Night in Tehran

by Kaplan, Philip

  —

  THE NEXT MORNING, Daud was waiting in the lobby in his snug morning coat. Weiseman gave him a nod and proceeded outside to the waiting Cadillac limousine. A stiff-necked Iranian in a tailored chauffeur’s uniform touched his hand to his heart and opened the right rear door. Weiseman turned and spotted Daud watching him from the lobby, mopping his brow with an outsized yellow handkerchief.

  A quarter hour later, sentries waved the limo rapidly through the palace’s massive wrought iron gates as if they wanted to prevent anyone from seeing him enter. Then they let him cool his heels in the courtyard while the Shah’s coterie inside decided what to do with him. Weiseman stood under the smoggy morning sky, the sun beating down, drops of perspiration sliding down his face, pools of sweat gathering under the arms of his freshly laundered white shirt. He could imagine Hanif in there, arguing to the Shah that he should not be wasting his exalted presence on this presumptuous troublemaker.

  It was true, Weiseman thought. The Shah had just done what he had urged him to do; he had reached out to his people and promised them modernization and health and education. And what had it led to? Street demonstrations, opposition agitprop, and police brutality. Iranian society was shattered, with no compromises in sight. The middle ground was truly empty…unless the Shah got rid of Hanif, unless more moderate ayatollahs like Amin or Seyyed cut a deal with other moderate forces…unless an understanding was reached with the ayatollahs that would not humiliate the United States and consign the Iranian people to misery and repression.

  Unless…

  The sun in the courtyard was unbearably hot. He reached into his back pocket for a handkerchief and wiped the moisture from his eyes. How did you deal with true believers, religious zealots with guns who saw no middle ground? You had to beat them. There was no other way.

  But America wasn’t going to war here. Iran was on the other side of the earth. The war in Vietnam had barely ended, and Carter had won the presidency by campaigning against it. Anti-war sentiment was alive and well in virtually every American household.

  Besides, what would be the goal of a war here? To keep the Shah in power another year? Until the cancer took him? No. The fire was coming, and there were no hoses long enough to extinguish it.

  Weiseman looked up and saw Hosein Hanif standing before him in full-dress uniform with the four stars of a full general—the beak of his hat gleaming, his shoes reflecting the sunlight. Hanif turned on his heel, and Weiseman followed him into the palace. Inside, under an enormous chandelier, the Empress stood in a straight, white silk dress, a single strand of pearls like a talisman around her neck. She kissed him dryly on both cheeks, like a family friend.

  Hanif strode out of the room.

  The Empress spoke. “My husband needs you,” she said quietly, gesturing to the enormous double doors behind her. Then she, too, left.

  It was the Shah’s throne room, and as he stepped inside Weiseman saw the Shah across the room, a solitary figure standing erect—and seeming to strain to do so—in a white dress uniform with a gold, red, and blue ceremonial sash, as if ready to inspect his troops on the parade ground. He was gazing up at an illuminated portrait of an Iranian military officer wearing a fur trimmed hat with a black bill, stiff white plumes rising from a gold medallion at the top, a bushy mustache under a prominent nose, the fleshy face framed by outsized ears.

  It was Reza Shah, Mohammad Reza’s father.

  The Shah studied the portrait as if seeking a sign. His face was nearly identical to his father’s—the same nose and ears. But Weiseman was struck by the ineffably sad eyes.

  The Shah turned his scrutiny, finally, to Weiseman, examing his face, his bearing, as he had studied the portrait of his father.

  “Is it over?” he asked. His voice was soft as summer rain, but he was tightly wound. “Lyman Palmer won’t answer me. He never does. When people with authority don’t answer, it’s ominous.”

  “It’s not foreordained, Your Majesty. The United States is behind you.”

  They moved closer to the Peacock Throne, covered in gold and jewels, a masterful piece of Mughal workmanship to project power and fabulous wealth, with steps leading up to it so it would appear the Shah was floating above ground and closer to heaven.

  But the Shah seemed weighted down from heaven now; they sat on an elegant, nearby sofa. Beno, the Shah’s great black German shepherd nestled at his master’s feet, chewing on a large bone.

  The Shah stared at the unicorns dancing on the distant wall, as if in a trance. His distraction might have been due to his cancer medication, but was more likely out of thoughts of what was to come—his overthrow, humiliation, the end of his royal line…

  “The situation is serious,” Weiseman said candidly. “There’s very little middle ground.”

  “I tried. I reached out…Did you hear my speech?”

  “I did. It was…admirable.”

  The Shah waved his hand in dismissal of the empty compliment. He was determined to guard his dignity. “I don’t have much time, you know.”

  Weiseman remained still.

  “Of course you know. The doctor is American. Trevor sent him to me.”

  “You need to act, Your Majesty, to regain the initiative. They only win if you surrender.”

  The Shah eyed him intently and seemed to summon up his strength. “I won’t live to see Iran ruled by a medieval shaman, David. There will be a new prime minister this afternoon. He’s loyal; he’ll do what I say.” The Shah glanced at him, to gauge his reaction, but Weiseman said nothing. “It will give everyone something to chatter about.”

  He doesn’t see, Weiseman thought. A new prime minister will avail him nothing at all.

  “And General Hanif?” he asked, knowing the SAVAK chief would be listening in through a tap in some lamp or fixture in the throne room. “Is he indispensable?”

  The Shah gripped his side and grimaced. A moment or two passed, but it seemed like forever as he absorbed the pain. The cancer, Weiseman realized, must be getting more aggressive.

  “Yes,” he finally replied. “Indispensable…until he tries to replace me.”

  The pain revived, and the Shah turned a pale blue. He gripped the arm of the sofa. Beno leapt up. Weiseman leaned over to help but was halted by a fierce stare.

  “You tell your president I have served America well, for decades. Now I expect to count on America.” He took a deep breath. “You’ll stay in Tehran until the end of Ramadan. That will be the moment of danger.”

  Maximum danger, Weiseman thought, but nodded his assent. “Yes, of course I will.”

  The Shah’s eyes glazed over again. “You won’t do to me what Sir Reader Bullard did to my father…” His voice took on a faraway tone.

  “No, sir.”

  The Shah seemed to recover his bearing. “Good. After all these years…America will do that…”

  He lifted his hand as if to wave off his thoughts, but stopped, abruptly, seemingly unable to lift his arm high enough. Had he had a stroke? He lifted a small handbell from the side table, rang it, and Weiseman was startled to see the Empress suddenly gliding across the empty room like a matchstick ballerina to assist her husband. She helped him to his feet and, bearing the weight of him, slowly helped him out of the room.

  * * *

  —

  COLONEL YILMAZ INVITED Weiseman back to the Polo Club for a ride in the woods. The Turkish general staff had met in retreat, then convened the National Security Council and advised the prime minister that time was running out on the Shah. Yilmaz now could assure Weiseman that Turkey was ready to support Ajax Two. Of course, Ankara had questions. When would the plan be set in motion? How would it be executed? Who would be the successor? A general, they thought, would be best.

  “Oh yes,” Yilmaz added. “I forgot. There was an envoy from Paris, a revolting man. Jacques Schreiber, asking about our military plans to stage a coup in Iran. I told him nothing.”

  Mossad was more exacting. The prime minister understood
the need for action, Moshe Regev said, but insisted on knowing every aspect of the plan. The Shah had, after all, protected Persian Jews living in Iran, and he had allowed them to immigrate to Israel. He had collaborated with Israel and Turkey to checkmate the Arabs. The prime minister was an Orthodox Jew who valued such things highly.

  Weiseman told them it was time to give history a push. Operational plans were being finalized in Washington. Soon, he’d be ready to say more, and if they wished, to visit Ankara again, and Jerusalem.

  He returned to Ronald Sims and surprised himself by taking the Brit more into his confidence. Weiseman briefed him on his meeting with the shaky Shah and sought his counsel on who among the many charlatans grasping for power could be a constructive partner after the Shah’s departure. “We need a reliable successor. There can’t be an empty throne.”

  He watched Sims reflect on that, then promise to take him to a certain honest business executive he had known for many years, a competent administrator who could serve as prime minister to a future shah or, if need be, in an Islamic regime. “No,” Weiseman said. “What we need is someone to replace the Shah, a strong man to hold the country together.”

  Sims nodded. “There are two generals who would do nicely. They’re loyal to the Shah, so far, but ambitious. I’ll have a word…with your permission of course.”

  * * *

  —

  WEISEMAN MET AGAIN with the network, except this time the group had expanded. There was an air of excitement, of expectancy—finally, the Pahlavi tyranny would be gone and a new democratic government would take his place. Weiseman encouraged their hopes, tested their readiness for risk, smiled as they told him how the nation would rise as one to oust the Shah.

  But he knew better. He could feel the rising risks, the tide threatening to wash the Shah away and deliver the ayatollahs to power.

  When the larger group departed, he handed out assignments to Alana and Mahmoud, to Shapour and Yasmine de Rose, who, like her spymaster father, was far from naïve. They were the leaders with a grip on what must be done, on how to turn this loose team of students and middle-class idealists into an operational unit that could alter the Iranian reality. Teams would be formed in every district of Tehran; young professionals and junior military officers would be added to their student network. Protest marches would be stepped up. But now the operational focus would shift. Wall posters would go up questioning the intentions of the mullahs. The young would press their parents to join their efforts to block a political takeover by the ayatollahs and to draw on their own professional contacts to build support for a moderate succession,

  Mahmoud was the one most at risk, as the double agent spying inside the Sheikh’s mosque. Weiseman admired his courage but worried deeply about his safety.

  Mahmoud told him that Montana and the mullahs were forming a militia called the Revolutionary Guards. “You’d be amazed at the middle-class recruits buying into their line, the thugs they’re recruiting from South Tehran.”

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS MIDNIGHT when Hannah arrived at the safe house, breathless, palpably frightened. Hanif was on to her, she was sure of it. Weiseman ordered her to back off; he’d get her a visa and put her on a plane to Germany, or America. “After all your family has gone through—”

  “No,” Hannah said. Iran was her country now. Hanif had to be stopped. She had tapped his office phone with the device Weiseman had passed on to her through Alana.

  “It’s time,” she repeated. “Hanif is on to us. He’s waiting for the right moment, for the US to install him on the Peacock Throne. He spoke tonight to Washington, to a man called Trevor. ‘You’re our man, Hosein.’ I heard him say that. It’s on the tape.”

  She looked at Weiseman. “Who is this Trevor?” she asked.

  18

  FIRE IN THE THEATER

  EVERY BATTLE PLAN dies at the first skirmish, along with the men ordered to carry it out.

  The assets Weiseman had assembled had nothing in common except a wish to send the Shah packing. There wasn’t an ounce of trust among them. His Ajax Two plan was the least common denominator, and he figured it might only survive until the moment when it must be executed. That was when his allies could well fall out like Ali Baba’s forty thieves.

  He needed a hedge, a fallback strategy in case the mullahs won. In Beirut, Françoise had reminded him of Ayatollah Seyyed. Yes, he could use a worldly ayatollah with a taste for power, ready to deal with Hanif, harboring a grudge with Khomeini. Was Seyyed such a man? He wasn’t sure.

  Back in the hotel he strode through the lobby, ignoring the familiar manila envelope. “But, sir, it’s important,” Daud mumbled as Weiseman entered the tiny elevator.

  In his room, he tore off his clothes and soaked under a cold shower, then dressed in a polo shirt and light khaki pants and white tennis shoes. There was a knock on his door, and he opened it to find the manila envelope on the threshold. He ripped it open. A half dozen photographs of himself around Tehran stared back at him. It was a clear threat—we’re watching you at all times. It had to have come from Hanif, just as Hannah had warned. Unless it was the mullahs, or Sheikh Khalaji, or Guido Montana…

  The phone rang. It was Karim Nasir. Weiseman pictured him, in his tweed jacket, in the room lined with books, before he took in what Karim said: “They’ve taken my son—”

  Weiseman’s instincts took over. “Not on the phone,” he said.

  Weiseman had to go to Abadan the next day for the handoff Foster had arranged.

  “Tomorrow,” he told Karim Nasir. “Can you get to Abadan?” An idea had come to him. “Can you get to the cinema there? The Rex Cinema. Do you know it?” Surely there were no listening devices in the theater, and it would be tough to spy on them in the dark.

  Karim confirmed and Weiseman left immediately. He took the stairs, slipped across the back of the lobby, out into the relentless heat, and down the hill into Tehran. Ordinary Iranians bustled past shop windows, not tarrying to look in. All the lights were dimmed.

  It was sea of the past, the turbans and chadors, with Western-style clothing having virtually disappeared seemingly overnight. A diplomatic colleague in Beijing once told him that Mao Tse-tung had created an anthill of human beings dressed in identical, floppy, blue suits that erased gender, making it impossible to distinguish between men and women, and stifling human imagination and creativity, thus enforcing submission. Orwell’s 1984 had come to China, his friend had said, and it would only disappear when the Chinese people discarded their Mao suits and became human beings again.

  The sounds of the adhan echoed all around as each muezzin began at the appointed time, but according to clocks that were never perfectly synchronized. Weiseman snapped out of his reverie to see two young women wearing head-to-toe chadors, one of them fingering an errant curl that peeked out of the hood of her chador. An older woman came by and stopped to scold the younger woman, who bowed her head and pulled her shroud tight around her forehead before slinking away.

  Weiseman proceeded to take a series of taxis about the city, meeting with assets in affluent suburbs and shabby slums, going where diplomats never go, clad in khaki, his pin-striped suit locked away in his hotel closet. He met with students still daring to speak, and endured suspicious stares in mosques. He noted how everywhere he went people conversed in whispers.

  Hanif’s cops were out, their presence palpable, still a silent menace. There were more men in uniform, toting machine guns, and people hurrying down the street, trying to stay out of their reach. Religious thought patrols were out, too, warning young women to behave like pure Muslim girls.

  That night, he called Françoise from a pay phone, let her know that Selim Nasir might be in danger, and told her what she must do. Then he telexed Trevor and told him that he planned to spend Ramadan in Iran, perhaps stay a bit longer. “Of course, my boy,” Trevor said. “Whatever you say.”

  * * *

  —

  ON AUGUST 19, Weiseman took
a train to the southern port city of Abadan, traveling second-class on hard wooden seats in a compartment full of country people dining out of picnic baskets. He greeted them with one of the few words of Farsi he knew—“Hello”—and they smiled back as they opened their baskets. Out came lamb and chicken, dates and figs. Weiseman found himself talking with the teenage boy sitting next to him. His name was Ibrahim. He knew only slightly more English than Weiseman knew Farsi, but through their clumsy exchanges Weiseman learned of the dreams of Ibrahim’s family: a good education for young Ibrahim, a decent doctor to serve their village, an end to violence.

  Weiseman told them Americans wanted the same things. He asked Ibrahim to ask his family what they thought of the Shah. The father, bent over from what must have been a lifetime of physical labor, took a metal medallion from the inside of his jacket where it had rested on his heart. He kissed first one side, then the other. The first side was engraved with an image of the Shah, the other with the image of the Shah’s father.

  Young Ibrahim watched this gesture as he must have countless times. He said quietly, “We will change old ways. We will—purify.”

  The mother, with her iron-gray hair in its tight bun, wept softly. She spoke no English but she understood. She had doubtless witnessed this generational debate between her husband and son many times, Weiseman thought.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN WEISEMAN ARRIVED in Abadan, he went to the port and stared south at the oil tankers heading out into the Persian Gulf. Deeply tanned men with grimy faces labored in the yards, moving petrol products that fueled the world’s industrial machine. Just across the Gulf was Kuwait. Only slightly to the north of Kuwait was Basra, the Shia capital of Iraq.

  An Iranian came up to him, dressed in a white three-piece suit and shiny black wing tip shoes, a cigarette lodged between two fingers, a boutonniere in his lapel. The man eyed him warily for a moment, then approached him.