Twenty-Nine Cozy Bears

37

Doug Tanner walked beside Samantha through Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport. It was a busy day for travel. The lines were long, tempers were short, Samantha was insufferable.

"You don't look like you want to be here," she said as they made their way to the street outside of the airport to find a taxi.

"That's strange," he jibed. "Since I don't."

"Come on, travel is what keeps the peace, more than anything else," she said, as she adjusted her hijab into position, and draped the tail over her shoulder.

He studied it for a moment, and then shrugged, unwilling to say it looked good on her. The cloth was silk, red with gold embroidery patterns typical of the Arab world. The colors set off her green eyes, and the gold of her skin. "Mitch wanted to make the trip."

"You want me in a hotel bed for a week with Mitch?" she asked.

"Not really. But Alice or Paula could have made the trip with him, or David for that matter."

"I don't think David is attracted to Mitch," she said, with only a hint of teasing in her voice.

"Then they might actually get some work done."

"We will be working beavers," she countered.

He ignored the slang.

"I'm glad you like me," she said, and he recalled her asking if he did the day before they left.

"Honestly, what is not to like? You're a great partner, we satisfy each others animals and you're fun to be with, most of the time."

When she didn't say anything he glanced at her and found she had tears in her eyes. Not knowing what to say, he put his arm around her and looked for a taxi.

Once a ride was found and negotiated, and their backpacks loaded into the trunk, they sat in the back seat together, speaking only French or Persian.

"They gave us the trip because we were ready," Samantha told him. "We both had our passports, shots and free time on the books." This last was added, he understood, because they had an audience. Two men in the front seats. She was right in beginning the cover as soon as possible. It was simple human lax that botched most operations. The compelling idea that all of the protocol and practice really wasn't required. That some how this thing called life, had a fail-safe.

One of his trainers told him, take it seriously, or it will take you. He wondered briefly, 'take me where?' but understood that it wouldn't matter, he would be gone.

I was late morning, the traffic would not be unmanageable for another four hours.

Samantha happily sat beside him, occasionally holding his hand or grabbing his thigh, and pointing at some tower or mural or graffiti, or building as they made their way into the heart of Tehran. The buildings were tight together. Most of them five floors high. Not many taller than this. They were shades of brown and tan and gray. Some where so tight together they appeared to share walls.

There was the scent of exhaust and rust in the air, but also of spices and something under it all, that he thought might be age.

"Do you know what they called Iran, 3000 years ago," he asked Samantha.

"What?"

"Iran." He said this with a simple tone, like it was just a trivia, but was it? People have lived in this city for thousands of years. And for fourteen hundred of those years, they've been saying the same prayers at the same times, together. Right now Tehran urban proper had 10 million people. And in the Metropolis areas and that swells to 15 million. It was urban sprawl a thousand years ago.

Surprisingly, there was a plan at work. An intellect in play. Well, it surprised the shit out of him. How do you manage and plan this kind of momentum and inertia? This is millions of people — all of whom have roots going back generations on the same ground — living on top of each other in a sprawl that spans across and mixes cultural dichotomies, like its braiding hair — from opulent wealth to poverty, stacked and pressed side by side, over and under.

In French she asked, softly, "Are we allowed to say 'blow-job' in Persian?"

"I don't know," he said, his lips near her ear, his arm around her narrow but firm shoulders; strong. "So we don't. And we don't do anything else that is questionable or might possibly offend. I like it here, so far."

"Yes, I like it too. I'm glad we are here. You will be too," she said with a French giggle that added the playful innocence of a whore's second night, to the promise. He understood that it was his American ears causing the effect, not the French speaker. Still, the effect touched his spine.

And why wouldn't he be happy to be here? This was Persia, and it felt like a different world. And Samantha was with him. Why the long face? Because they were in Iran, in Tehran, to meet with the Mossad.

Doug had lived by a few succinct ideas, and one of them was never to meet with the Mossad — just on general preferences. He felt that if he had to break with that guideline then doing it in Iran would not be ideal. In fact it would be far flung from ideal —- dismal.

Dismal felt accurate. At least he wouldn't be unbearably naïve. Just as dead, yes, but not cringing.