Night in Tehran

by Kaplan, Philip

  This confirmed what Yasmine had told him, and what he just heard from Françoise. The the mullahs wanted him dead, and Françoise. Why hadn’t Trevor told him this directly?

  What was going on?

  O’Brien smirked, as if reading his mind. “You’re over your head, Weiseman. They’re setting you up.”

  “They? And who is they?”

  “The French have got you all twisted around. You’re following your cock instead of your head. Klein warned you. We’re watching to make sure you don’t give away the store.”

  The spook turned on his heel and strode down the avenue. Weiseman watched him go, past the church, around the corner. He watched O’Brien disappear, then waited until he’d regained his composure, and walked past the flower stalls and headed toward the Place de la Concorde. It was time to talk to Laurent.

  * * *

  —

  ONCE ACROSS THE bridge, Weiseman continued along the quai, past the bouqinistes, with their paperbacks wrapped in plastic to escape the mildew of the Seine pulsing along just below. At the Quai d’Orsay, he asked for Gramont. The clerk called up and told him, to his surprise, that Gramont was ready to receive him. A young man wearing a green tie led him upstairs and said, “The Count will be right with you.”

  Forty minutes later, Weiseman was still waiting and, checking his watch angrily one last time, he got up to leave. At which point the inner office door slid open, as if programmed. “David, they didn’t tell me you were here. Come in…come in. Sit down. A cigarette? Oh, I forgot, you don’t smoke.”

  “I saw Françoise this morning,” Weiseman said.

  “Yes, I know.” Gramont lit up a Gauloise and took a careful puff. “Tu permitte?”

  Weiseman watched him preening like an ostrich. He’d won and was relishing it.

  “I have to fly to Washington in the morning, Laurent, to report.”

  “Of course, Justin will want to know.”

  “I want to know what you’re willing to tell me.”

  Gramont crushed out his cigarette. Mixed with his air of triumph was a nervous tension, as if he were aware that the road ahead would be rocky, that the ayatollahs would not be so easy to control.

  “Well, he’s here now,” Gramont said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

  “If it’s just a matter of time, why push him out?”

  “Please, David,” Gramont said. He spread his manicured hands, like an entertainer awaiting applause. “We get the credit this way. For helping, in our modest way.”

  Weiseman repeated the adage from memory. “Don’t forget what Churchill said. ‘You’ll be amazed at the extent of their ingratitude.’ Do you really think you can work with the mullahs?”

  Gramont shrugged. “Who knows? They’re almost completely egoistic; they have little room for understanding anyone else’s interests.”

  Weiseman tried not to remark on the irony of Gramont being the one to make that observation.

  Gramont rose, made the journey to an elegant Empire armoire, and drew out a bottle of whiskey. “A small glass?”

  “A bit early for me.”

  Gramont poured himself a glass, swallowed it down, and wiped his lips with a starched, white cloth napkin. Weiseman studied him carefully; there were deeper lines in the Frenchman’s sculpted face than he had noticed before. Perhaps even for him, playing a dirty game for the Élysée was taking its toll.

  “It won’t be so easy,” Gramont said, partly to himself, then put down the glass and returned to his chair. “We’ll have to work together after Khomeini arrives, to keep him in line.”

  Weiseman almost laughed. “So, you’ve decided we’ll work together…now?”

  Gramont shrugged again. “It’s our métier, David. You know that. Justin knows.”

  Of course. Déformation professionnel.

  Weiseman got up. “Is there anything else?”

  “Just one thing. You want to know about Françoise. She’ll tell you what you want to know. But you need to protect her, or it will be on your head.”

  “My head?” Typical of Gramont, deflecting his responsibility when he was the one putting her in danger.

  “You still don’t understand?” Gramont spoke so softly that Weiseman had to strain to hear him. “Didn’t Yasmine tell you?”

  * * *

  —

  THE YELLOW BRICK house on the corner of the Rue de Vaurigard and the Rue de Médicis wore a name tag in the form of a gold plaque on a stone pillar: VILLA SCHREIBER. The descending sun cast a patina of auburn light on the blue tile roof. In the glare, no lights could be seen from inside the house. Still, it was seven o’clock, the appointed time. Weiseman knocked twice on the door.

  It opened, and a maid in a black dress and white apron said, “Bonsoir, Monsieur Weiseman.”

  She led him through a vestibule to a set of double doors twelve feet high.

  “Entré, monsieur. Ils vous attendent.” They’re waiting for you.

  He opened the doors. Françoise was seated on a love seat. She wore a straight black dress and a single string of pearls. Her hands were folded tightly in her lap. Jacques Schreiber, in a red velvet smoking jacket, sat beside her, for all appearances the husband and paterfamilias. Standing behind them in black tie was Laurent Gramont, like the godfather in a family portrait.

  “Take a seat, Monsieur Weiseman,” Jacques said. He tapped the ashes of a cigar into a swanlike ashtray on a side table. “Please, you’re our guest.”

  There was an overstuffed sofa facing them, but Weiseman chose instead a straight-backed fauteuil, also facing them. “You have something to tell me,” he said, and crossed his legs.

  “It should come from Françoise,” Jacques said dryly. “We’ve decided you need to know.”

  Gramont nodded and, as if on cue, she leant slightly forward. Weiseman couldn’t help noticing the grace of her movements in the low lights.

  “David, Empress Farah is my cousin.”

  Weiseman was rarely surprised anymore to learn of the connections between high societies in Europe and the Mideast. Still, this caught him off guard. He stared at her as she went on.

  “For years we worked with the Shah’s regime, like America, until the murders here in Paris. We couldn’t allow the Iranian civil war to be fought here.”

  “We? Who is we, Françoise?”

  “She’s talking about France,” Gramont said. “Me, and Françoise, and Jacques.”

  Jacques? He turned toward Françoise. “Then you’ve been playing me all along. All the stories about Jacques working with the gestapo…”

  “The gestapo part was true,” Gramont said. “So was most of the rest, except—”

  “I was arrested after the war,” Jacques interrupted. “There were, shall we say, intense inquiries in the Rue des Saussaies, the same cellars my German friends used during the occupation. I was offered a deal I could not refuse: collaboration with the Sûreté against Moscow, or the gallows.” He shrugged. “Sauve qui peut, you might say. It was the Cold War. Over time, my network expanded, in China, the Middle East. Now Iran.”

  Gramont cleared his throat. “The arms dealer cover enabled him to turn up wherever he was needed. Arms dealers go to trouble spots. Using him was an inspiration, from Françoise.”

  Weiseman glared at Jacques Schreiber.

  Jacques flicked the ashes of his cigar back into the swan ashtray. “We are a professional couple,” he said. “For operations.” And then, a sardonic smile. “Of course, I’m only human.”

  “You’re not,” Françoise said cuttingly, “and nothing ever happened.”

  Gramont fixed Jacques with the withering look of contempt reserved by a French aristocrat for the nouveaux riche. “The sordid compromises of our profession,” he said wearily.

  Jacques chuckled, then crushed his cigar in the swan as if he was burning it into the chest of a prisoner in the cellars at the Rue des Saussaies. “Please, Monsieur Weiseman. There’s no need to be morose. Nor sentimental. Un petit charade, c’est tou
t. Nothing more.”

  He rose from the love seat, checked the back button on his wallet pocket as if by habit. “I think my part in this little drama is over. There is something pressing I must attend to.”

  Weiseman watched Jacques leave the room and slip on a suit jacket, then heard him tell the maid, “I’m going out, Celeste,” before hearing the door close behind him.

  Gramont poured himself a whiskey. “Françoise has been with us since she left the university,” he said. “She’s an accomplished agent, one of our best, but of course undeclared. It’s imperative that her role remain secret.”

  Abruptly, he downed the whiskey.

  “In fact, she’s more than an agent to me. She is a special responsibility. Her father and I were comrades during the war. He died during the Nazi invasion.”

  Gramont kept talking. “When the two of you met, we saw our chance to work with America to deal with the murders on our streets and the fin de régime in Iran. Now we’re at the most sensitive phase. When you see Justin, tell him our agent has won the trust of Khomeini, that there is a way ahead to protect our mutual interests in Iranian oil after the Shah departs.”

  Weiseman was still taking in the fact that he had been a “chance” to them—that he had been Françoise’s assignment. “When the two of you met, we saw our chance…”

  “And Françoise?” he spit out at Gramont. “What is your special responsibility to her, Laurent? That is, if she survives this—if Montana doesn’t kill her.” He couldn’t help but add sardonically, “Which of course, will ‘be on my head.’ ”

  Gramont ignored his anger. “You and she will work to tighten the screws on the ayatollahs,” he said, “Just as you asked. Just as she promised.”

  Gramont rose, straightened out his tuxedo jacket, adjusted his cufflinks just so. “You and Françoise will want to be alone now. If you like, we’ll have a car take you to the airport in the morning.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Weiseman snarled.

  Gramont nodded, started toward the open door, then turned. “Oh yes, bon voyage, David. My best to Justin.”

  Weiseman watched the door close behind Gramont, doubtless off to some official function in his tux, the ultimate cynic, patrician, and patriot…like Trevor.

  Françoise got up and went to a nearby side table to put on a radio—to defeat any listening devices, Weiseman guessed. “David, beyond my relationship with the Empress, there was nothing here tonight you didn’t know before. In our profession we use people, often terrible people to achieve our aims.”

  “That’s what we’ve been doing with Jacques—”

  “And me.”

  She stared at him deliberately for a long moment before saying, “No longer,” without breaking her gaze.

  The radio played on in the background, some bad French rendering of a bad American pop song.

  Finally, Weiseman said, “Watch out for Gramont,” before turning on his heel.

  “David—” She stopped him. “You do understand: Laurent is the one who is vulnerable here. He convinced the Élysée to take Khomeini out of Iraq, to bring him to Paris. When it all goes wrong it will be Laurent who will be at risk, and no one will know him.”

  Weiseman took it in and nodded. “But you and I are still the ones with a target on our backs,” he said as he left.

  25

  FAST FORWARD

  AN AGENCY CAR took Weiseman from Dulles Airport to the front entrance of CIA headquarters, where a guard led him to the director’s limousine. The guard opened the left rear door of the armored car, and Weiseman sat on the plush, black leather seat. Then he waited for forty minutes, the same amount of time to the minute that Gramont had kept him waiting at the Quai d’Orsay. On the minute, Trevor silently entered the right rear seat—pride of place—and then they were speeding down the George Washington Parkway under the canopy of pine trees concealing the road as though it were a state secret. Trevor did things his way, Weiseman knew, so he waited in silence until the limo pulled up before the Washington Monument.

  “Let’s take a walk,” Trevor said, and led him along the path beside the reflecting pool. Two crew-cut bodyguards trailed behind, tiny communication buds in their ears, their reflections bobbing images in the water. “We saved the Shah once before,” Trevor said. “Not again.”

  “Justin, he’s ready to go. He looks like a mummy.”

  Trevor kept moving forward. “Ajax may be dead,” he snapped, “but we still need a replacement for the Shah. There must be someone. You have to give me options. That’s why I sent you out there. You don’t expect me to just go along with Gramont, do you?”

  Weiseman stared off across the water at the Jefferson Memorial and thought, Here we go, then said, “There are two generals…”

  Trevor waited for more.

  “It’s too late,” he finally stuttered. “Things have to happen before Khomeini arrives.”

  “Yes,” Trevor mused in hasty agreement, missing Weiseman’s point and going on as if speaking to himself. “A fait accompli to checkmate Laurent. We need that.”

  Weiseman, walking a step behind his slowly pacing boss, was more convinced than ever that Trevor and Gramont were playing their own double games—each keeping all avenues open, all options available, never giving up until the last card was played and they ran out of options. He noted, too, that his normally cold-blooded mentor was personalizing things with Gramont…and he suddenly wondered whether Jacques was reporting behind Gramont’s back to Trevor. Jacques, he knew, wouldn’t hesitate to double-cross the arrogant count.

  Trust was a limited commodity among intelligence operatives.

  Regardless, Weiseman knew it was too late to find a replacement for the Shah—Trevor was going to need to form some kind of liaison with the ayatollahs

  “I’ve met Khomeini,” he said.

  Trevor stopped at that, turned, and waited for Weiseman to catch up. “I’ve read your report. Tell me about him,” he said, striding off as soon as Wesieman was beside him.

  “Ali Amin says he’ll be kept in Qom as spiritual leader of Iran. But that’s ridiculous. Khomeini is absolutely fearsome. He’ll be calling the shots.”

  “Still,” Trevor said, “we should talk again to Amin. He’s a professor at UT, isn’t he?”

  “Why not?”

  “And there’s an ayatollah who distrusts Khomeini?” Trevor was fully alert now, sensing an opening, but Weiseman wouldn’t name Seyyed, not even to Trevor. Trevor had once warned him: words fly, names fly.

  “Of course, Justin, we have assets—the ayatollah you mentioned, a network of students and businessmen and younger military officers. The Turks and Israelis. The Brits are being helpful.” He couldn’t bring himself to mention Tariq Aziz, even though he was sure Trevor was probably pondering an Iraqi option.

  They arrived at a bench and Trevor slumped onto it. “Go on,” he said.

  “And there’s Hanif. He’s gone underground, calling in his chips. He has some kind of link to our ayatollah. He told me he had your backing.”

  A plane soared above them, banking for the final descent to National Airport. Trevor tracked the plane, his right hand shading his eyes from the sun. Finally, he turned toward Weiseman. “Well, Hanif would say that, wouldn’t he.”

  Weiseman allowed a half smile to cross his lips. He’d always enjoyed Trevor’s form of diplomatic ballet. He was his mentor, after all. “Justin, the French are ready to move Khomeini in at any moment. If we don’t preempt now, we’ll have to wait until the people feel enough pain to rise up against the mullahs. That will take a very long time.”

  Trevor merely nodded and looked lost in thought.

  Like musical chairs, Weiseman thought, Trevor and Gramont are watching to see who will be left standing, with Serge Klein doubtless there to do the dirty work.

  “You’ll go back out there,” Trevor finally said quietly. “We’ll announce our support for the moderates.”

  “That would be the fastest way to get them ki
lled.”

  Trevor’s face seemed to age before him, the grooves and tributaries deepened as if plowed. Weiseman could sense the calculations underway in his patron’s mind.

  “Gramont called me,” Trevor finally said.

  Ah, finally, thought Weiseman.

  But then Trevor said something unexpected. “Khomeini’s people warned the French against the Shah receiving exile in Paris, that whoever takes him will pay a heavy price.”

  “That’s outrageous,” Weiseman snapped. “The Shah was our ally for thirty-seven years. Other leaders notice how we treat allies who get in trouble.”

  The stillness along the mall was deafening.

  Weiseman tried again. “I’ve met these mullahs, Justin. They’ll build a fundamentalist state. They’ll oppose us all over the Middle East. They’ll have their own SAVAK. They already have a contract killer, Guido Montana, and he’s targeted me.”

  Trevor said, “I know about Hamid Fazli.”

  Now, Weiseman thought, this is the time to confront him.

  “Sir, we have a responsibility, whatever the consequences.”

  Trevor rose from the bench and wiped an alien bead of perspiration from his forehead. “Whatever the consequences, David? You can’t mean that. Consequences are all that matter.”

  “No, Justin. The Shah should be treated in New York, at Sloan Kettering, with no apologies. We’re a humane people. The mullahs will need us when they take over.”

  Trevor stared at him a moment, then shook his head and rose from the bench. “You’re disappointing me, David. My analysts tell me that that will lead to an outcry against us in Tehran. I want you to come up with a plan that gets us out of this mess. And tell me what we really should do about Pahlavi.”

  So, Weiseman thought, he’s just Pahlavi now. To Justin Trevor, he’s already a dead man. They’d had these differences over and over, going all the way back to Prague—Trevor telling him that only power counted and disdaining what he termed sentimentality, and Weiseman insisting that the human factor must be accounted for.

  Perhaps it was a generational thing, Weiseman sometimes thought, but at bottom, he realized that when it really mattered, he was still Johann’s son.