Night in Tehran

by Kaplan, Philip

  “And why not?” Schreiber said. “Jobs for our people. But regrettably, the Anglo-Saxons keep the Shah well equipped. Perhaps it was American weapons that SAVAK used here in Paris on New Year’s Eve.”

  Weiseman noticed Schreiber staring hard at him, daring him to respond. Françoise whispered, “Let it pass. Jacques is trying to bait you.”

  “Do you know that, monsieur?” Weiseman asked. “That SAVAK carried out the murder?”

  Schreiber rolled his eyes, as if only the village idiot would doubt it. Weiseman looked first at Gramont, then Alain de Rose.

  “Of course, you’re right to ask,” Gramont said softly. “The matter is unsettled.”

  De Rose shot Weiseman a glance. His lips seemed to synch, Later…

  Margot Gramont smiled sweetly, “Who would like more of the turbot?”

  “But you know Jacques may be right,” the professor’s wife said. “The Shah is a tyrant. The Americans have been propping him up for years, averting their eyes from the torture.” A pause for effect. “Look, I don’t have any use for French arms dealers”—here, a nasty glance at Jacques Schreiber—”but why not give the Shah’s political opponents a chance?”

  Weiseman wondered, Why not indeed?

  “And who are these opponents?” he asked. “Would we want to see them in power? Religious fundamentalists are operating right here in Paris. Isn’t that true, Laurent?”

  “Well, we’ve seen those reports,” Gramont said. “It’s very complicated, rather opaque.”

  “Not so opaque,” Yasmine suddenly said aloud. “Iranian exiles at the Sorbonne are organizing into cells, pro and anti-Shah. There are SAVAK agents in training, religious fanatics spreading the word of the Ayatollah. Students are being beaten up—one was even killed. And that Iranian couple murdered here on New Year’s Eve—”

  Weiseman thought she seemed extremely agitated. It was more than the usual fevered debate at a diplomatic dinner party.

  Françoise d’Antou said, “I interviewed Ayatollah Khomeini in Iraq recently. He was expelled by the Shah years ago; he’s the Shah’s bête noir.” She stared directly at Schreiber who seemed about to burst a blood vessel. “One of your customers, Jacques, I believe.”

  Weiseman looked down the table at Gramont and de Rose, studying their fingers.

  * * *

  —

  AFTER DINNER, THE men and women separated into two groups—the ladies in the salon, the men in a den where drinks and cigars were distributed. As Jacques went off to use the phone in the next room, Gramont led Weiseman into a huddle with de Rose. Gramont told him that Françoise’s father had been close to him. De Rose said Jacques Schreiber was a man of the far right, fiercely Catholic, a collaborateur who did the bidding of the gestapo in the war, a schemer who advanced himself on the backs of others.

  “It’s a sordid story,” Gramont added. “He’s here because we find him useful.”

  Useful?

  “The violence at the Sorbonne,” Weiseman said to de Rose. “It’s not just old wounds.”

  “Of course not,” de Rose said, “What my daughter spoke about is correct. Those things are happening now, and it brings back memories of our past. We haven’t forgotten the bombings. It’s still a scar on our politics. Now we see it coming again.”

  Gramont led them to a corner set of three fauteuils. “You leave tomorrow for Tehran, David. You’ll want to meet everyone in the government, civil society, even the mullahs. But discreetly. There’s a man called Hanif; he heads SAVAK. Justin knows Hanif. So do I.”

  Gramont paused, as if deciding whether to say more. “We know the opposition, even some ayatollahs.”

  I’ll bet you do, thought Weiseman.

  “And intermediaries?” he asked.

  “Yasmine will introduce you to student leaders,” de Rose said softly. “She was born there. She’s very attuned to the reseau. The network.”

  “And there are others,” Gramont said. “Françoise—”

  Jacques Schreiber reentered the room. “It’s time to go,” he said abruptly.

  Weiseman looked up, startled by the peremptory tone. What was this about?

  Gramont led them back into the salon.

  Françoise d’Antou appeared a moment later, stunning in a shimmering black fur cloak. She gave Weiseman a subtle but meaningful look, as if anxious to tell him something.

  “Monsieur,” Jacques said crisply, then turned on his heel and headed toward the door.

  Françoise stepped forward, slipped a note into Weiseman’s hand, then kissed him on both cheeks, and pulled her cloak tightly about her as she followed Jacques Schreiber out into the cold Paris night.

  * * *

  —

  YASMINE. WEISEMAN HAD a feeling she would be able to tell him more about the murder at the Sorbonne. He excused himself and went to look for her.

  He found her sitting alone in a small book-lined den. She appeared to have been crying. She looked up, but didn’t say anything.

  “When you spoke in there about the Sorbonne student being killed,” he said, “it didn’t seem like something you’d only heard about. If you can tell me, I’d like to know. Perhaps it would help.”

  Yasmine shook her head, was silent for a moment. “She was a friend of mine,” Yasmine finally said. “A gentle girl named Shirin Majid. From a good family. Her father is a banker in Tehran. She was completely apolitical.”

  For an instant it looked as if Yasmine would resume crying, but she stifled it and continued. “It was the headscarf,” she said. “Shirin wore it every day. It didn’t cover the hair in the front of her head—that was her tiny statement, her freedom. They warned her to cover up, but she wouldn’t wear the chador. She was a modern Iranian woman, like me. She told me she wouldn’t abandon her identity. And now…”

  Weiseman felt a gathering force in what she was saying, the way a small wave can crest into something terrifying. “Shirin was walking on the Boul’Mich,” Yasmine said softly. “I was about a hundred meters behind her when I recognized her headscarf. I was about to call out to her when I saw three Muslim guys wearing skullcaps cross the street toward her. They grabbed her by the arms and pushed her against a wall. One of them pulled the scarf down over her hair so that all of it was covered. Then he tied it very tightly around her throat. Shirin started screaming. She pulled the knot open and fixed it again, her way. They started up again, and she screamed at them, saying she was a woman, not their property.”

  Yasmine’s voice had risen, so that it seemed she was the one who was crying out against the attackers. Suddenly, she seemed to shrink down into her body, as if retelling the words had intensified Shirin’s terror—and her own.

  Weiseman saw before his eyes the two slain nudes from New Year’s Eve; he felt the wave swelling, ready to crash. “And then?” he said, urgently.

  Yasmine took a deep breath. “A Mercedes was parked there. A man got out. He was huge, a big man in a jellaba.”

  Yasmine was sobbing now. He reached out to steady her, but she had to get it out, to tell everything. “The man drew a long sword out of his jellaba.”

  She sobbed hysterically as she relived what she had seen. “He raised the sword over his shoulder, and then he swung it at Shirin. She was standing there, and then—”

  But the words wouldn’t come.

  2

  PASSAGE TO IRAN

  THE NEXT DAY, before departing for Tehran, Weiseman waited for Françoise d’Antou in a café, wondering why she wanted to see him. She professed to be a journalist, to travel around the Middle East, and to meet Arab and Iranian leaders. She was beautiful and sophisticated and worldly. And she was with Jacques Schreiber, a collaborator during the Nazi occupation.

  Why?

  He wondered, was she placed in his path by Gramont as bait? Did that explain the departure kiss at the dinner party and the note she had secretly passed to him?

  He sipped his espresso and suddenly she was there, standing before him. They exchanged air-kisses and s
he slipped gracefully into the booth, smoothing her skirt and crossing her legs. He signaled to the waiter and a cappuccino was placed before her. She got right to her message, speaking to him of Iran, about the conflicting forces he was about to confront there. She told him that fear was the Shah’s only remaining weapon, but now hatred was overcoming that fear. When the SAVAK secret police rolled out their dragnet to sweep up the middle-class opposition and student rebels, they only stirred the cauldron of regime hatred.

  “And the mullahs?” he asked.

  “When the mullahs take over,” Françoise said, “the people will dance in the streets. They’ll celebrate the Shah’s departure and cheer on the new regime. They’ll chant the prayers. Then they’ll realize what they’ve allowed to happen. Black robes will replace military epaulettes. Everyone will conceal his true feelings. People will report their neighbors, as they do now. It will remain Iran…all the blundering and deceit, the suffering and self-preservation, the conspiracies and secret police.”

  He was struck by the comprehensiveness and realism of her perspective, conveyed in just a few moments, and how it corresponded with his own reflections about Iran—except she had been there frequently as a journalist, knew the languge, and had anecdotal detail to bolster her views. And he was struck that her depiction of life under a future regime run by ayatollahs hardly supported Trevor’s belief that the French were out to replace the Shah.

  Was there more that grounded her insights? He’d have to find out.

  The penetrating mind almost made him forget her beauty, the tendrils of blond hair that caressed a long graceful neck; but her passionate commitment forced his attention back to the fissures in Iranian society. She told him everyone in Iran was a hostage: the Shah, the soldiers and bazaari, the students and peasants. The ayatollahs. Even the SAVAK. “As soon as you get off the plane,” she warned, “you’ll be a hostage, too.”

  “And you,” he said. “Are you a hostage as well?”

  He had not meant to pry; it was incompatible with his character, his insistence on guarding his privacy and respecting that of others—qualities inherited from Johann, his father—values he considered well suited to his life as a diplomat.

  But she seemed to brush it aside, leaning forward and speaking softly, even intimately. “I met Jacques when I was in the university and he was a man of the world. He flattered me, took me to fine restaurants, to concerts. At that time, there were so few eligible young men who had come back from World War II and the German occupation.”

  She paused, as if awaiting his reaction, then said, “We never know what is inside the gold wrapping paper. It ended before it started.”

  Clever, he thought, and encouraging. But be discreet; how was she still linked to that beast?

  “You need to understand the Iranians, David. They have their own rituals of decorum, politeness, and social etiquette. When they flatter, or say something they don’t necessarily mean you to take literally, they expect you to understand. And they expect the same in return. They have a word for it. Taarof. In Tehran, you must practice taarof like the Iranians.”

  And did she practice taarof as well? Weiseman wondered. Was she doing so now?

  She stood to leave and led him out of the café, up the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, past the upscale boutiques and the Élysée. The sun had warmed the day, and Françoise removed her gloves. A long black Citroën flashed by and entered into the courtyard of a massive gray building just up a narrow street. “It’s the minister of the interior,” she said.

  Two blocks more and she stopped at Saint-Philippe du Roule, a church with a single spire that he had often passed but never entered. “Vous permettez?” she asked.

  He watched her enter Saint-Philippe, kneel, and cross herself, then rise to light a candle. Eyes tightly shut, she said a silent prayer, crossed herself again, and walked out of the church, the sun casting its glow on her blond hair.

  She led him to a bistro across the street, and they sat at a table with a red and black tablecloth. Over their quiches lorraine and salads and glasses of pinot gris, he asked her about her work. How often did she go to the Middle East…to Iran?

  She spoke knowingly, describing visits for Le Figaro to Iraq and Iran, to Lebanon and Egypt—even to Saudi Arabia, not the easiest place for a woman to cover. She had learned Arabic and become rather proficient in Farsi. The paper’s editor was a crusty old man who doubted a woman’s ability to operate in such countries. It was a point of pride that now, it seemed, the editor came to her to take on the tough assignments…as Trevor did with him.

  He respected that, her intellect, and the way she had put Jacques down at Gramont’s dinner party. But he wanted to know more. How could she be with Jacques? What was their relationship? Who was her mentor at the quai…her patron?

  “You’ve risen…quickly,” he said.

  “I’ve met a number of the mullahs,” she said. “Businessmen, even some military officers. I can help you contact them, once you get there.”

  She was cool and calm. He wondered, his mind going back to Gramont, to “useful” Jacques, was journalism her cover? He asked, “How long have you worked for Le Figaro?”

  “Since I graduated from the Sciences Po. I read Oriental Political Studies. Laurent arranged my first job, as a stagaire, an intern, at the quai.”

  Ah. Gramont. Of course.

  “And then?”

  “Then a call to Le Figaro and they took me on.” She paused, as if seeking to gauge his reaction, and added, “I was very grateful to him.”

  “Of course,” he said, wondering how grateful, and why she was telling him all this, and whether she had really met with Saddam and Khomeini.

  “They’re close,” she said knowingly. “Laurent and your Justin Trevor. Really two of a kind.”

  He watched her dab at her lips, refresh her lipstick. She was sophisticated, practiced in the arts of intrigue, a journalist who could open doors to mullahs ostracized by Washington, a way to make contact.

  And beautiful.

  “You told me that you and Jacques were not a couple. And yet…”

  “Yes,” she said. “We arrived together last night and departed together. N’importe. He’s old enough to be my father. But he could never be my father.”

  A man came into the café carrying yellow roses and walked up to their table. “Pour l’amour,” he murmured.

  Weiseman selected a rose and handed it to her. “It matches your hair.”

  The man drew a pin from his green apron, and Weiseman helped affix it to her dress. His hands fumbled with the pin; it took three tries, and finally it was done.

  “So, a collaboration,” he said, breaking the pregnant silence.

  “Yes, we could call it that, if you wish.”

  He watched her rise to go and stood as she glided away, turned at the door, and gently waved, the fingers in the white glove dancing seductively, performed as only a Frenchwoman can. He looked again at the note she had slipped to him at the dinner party: Café Castiglione: 8 A.M., and Tehran.

  She was charming, while at the same time possessing the cool demeanor and intellect of the European professional woman. She had denied any relationship with the depraved Jacques Schreiber. He had to assume she was close to Laurent Gramont, perhaps the asset Trevor had mentioned. What was she not telling him? Could it be more than that?

  Yet he sensed in her a kindred spirit, someone using the cover of Le Figaro, perhaps to carve out a measure of autonomy from Gramont just as he sought to do from Trevor. And there was their common past, how each had lost a father very close to them, her reaction to that.

  And what else? Suddenly this woman had appeared in his path, an expert on Iran. Could that be a coincidence? Unlikely. Had he revealed too much?

  He had lost Eva and remained unattached. There had been other women as he moved about Europe on missions for Trevor, most of them Europeans who shared his interest in the theater and music. And, of course, there was Regina Trevor, but the thought of marrying in
to Justin Trevor’s family…well, his father, Johann, had schooled him on Goethe’s Faust, had cautioned him never to sell his soul to anyone, for any price.

  Growing up on a farm in Illinois after their harrowing escape from Germany, Weiseman often heard Johann say, “Never again.” Now, years later as a diplomat tested by hard experience, he knew that terror and genocide had not ended in the ruins of Hitler’s bunker. It continued to reside in the lower depths of the human condition and could not be wished away. Those who have power can and often do abuse it beyond the limits of human decency.

  He relied on the counsel of two fathers: the good and gentle Johann and the coldly realistic Justin. Johann had saved his life and sensitized him to the importance of self-reliance, of helping others, to redeem a life that was nearly forfeited. Justin had enrolled him in the service of the American empire, promoting him in Prague, turning to him to wage the good fight in Europe for America’s interests and ideals in the Cold War. But Iran—that was different, a blank slate for him. As director of central intelligence, Trevor had told him America’s entire position in the Middle East depended on the Shah’s secret alliance with Israel and Turkey, and of course with the United States.

  They were so different in personal manner and in social station, Johann and Justin, yet Weiseman’s own mind and methods were touched symbiotically by both. He still heard his father’s words echo in his ears. “Our new country was carved out by individuals ready to dare, not by sheep who do what they are told. Remember what Bonaparte said, ‘Audace, toujours audace.’ ” And with his remarkable intuition, Trevor seemed to know just how to draw the best out of his protégés, touching their innermost drives to stir them to surmount what they themselves thought they could achieve.

  Yet he still felt a missing personal dimension. Maybe it was because he lost his mother at such a young age, in Hitler’s war. A bomb had exploded in her path. A psychiatrist he saw once in Vienna—only once—told him the death of a mother was like being torn a second time from the womb. He didn’t have much time for psychobabble; he accepted the uncertainty of life, and so was pragmatic, ready to take events as they were served up, to use his skills and internal discipline to confront any challenge. But he suspected he would have been a better man if his mother had been there to give him the love he missed amid the stress of growing up in an adopted country.