CHAPTER 2 – IN THE SERVICE OF IRAN
20:08 (Bagdad Time)
Saturday, September 19, 2020
Private residence, Al-Karkh District
Western shore of the Tigris River
Bagdad, Iraq
‘’General, the girl sent by Youssef is here.’’
‘’Is she as nice-looking as that bastard promised me?’’ asked General Abdul Bakr al Husseini to his majordomo, making the man smile while bowing to him.
‘’She certainly is, General.’’
‘’Then, bring her in.’’
‘’At once, General.’’
Al Husseini, wearing only an embroidered robe and a pair of sandals, waited in the middle of the large, luxurious lounge of his private residence in downtown Bagdad, impatient to see what kind of girl the pimp had sent him for tonight. Al Husseini knew that Youssef delved in human trafficking and that he often offered minors to his customers, but the Iraqi general didn’t care about that, as long as the girl was pretty and sexy. His majordomo finally returned with two bodyguards escorting a tall young woman dressed quite modestly with a long robe and a hijab{4}. While she was not as young as Al Husseini had wished for, she was tall, with very nice curves, and was positively beautiful, with long silky black hair framing a soft face with large brown eyes.
‘’I present you Fatmeh, sent by Youssef, General.’’ said his majordomo while bowing to Al Husseini. The latter nodded and made a dismissive gesture with one hand to his bodyguards.
‘’Youssef has chosen well. You may leave us, Fadhi.’’
With the majordomo closing the doors of the lounge behind him, Abdul Bakr smiled to the woman, who appeared to be in her mid-twenties and who wore makeup and a few cheap jewels.
‘’Please come forward, Fatmeh.’’
The young woman obeyed him, stopping once two paces away from Abdul Bakr and allowing the latter to better detail her. She was indeed beautiful and her eyes reflected both intelligence and character. That pleased Abdul Bakr who, contrary to many powerful Iraqi men, did not like quiet, slavish girls. The more action the better, in his opinion. Taking a step forward, he then raised both of his hands and started gently running them down each side of the woman’s face. His hands then continued downward, to go around the contours of her breasts, which proved both large and firm. Now truly fired up by her, Abdul Bakr smiled again to her and went to sit on a comfortable sofa nearby before speaking again to the escort girl.
‘’Show me what you have to offer me, Fatmeh. Do it in an artistic way.’’
The woman bowed respectfully in response, then started slowly dancing in front of Abdul Bakr while humming a soft tune. Taking off her shawl after a few seconds, she then continued dancing and whirling around. Next, she opened and shed her robe, then her sandals, ending with a set of fine lace lingerie that had probably come from Paris. Abdul Bakr sucked air in as he admired her body: her set of lace lingerie was more akin to what could be called a string bikini than to a set of bra and panty and left very little to the imagination. For one thing, Fatmeh’s nipples protruded out from rings in her lace and string bra, while her firm, well-rounded buttocks were left completely uncovered, with only one lace-covered string splitting her butt. As for her groin, which was closely shaved, the front of her ‘panty’ was made up of a grand total of three lace-covered golden strings which both split and outlined the contour of her outer vaginal lips. The escort girl smiled on seeing the effect she was making on her customer.
‘’You like what you see, General?’’
‘’Oh yes!’’ replied Abdul Bakr, his eyes gleaming with desire. ‘’Please come closer but continue dancing and stripping.’’
The woman obeyed and danced her way to within one pace of Abdul Bakr, who was still sitting in his sofa. The string bra was next to come off, leaving her with only her string bottom. That came off as well a few seconds later, leaving her completely naked and allowing the Iraqi to salivate while admiring her nudity. With her string bottom in her hands, the escort playfully showed it to her sitting customer while starting to dance around his sofa. Abdul Bakr bent his head backward to admire the bottom of her breasts, now hanging over him as she was passing in his back, her string panty still in her extended hands. Suddenly, without warning, the escort girl passed the back string of her panty over Abdul Bakr’s throat and, twisting its extremities behind his neck, pulled on both extremities with all her strength. By the way that the panty string around his throat sank into his skin, Abdul bakr understood with horror that the panty string was in reality a garotte covered by a band of lace. However, his understanding came too late, as he was now in the most vulnerable position possible, sitting unarmed and with his assailant in his back and using the sofa he was in to pull even harder on the extremities of her garotte. With his breathing tubes completely closed off and his fingers unable to pull the garotte off, Abdul Bakr’s vision started to be tainted with red as the escort girl’s smile turned into a hateful rictus.
‘’You won’t be able anymore to sell the guns you stole from the Iraqi Army arsenal to ISIS{5} fighters in this country, you bastard!’’
Keeping pulling with all her strength, the woman held her grip for a good thirty seconds more, until Abdul Bakr stopped thrashing in his sofa and became totally inert. With her garotte still around his throat, she checked him for a pulse and, finding none, finally untied her garotte. Seeing a large bed in the adjacent bedroom, she grabbed Abdul Bakr’s body under his armpits and dragged him with some effort into the bedroom, where she pulled the dead man on top of the bed and placed him on his left side before covering him up to his chin with the bedsheets. Next, she recuperated her pieces of clothing and dressed back. However, Captain Farah Qalibaf, of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps Intelligence Bureau, was not finished here yet and started a careful, detailed but also silent search of Al Husseini’s apartments.
After searching the bedroom for hidden safes or documents, Farah checked the big lounge but found nothing of interest there. Things changed when she searched Al Husseini’s private study. She first found and grabbed a small notebook in one drawer of his work desk, then went through his rolodex and noted down the names, numbers and addresses of those she thought could be of interest for the Intelligence Bureau. Continuing her search, she then found a small safe embedded in a wall and hidden behind a painting. Since she was no expert at safe-cracking, she felt some discouragement at first but then noticed that the safe used a fingerprint recognition pad instead of a numerical keyboard. Such fingerprint recognition pad systems were actually becoming more and more popular for owners of safes, for the good reason that no one could simply steal the combination or force the owner of the safe to reveal it. In essence, only the owner in person could open such safes. The model she was looking at used a single digit recognition pad, most probably for a thumb. In this case, Farah had the solution right at hand, in a matter of speaking. Returning into the lounge, she grabbed an antique but still sharp sword that had been hanging from a wall, then went into the bedroom, where she took Al Husseini’s right hand and, pulling on it, laid it on the nearby nightstand. Inserting a thick folded bedsheet between the hand and the nightstand’s top surface, she then raised high the sword in her hands and carefully aimed before slamming down the blade’s edge, cutting off the right thumb of the dead Iraqi, along with parts of his other fingers. Wiping clean the sword’s blade with a bedsheet, Farah then grabbed the cut thumb and walked out of the bedroom, putting first the sword back in its original place before going into the private study. A satisfied smile came to her lips when the safe unlocked itself once she pressed the cut thumb on the recognition pad. Opening the safe and throwing away the thumb, she quickly emptied the safe, putting its content on the carpet so that she could more easily examine it. There was a collection of various documents, piles of cash money in various currencies, a loaded revolver and also a few small boxes. Intrigued, Farah opened one of the boxes to check its content. Her eyes widened at the sight of the dozens of cut diamonds inside the box.
‘’Damn! Arms trafficking was certainly very profitable for that bastard.’’
Pocketing that box, she then checked the other three boxes, finding more diamonds, along with a collection of beautiful emeralds and rubies. She pocketed those as well, along with the thick bundles of American dollars and Euros which had been in the safe. She however had no intention to keep all those riches for herself, as she was a profoundly honest person and considered herself incorruptible. Rather, that cash money and gems were going to help the families of the Iranian agents who had died in the service of the Islamic Republic of Iran and to fund Iranian clandestine operations. Next, she quickly reviewed the documents from the safe. All of them proved of interest, with one file in particular making her smile: it contained a number of compromising documents and photos which Al Husseini had probably used to blackmail a number of senior Iraqi government officials. Those would most probably prove very useful to the Intelligence Bureau. Inserting that file and a few other documents in a large envelope she first emptied of its original content, she then slipped that envelope down her string panty, then covered it with her robe. Replacing in the safe what she had not grabbed and closing back the safe, Farah also picked up the cut thumb from the carpet and walked out of the study. Her last task was to clean up as best she could the bloody mess she had done in the bedroom, so that any visitor would not immediately notice anything alarming. Once that was done, she went to the main double doors of the private suite and opened one door, stepping out of the suite and closing the door before smiling to the two Iraqi bodyguards standing outside the double doors.
‘’I’m afraid that I burned out the General: he is now sleeping.’’
The two bodyguards smiled at those words: this was a rather frequent scenario where their boss was concerned.
‘’I will escort you out, miss.’’ offered the senior bodyguard, making Farah bow her head to him.
‘’That would be kind of you indeed.’’
While being the figure of serenity as she followed the bodyguard, Farah’s heart was in reality pounding like crazy from anxiety: one slip right now could be fatal to her. Thankfully, all went well and she was able to safely exit the residence and walk into the adjacent street, where she promptly hailed a cab and sat on its back seat, giving to the driver an address in a Shia district of Bagdad. Her next step now would be to meet with her local Intelligence Bureau contact and arrange for the real Fatmeh escort girl to be safely released from where she had been hidden.