Khomeini's Boy: The Shadow War with Iran Read Online Free Page A

in surprise, feeling his out of shape lungs swell outward beneath his emaciated ribs.
    Jamsheed’s sight returned to him in single vignettes of images. He was curled in the corner of a filthy room that had old brick walls covered in moss. With the exception of the sputtering bulb above him, there was no source of light in his cell. The only entrance into the room was a rusted metal door. Now that door was open, and a short man’s frame hovered in it.
    His visitor had a narrow, bearded face with guarded eyes that gave away little. His beard was just starting to gray, along with his hair and two naturally arched eyebrows that made him look suspicious of the universe at large. He wore a khaki military uniform covered in gilded medals, but Jamsheed didn’t recognize most of them. Jamsheed had left the military behind him, and after the desperate war with Iraq, Iran’s surviving soldiers had remade the army into a professional affair that Jamsheed barely recognized.
    The man spoke in a subdued, earnest voice, “God, what have they done to you, Jamsheed?”
    Jamsheed winced at the sound of his own name. It wasn’t good when they started by saying your name.
    Jamsheed whispered, “Who…”
    “You are Jamsheed Mohsen Mashhadi, born 1972 in Tehran. You fought with the Southern Command in the Basra theater for more than four years, and became the most decorated soldier in your age group. When the war ended, you were offered a permanent position with the army in exchange for your service. You would have officially mustered as a first lieutenant, with assurances you would be fast tracked into a command role, regardless of your age,” the man said, looking him over. Guarded or not, his eyes told Jamsheed things about his own body that he’d only suspected, and gave Jamsheed a sense of what had been done to him while he rotted in the dark. “You refused,” the man finished.
    Jamsheed looked down, away from the flickering bulb that had burned his eyes like it was summer sunlight. He said, “I refused. I didn’t want…” He looked for the right word and couldn’t find it, but his insides insisted that he complete the thought, so he said, “I couldn’t do it. It was too much shock, and I was young, and I couldn’t stand leaving the war to go watch parades in a uniform.”
    The earnest man chuckled and said, “You were honest. Most people wouldn’t admit that they grew to love the blood. I’m still ashamed to admit it.”
    Jamsheed nodded, feeling the weight of his head and how weak his neck muscles had become. “I never loved the blood. I just hated the devils who made us fight, and I loved ending them.”
    The man sat down on the ground next to Jamsheed. He didn’t seem to care that his carefully creased uniform slacks were pressing down into the dried filth of a prison cell made by Jamsheed and a hundred doomed souls before him. He said, “The shah’s secret police put my uncle in here, you know. He was no threat to the king, but men in black suits still came for him in the dead of night.”
    Jamsheed mumbled, “I’m sorry.”
    “That’s kind of you. He came back, though.” He looked Jamsheed dead in the eye and said, “He came back, but you won’t. Your international tour was too much of an embarrassment to Supreme Leader Khamenei and the other ayatollahs. Khamenei can’t afford to look weak, so he’s making examples of everyone he can. That especially includes war heroes who go abroad and say blasphemous things about the Revolution.”
    The earnest man looked into the corner of the room furthest from Jamsheed. There, on a tripod, sat a video camera flanked by a single wooden chair.
    “Have you given them a confession yet? Something about America and Israel and counter-Revolutionary activities?” The man asked.
    “No. I keep messing up my lines.” Jamsheed tried to smile, feeling his sallow, malnourished skin stretched across his cheekbones and up to his sunken eye sockets. “Would Ali Khamenei