by Jack Freeman
Meanwhile, a few miles to the west, Jack Johnson scanned an incoming telex message. UN Secretary General Hammarskold had died in a plane crash in northern Rhodesia that night. “Goddam Sovs. They sure fixed him. That’s one up to them. I guess it was too obvious to them that he was our guy. Bastards,” muttered Jack, as he headed to his camp bed in the corner of the Company’s situation room in the Grosvenor Square US Embassy. Jack was to be attached to the London Station for the foreseeable future. He was a steady Company man and unlike Max, had always focussed on the job in hand, whatever it was, without concerning himself with the reasons and the ultimate significance of what they were doing. Ours not to reason why, ours but to do or die, said that limey poet, Tennyson wasn’t it? That’s the way it was. He knew Max mainly from their work in the Western Hemisphere Directorate. Yeah, thought Jack, Max had his share of bad luck, but leaving the Company was an over-reaction. You leave like Max and what happens? You are sucked back in as a free-lancer, so you might as well accept that once in, you couldn’t really leave. As he drifted towards sleep he thought, I sure hope, Max and Azar really can handle this little assignment. She is an unknown quantity and her loyalties are uncertain, is she still with the RPI or more with us? But, hey, its worth a try and really, she could be perfect for the job , if she’s really on side.
“Hello! Is anybody there?”
Alan’s reedy voice came up the steep stairs from shop level and through the open stripped pine door into the flat and roused Max. Shit, thought Max. Got to sort out Alan so he can look after the place for a while when we are away. There’s a big job ahead. Got to get organised, get organised…
Max shouted back down from top of stairs.
“Ok, Alan, I’ll be with you in a minute. Don’t open up yet. I’ve got some things I have to go over with you, but before that, first get some coffee going.”
Azar was in the shower, so Max went down himself and was pleased to find that Alan had the coffee ready. As an unusual customer service, Max provided all day coffee for browsers in his shop and it was not just instant coffee, but real ground bean coffee. He had held out against frequent requests from locals for tea, milk, sugar and biscuits to also be provided. These Brits and their tea!, he often thought, People, please accept that this is an American beat style bookstore, so black coffee is the right thing. I am not going to mess about with the mysteries of tea strength, the order of adding milk and having sugar spilling about the place. The greats of the Beat generation, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso and all those guys were fuelled by coffee, and other things, true, but not by tea. One day he thought, maybe there could be a little article there for the Booksellers Monthly on effects of tea as against coffee on literature?
“Alan, there are a couple of things I need to go over with you. Azar and me are going to be tied up unavoidably with some other projects for the next month. We’ll be away a lot, but it’s all a bit unpredictable at the moment, and I can’t say for how long exactly we’ll be away. Anyway, basically, you will be in sole charge while we’re away. To sweeten it, we’ll up your wages to say £15 a week. OK?”
Alan grinned widely, brushed back the greasy shoulder length straggly hair that had obscured his pock marked face and said, “Hey, that’s cool. £15 a week! I can get really out of it on that! No problem, man.”
“Good, good. That’s great. Just try to open up the shop from time to time, especially on weekends and particularly on Sunday afternoons...that’s our best time since everything else is closed Sundays in this benighted country. Weekdays from 3-ish on through to 9-ish are good too. These are the times our great unwashed clientele tend to roam the earth.
A psychiatrist who needs his own services, name of Laing, might come by demanding that we stock his book. Try to humour him; it is on order and they say it could be a big seller.
Now, there’s a special order for everything we’ve got on the People’s War, the International Struggle against Imperialist Capitalist Hegemony and so forth…basically one of every title in the “People Power” section. I’ll handle this one, but you assemble the books for me and I’ll collect them in half an hour”
“No problem. All right-on stuff will be ready and waiting. Power to the People, man!”
Alan gave the clenched fist salute and began pulling books from the People Power shelves while whistling an out of tune version of “The Red Flag”. This reminded Alan of his recent student activist adventures that had got him expelled from the London School of Economics. So unfair! He had been leading a crowd bent on occupying the School Provost’s office and an elderly porter facing the crowd had found it all too much and had a heart attack. Alan couldn’t help that or the fact that the porter died soon afterwards. The authorities blamed Alan as a ring leader and now he was an ex-student activist. Still, he might return to the struggle one day, but to the broader struggle for a People’s Revolution. Getting the job with Max was ideal for Alan, offering, as it did, flexible hours and free coffee. The shop was a centre for the radical crowd and gave some status to Alan to be part of the scene.
Max went back upstairs carefully holding two large mugs of fresh hot coffee. Azar was talking on the telephone working steadily through her émigré contacts. He heard her say –
“Hi, Hi, it’s Azar. I just wanted to meet up for coffee and a chat. I’ve been out of things after the problems back home but now ready to get a bit involved again and pick up old contacts…”
Within an hour, Azar had two days worth of appointments. Max riffled through recent issues of the International Times looking for likely protest meetings to make his first appearance as a public convert to the people’s cause. There was no shortage of meetings for protest junkies. There were meetings most days on police brutality, women’s lib, racism, anti-fascism, anarchism, airport expansion, railway closures, motorway building, student power, drug laws, censorship and many more besides. Max ringed one with a pencil and said:
“Hey, before you go out, there’s a meeting tonight, 7.30, at Friends’ House on “Iran: reform or revolution?” Well, I think we know the answer to that one. It could be a good place to make an appearance?”
“Yes, right, I’ll see you outside on Euston Road about 7 pm. That’ll give me plenty time to see some contacts. Today I’ll be spending time in the coffee shops of Little Tehran also known as the Edgware Road. I’ll be totally caffeined up and really ready to rumble with the sell-out reformists by the time I get to Friends’ House.”
“Yeah, Friends’ House is likely to have plenty of our enemies there as well as friends and comrades. But are you ok? You seem very calm considering your little brother’s situation.”
“I’m ok now. Once the way is clear, I am focussed. Being a wreck wouldn’t help him. You bone up on the jargon and history stuff, so you are a believable revolutionary convert. Ex-CIA, one time peacenik goes radical! You are going to have to put on quite an act, but if anyone can, you can.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. One more thing...”
A long kiss, a squeeze and they parted. Azar walked down Judd Street and on to King’s Cross station where she took a crowded Circle Line tube train to Edgware Road. She then began stopping in the many coffee shops on that street to speak to fellow émigrés to whom she was well known. Her family had been part of Tehran’s liberal secular elite and had imbued her with strong sense of purpose and a feeling of entitlement to improve things for others, whether they wanted it or not. Her establishment background and connections had fuelled her huge self confidence. Her parents had fallen out of favour with the current regime after backing Mossadegh rather than the Shah in ’53 and her folks had wisely left for Zurich after Mossadegh’s fall. Azar had stayed on with an aunt and uncle and became more radical as the repression increased although she still drew a firm line between physical struggle with the Shah’s agents and terror tactics against civilians and she wouldn’t cross that line, unlike her ex-comrades in the new look RPI. She had to be strong to survive in Savak’s Komite Moshtarak jai
l. Although they hadn’t got round to harming her physically before Max managed a rescue, she had heard her comrades suffering and knew she could be the next to be tortured at any time.
Azar and the émigrés discussed the news of the day from Iran. The Shah was touring the world’s capitals, meeting with De Gaulle and Kennedy while crackdowns were continuing in Iran. Many friends from the old days had now disappeared into Savak’s jails and interrogation centres. One contact told Azar that her favourite cousin whom Azar had played with every weekend as a child, had been taken off the street by Savak agents and later returned to her parents dead. Savak said she had had a heart attack in custody but she had evidently been tortured. Azar burst into tears and banged her fist on the coffee bar table on hearing this news. She was also dismayed to learn that a fellow protestor from student days had been found dead in Zurich and it was thought he had been a victim of in-fighting between different anti-Shah resistance groups. It was said that the RPI had carried out the killing but no one knew for sure. But all her contacts were afraid of the RPI and were reluctant to say anything critical of that group because of its reputation for ruthless suppression of other voices in the broader anti-Shah movement.
While Max was alone in the flat he began a daydreaming reminiscence over a large coffee about his time in Iran. He had arrived in early summer of ’61 as one of the first of the Peace Corps volunteers. Yes, he thought, he really was pretty idealistic. As he saw it, he had served his country and the Free World in a number of tough situations from the Baltic to Asia and the Caribbean. All these assignments had involved considerable violence, although always for a cause in which he believed. Even so, by the end, these actions left him uneasy about the innocents nearly always killed and wounded in the process. Moreover, his last operations had been messy failures which had eroded his confidence in the management of the Company. At least, he had thought, with the Peace Corps, no violence should be needed, just good deeds and maybe reasoned argument against any people who thought the Communist way was better. Pretty soon after arriving in Tehran it became clear that the Shah wasn’t quite as popular as he had heard before. Sure, he had known that there would be dissidents, protestors, and even commies in Iran. But the extent of resentment of the Shah and the Westerners who had been brought in to speed up the Shah’s White Revolution was a shock. Close up, it was clear that the Shah was running a corrupt dictatorship and any protest was met with extremely violent repression. As part of Max’s brief he had held open meetings at the Peace Corps HQ in Tehran. There were Jazz and Coffee mornings on Saturdays and debates on issues of the day. That’s where he had met Azar. She came to speak at a debate on “Peoples’ Democracy or Bourgeois Democracy for the Third World?” Max was too distracted by her looks to take in her message about People’s Democracy as against Bourgeois Democracy; but he did realise her speech was dangerous, not least for her, as Savak agents always attended these events and took extensive notes. He took her aside after the session for a quiet word in his office. He explained her speech was risky to her at which she laughed and said that of course she knew that, but the main thing was that the speech was dangerous for the Shah and his cronies. Azar came to the Jazz mornings a few times and always had a private word with Max who justified their growing closeness as a way of keeping in touch with public opinion. Then one day Azar came to see him and was clearly scared. Her closest friends had been rounded up by Savak and she was sure that she would be next. Max offered Azar protection. She could stay at the Peace Corps HQ. Later that day they became lovers. A few days later, when Max came back to the HQ after a routine meeting with the Minister of Education, Azar was gone. Their room was in a state of upheaval and it was clear that she hadn’t gone without a struggle. That was for sure. Shit, thought Max, they even bust into Peace Corps HQ now. Almost certainly, Azar was being held now at the infamous Komite Moshtarak jail. He vowed to get her out, that night, if at all possible. Frustratingly, it had taken three days to confirm through contacts in the security forces, which he had through his previous employ in the CIA, that Azar really was being held in Komite Moshtarak. Again, calling on Company contacts he got a little gelignite, a remotely controlled detonator, an old Paykan car and a letter of introduction to the jail’s Governor. He explained to the Governor that he was still a Company man and needed to interview Azar over an anti-American plot she was thought to know something about. The Governor was happy to help the Shah’s great allies, of course and Max was allowed to see Azar in a low security office at the jail, with no guard in the room. Azar was pushed in to the room by a guard and gasped when she saw Max. The guard stepped outside. Max winked and began yelling at her to spill whatever she knew about the plot against the US Tehran Embassy and be quick about it. As he finished the question, he pressed the button on a remote control device and immediately the room shook to a loud explosion coming from somewhere towards the prison walls. He grabbed Azar’s arm and led her out into the corridor, where he was pleased to see a satisfactory level of smoke, dust and confusion. Sirens wailed and guards ran for the exits followed closely by Max and Azar. The guards at the gate had abandoned their positions and were cautiously approaching the blast site against the outer wall. Max and Azar went the other way, climbed into the Paykan and drove fast out of Tehran for the Iraq border and freedom. Max’s expired CIA ID, current US passport and a generous dose of US dollars smoothed the way into Iraq and onwards. Azar had family now in Britain and so they sought asylum successfully there. Max’s old CIA bosses let him know that they would tolerate this eccentric behaviour this one time and even help with Brit officialdom, but in return, favours would be called later, and now, later had suddenly arrived. Max came out of his reverie with a start. Shit, nearly eleven, time to get ready for his new role as an international guerrilla in the People’s War.
Max got the copious reading material from Alan and several hours, many Chesterfields and four large mugs of coffee later, he had refreshed his memory of key revolutionary jargon and history. What line to take on Trotsky? A great revolutionary. Stalin? A deviationist chauvinist. Almost a fascist. The Iranian Communist Party also known as the Tudeh? Completely misguided. Stooges of neo-Stalinists in Kremlin. The Mullahs? Medieval reactionaries, completely irrelevant to the new scientific age. RPI? Peoples’ true champions and wave of future. Why had he, Max, changed? It was a logical progression. He believed in freedom, but that was an illusion, a false consciousness, under capitalism. There could only be true freedom when the people were in charge and shared everything, not when the boss class took all the best for themselves and kept the people down with their lies, their phony religions, their cops and their armies. He knew what he was talking about. He used to be on the inside, brainwashed into working against the People’s international struggle and for the capitalist hegemony. Man, those capitalist boss guys were evil and would stop at nothing to push their interests. For the bosses, war, genocide and famine were just business tools for conquest and exploitation. The bosses didn’t give a shit who got hurt as long as they made big bucks.
Max felt himself getting genuinely agitated and began talking out loud to the empty room.
“Yes! Power to the People is only way! Its coming and nobody and nothing can stop it.”
Whoa, he thought, this method acting is really working. The Company laid on special sessions in the Actors’ Studio back in New York City in ‘52 and it wasn’t pure bullshit as most of the Company men felt at the time. That guy who took the sessions, Lee Strasberg, knew a thing or two about the acting game. Let’s face it, agents did have to act out parts, so learning how to act from the best was a good idea.
Then he noticed with a start that it was already 6.30 and getting dark out. Ok, he thought, time to head up to Euston Road and Friends’ House. Got to stay in character. Now ready to rock and roll.
After a short walk, as he turned on to Euston Road, he could already see a large crowd in the distance outside the venue. Getting closer, the crowd resolved into separate obviously hostile gr
oups. Rival revolutionaries and reformists were shouting loudly and gesturing at each other. Then, by a natural sorting process the various different revolutionary and reformist groups had banded together into two temporary alliances to form united fronts against each other. The confrontation had spilled out onto the road with just two police constables trying to keep some order. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement not to come to blows just yet, but to save that for later. So far, the aggression was purely verbal although fierce in tone.
With difficulty, Max made his way through the crowd to join the revolutionary side and quickly saw Azar shaking her fist and yelling strongly worded abuse at the moderates. Max had to shout to be heard by Azar.
“Hi. This could be lively.”
“Yeah… we’re really going to get them later. It’ll be great publicity for the cause and for us.”
The organisers of the meeting thoughtfully opened two doors, one on the left and one on the right of the hall and this arrangement conveniently allowed the revolutionaries to enter left, much to their approval. Chairs had been arranged with a passage down the middle and passages along the walls so again the left/right split could be maintained. There were also seats in balconies along each side. On stage, in the front was a lectern and behind that were two tables placed as politically appropriate and draped with slogans advocating either peace and dialogue or struggle and people’s war.
Max and Azar got aisle seats that were near the stage and in easy taunting distance of the moderates across the passage. The chairman appeared on stage. He was a frequent commentator for BBC on world politics and had been asked to chair as someone used to acting as if neutral. Nevertheless, wilder elements greeted him with boos and cries of “Capitalist lackey! Stooge!”