The Leveling

Zemin handed over his identification and looked past the gates. With its smattering of red-tiled roofs, stucco buildings, and Spanish street names, the planned community of Santa Barbara was supposed to give the wealthy Beijing residents who lived there the impression that they in fact inhabited the small California coastal town.

Zemin was not a man of strong passions—mild dislike was usually about all he could muster for even the most disagreeable elements of life—but Santa Barbara was an exception.

He loathed the place.

Forty-five years ago, during the Cultural Revolution, having been labeled a capitalist roader by forces loyal to Mao, his father had been executed. A year later, his mother had died of pneumonia in a jail, where she’d been locked up for having supported his father.

Zemin had been raised by his uncle and taught to despise his dead parents because of their alleged ties to capitalism. Santa Barbara made a mockery of that history.

Now everyone was a capitalist, and his uncle, the great general, lived like the very capitalists he’d taught Zemin to despise.

The guard waved him through.

He drove down Cabrillo Boulevard until he came to a cul-de-sac, at the end of which sat a large two-story Tudor-style house, an architectural anomaly among its Spanish-influenced neighbors. Though the grass out front was fertilizer green, the sky above was its usual sickly smog gray. He parked his car in the granite-cobbled driveway and, with a nod of his head, acknowledged the soldier standing near the garage. This one was a real Chinese army officer.

When he rang the front doorbell, he was met by a maid.

“The general is in a meeting. You’ll have to wait.”

Zemin wasn’t surprised. The fat general always kept him waiting.





54


Tehran, Iran



“STAY CLOSE.” DARIA touched Mark’s forearm. “Shove through if you have to.”

Mark turned his attention to the crush of shoppers trying to plunge into one of the main bottleneck entrances to Tehran’s Grand Bazaar.

A few feet ahead of him, a man was muscling a cart, stacked six feet high with sacks of rice, through a wall of bodies. Daria fell in behind him. Mark fell in behind her.

Unlike the open-air bazaar outside of Ashgabat, this one in south Tehran was a chaotic, twisting maze composed of miles and miles of centuries-old covered alleys.

In one section were electronics, in another fine china, in another racy women’s lingerie…Porters replenished the stores with goods they carried in on backpacks padded with old carpet remnants. Motorbikes occasionally wove their way through the dense crowds. In many alleys, the only light came from neon signs and strings of fluorescent bulbs hanging from low ceilings, which gave the place a cave-like feel. In others, thick shafts of bright sunlight, filled with dust motes, filtered down from open skylights that had been cut into high vaulted ceilings.

After they’d walked over a mile, Daria turned down an alley where shop after shop was packed with rolls of brightly colored fabrics stacked on shelves that reached up to the ceiling.

She approached the third shop on the left and spent a few minutes examining the fabrics that were at eye level. Eventually, a middle-aged man came over and said he would be happy to show her some of his finer rolls.

Daria said no, she was looking for a specific fabric she’d bought at the shop two years ago. It was a brocade of silver and yellow, with an image of a caged bird repeated in the pattern. It was a beautiful pattern, she said. Very rare, but the owner of the shop had been in the day she’d ordered it, and had recommended it to her. She’d used it to reupholster her couch, and now had two chairs she needed done. Did they still carry it?

The merchant inspected his inventory, but couldn’t find the fabric she was looking for.

Daria asked whether he could order it.

He would have to make a call. The owner of the shop would know.

When the merchant came back, he said that Daria was indeed fortunate. The owner of the store remembered the exact fabric in question and had some at one of his stores in north Tehran. Would Daria prefer to pick it up at the other store or have it delivered?

“I’ll pick it up in an hour. If the owner could have it ready, that would be wonderful.”

“I will tell him.”

“Merci.” Daria used the French word for thank you, as most Iranians did.




They squeezed onto a motorcycle taxi, which, fifteen minutes later, dropped them in front of a parking garage on Taleqani Avenue, just past the high brick walls that encircled the old American embassy.

On the sixth floor, Daria approached a silver Mercedes. Although it was rusting in a few places, it had recently been washed and waxed. The shiny hood stood out next to the concrete walls, which were stained with engine oil that had dripped down from the floors above. The words Bethlehem Steel were stamped on one of the grimy I-beams supporting the ceiling.

Daria opened the gas cap cover and pulled out a set of keys.

“He’s watching us now,” she said.

“From where?”

“I don’t know.”