H.M.S. Unseen (1999) Read online

  He was almost level when the senior man spoke, brusquely, with authority.

  “Hey, old man…Iraqi?”

  Eilat nodded and kept going, moving past them, exaggerating the limp. For a split second, he thought they would ignore him, but then the soldier spoke again.

  “WAIT!”

  Eilat was not surprised. He was moving into a particularly sensitive area of his country. Al-Kut was the town where the Tigris splits, and where the great drainage program to dry out the marshes had been in place for many years. It was a program designed to destroy the wild wetland homes of the ancient Marsh Arabs, who were believed to have lived there for the entire 6,000 years of the region’s history. In the opinion of Saddam Hussein, those watery miles had become a haven for deserters from the Army, and even for Iranian insurgents. Gangs of ex-Army personnel still roamed the vast overgrown areas where water remained. Eilat knew the place was crawling with soldiers because it was still believed to be somewhat out of control. Drier, but still out of control.

  He obeyed the command of the Iraqi officer, turning slowly and saying softly the traditional greeting of the desert, “Salam aleikum,” Peace be upon you.

  The officer was a man of around thirty-five, tall and thin, with a hooked beak of a nose, hooded dark eyes, and a full mouth. He did not smile.

  “Documents?”

  “I have none, sir,” replied Eilat in Arabic. “I’m just a poor traveler.”

  “Traveling to where?”

  “I’m looking for my son, sir. I heard from him last in An-Nasiriya three years ago. I have no money except for a few dinars, enough for some bread in Kut.”

  “And then you plan to walk right down the Shatt al Gharraf…120 miles?”

  “Yessir.”

  “On a loaf of bread, on your own, with no documents?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “In Baghdad, sir. In the south of the city.”

  “A city Arab with no documents?” His tone was questioning. “And what do you carry in that bag?”

  “Just water, sir.”

  “Show me,” said the officer, uttering the two words that would end his life.

  Eilat turned away, but he came back as fast as a striking cobra, jamming the end of his stick with colossal force into the small space between the officer’s eyes above the bridge of his nose. All three men heard the bone of his forehead splinter, but it was the last sound the Iraqi soldier ever heard. Eilat slammed the butt of his right hand upward into the great beaked nose, effectively ramming the bone into the man’s brain.

  The younger soldier just stood there, his mouth open with total amazement, as this elderly, crippled traveler killed his commanding officer in two seconds flat. He held his hands open wide, trying to speak, perhaps to surrender. But it was too late for that. Eilat was on him with his knife, thrusting it between the ribs straight into the young man’s heart. He was dead before he hit the sand.

  Eilat kicked and rolled the two bodies under the jeep, located the toolbox, and shoved that under there with them. Then he cut and sliced three long strips of material from the front seat, tied them together, and shoved them into the petrol tank. He pulled them out and made a jury-rigged strip, about six feet long, going back into the tank. He lit one gasoline-soaked end and hurled himself into the sand 20 feet away as the jeep blew up in a blast of flame and black smoke. Then he picked up his bag and stick and fled the blazing wreck, racing along the river for more than two miles before he finally slowed and resumed his careful, stooping, old man’s gait. He hoped the burned-out jeep and corpses would not be discovered for a few hours, but he did not bank on it.

  “Anyway, who would suspect me?” he muttered. “It’ll take them a few days to run an autopsy on the soldiers—a few days before they find out they were taken out by a professional.” But he thanked God for the training of the military in which he had served—especially for the courses he had attended in unarmed and armed combat. He had finished first in both of them, as he had finished first in every course he had ever taken.

  He reached Kut by nightfall, limping into the city. Food was easy to find, and he purchased grilled lamb and rice with extra pita bread from a street trader. He refilled his water bottles from a hose at a gas station and slept on a bench in a dark corner of the bus depot. So far as he knew, only the curbside cook had seen his newly bearded face, and even then he had kept his head well down, mumbling his order and offering no conversation.

  Eilat left before dawn, following the river as it swung east away from the city toward the Iranian border. His little map marked the spot 80 miles farther on at the oasis settlement of Ali Al Garbi, where the wide stream would turn southward again, toward the Gulf—and the marshes.

  For four more days and nights he walked and slept intermittently, both under the raging desert sun and through the unbearably hot and clammy nights. He saw few travelers, spoke to no one, and ate and drank only what he carried with him. His ration was three pieces of bread and four pints of water every twenty-four hours. Twice each day he would move down to the river and immerse himself in the waters. Then he would walk on, in cool but heavy robes, which dried out all too quickly.

  He arrived exhausted and dehydrated in Ali Al Garbi just before midnight on July 5. He located a water pump in the middle of the town and stood drinking alone in the dark for almost ten minutes. He filled his water bags again and found an abandoned market stall on the sand, where he slept until dawn. He was two days away from al’Amarah, which was a much bigger town, but there was nothing along the route. Thus Eilat could not leave Garbi without replenishing his food supply. And he hoped there would be a café that opened early.

  His luck, which had held for a long time, ran out there. Nothing opened until nine, and Eilat was obliged to wait around for three hours. He finally ate breakfast, drank copious amounts of fruit juice, and found another shop to buy bread for the journey. Because of the heat, he was wary of taking even prepacked meat, but he risked a few tomatoes and some tired green local lettuce leaves. In the second shop he had noticed a newspaper which carried a front-page photograph of a burned-out Army jeep, under the headline:

  IRAQI SOLDIERS DIE REPAIRING ARMY VEHICLE.

  It took him another three and a half days to reach his turning point at Qal At Salih, deep in the eastern marshes, only 30 miles from the Iranian border. It was easily the most hellish part of the journey. The unforgiving sun beat down from morning to night, the days grew hotter as he went south, and the humidity became worse. He was now 16 pounds below his regular weight, and the insects that hovered above the still waters were vicious. Eilat used his spray sparingly, when the mosquitoes were at their worst. He stuck to the river, and he knew that out to the east were the surviving ancient lands of the Madan, the Marsh Arabs.

  Away to the right, on the west side of the river, Saddam Hussein had drained hundreds of square miles of the marshes right down to the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates. For hundreds of years those wetlands had provided a haven for slaves, Bedouins, and those who had offended against the state. The area was accessible only by small boats, and no army, however determined, had ever successfully operated in that treacherous swampland. Saddam had a solution to that. He diverted the rivers and built a couple of gigantic canals to cut off the water supply to the entire al’Amarah Marsh. The result was a dry, arid, silted-up land, in which an entire ecosystem was decimated. A huge range of wading birds, storks, pelicans, and eagles—not to mention another vast range of fish, small mammals, and people—lost their homes.

  Marsh Arabs, whose families had lived there for thousands of years, were forced to leave, as the Army of Iraq in the 1980s drove through the dried-up swamps, laying down great causeways for armored vehicles to move more easily to the east, to Iraq’s smoldering enemy across the Iranian border.

  Eilat did not approve of the drying program. But at that moment he was much more concerned with his side of the river, where the great surviving mars
h stretched for 50 miles, to the border and on into Iran, toward the foothills of the Zagros Mountains.

  He rested for a whole day at Qal At Salih, regaining his strength after his sixteen-day march from Baghdad. He ate chicken, lamb and rice, fruit and vegetables. But he still risked no other human contact except for the two elderly street traders who served him. And in the late afternoon of July 12 he turned away from the Tigris for the first time and set off through the marshes for the border. His little map marked the causeways he could follow, but there were no road signs, and his navigational guides were simple. The Pole Star would show him due north, and so long as the sun rose dead ahead, he was on the right bearing.

  Eilat intended to walk until dawn, until he could see the watery landscape. That meant eleven hours, including three stops, and he expected to cover close to 25 miles in the long humid night. He knew that the moon, sixteen days after it was full, would be no help at all. And he must take care not to walk over the edge of the path, into the swamp. But he was a man with excellent night vision.

  Unsurprisingly, he met no one throughout the walking hours. The waters were low at that time of the year, and many of the nomadic buffalo herders had moved to the rivers. Occasionally, Eilat would spot the dim lights of a small cluster of houses set on poles above the water—sarifas, with their ornate latticework entrances. Outside in the shadows, moored in the high reeds, he could see the long, slender poling canoes—the mashufs, which are just about the only boat that can operate efficiently in the long lagoons and shallow lakes. Not many designs hold up for 6,000 years.

  When the sun rose, dead ahead, thankfully for Eilat, he was seven miles short of Iran. The causeway he now walked was wide and firm. For it was along here in September of 1980 that the great armored division of Saddam’s army had mounted its opening attack on Iraq’s Persian neighbors, roaring through to the old capital of the border province of Khuzestan—the city of Ahvaz, to which Eilat was headed.

  However, a patrolled frontier lay directly ahead, and the former Iraqi Intelligence officer had no wish to cross swords again with forces of the government of Iraq, or indeed Iran. He had an Iranian passport, but he nonetheless elected to lie low all day, then make his crossing by night, heading for the tiny border town of Taq-e Bostan. He ventured no closer in the daylight hours and finally made his move at 11:00 P.M. Two hours and forty-five minutes later, in the small hours of July 14 in the year 2004, he slipped into the Islamic Republic of Iran, crossing illegally the unseen line dividing two of the world’s most implacable enemies.

  He was still in the marsh, but soon the land would rise and become drier. Ahvaz was 60 miles distant, with two towns along the way, Taq-e Bostan and Susangerd, where he could eat and find water. Ahvaz was more appealing. He had arranged to pick up a letter there, and he could purchase new clothes, Iranian dress, find a decent meal, and board the train for the long journey to Isfahan, almost 500 miles away across the great range of the Zagros.

  It was eight o’clock on the evening of July 17. Directly to the south of where he walked, Eilat could see clearly the bright lights of the sprawling industrial city three miles away. All along the north side of Ahvaz were huge oil refineries, burning off excess gases twenty-four hours a day. These towering beacons lit up the city permanently. It never got really dark in Ahvaz.

  Eilat changed back into his Western clothes a half mile from the city’s boundary. He dumped his Arab robes and bag, and strolled up to the main square, Meidun-e Shohada. From there he located the Hotel Bozorg-e Fajr, checked into the best room he could find, at $75 a night, immersed himself in a hot bath, and made one phone call. Then he persuaded a rather sullen room-service waiter to bring him sandwiches and coffee while he awaited the arrival of the talabeh, the young theological student who would take him to the meeting place.

  That took another forty-five minutes, and it was close to eleven o’clock before Eilat and his guide, a twenty-four-year-old bespectacled Iranian named Emami, left the hotel. They turned immediately west, walking quickly through the shadowy, still-busy streets. Ahvaz was a late-night city, and many shops and restaurants stayed open until after midnight, probably because of the endless twilight caused by the flaming oil beacons.

  But less than a mile from the main square, Ahvaz was very gloomy. The streets were like those of most industrial towns, poor and dirty, and made even more melancholy by the proximity of the factories and refineries, in which most men worked. The heat was oppressive, and the smell of oil pervaded the atmosphere.

  They turned onto a small, deserted square, surrounded on three sides by high, dark walls, and the young talabeh led the way to a tall, wooden gateway. He tapped softly, twice, then said quietly, “Eilat,” before tapping twice more. The gate was opened by a guard, who led them across a courtyard and into a small house, situated behind an unprepossessing city mosque. Inside stood a tall, elderly cleric, dressed in the long dark robe of his calling, wearing a white turban. Eilat knew that as an Iraqi Sunni Muslim, he would have some adjustments to make. Standing before the Iranian Shiite, he raised his left hand to his forehead and lowered it in the traditional greeting of Islam, “Salam aleikum.”

  The Iranian wasted little time. He nodded, and said, in Arabic, “Your suggestions have aroused curiosity in certain places. The hojjat-el-Islam will see you in Isfahan. I will give you a letter of introduction, with a phone number. You should call it, and a student will take you to him. You must explain everything to him. But it is better that you leave now. The train departs at eight in the morning. You must sleep. Allah go with you.”

  Eilat bowed again and took the letter that was handed to him. He offered his thanks and followed his student guide back across the courtyard and through the gate to the square. Fifteen minutes later he was in the hotel, in bed by midnight. And before he slept he assessed his progress. Out of Iraq. Good. Into Iran. Satisfactory so far. But will they listen, before they kill me? It’s beginning to look as if they might…

  The following morning, after a deep six-hour sleep, he rose early, badgered the hotel staff for tea, bathed, shaved, and wished to hell he had a clean shirt. But that would have to wait. He had someone call a cab to take him to the railway station, and there he bought himself a first-class ticket to Isfahan, for which he paid in cash. The journey would take twelve hours, with a stop at Qum. Iranian trains are fast, and the first-class section was comprised of comfortable compartments for four passengers. The seats could be converted into beds at night, and the guard came around often, taking orders for meals and tea.

  Eilat’s compartment was otherwise empty, and the train pulled out of Ahvaz only ten minutes late, heading north across the southwestern desert, 70 miles to the town of Dezful. From there, they climbed into the high peaks of the Zagros, steaming through rough but often spectacular country along the route to the mountain town of Arak, a religious center in which, in 1920, the young Ayatollah Khomeini began his theological studies.

  Arak was almost the halfway point, and Eilat’s train pulled in at two o’clock. From here it was a fast downhill run of almost 100 miles to the sacred Shiite city of Qum, a place where non-Muslims are banned from entering the holy shrine of the gold-domed Astane, built over four hundred years ago in honor of the Imam Reza’s sister Fateme, who died in 816. Non-Muslims are not even admitted to the hotels around this shrine, and photography in any form is absolutely forbidden. Ayatollah Khomeini studied there for fifteen years under the legendary Muslim theologian Shayk Abdul-Karim Ha’eri.

  The train waited in Qum for only a few minutes, and, four hours later, Eilat arrived in Isfahan, checked into the great, ornate Hotel Abbassi, and made his phone call. He agreed to meet the student he had called at 11:00 A.M., and together they would find the hojjat.

  Early the following morning Eilat purchased a soft leather traveling bag and some new, expensive robes in the Iranian style. He also bought a turban, new underwear, socks, and shirts, and laid siege to a city pharmacy, acquiring after-shave, toothpaste and toothbrush, s
having foam, eau de cologne, and expensive bath oil. On reflection, he decided, he was glad to be shut of the life of a traveling Bedouin peddler.

  When he met the talabeh at the correct time in the hotel foyer, he was wearing the new robes and feeling clean and comfortable for the first time since the night he had dealt with the Iraqi government’s assassins, more than seven weeks ago. The new student was taller than he, a slim youth of just twenty-one, from Tehran, who walked along reading an open book, saying nothing whatsoever. Eilat saw no reason to disturb these theological ponderings and stayed just behind, taking in the sights of a place he had known only in Muslim folklore.

  Isfahan was once the most glorious city in the Middle East, and it still contained the greatest concentration of Islamic buildings in Iran. Beautiful, translucent blue tiles decorated much of the architecture. Like most tourists, Eilat had never seen anything to match the ancient splendors of the city.

  Eilat and his guide walked along winding streets, to Imam Khomeini Square

  , a majestic shop-lined area of 20 acres, right in the middle of the town, the second most dramatic urban square in the world, after Tiananmen. They crossed its entire length, and Eilat actually thought he had walked enough by now, and asked in Arabic how far to the meeting place.