Night in Tehran

by Kaplan, Philip

  He remained in the café and ordered another espresso, his thoughts returning to Françoise, what she had said, and—“Salaud!” the waiter suddenly cried out, turning up the television over the bar. The TV screen was replaying that terrible night at the Sorbonne. Shirin Majid was on a stretcher, covered up before the gates. The camera panned in farther, and he felt a chill, reliving Yasmine’s horror. Everyone at the bar stared at the TV, their faces flush with rage. A TV reporter explained what happened. Shirin was an Iranian student who spoke fluent French. She had a brilliant career before her. She was murdered because she didn’t observe the precepts of some radical prelate of a foreign country far away. It was time to send them home if they dared to ignore French laws and customs.

  At the bar, the patrons were all cursing the foreigners. The old fellow with a white mustache and fisherman’s cap was telling how he had fought at the battle of Algiers and shown them a thing or two. Next to Weiseman, a rail-thin woman with a gravelly voice said, “These people, they live in my quartier, they stay up late, play loud music, and keep me awake. Their place stinks from their strange cooking. It’s like a souk; a person can’t get any sleep. I don’t have any peace.”

  Coins hit the counter, and a thin, dark-skinned man slipped out of the café, apprehension on his face. The innocent would get caught up in all this, Weiseman thought. They always did.

  * * *

  —

  WEISEMAN SAT ON the Air France flight east, peering down at the Balkans, the mountains drenched in blood from centuries of conflict. The stark contrast reminded him graphically that he had a job to do, and his mind flashed back to the exodus from Germany across the Baltic Sea, onward to America, across the Atlantic on a barely seaworthy freighter. A lifetime ago.

  There had been a man in a black turtleneck with big thick eyeglasses and wavy brown hair huddled alongside them just outside the boiler room. The man entertained young David with card tricks and tall tales of adventure, telling him of life’s possibilities, granting a frightened child the precious gift of hope.

  Johann had asked the stranger what he had done before ending up on a ship of refugees. The man said he was a member of the honored profession of survivors. A small town doctor from the French Auvergne, he had married a German woman who cursed the Nazis, swore to him that she hated Hitler. When she learned that he had joined the Resistance, she turned him in to the gestapo. They clapped him in Drancy, just outside Paris, the way station to Auschwitz. But he decided to survive. You couldn’t fight back in Drancy, the doctor told them. You had to outsmart them. “I made myself into a whole camp of different characters: a magician, a gypsy violinist. I did card tricks for the camp commandant’s children, and even seduced his wife. You see, you have to get into the head of your enemy, to think like him. You have to comprehend what he believes in, to imagine the rules he lives by. Then you can know what he will do.”

  “And so I stayed alive.”

  As did I, Weiseman thought, snapping back to the task at hand. He was on his way to Iran, a country he knew only from briefing books. Trevor had given him a mission: Replace the Shah; find a successor we can bend to our will. Be discreet, but get the job done. Stay out of the newspapers. That was the way Trevor operated. Trevor always gave him plenty of latitude, leaving him to sink or swim on his own.

  He picked up a magazine and saw the Shah’s photo, thought, this is the Zeitgeist. We depend on dictators till one day our leaders find them distasteful. And when they falter, we want them out. But replacing a tyrant with something decent…that’s another matter. And sheltering the people from the ugly aftermath, the inevitable violence? Well, that’s much harder.

  He took out the Farsi language cards he had received from the Foreign Service Institute before departure and began methodically working his way through them. He was good at languages and began to feel the rhythm of Farsi. Once he arrived in Tehran he would practice on the tapes he also had with him.

  An Air France stewardess came by, offering him a drink. He shook his head; non, merci. She shrugged in the Gallic way: your loss, she seemed to say.

  Ah, yes, Trevor’s bottom line: do it any way you must. Find me a successor to run the country for us. Our guy: a general, a cleric, a cutthroat. We can’t be too fastidious.

  * * *

  —

  AT ANKARA THEY stopped to refuel. Arab and Iranian families joined the flight. Veiled Arab women incongruously nursed their babies in plain sight.

  Over the Caucasus Mountains the plane soared. Out the window, Weiseman saw mountains give way to water. They headed southwest across Azerbaijan, and he could see the oil rigs, offshore from the port city of Baku. The Caspian Sea and Iran beckoned.

  He opened the briefing book and read, seeking to steep himself in the psychology and culture of the Iranians, in the split between Sunni and Shia Islam, and especially in what existed in Iran before Islam. The Zoroastrian faith, closer to Christianity or Judaism, emphasized the responsibility of every person to work for social justice. Citizens had the inalienable right to enlightened leadership. Iranian kings were seen as the representatives of God on earth as long as they enjoyed farr, a divine blessing they had to earn through consistently moral behavior. Subjects had the duty to obey just kings and to rise up against wicked ones.

  Like Confucian China, he thought. Shahs and emperors ruled by the mandate of heaven. Any ruler who violated that principle invited rebellion and his own ouster.

  He pulled out a yellow pad and jotted down his priorities. Establish Iranian agents in place. Court the vulnerable. See the Iranians, and Turks, and Israelis, the British agent Trevor had mentioned. Co-opt Hanif, the SAVAK chief. He paused and thought of his own harrowing escape with Johann from Germany. Check the borders to arrange egress for exiles, he wrote. And reach out to the ayatollahs, just in case.

  He had to put a face to all these people, fill in the blanks. There were only bad options: Stick with the Shah, cancer or not, or one of his men. Accommodate the ayatollahs and hope they’d mellow over time. Find a white knight to save the day, what Graham Greene—whose reckoning with the moral compromises of espionage Weiseman admired—once called a third force. Stage a coup. Invade. Mind our own business.

  But even his brief list was too complicated. The Shah would go, so it came down to this: find a credible leader we could work with or tie the ayatollahs in knots. That was the bottom line. That and finding a way to stay out of Evin Prison.

  Meddling with another nation’s future was a dicey business. We had done it before in Iran, in 1953, a quarter century before. Operation Ajax—overthrowing a regime, then bringing the Shah back. Iranians hadn’t forgotten that; they probably never would. But taking on the ayatollahs? The very thought brought nightmares.

  He locked the briefing book inside his attaché case, knowing that a briefing book was like a strategic war plan, to be abandoned at the first engagement with the enemy. He’d get to Tehran in a couple of hours and do his walk-arounds, imbibing the sights and smells, taking the measure of the city. He’d burrow in with the students, the mullahs, the troublemakers, as well as the military and business class. Find out what they’re up to, before Iran goes up in flames. Then would come the hard part: deciding who to trust and who to avoid.

  He thought back to what Françoise had said. They were all hostages. Iran was poised on the edge of an earthquake, exactly two hundred years after the French and American revolutions.

  He was a hostage, too. And if it all went down, there’d be no one to claim him and bring him home.

  * * *

  —

  A STEWARDESS STROLLED up the central aisle. “Un quart d’heure pour l’atrerrissage,” she said. “Fifteen minutes to landing.” She drew a lavender silk scarf from her bag and covered her head, tucking her auburn hair under the scarf.

  Mehrabad International Airport came into view, as if slowly revealing itself from behind cloud cover, hiding Persia’s secrets from Western intruders. From the air he could see miles of squat bui
ldings mottled with centuries of pollution, while in the distance high-rise structures beckoned visitors to the new Iran the Shah was constructing as part of his White Revolution.

  The wheels touched down and the aircraft bounced once, then again, before heading toward the bleak, gray terminal.

  In Mehrabad, security guards with wraparound sunglasses surrounded the arriving passengers, demanding that one or another display his or her papers. At immigration, the customs official glanced at his black US diplomatic passport and quickly waved him on. America was still in good standing in the Shah’s Iran, Weiseman thought.

  He passed a tweny-four–hour prayer room where a half dozen heads were bent toward Mecca. Women in chadors rushed by, their faces covered except for slits for their eyes. Younger women in miniskirts, holding hands, floated along like butterflies, displaying coiffed hair, tottering in high heels.

  Outside the airport, throngs of Iranians waited for relatives. Cops and soldiers were everywhere. Horns blared, impatient taxis revved their motors. Security blanketed the airport.

  A taxi pulled up. The black-bearded driver wore a white robe and white knit kofi cap. As a woman with glossy dark hair got out, her expensive knit dress rode up her legs to reveal a glimpse of lilac bikini panties. The driver took her Italian lire, tucked them in his billfold, placed his hand over his heart, then leaned forward and kissed the photo of Khomeini on his dashboard.

  A cop with a swagger stick, a remnant of British colonial rule, thumped on the taxi’s trunk to hasten him along. The rickety cab pulled up a few feet, scouting for another fare.

  Weiseman surveyed the scene, searching for his new “escorts”—SAVAK agents, mullahs, US or French embassy spooks. He saw a short, wiry American in a brown suit and tie, head as bald as an eagle, studying an Iranian newspaper. Weiseman hustled over to the still lingering cab, got in, and slammed the door. He glanced back toward the bald American, who was no longer there.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  * * *

  —

  THE RIDE INTO Tehran was a journey into the past. Men led mules that pulled carts laden with farm produce. Women balanced baskets on their heads. Small children kicked a rubber ball near a polluted pond. Soldiers along the highway gripped automatic weapons.

  They were in the suburbs now. The gray concrete buildings that lined both sides of the road resembled the featureless Stalinist architecture Weismann knew from Moscow. Pedestrians were bundled in padded coats to protect them from the frigid February weather. A billboard showed a smiling Shah and Empress Farah escorting two children into a model school.

  A few miles farther on, there was another billboard. This one was a shot of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s eyes burning with righteous wrath. “The Shah allows that?” Weiseman asked.

  “No, sir,” the driver said. “They tear them down but they’re back up the next day. In the bazaar, priests pass out leaflets cursing the American devil. They say the Shah must go.”

  The taxi entered the city. Soldiers were everywhere, patrolling the streets, riding in armored personnel carriers. Through the window, Weiseman could hear the din of the crowds in the streets, where merchants were plying their wares from modest storefronts, and women were boiling chickens in sizzling clay pots. He rolled down the window to sniff the aromas of the street. The driver ordered him to snap it right back up. “Security,” he said sharply.

  Weiseman spotted the marquee of the Intercontinental Hotel, and then the car was heading up the front drive. A doorman in a green uniform and red turban opened the door.

  In the lobby, the Shah’s picture was everywhere.

  3

  TWO TEHRANS

  WEISEMAN FELT AS though he had plunged into a Third World, amorphous city that sprawled under a heavy cloud of smog, across a vast plain surrounded by breathtaking mountains. Los Angeles without the glitz. Except, he knew Tehran was a city where spies and cops lurked in every doorway.

  After checking into his room at the Intercontinental, he set out to explore Tehran. He took a taxi along Pahlavi Avenue, toward the Shah’s Niavaran Palace in North Tehran, past skyscrapers and luxury apartments, parks with trimmed hedges and immaculate gardens, climbing to the summit of a steep hill where rich Persians enjoyed the pleasures that money afforded. Those who ruled resided here. High walls sequestered the affluent in handsome villas. On a nearby rooftop he spotted surveillance cameras and uniformed men with automatic rifles.

  Alighting from the cab at Mellat Park, he took a seat on a bench—a tourist observing the passing parade. Across the street a black limo pulled up. The chauffeur opened the right rear door for a stocky pockmarked man in a colonel’s dress uniform; a moment later a younger woman in a blue dress and fur stole took his arm, and they moved up the steps to a private club. Across the road, a man in the white robes of a Muslim high priest entered a mosque, a cigarette drooping from his lower lip. Women passed by, their faces covered in black with tiny openings for their eyes. Yet Weiseman knew they could discern more of this panorama of paradox than he.

  He rose from the bench and walked into the mosque. He found himself amidst pillars stretching to a vaulted stone ceiling where an enormous white banner with the red crescent of Islam called the faithful to prayer. Persian carpets covered the concrete floor space. Up front, an ulema was chanting at an altar. Perhaps two dozen men on their knees murmured their devotions, bending their bodies forward until their heads, covered by simple caps of knitted white wool, touched the ground. Behind a railing, women were segregated from the men. Most of the women were in long garments; one or two wore the veil, several were in chadors. Some younger women and girls wore Western clothes, heels, skirts at the knee, but each was wearing a scarf that covered every strand of hair—all bent toward Mecca, like the men a hundred feet away.

  Weiseman moved toward the side wall of the mosque and felt he was entering a caravan. Grizzled old men in prayer caps sat hunched over water pipes, imbibing whatever narcotic the pipes might offer. An aroma of apple tobacco, rose water, and a distinctly stronger opiate wafted toward the high ceilings. The men fingered worry beads and gossiped in a guttural Persian dialect. He saw one of the old men staring at him. The man removed a pipe from between rows of stained yellow teeth. “You would like the tea, sir?” the man asked in English.

  Weiseman said, “No, thank you,” and slipped away.

  The mosque was filling up with young people in Western clothes, schoolgirls in green sweater and skirt combinations, matching green ribbons in their hair. Students in pairs of two held hands and followed their teachers, chattering like teenagers everywhere. More paradox, he thought—the old and modern, religious and secular, East and West—a country seeking its identity.

  Exiting the mosque, he walked back across the park to where it ended at the edge of a cliff. He peered down the mountain, south, toward the poorer part of the immense city, to the anonymous alleys and dull gray facades of South Tehran, hiding its secrets. He knew the mullahs would have their strength, and it was there.

  Suddenly he was aware of a man behind him. He turned and saw the wiry, bald man in the brown suit he had first noticed at Mehrabad Airport. Dark eyes flitted back and forth under severely trimmed eyebrows. “I’m Serge Klein,” the man said.

  Klein was the embassy station chief whom Trevor had told him to avoid. They were bound to meet, though, so better to get it over with.

  Klein eyed him. “I know you’re close to Trevor, but you’re on my turf. We have to reach an understanding.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You and I share, or we’ll be crossing wires, sending false signals. That’s dangerous.”

  Klein’s dark eyes drilled in. “Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Weiseman said. He extended his hand and gripped Klein’s. Sharing was an ambiguous concept; his relationship with Trevor, not to mention his mission, would stay private. And, thought Weiseman, Klein would only share what he wanted me to know; that much was certain.

  Apparently assuming a compac
t had been closed, Klein became the consummate professional intelligence officer, concisely charting the lay of the land. Multiple conflicting forces existed here. The palace was a nest of vipers, and in addition to anti-Shah dissidents and students, there were the bazaari, businessmen who sucked up to the palace and left Tehran when things got hot. Klein himself was the point man with SAVAK.

  “And the Islamists?” Weiseman asked.

  Klein squinted, although there was no sun. “We don’t deal with them,” he said. “It’s policy, from Washington.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you? If you plan to see them, you’d better have Trevor give you authority to do so, in writing.”

  * * *

  —

  WEISEMAN PASSED UP the new Mercedes taxis parked in front of the club for a tumbledown job with a smoking tailpipe he found down the street. As he climbed in, he noticed a lime-green Peugeot pull away from the curb. They drove down the mountain, and modernity dissolved. Skyscrapers were replaced by shacks. Posh glass-enclosed restaurants with tuxedo-clad waiters became roadside kebabi, and then pushcarts. A man on a mule started across the road, and his driver slammed on the brakes.

  Behind them, there was the screech of skidding tires, and a car pulled up alongside them. The lime-green Peugeot. Inside were two rough-looking men wearing bottle-green police jackets and caps. Each had what seemed to be a two-day-old beard; each wore aviator sunglasses. They both stared straight ahead while their radio blared Persian popular songs.