Dubai [antikvár]

Chapter 1Fitz left the intelligence staff meeting at the U. S. Embassy in Tehran at 10:30 a.m. He turned onto Rozvelt Avenue, the large street dedicated to the U.S. president who organized the famous Tehran summit meeting near the end of World War II, and began the one-hour walk to the giant Bazaar, forerunner by a century to the supermarkets of America. He enjoyed walking Tehran's streets, and of all his foreign assignments this was the most challenging and exhilarating of his twenty-year military career, combat duty in Korea and Vietnam excepted.Tehran might seem to the casual visitor a city devoted exclusively to street selling and buying. Everything was for sale. But to Fitz it was the world's foremost city of intrigue, strategically located between the Middle East and Asia. And Tehran was the great international transfer point between Israel and the Arab world. This was the city in which to pause, switch or alter passports, and then proceed.Reaching Shahreza Avenue, he turned right and walked the three blocks to the square, and turned left on Ferdowsi. If he had a home of his own, Fitz reflected, as he walked down Ferdowsi Boulevard, he would go into one of the carpet dealers and haggle for a beautiful rug. He had been to Tabriz and watched the care with which the carpets were woven. The prohfer-ation of exotic household goods on sale along the route to the Bazaar never failed to remind him that he was, in truth, one of the world's homeless and rootless citizens.