jazeera, where an attractive female anchor held an animated — and thankfully silent — interview with someone from Sydney, Australia. A lone gunman had taken hostages inside the Lindt Chocolate Café. The police had trapped the man and a standoff was playing out. The black flag of the Islamic State hung in the window of the café.

Normally, Hashem would be cheering a fellow Muslim who chose to take on the Western nations, but not today. Today he hoped the man died — not as a martyr, either, but as an animal, alone and scared.

Hashem blew a stream of smoke at the screen. First in Iraq, now in Syria, those Sunni bastards were a cancer on the region. Even worse, they forced him to direct valuable resources to stopping them. Resources that could be used for more important projects, like his desert bunker. They’d created their own “nation” and couldn’t even decide what to call themselves — IS, ISIL, ISIS, the Islamic State, Daesh…

He checked his watch and stubbed out his Marlboro in the overflowing ashtray. Still, they were effective, he had to give them that. Daesh had timed its entry into Iraq perfectly. In that short window between the Americans departing and Hashem consolidating his Iranian influence over the Maliki government — a matter of only a few months — these Islamic State assholes unleashed a rapid and successful campaign to establish their own Sunni state. Just as Iran was gaining traction in shaping Iraqi policies and keeping Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria — he was an idiot, but he was Iran’s idiot — Daesh had struck there as well.

For that, upstarts like the one in Australia deserved death.

The door to the private room snapped open and Aban swept into the space, preceded by his always-present bodyguard. The hulking man scanned the room, deposited a heavy briefcase on the floor, and left without a word.

As usual, Hashem’s older brother cut a fine figure in the cream-colored robes and white turban of his office. Hashem hastily moved the ashtray off the table and stood, brushing a trace of ash from his suit jacket. He took a knee before his half-brother and bowed his head. “Your Eminence, I am honored by your presence.”

Aban let out a belly laugh and pulled Hashem to his feet, embracing him in a bear hug.

He wants something from me, Hashem thought.

“Let me look at you, brother,” Aban said, holding Hashem at arm’s length.

Hashem noted the tension in his brother’s too-wide smile and the deepening crow’s feet that framed his eyes. The rise of President Rouhani and his wave of moderates over the last few years had eroded his brother’s influence in the Islamic Republic of Iran — something they hoped to fix with their desert bunker project.

But they were still months, maybe years away from having operational nuclear missiles. Years away from the kind of drastic reform that Aban planned to implement in Iran.

Aban waved his hand at the television. “Bastard Daesh. I hope the Australians shoot him like a dog in the street.” He reached for the remote and switched off the TV.