Night in Tehran

by Kaplan, Philip

  He heard Trevor’s trademark sigh. “Well, you’ll do what you must, won’t you, David. And you’ll do it on your own, certainly no need to tell us about it.”

  He knew Trevor would say that, but still. Had he been dealing behind his back with Gramont?

  “Tell me more, Justin.”

  “More? You have to create facts on the ground so our people won’t resist, won’t succumb to sentimentality. Shape the outcome for us. Is that too much to ask you to do for your country?”

  “Justin, I’m asking a simple question. Is it a go?”

  He heard a voice in the background—“The White House calling, sir”—and then there was only a dial tone.

  21

  NAUPHLE-LE-CHTEAU

  FRANÇOISE’S EDITOR AT Le Figaro told Weiseman she was on assignment somewhere in the Middle East; they hadn’t heard from her in weeks.

  Trevor had ordered him to Paris to be present for Khomeini’s arrival; Marion Parsi had made that perfectly clear. Laurent Gramont and Alain de Rose had made no bones about their business. He couldn’t imagine that Françoise wouldn’t be in Paris, too.

  He put on a light windbreaker and made his way carefully down the stone steps of the left-bank safe house, past the snooping eyes of the nosy house watcher. “Bonjour, Madame Sylvie.” He crossed the street, dodging tiny Renaults and Simcas. A black Mercedes with CD diplomatic plates and drawn, white curtains cruised by. The sun was low. Paris was awakening.

  After months under cover in Tehran, he could only marvel at the splendor of Paris, the rhythms of the city. And then, outside the church of Saint-Germain-de-Prés, he saw the same withered old man to whom he had given a coin in this same spot while heading to the dinner at Laurent Gramont’s, the one where he’d met Françoise. He tapped on the man’s shoulder and there was the beret, extended toward him. He dropped in a franc, and the deep bow he received in return brought a smile to his lips. Here is another survivor, he thought.

  At the newsstand before the church, he bought a copy of Le Figaro, and there she was, on the first page: “Entre Iraq et Iran, par Françoise d’Antou.” Between Iran and Iraq. His eyes swept down the front page column reporting on Khomeini’s journey out of Iraq. There was nothing new. He flipped to the continuation page: “Fin de Régime.” “Ali Amin, a Texas professor teaching in Sciences Po this semester, said that the rule of the ayatollahs would be moderate, that Ayatollah Khomeini would preside over the nation as a spiritual leader, like Gandhi, while technocrats governed.”

  That’s what Amin had told him after the mullahs bound him up and deposited him at the farmhouse in the Tehran suburbs. How could she write such tripe?

  Of course: for Gramont.

  * * *

  —

  WEISEMAN HADN’T EATEN in thirty-six hours, so he wandered through the sixième, across Rue de Seine and Rue Mazarin, until he reached the quai, then crossed Saint-Michel and stopped along the river at a bistro he’d never noticed before. He looked through the window at the mélange of uniforms—students and businessmen, a policeman and his girlfriend, a priest in a cassock, perhaps from Saint-Séverin or Notre Dame just minutes way. At a table for four there was a man with a big paunch barely restrained by red suspenders, his slim wife in a print dress and round pasha glasses, and two kids trying to pry apart shells from a big black pot of mussels.

  He stepped inside and spotted a red garter on the right sleeve of a very wrinkled white shirt, and signaled.

  “Par ici,” the waiter said, showing him to a table already occupied by a tall man in his midthirties. The man had blond hair parted down the middle, a neat mustache, half-glasses, and a small black leather bag at his feet.

  “Vous permettez?” Weiseman asked, eyeing the dozen oysters the man was slurping with gusto from their shells. He realized that he was ravenous.

  “Bien sûr,” the man said. “They’re Belons, from Normandy.”

  Weiseman nodded to the waiter. “Aussi pour moi, et des quenelles de brochet Nantua.”

  “A good choice,” the man said, “light as a feather, swimming in lobster sauce. Of course, not so good for the cholesterol.” The accent sounded Dutch or German.

  “I’m David,” Weiseman said, extending his hand.

  “Hippolyte Altmann, from Flanders, in Belgium. A doctor for my sins, at Père Lachaise Hospital—near the big cemetery.”

  “I know it,” Weiseman said. “But please eat. I’m happy to smell the garlic and look out at the street.”

  “Yes,” the doctor said. “Notre Dame, the Seine, nothing quite like it. But here, take some of the Sancerre. It’s really an excellent white. I can’t polish off the entire bottle.”

  Altmann poured. They clinked glasses. “Santé,” Altmann said.

  “Salute,” Weiseman replied and watched the doctor shuck an oyster from its shell, swallow it down, and smile contentedly, then mop up the butter and garlic with a heel of farm bread, and finally wipe the sauce from his mustache.

  At the next table, halfway through their pots of moules, the family remained on the attack. The father with the paunch and suspenders called for another Kronenbourg beer.

  “I’m from Antwerpen,” Altmann said. “It’s a commercial city—textile and diamond trade. Rembrandt and Bruegel painted there.” He swallowed another oyster, patted his mouth with his napkin. “And a center of medicine. My father and his father were doctors.”

  The waiter placed a dozen oysters in front of Weiseman, and freshly sliced bread, steaming hot, and he refilled their glasses. Weiseman said, “Another bottle of the Sancerre, please, this time on me.”

  At the next table, incredibly, the black pots of empty shells were being cleared away, the mounds of mussels reduced to empty containers, replaced by steak frites. Weiseman forked an oyster, sniffed its raw, oceanic flavor and devoured it. He washed it down with the Sancerre. Across the Seine, the bells of Notre Dame chimed three o’clock. Both men ate quietly for a few minutes. Weiseman thought of the Shah and wondered what was going on in Iran.

  “Tell me, Dr. Altmann—”

  “Hippolyte.”

  “Hippolyte. Tell me about your practice.”

  “I’m an oncologist. I treat cancer patients. I save lives. And yes, I lose them.”

  “Like me,” Weiseman murmured, and thought of the dead Hashemi curled at his feet in Jaleh square.

  “Sometimes there’s nothing to be done,” the doctor continued. “Just mitigate the pain…postpone the inevitable. It’s very common, more than you might think. A woman comes in, she says, ‘Help me, doctor.’ You examine her and realize it’s hopeless.” He pushed away his plate. “Do you tell her the truth, that it’s hopeless? Of course not.”

  “So,” Weiseman said. “Postponement? That’s all there is?”

  “It’s the European way, you know. Something has affected our spirit; perhaps it’s Freud, the pleasure principle. After the First World War, all those ghastly sacrifices, no one wanted any more conflict. Once Hitler took Paris, the French gave up and just went along. Of course, everyone claimed to have been a Resistance fighter once the war was over.”

  Like Gramont, Weiseman thought: Resistance fighter, noble count, and appeaser, doing the dirty work of the nation…Like me?

  Altmann’s face froze a moment…a painful thought?

  “We Dutch actually did resist. We paid a terrible price. The Germans broke my father’s hands. His beautiful surgeon’s hands.”

  The waiter came by with the food: Weiseman’s quenelles, Altmann’s grilled fish.

  “I have to operate tonight,” Altmann said, waving off a refill from Weiseman. “To buy a bit more time, to show I’ve tried.”

  Weiseman filled his own glass and lifted it toward the doctor. “To postponing the inevitable,” he said.

  * * *

  —

  WEISEMAN WATCHED THE mob scene at Orly on television and realized that the French had allowed the Iranian mullahs to stage a spectacle. They could have hustled the old ayatollah into a waiting l
imousine, and quietly away. Instead they allowed TV crews in. No—they invited them in.

  Weiseman, sipping a chilled beer at a bar in the village of Nauphle-le-Château some twenty-five miles out of Paris, found it harrowing. The arrival at Orly seemed to invest the elderly ayatollah with towering stature. He came down the stairs of the plane, clutching the arm of an Air France steward, then stood on the tarmac in the hot airport lights alone, in complete repose—a prophet carrying out God’s mission, ready to destroy the infidels. A reporter pushed a microphone his way, and a cop cast it off with a vicious karate chop, a French thunderbolt in service to the Prophet.

  Khomeini was placid, as if the commotion he had aroused had nothing to do with him. But Weiseman was certain the old man was contemplating how long he would have to remain in France before arriving triumphantly at his ultimate destination.

  The bartender, a big-bellied fellow with a soiled blue shirt, gestured toward the TV set.

  “Cet Arab est fou, monsieur. N’est ce pas?”

  “I wish it were true, monsieur,” said Weiseman. “But he’s not an Arab, he’s Iranian, and he’s crazy like a fox.”

  The bartender rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Ah, oui, the kind that bite. But our boys won’t let him out of that big barn down the street. Another beer, monsieur? On the house.”

  At which point Weiseman saw, on the television screen, Khomeini speaking—indecipherably—into a microphone held by Françoise d’Antou.

  * * *

  —

  THERE WAS ANOTHER mob scene outside the big house with blue shutters in Nauphle-le-Château when the long black Citroën limousine and the cavalcade of lesser black cars rolled into a second blinding array of TV lights. Except Weiseman wasn’t watching this on TV—standing near the front of the crowd, he observed a shield of French police and Sûreté officers escort Ruhollah Khomeini slowly into the big house as though he were a visiting head of state. The French knew how to do that well, Weiseman had to admit.

  Yes, the shrewd, old Iranian priest knew he’d be on the front pages of every newspaper in the world tomorrow, the lead story of every TV news show. Weiseman thought the images would put enormous strain on Iran’s already severely rent social and political fabric. It would tear at the tightly strained mental state of a shah near nervous collapse.

  And then he saw her, alighting from the fifth limousine, in a black shift with a single strand of pearls, a delicate peach silk scarf covering the golden hair. She started his way, a subtle smile on her face.

  “Viens, chérie. I will introduce you to the Imam.”

  * * *

  —

  THE BIG HOUSE was furnished sparsely with straight wooden chairs, an atrocious green cloth sofa and an oak table pushed back against the wall to make room for the crowd of idolatrous supporters and conniving Persian politicians, positioning themselves for what they assumed was the inevitable seizure of power.

  In the center of the room, with legs crossed on a small threadbare prayer carpet, sat the Ayatollah, seemingly unaware of the commotion his arrival had stirred. His head was bowed. His eyes were tightly compressed. He was a religious symbol, an idol around which the good and bad Iranian opposition would struggle for power and the remains of the Shah’s fortune, and, Weiseman was convinced, a hard-willed fanatic who would call the shots, convert Iran into a new kind of prison, and act as an unequivocal enemy of the United States and the West.

  Over Khomeini’s left shoulder stood Sheikh Khalaji, the glazy pupils of his sightless eyes somehow focused on Weiseman.

  “Imam, you know Madame d’Antou,” he heard the blind Sheikh say in Farsi. “And this is the David Weiseman we mentioned to you.”

  Khomeini slowly extended his hand to Françoise, the mottled skin seeming to slide out from the black sleeve. “Madame.” The single word was spoken in a tired guttural voice that betrayed his age and the great odyssey that had led him from Iran to Iraq to this village outside Paris. A journey still incomplete.

  Françoise took the hand and bowed her head, then passed the frail fingers into Weiseman’s custody. A flashbulb froze him; he did not want to see himself on the front pages shaking hands with Khomeini. Trevor would…but a large hand reached out and seized the camera from its zealous owner, and Weiseman turned to see Montana removing the film.

  The old priest took a labored breath. In a barely audible voice he said, “You will visit us soon in Qom when the revolution is fulfilled.”

  The eyes. It was impossible not to feel the intensity of the fiercely dark eyes that seemed to be hiding in the caves above the narrow cheekbones. Weiseman had met many world leaders, heroes and villains, but he had never felt as intimidated as he did now. The man’s severe demeanor conveyed his overpowering self-righteousness, the utter conviction of his own rectitude. It didn’t take a lot of thought to imagine the regime he would impose upon Iran.

  Montana dangled the roll of film in midair, fixing Weiseman with a vicious glare.

  Françoise whispered, “We’d better go now.”

  * * *

  —

  SHE TOOK HIM to an apartment he had never seen before—yet another elegant hideaway, in Neuilly, just beyond the Arc de Triomphe. It was her private haven in Paris, she said, away from Laurent and Jacques and the others who tried to run her life.

  She stepped back, slowly, and removed her scarf.

  It was time to talk. “Are you ready for this?” he asked.

  “Yes, David,” she said quietly, again the professional operative, her eyes clearly focused on him. “Together we have a better chance to get this job done.”

  “And Gramont?” he asked.

  “David, Laurent and Justin are allies but also ruthless competitors. They are in league more than you may know. You and I will have different orders to follow but—”

  “Yes, but on the important things—” he started.

  “Exactly,” she interrupted, “on what matters, we decide. You and me. And what matters most is…”

  He watched the infraction in her eyes shift back and forth, from collaborator to lover. Yet over his shoulder he imagined Trevor warning him: Go carefully, David.

  22

  WASTELAND

  TEHRAN WAS A WAR ZONE, Françoise had told him, a wasteland. There were rolling demonstrations every day, hotels and businesses were being torched.

  Upon his return to Tehran, the television sets at Mehrabad Airport were showing alternative sequences—first an interview by an American reporter in which the Shah froze for thirty seconds, unable to answer a question—thirty seconds on worldwide TV, a lifetime. Then came a second sequence in which the Shah, tall and straight in full-dress uniform, announced that he had sacked his prime minister and would appoint a military government to restore order. Iran was a civilized country, this more confident shah said firmly. The occupant of the Peacock Throne would not allow religious radicals to turn his proud country from democracy into anarchy.

  Weiseman rushed through the terminal, thinking, fin de régime—it’s almost over. He hailed a taxi. “Niavaran,” he said. “The palace.”

  The driver scowled. “To see the Shah?”

  He nodded.

  “Then we’d better make it fast, mister.”

  The driver sped off on the barren highway toward Tehran. The streetlights were out; only the half-moon provided an ominous choreography for the starless stage. The windows in the graceless apartment buildings along the highway were utterly dark. Occasionally a big oil container truck would pass by, its horn shattering the evening silence.

  Weiseman dozed off. The long flight had worn him down, and sitting in the economy seat between two young mullahs chanting incantations from their tattered prayer books had agitated him. He had asked one of the mullahs to excuse him so he could use the toilet, and the man kept chanting.

  A commotion in the street woke him up. They had entered the populated part of the city, and he saw young people in jeans smoking cigarettes and hoisting placards on walls.


  DEATH TO THE SHAH! DEATH TO AMERICA!

  On a dark lamppost, a body swung in the night wind. The body was wrapped in an American flag soaked in blood. He felt an overwhelming feeling of dread, a revulsion ready to boil over. He swiveled the window down, thrust his head out, and vomited onto the street.

  The driver said, “A weak stomach, mister? It’s the revolution.”

  * * *

  —

  AT THE PALACE, Weiseman ignored the salutes from the uniformed sentries. He got out of the cab, paid the driver, and slowly climbed the marble staircase. When he reached the top of the stairs, he stopped abruptly. General Hanif was coming out of the Shah’s throne room, passing him without a word. Hanif sat down on one of three gilded chairs near the landing, deep in concentration. Weiseman thought of approaching him, but the Chamberlain appeared and said, “Excellency, His Majesty will receive you now.”

  The golden doors through which Hanif had passed opened again and there was Mohammad Reza Pahlavi sitting on his throne, gazing listlessly into the distance. The deterioration in his physical appearance was shocking.

  “Your Majesty.” Weiseman took a seat to the monarch’s right, in a gilded fauteuil.

  “Trevor sent you,” the Shah said, “to see if I’m really still here. Well, after all these years, I can deal with death. But to lose the country to a fanatic…”

  He coughed and reached for a glass of water. “You saw Khomeini in Paris.”

  “I did, sir. He’s frightening; he’s convinced that he’s God’s agent on earth.”

  “I met him once,” the Shah said, “when I was younger. I tried to reason with him. He was nothing but a filthy little cleric. And do you know…” The Shah’s eyes glazed over, he was somewhere else.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes. I was just thinking.”