Night in Tehran

by Kaplan, Philip

  There was something else. He would need to find escape routes for those in the opposition, especially his agents who faced retaliation by the regime—including himself.

  * * *

  —

  IN A SMALL university office with windows taped over with sheets of brown paper, in the philosophy department of Tehran University, Weiseman met with Ronald Sims and Thomas Foster. Karim Nasir sat in the corridor just outside the office, at a chipped yellow desk, conducting a tutorial with a female student, keeping watch, ready to sound the alarm if any RGs came snooping around.

  Sims and Foster were good. They knew Iranians who would help, some with family members in Evin, others with financial resources. Sims said the border with Iraq was porous; his people knew it well. The Brits had been dealing with the Iraqis for a long time.

  “You remember Jafar,” Foster said. “Trita’s brother. The military officer we slipped out to Iraq. He’s in touch with Iraqi colonels and is sending us reports.”

  A soft knock on the door brought a tense Weiseman out of his chair. Karim Nasir leaned into the room. “Strangers are roaming about the campus,” he said. “You should finish up.”

  The door closed.

  “The Ayatollah will need another foreign devil,” Sims said softly, “after he lets your embassy people go. Saddam will be the perfect choice.” His eyebrows rose. “Khomeini wants a chance to get back against his jailer.”

  “Yes. I can see that.”

  Sims had more. “Millicent drove to the border a few days ago and talked with a general who was once close to the Shah. He said the Ayatollah had ordered them to make every preparation for war. The general told Millicent the ayatollahs were amazed that America gave up after that bungled rescue mission.”

  Weiseman thought this general was someone he should meet.

  There was another knock on the door. “Hurry!”

  Sims peeled aside the edge of the frayed drape covering the window. “RGs,” he said.

  “Who can we count on?” Weiseman asked hurriedly. “Inside the regime.”

  “Well, you’ve met the president and foreign minister,” Sims said, “but they’re compromised—useless. Find someone the old man needs, to lend a touch of respectability.”

  Weiseman wasn’t surprised it had come back around to Ayatollah Seyyed. He nodded to Sims, and then they hustled out the rear door held open by a nervous Karim Nasir.

  * * *

  —

  THE WORD FROM BONN was that the hostage talks were stuck. Sadeq Tabatabai was bargaining like a fishmonger, while in Tehran the RGs hauled the hostages out for daily humiliation before the waiting cameras of the world press. Every night, American television networks announced the number of days the hostages had been held. Jimmy Carter, his reelection prospects fading like a wilted flower, sat chained to his desk the way Trevor predicted he would be, devoted to his duties, in fear that he would be greeted with disdain on the campaign trail.

  The plans Weiseman concocted with Sims began to unfold. Middle-class families, bazaari who once led demos against the Shah, now took to the streets. A small private plane crossed Tehran’s evening sky dragging a fluorescent banner proclaiming, ALLAHU AKHBAR, God is great. The same words that routed the Shah were now being turned against the mullahs.

  Over the next week, while the RGs unsuccessfully sought to trace the plane and pilot that Weiseman had obtained with the help of Moshe Regev, citizens crowded onto Tehran rooftops and chanted, Allahu Akhbar.

  Enraged, the RGs lashed out, further cramming the cells at Evin.

  Printing presses cranked up. A new broadsheet appeared, Allahu Akhbar, tarring the ayatollahs for shredding Iranian traditions and undermining the hopes of the people.

  At the Tehran Polo Club, Weiseman helped Millicent out of a dilapidated VW bug. A tall man climbed out of a waiting military sedan, dressed for a walk in the woods. The general, who prudently withheld his name, told Weiseman he had been a young lieutenant during Operation Ajax, when Mossadeq was removed as prime minister. Now he said there would have to be another campaign of civil uprisings, each night in another part of the city. Peaceful demonstrations and acts of sabotage throughout the country would be necessary until Khomeini’s regime was chasing its tail. “It’s astonishing what people power can do,” he told Weiseman.

  The next day, a hooded youth rode his motorcycle along the Qom highway to within a hundred yards of the Ayatollah’s house. He pulled a chord on his backpack and became the first martyr resisting the revolution.

  Outside the American embassy compound, peering through high-powered binoculars, Weiseman watched the daily parade of hostages, searching for Chris so he could report to Roger Tyler that his son was still alive and well. He saw RG Nejab again, this time in a filthy golf jacket, leading on the American chargé d’affaires. Next came the bent bodies of those hostages who had refused to knuckle under and so had landed in solitary. Two women hostages, hair stringy, faces blotched from sleep deprivation and a rotten diet, were prodded to move faster by a notorious female captor called Bloody Dora, who was said to be the worst of the lot.

  Finally, he spotted Chris Tyler. The RG goading him forward was Selim Nasir, Karim Nasir’s son. The young man had found his calling.

  * * *

  —

  THE FIRST PERSON Weiseman helped to get out was, indeed, Karim Nasir, who had been under house arrest after a female student he tutored had broken down under torture by the Revolutionary Guards and accused him of being a Shah supporter. Colonel Yilmaz arranged to slip Karim across the Turkish border. “We’re in charge in Ankara now,” Yilmaz said. “No protesters to worry about.”

  Many others followed across neighboring borders. Some were soldiers, many middle-class businessmen, police, teachers, and students, the fabric of civil society repressed first by the Shah and Hanif, then by Sheikh Khalaji and Montana, now by self-righteous Islamists and RGs who claimed to have captured their future. No country was more eager to welcome Persians than Israel, which knew well the value of acquiring human talent. “Such a waste for Iran,” Moshe Regev told Weiseman, as Israel doubled its immigration quota for Iranians.

  Weiseman paid special attention to the young people who were Iran’s future. After the loss of Alana and Shapour, he was determined to save as many of those in their network as wanted to leave Iran. It was the least he could do to honor their memory.

  Camouflaged in worker’s clothes and a film of black earth covering his face, he personally drove a large fruit and vegetable truck toward the Turkish border at midnight, with a dozen students or more—he wasn’t quite sure how many—including Mahmoud, secluded among the packing crates. The truck was stopped and searched repeatedly at police blockades. Miraculously, no one was discovered.

  At the last blockade, only a mile to the Turkish side of the border, a squad of five RGs forced him from the truck, at gunpoint, holding a photo—his photo—and shining flashlights in his face. Two men twisted his arms behind his back and cuffed him. The squad leader reached for a radio phone. Weiseman heard him utter the word he most feared.

  Evin.

  There was nowhere to run. Flashlights were fixed on his eyes and the cuffs singed his wrists. A dozen young Iranians—his responsibility—faced death under the tarpaulins.

  RGs with machine guns strode toward the rear of the truck and began to remove the tarpaulins. Weiseman heard screams and gunfire. It was over. He felt sick with despair.

  To die on this dusty border.

  And then, Mahmoud came around the truck with two timid teenage boys, who suddenly turned and emptied their pistols into the squad leader and the two RGs who were detaining Weiseman.

  Moments later, his cuffs removed, the tarpaulins back in place, the dead RGs dragged to a ditch at the side of the road, Weiseman drove the truck across the Turkish border where Colonel Yilmaz’s men escorted them to safety. They immediately drove him back to Tehran in a Turkish military sedan, wearing the uniform and broad rimmed cap of a Turkish general. />
  The two teenagers insisted on returning with him. When he left them off in a mountain village outside Tehran, he asked them why. “It’s our country,” they said.

  A few days later, Mahmoud led a young woman into Karim Nasir’s house, where Weiseman was hiding out. She removed her chador. “I’m back,” Hannah Wiecorzek said breathlessly. “I heard you were getting people out.”

  * * *

  —

  TIME WAS RUNNING short. On September 21, Weiseman, in the brown robes and hood of a Muslim priest, visited a small mosque. He told Ayatollah Seyyed that Khomeini was gravely ill and that financing would be available to work against the regime, to counter the likes of Khalaji and the RGs and to turn Iran back to its people.

  The reticent priest surprised Weiseman. He said he had recruited a coterie of counterrevolutionaries who shared his concern about what Khomeini was doing to the country and the good name of Islam. Behind Seyyed, in the half-light, he saw Trita and his brother Jafar, back in Iran to support Seyyed’s campaign.

  “Don’t expect Ruhollah Khomeini to die anytime soon,” Seyyed said. “He’s been frail as long as I’ve known him. He may yet outlive you and me.”

  Seyyed said Khomeini had invited him to join the Supreme Council of Ayatollahs. He was going to accept. It would place him in a position to know Khomeini’s inner secrets, and to subvert them. He would have to indulge in unorthodox measures. It would be dangerous.

  Weiseman did not ask for details of his plan. He handed Seyyed a picnic basket stuffed with francs, marks, and pounds sterling. To get his people out, he gave Seyyed a point of contact, Mahmoud, who so far had mastered the art of survival, and Hannah.

  And he provided Seyyed with a code name: Persian Prince.

  On his way out of the mosque, he exchanged salutes with a bearded Hosein Hanif—whatever his ultimate motives, now a collaborator in the campaign to undermine the ayatollahs and RGs.

  * * *

  —

  THE NEXT DAY, September 22, the armed forces of Saddam Hussein crossed the border near Basra and Abadan and invaded southern Iran. Khomeini summoned the rage of the gods and declared jihad on Saddam’s Sunni infidels.

  Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s foreign minister, passed a message to Weiseman through Moshe Regev. “You see, you can depend on Iraqis as partners.”

  Justin Trevor, no doubt drawing deeply on his cigar and savoring his vintage port, sent Weiseman his own message: God has smiled on us; now they may let our people go.

  35

  MORNING IN AMERICA

  BACK IN THE State Department, Weiseman read the cables on the numbing negotiations ongoing in Algiers with Tabatabai, but his mind was on the spreading war along the Iran-Iraq border; on the Iranian patriots and foreign agents he had set in motion in Iran; on Seyyed, his Persian Prince; and on the hostages themselves, still held by the Revolutionary Guards in the American embassy. He stayed in touch every day on a secure line with Françoise, who said she was working closely with Alain de Rose, and kept him current on Gramont’s maneuvers.

  The White House was pressing for a deal before the November 4 presidential election, but the Iranians were not backing down on even one of their extreme demands. Some in Washington called for a halt to the talks, but Trevor brought Weiseman to the Oval Office to explain to the president that Iran would only concede when time ran out. Weiseman cited examples of the Iranian bargaining tactics he had encountered in Tehran. The president instructed his delegation to stay in Algiers.

  Weiseman thought back to the moment four years ago in the fiberglass-enclosed, bulletproof, inaugural parade reviewing stand in front of the White House, the marching bands, the strutting majorettes, the fantastic floats. Jimmy Carter in his moment of triumph, bringing Democrats back into power for the first time since Lyndon Johnson went down in the ashes of the Vietnam War.

  Nothing ever turned out as expected.

  * * *

  —

  TWO WEEKS BEFORE Election Day, Trevor called Weiseman to say he was flying to Sacramento to brief Governor Reagan on foreign policy developments. “The DCI does this with the opposition candidate before every election,” he said. “Iran’s the big issue; you should come with me.”

  They flew across the country in Trevor’s specially equipped air force plane, one of the backups to Air Force One, landing at McClellan Air Force Base, just outside the city. From there, they were driven to the California State Capitol with its huge gold dome. Climbing the marble stairs, Trevor said, “Reagan will be the next president.”

  Weiseman smiled, thinking, if Trevor thought so, it might well be true. After all, unmanageable crises are rarely conducive to presidential reelections.

  Ronald Reagan greeted them in his big plush office, under the California flag with the golden bear. They all sat down in green leather chairs at a highly polished round table. Reagan thanked Trevor for taking the time to fly out to California. Then he flashed Weiseman a broad smile. “I’ve heard a good deal about your exploits, Dave.”

  Reagan was getting older, but he still had movie star good looks and a natural charm that put people at ease. He had a fat knot in his necktie and a slick pompadour, and he began to regale them with political jokes that soon had both Trevor and Weiseman laughing out loud. Weiseman had never seen Trevor so amused.

  “Well, Director, I suppose we should get to the business at hand,” Reagan said.

  Trevor nodded and passed a black leather briefing book across to the governor, but Reagan left it unopened. “Why don’t you just tell me what I need to know,” he said.

  As Trevor took Reagan on a tour d’horizon of international hot spots, Weiseman reflected on the stark differences between this sunny, casual Californian and the driven, meticulous Jimmy Carter who read every memo, checked every last detail. As Trevor continued talking, Reagan nodded at times. Weiseman had no idea how much he was absorbing.

  “Governor.” Trevor’s tone became more sober. “David is our point man in Iran.”

  Reagan snapped to attention, the smile gone, his eyes focused. “That is important,” he said, and then Weiseman was briefing Reagan on the negotiations, on Khomeini, on his trail of agents in Iran, though without naming any names.

  Reagan glanced at his gold watch. “Oh, my, time flies. Well, I have just one question.” He grinned. “Are you folks going to get the hostages home before January 20?”

  Trevor turned his head toward Weiseman. “David? You’re the expert.”

  “Well, Governor, our people are working twenty-four seven on it. I’d guess Khomeini will sign off on it a few hours before you take the oath.”

  “That’ll be good enough for government work,” Reagan said, and stood up. He escorted Trevor and Weiseman into the marble corridor outside the governor’s suite, spinning tales, elevating his eyebrows, laughing at his own jokes. “I’m going to miss this place,” he said, as if he really meant it, then turned and strode like John Wayne back into his office suite.

  It was only then that Weiseman realized he had told Reagan he expected him to take the oath as president.

  As he and Trevor walked down the marble staircase, he finally asked Trevor the question that had bedeviled him since his most recent escape from Qom, when Hanif had gunned down Montana. “How did you orchestrate that one?” he asked.

  “Oh, that,” Trevor said nonchalantly, and put on his sunglasses to shelter his eyes from the California sun and Weiseman’s view. “Klein had a word with Hanif. I told you we’d take care of that.”

  Amazing, Weiseman thought, and the true Trevor—cold-eyed, cynical, pragmatic—but when needed, watching out for him, while hiding his bottom-line views behind an opaque mask.

  “Justin, whose side are you on actually?”

  Trevor chuckled in his trademark dry laugh. “David, on the American side, as always. But you see, the other sides keep changing.”

  * * *

  —

  THE NEXT EVENING, back in Washington, Weiseman watched Ronald Reagan turn his head
again, smile as he did in the governor’s office, and ask Jimmy Carter in the presidential debate whether America was better off than it was four years earlier, when Carter first took office.

  The American side, Weiseman thought, was about to change as well.

  Brains aren’t everything, Weiseman’s father had told him long ago. Life is about character, Johann said.

  * * *

  —

  IN THE END, Carter, the engineer, missed his November 4 deadline for freeing the hostages, and Ronald Reagan, the actor, won the election, just as Trevor predicted he would. Sitting in his patron’s Wyoming Avenue home on election night, Weiseman watched one state after another break for Reagan, forty-nine out of fifty, leaving Carter shattered.

  Justin Trevor, the ultimate Washington survivor, sipped his brandy and lit a Havana cigar. “Life goes on,” he said.

  While Carter recuperated down in Plains, Trevor moved quickly to fill the vacuum. At his instruction, Weiseman called Sadeq Tabatabai to say that President Carter was ready to continue negotiations for the release of the hostages.

  “Carter?” the Iranian repeated. “Isn’t Reagan president now?”

  Weiseman sighed and calmly explained that there would be a transition period until January 20, which would enable the president-elect to prepare his agenda and appoint his cabinet and principal advisors. Until then, Iran would still be dealing with President Carter.

  “I see.” Tabatabai paused a moment. “All right.”