7: Chapter 7 Tehran

This sentence struck right at Fatima's rationality.

She stopped, but her guard did not drop.

"What do you want?" she asked, her voice very low. "People from the royal family don't go looking for physics students just to discuss gas dynamics."

"You're right. I'm looking for you because I need you."

"Need me for what?"

"To help me build a missile."

These three words were like a bomb, exploding in the quiet little garden.

Fatima stared at him fixedly, saying nothing.

But her fingers were trembling—not from fear, but from the uncontrollable excitement a scientist feels when hearing about "turning theory into reality."

"You're crazy," she said.

"Perhaps," Reza said. "But if you finish reading that notebook, you'll know I'm not just talking nonsense. It contains a complete master plan. The missile body structure, guidance principles, propulsion systems—although simplified, they are entirely feasible given Iran's existing industrial base. What's missing is someone who can turn sketches into engineering blueprints."

"Why do you want to build a missile?"

"Because a Persia without missiles is just a sheep waiting to be slaughtered in front of the Americans."

Fatima was silent for a long time.

The wind blew through the bare branches of the sycamore trees in the garden.

"Assuming I believe you," she finally spoke, her voice returning to that cold, hard academic tone. "Where do you plan to build it? What equipment will you use? Where will the raw materials come from? Do you know how many types of special alloys and chemicals even the simplest solid-fuel rocket requires?"

"I know," Reza said. "I have a plan for every one of them. Some can be purchased on the international black market, and others can be replaced with materials found within Iran. As for how to specifically replace them, your expertise is better than mine; I need you to solve the engineering problems."

"I'm just a senior student—"

"You are the only person in Iran to have published a paper on uranium enrichment theory," Reza interrupted. "And the engineering intuition shown in your paper is three times better than your advisor's. You don't lack ability; you lack a platform."

Fatima's lips moved, but she didn't speak.

But she didn't leave.

Reza knew the fish had taken the bait.

Now, all that was needed was the final tug.

"Fatima," he said, using her name for the first time. "Your paper has been cited by the Americans. Do you know what that means? It means they have already noticed you. If you go to France to study and get your doctorate in three years, then what? Stay in France and be a cheap researcher for white people? Return to Iran to teach at a university and wait for retirement? Or—be 'invited' by the CIA to some laboratory in the United States, sign a lifelong non-disclosure agreement, and build their weapons for them?"

Each sentence was like a scalpel, precisely slicing through the shell of the "respectable scholar" in Fatima's heart.

Because she knew that everything he said was the truth.

In 1976 Iran, the fate of a talented science and engineering scholar was nothing more than these three paths.

None of these paths served Persia.

"Give me a week to consider," Fatima said, picking up the notebook and hesitating for a moment. "This... can I take it with me to look at?"

"Take it. But don't let anyone else see it."

"I'm not stupid."

Fatima turned and left. After a few steps, she looked back at him.

In that look, there was no trust, no goodwill, only something very pure—

Curiosity.

A scientist's curiosity about the word "impossible."

Reza watched her disappear around the corner of the teaching building, then quickly left the university.

He couldn't stay here long. Tehran was crawling with SAVAK informants; a stranger from another province having a secret conversation with a student at the university risked exposure if he stayed for more than an hour.

That night, he stayed in a rented room in the slums south of the city. Abbas stood guard at the door, his gun under his pillow.

At two in the morning, Reza suddenly opened his eyes.

He hadn't been woken up. It was a sixth sense.

Having spent twenty years working on sensitive projects in the military-industrial system in his previous life, his crisis intuition had been trained into an instinct.

"Abbas," he whispered.

There was no response from the doorway.

Reza's heart sank sharply.

He rolled out of bed, grabbed the pistol from under the pillow, moved sideways along the wall to the door, and pushed—

The door wasn't locked.

Abbas was lying in the corridor outside, with a blunt force trauma mark on the back of his head; he was unconscious but still breathing.

They weren't here to kill.

They were here to capture.

Footsteps came from the end of the corridor. Light, rhythmic—two people, wearing soft-soled shoes, professionally trained.

SAVAK.

Reza made a three-second judgment in the dark:

The rental was on the second floor, and the window faced the back alley. At the end of the back alley was a small ditch, and on the other side of the ditch was a dense cluster of slums; once inside, it would be difficult for SAVAK to track him.

He didn't hesitate.

He turned and rushed back into the room, kicked the window open, and jumped out.

The second floor was about four meters high. When he landed, he used a roll he had learned in military training in his previous life to dissipate the force—his right ankle sent a sharp pain—it was sprained, but not broken.

A head poked out of the window behind him, followed by a curse in Persian.

Reza took off running.

Limping on one leg, sprinting through the slums of Tehran at two in the morning, with two professionally trained secret police officers behind him. If anyone saw this scene, they would probably think it was a scene from some cheesy movie.

But what was racing through Reza's mind right now wasn't "how to run," but—

Who betrayed me?

Abdullah? Unlikely; he had no intersection of interests with SAVAK.

Was I recognized at the university? Possible, but unlikely.

That local guide?

Most likely.

A local from Khuzestan with relatives in Tehran. If SAVAK had an informant in Khuzestan, knew about his movements, and tracked him to the rental through the local guide, it made perfect sense.

This was his mistake. Too rushed; security measures weren't thorough enough.

The Chen Feng who planned and strategized in an office in his previous life, and the Prince Reza limping through the darkness in this life, finally merged into one at this moment.

The era of talk on paper was over.

From now on, every step would be on the edge of a knife.

He jumped into the ditch, the cold sewage water rising above his knees; the pain in his ankle was temporarily numbed by the biting cold water. He bent over and moved two hundred meters along the ditch, and after confirming that the pursuers hadn't followed, he climbed up the opposite bank and disappeared into the maze-like alleys of the slums.

Just before dawn, he found a public telephone.

He dialed a number.

The phone rang three times, and Hassan's voice came through, clearly tense: "Your Highness?"

"I'm safe. Abbas was knocked unconscious, but he's fine. Find a way to get him out. Also—"

Reza leaned against the metal wall of the phone booth, looking at the gray skyline of Tehran.

"Investigate that guide. If he's one of SAVAK's people, take care of him."

There was silence on the other end of the line for two seconds.

"Understood."

Reza hung up the phone.

One week.

He had given Fatima one week.

In this week, he needed to leave Tehran alive, return to Khuzestan, and then—

Wait for a genius to make the most important choice of her life.