Night in Tehran

by Kaplan, Philip

  * * *

  —

  EN ROUTE BACK TO PARIS, Weiseman unlocked his attaché case and drew out a plastic cover with a single sheet of paper.

  You are to resume contact with Khomeini representatives. Go see Amin tomorrow. Tell him the Shah will leave on the 16th, directly for New York. Explain to him as eloquently as you did to me why we owe the Shah that much. You may cooperate with Madame d’Antou to learn the plans of the ayatollahs. Your reports should be sent directly to me, no other copies. JT

  So, Weiseman thought, Justin is ready to let the Shah come to New York. Or is this just a con, a cover for sanctioning official contacts with the ayatollahs? With Trevor you never know.

  He slipped the paper into his case and pulled out the cable Ambassador Palmer had sent the day before about his meeting with the Shah. Palmer must have snorted in disgust before delivering the mealy mouthed message the high-level interagency Iran group had coughed up.

  Our support for you is steady, but it is essential to end the uncertainty. We would support a military government only to end bloodshed but not to apply the iron fist to retain your throne. A Regency Council could supervise the military government.

  Since a Regency Council could act only in the monarch’s absence or incapacitation, the Shah had asked Palmer if Washington expected him to go abroad. And, of course, there was the problem of where to go, he added. Palmer’s cable noted that there was a long silence until he finally told the Shah he was confident that he would be welcome in the United States.

  Of course, Trevor instructed Palmer to say that; Palmer would never have said it on his own. So they were going to let the Shah come to New York after all. Weiseman thought, maybe his pitch on the mall had made an impression on Trevor.

  He drew out the third document from the plastic, the instruction encouraging all remaining US dependents to leave Iran, and the embassy’s reply:

  There is a strike by Iranian civil air personnel that has terminated air traffic control services at Mehrabad. Israeli and US aircraft are no longer permitted to land in Tehran.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN WEISEMAN ARRIVED at the big house in Nauphle-le-Château the next afternoon, Ali Amin was almost unrecognizable. He had traded his natty Western clothes for the long black robes and turbans of the mullah fraternity; a white beard covered his face. He seemed in a frenzy, complaining that the Ayatollah wanted everything done at once.

  So, just a spiritual leader? The pope of Iran would be consigned to Qom? No, Weiseman thought ruefully, I don’t think so.

  Amin whisked Weiseman into a room crowded with typewriters, tape decks, video recorders and microphones—the rudimentary weapons of a medieval revolution.

  “I’m here on instructions,” Weiseman said. “The Shah leaves Iran in forty-eight hours.”

  “We know that. Our reports are that he’ll stop in Saudi, then the military will stage a coup, and he’ll return, like Operation Ajax in ‘53. Hanif will be back to run SAVAK.”

  Weiseman brushed aside Amin’s paranoia. “Hanif is out of the picture,” he said, hoping it was true, but still edgy about Hanif’s contacts with Seyyed. “The Shah will die without urgent medical attention,” he added sharply.

  “So he’ll die, Inshallah!”

  Amin sat down on a wooden chair next to a tape deck, arranged his robes carefully, and stroked his beard. Weiseman leaned forward, their eyes now separated by inches. The door to the room opened. A woman in a chador entered; only her eyes were visible through the slits in her black nijab. “The Imam requires your immediate presence,” she said to Amin.

  The voice. He was sure he’d heard it before, but with the head-to-toe covering it was hard to be sure.

  He followed the folds of the woman’s chador and Amin’s robes through the ramshackle house and its clutter of modern technology, past journalists with cameras around their necks, past young Iranian lads chatting excitedly, convinced they had seen the hidden Imam. On either side of a closed door, two bearded bulky bodyguards slouched, Kalashnikovs lying idle on their laps.

  “Wait a moment,” Amin said. He entered the room and closed the door behind him.

  “Alana?” Weiseman whispered, and the woman turned slowly toward him. “Why?” he whispered.

  “Keep quiet, brother,” a bearded bodyguard growled. “You’re at the shrine.”

  The woman looked down. Had she been turned?

  The door opened. Amin’s hand slipped out from his sleeve. The index finger pointed toward Weiseman and curled, beckoning him to enter. He stepped in and saw Ayatollah Khomeini sitting on the same prayer mat as he had the night of his arrival in France. Sheikh Khalaji stood right behind him, and alongside Guido Montana glared, one hand on the dagger in his belt.

  Khomeini trained his limpid dark eyes on him and mumbled in Farsi. Amin translated. “You have something to tell us?”

  The old man coughed slightly and was offered a glass of tea, but shook his head, then nodded, almost imperceptibly.

  Weiseman spoke in English, knowing it was vital to be precise. “The Shah will depart Tehran in forty-eight hours for New York where he will be treated for the cancer. He is going to die. Our purpose is to allow him to do so in dignity.”

  He waited as Amin translated. The Ayatollah leaned forward to hear Amin. Then Amin translated his response: “If you do this, it will bring a great disaster.”

  * * *

  —

  WEISEMAN ARRIVED IN New York in the middle of an ice storm to await the Shah’s arrival. He went directly to the command post the State Department had established at the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The next morning the television showed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi gingerly stepping off the plane, the Empress Farah at his side. But instead of New York’s snowy JFK tarmac, the Shah was being greeted under a brilliant sun by the slim, mustachioed figure of Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat. The terminal sign in the background read ASWAN.

  Weiseman watched as the Shah and Farah, with Sadat and his wife Jehan, climbed into Sadat’s presidential Cadillac, with Iranian and Egyptian flags flapping from the front bumper stanchions. The vehicle turned in a wide circle on the tarmac and then drove off into the desert.

  The phone in the command post rang. Ali Amin pronounced his name distinctly, and then came the accusations of bad faith. The trip to the United States had clearly been a ruse. If the Shah was so desperately ill, how was it he had time to visit Sadat?

  Weiseman didn’t know either, but he wasn’t admitting it. “It’s probably a stopover, Ali. Sadat wanted to show his respect.”

  But Amin wasn’t buying it. “It’s Operation Ajax again,” he insisted. “Are you sure Trevor has told you the whole plan?”

  Not very likely, Weiseman thought, but he told Amin it must have been Sadat’s idea. Amin wasn’t buying that either. “Sadat’s a walking dead man,” he said.

  When the conversation ended, Weiseman needed fresh air. Out on the icy street he found himself surrounded by demonstrators in heavy parkas and ski masks waving signs. SHAH GO HOME! Even though the Shah hadn’t arrived student demonstrators, Iranian and American, were circling the hospital entrance just in case.

  A bus pulled up and suddenly the crowd doubled in size. The circle started to close around him. Now the signs were in Farsi. MARG BAR AMRIKA! DEATH TO AMERICA!

  Weiseman dashed back inside. From the command center he called Trevor and asked, “Is this a double cross?”

  “Absolutely not,” Trevor replied crisply. He paused an instant, then said, “David, listen carefully. We have confirmation that Hamid Fazli, this Guido Montana, is after your neck.”

  Weiseman couldn’t help himself. “No kidding,” he said.

  Trevor paused, as if startled that Weiseman knew. “Well, we’ll try to get him before he gets you,” he finally said.

  * * *

  —

  FOR THE FOLLOWING week Weiseman watched fitfully as innumerable TV news programs showed the Shah and the Empress convalesce in beach
chairs outside the villa Sadat had chosen for them, surrounded by a bevy of Egyptian bodyguards. He watched the Shah wave furtively to the press from behind a white lattice curtain and wondered whether Amin was right: Was Trevor arranging his return to Iran?

  On January 26, motorcycles escorted the royal couple back to the airport.

  Two hours later they landed at Casablanca, where the Shah was greeted planeside by Hassan II of Morocco. Another motorcade, with Iranian and Moroccan flags flapping in the Saharan sun, whisked them to another villa, this time in Marrakesh.

  When Amin called, Weiseman said, “Ali, he’s still heading west. It won’t be much longer.”

  On January 31, Weiseman was summoned to Washington. In the L-shaped office, Trevor looked up and said, “The Ayatollah returns tomorrow to Tehran. God help Iran.”

  Weiseman waited. There must be more. Trevor could have told him that by phone.

  “We’re recalling Palmer. It’s premature to send another ambassador. The president has appointed you special envoy for Iran. You’re the only one of us who knows those mullahs, who can prevent them from getting unruly.”

  26

  ISLAMIC REPUBLIC

  REVOLUTIONS BREED MASS confusion and pandemonium, rousing hope in some and stirring fear in many. When Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran on February 1, 1979, the full range of emotions was present on the faces of the crowds at Mehrabad.

  From his office on the seventh floor of the State Department, Weiseman watched the live telecast of the scene at the Tehran airport. He watched the Ayatollah parade under green banners with yellow Farsi script as if he were the messiah, there to lead Iran back to the Middle Ages. Cordons of bodyguards escorted him through adoring crowds grasping to touch his garment. All the women were shrouded in black, not a speck of skin or a strand of hair showing. Men beat their chests and tore at their hair. Children waved Korans at him as shouts filled the air: Shah raft, Shah raft…The Shah is gone, the Shah is gone!

  A cutaway shot showed a female journalist in a headscarf asking a mullah with a white beard for comment and was told that, henceforth, the country would be known as the Islamic Republic of Iran.

  Who was that mullah? Weiseman wondered. Was it? Yes. Ali Amin, a long way from Texas.

  Weiseman had few illusions about what this meant for Iran. He had seen it before: shameful photos of Austrian arms rising in the Nazi salute as Hitler drove through Innsbruck and Vienna to claim his conquest; gestapo thugs and German shepherds chasing him and his father; hiding behind the hedges in the Berlin Grunewald just before the trains left for the camps.

  Now was the dawn of a new despotism in Iran.

  He turned back to the TV, but the Ayatollah was gone, leaving behind only the debris and the wild crowds. Depressed, he got up to store his classified documents in the new safe they had given him, and then he realized he had forgotten the combination. He forced himself to concentrate, and it came back. As he twirled the dials, he remembered what Trevor had once told him: If you’re in a sensitive position and you’re any good, you’ll have enemies. So don’t neglect the little things; that is how they’ll get you.

  * * *

  —

  HE HEARD FROM Ali Amin only three days later, on February 4. “The Imam has appointed me acting foreign minister,” Amin said on a fuzzy phone call from Tehran. “But there’s no staff, and no files. The Shah’s men held a bonfire.”

  “We should talk, Ali, when you’re ready.”

  “We heard about your appointment,” Amin said. “We know you plan to relaunch Operation Ajax.”

  “That’s not true,” Weiseman told him, although he wished it was.

  There was no response. Weiseman could hear clicks on the phone, counterpart to the field of static. Amin obviously knew his phone was tapped.

  “And the Shah, he is…”

  “Still in Marrakesh. We don’t know his plans. He’s told us nothing.”

  * * *

  —

  SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 14. Valentine’s Day.

  The Revolutionary Guards attacked the American embassy chancery in Tehran and the complex of employee apartments, taking many of the staff captive. Weiseman called Amin on the emergency number. Amin uttered what sounded like a curse in Farsi, then said, “The Revolutionary Guards will be the death of me.”

  That might just turn out to be true, Weiseman thought, but his task was to free those staffers. “Can you call the Ayatollah?” he asked. “You don’t need this right after taking over.”

  He heard Amin suck in his breath. “The Imam is in Qom with Khalaji and Montana, contemplating our future. The RGs are closer to him than I am; they’re like Mao’s Red Guards.”

  This was no time for niceties, so Weiseman let him have it. He told Amin the way he handled this hostage taking would define the new regime. Amin promised to do his best—“But it may take time. You’ll have to be patient.”

  “Let me give it to you straight, Ali. If any of our people are hurt, there will be a new Ajax.”

  Weiseman had no authority to say that, but it worked. Twenty-four hours later, the American hostages were freed. But it was warning enough to check on the dependents and nonessential employees, and the classified documents still there. The brief seizure convinced the embassy that it was time to draw down. US officials, always eager to avoid blame, quickly cleared the IMMEDIATE cable Weiseman drafted, instructing embassy offices to ship all but the most essential classified documents back to Washington within forty-eight hours.

  Two days later, Weiseman boarded a flight across the Atlantic, heading back to Iran. At a stopover in Casablanca, an embassy officer handed him a cable from Trevor.

  Keep going: trouble in Tehran. Amin in hot water. The Shah’s not coming stateside anytime soon.

  * * *

  —

  A NIGHT LANDING in Tehran. Everything was black, not just the sky, or the women’s chadors and men’s robes, but even the Alborz Mountains ringing Tehran on the north side veiled in heavy cloud cover. The country seemed to be drained of all color.

  A diplomat had to sniff out what was hidden, the truths no one would tell him. Weiseman sensed that vividly now, as he experienced the omnipresent new police state taking charge—first in the airport, in the averted eyes, the excessive politeness and apologetic demands for his passport, then at the hotel, in the security man who awkwardly patted him down yet didn’t miss an inch. Behind the reception desk of the hotel, Daud stood officiously, a sneer on his fat lips, no longer the bowing worm who couldn’t do enough. On his lapel was the shiny new insignia of the Islamic Republic. Over his head, glaring out at Weiseman, was a portrait of Ruhollah Khomeini, proprietarily at ease where the portrait of Mohammad Reza Shah once hung.

  It took eight calls for Weiseman to get through to a nervous sounding Ali Amin, who agreed to see him the next night at ten in a Tehran suburb.

  Restless, Weiseman put on a polo shirt and dark pants, donned a warm jacket and wraparound sunglasses, and slipped down the hill to the main street where he purchased a ball cap. The perfumed smells of Persia surrounded him; he found them strangely seductive, awakening a belief in what this country could be. But the contrast with the waves of people in black was unnerving, bringing to mind Trevor’s maxim about how people dressed to suit their political circumstances. Ordinary Iranians were seeking anonymity; they were hiding in plain sight.

  Spotting a phone booth, Weiseman checked the card in his wallet and dialed Sammy’s phone number. The phone rang a dozen times. Finally, a man picked up.

  “I want to speak with Sammy,” Weiseman managed in Farsi, then corrected himself. “Shapour.”

  “Dead,” the man muttered in Farsi. “Shapour died.”

  Weiseman felt his chest tighten.

  “Who is this? Who is calling?”

  He hung up and moved swiftly down the street. Two big guys toting black batons stood just ahead, eyeing him closely. Looking away, Weiseman edged toward the side of the road and pretended to gaze at the snow-tipped mo
untain cliffs just barely visible through the smog.

  Act like an Iranian, slouch a bit, stay calm. Tuck the cap down.

  Okay. He pivoted to move forward and, suddenly, a woman was there, colliding into him. The niqab that covered her face must have obscured her view. Parcels in her hands tumbled to the ground and he bent to help her, his hand accidentally grazing hers.

  She shrieked in Farsi, as if she had been violated.

  “I’m sorry,” he blurted out in English. “I was trying to help—”

  The guys with the batons were on him, roughly dragging him to his feet. One of them pulled his arms behind his back and snapped on the cuffs. “Revolutionary Guards,” the other one mumbled.

  Montana’s men, he thought. Stay calm. Speak in Farsi.

  “I’m a guest of your government,” Weiseman said, struggling not to betray his fear. “I was invited here by the Imam as a friend of Iran.”

  They looked at him suspiciously, then began to whisper to each other. The cuffs were cutting into his wrists; his hands were already numb.

  He told himself, don’t let on that you’re American.

  “I have an appointment with the Imam today, at 5:00 p.m.”

  They checked their watches, whispered together again. The guy who cuffed him came right up into his face, trying to read him through his eyes. There was spittle on his lips and food in his beard. He smelled like dirty socks; he clearly hadn’t washed for days.

  A streetcar clattered by and stopped near them.

  His heart was pounding violently; he was sure they would drag him to a tiny, dirty cell in Evin Prison. He was claustrophobic, fearful that this time there would be no reprieve. “It’s a misunderstanding,” he said, aware that it wasn’t what he said that mattered but the confidence and certainty that he could project to his captors. It was vital not to show fear. “The lady didn’t see me. I was trying to help recover her parcels. I’m sincerely sorry.”