She led us into the store to a door in the back and opened it to reveal a garage that contained a mint 1936 Bugatti convertible coup. “This will get you out of Tehran. With the right person at the wheel, it and whoever is in it disappears.” Then she looked at all of us one by one and finally settled on me. “All of that effort, Oliver, all the brilliance, the courage, for what, to destroy evil in the world, to liberate the oppressed? All that effort enslaved a people trying to break free. All that brilliance crushed a nation. All that courage snuffed out the light and glorified the darkness. The American image of freedom and liberty was turned on its head, Oliver and it’s still standing upside down looking more and more right side up every day. For twenty-nine years we suffered under the Shah. His CIA trained Gestapo, SAVAK imprisoned, tortured and killed thousands. The Islamic Revolution that set us free from the Shah transformed into a theocracy ten times more brutal. The corporate tyranny that is running roughshod over the globe has been kept out of a very big market in Iran and it is drooling at the gates. When the theocrats finally fall, the corpocrats will rush in and once again my country will be liberated from one tyrant by the tyranny of another. Do you know what is inscribed in marble at CIA headquarters in Washington DC, Oliver? ‘And ye shall know the truth and it shall set you free’.”
“Arbeit macht frei!”, barked Pat as he relieved himself on a tire of the Bugatti.
Nanette frowned. “Truman himself said in 1961, ‘I never would have agreed to the formulation of the CIA if I had known it would become the American Gestapo’.”
Amira clasped Conrad’s collar. “And now you will leave me.”
Nanette frowned. “Truman himself said in 1961, ‘I never would have agreed to the formulation of the CIA if I had known it would become the American Gestapo’.”
Amira clasped Conrad’s collar. “And now you will leave me.”
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