The Sunday Spy

by William Hood

  “I’m more interested in your Russian friends than your marital problems,” Trosper said.

  “I’m not involved in any conspiracy,” Alizadeh said, shaking his head. “And I don’t have any special Russian friends.”

  “No special Russian friends?” The Iranian was folding more easily than Trosper expected.

  “I do no harm, I swear that. You can ask him … ” Alizadeh turned to Widgery. “Tell them I never try to get information from you. All I ever do is tell you what I know about things at my office and about Iranians I know … ”

  “No harm?” Trosper interrupted. “Then why haven’t you told us your mother is in Russia, that her Moscow Center friend got you both out of Iran, that he had you trained and sent back to Tehran … ”

  “I’ve done nothing against United States, I swear it … ” Sweat moved along his hairline to the collar of his light blue shirt.

  “If you’ve done nothing against us, what is it you have been doing for your Russian friends?” Grogan asked.

  “I never did anything for Russians but training until I met Peter Lynch in Austria.” Alizadeh turned to Widgery again. “Tell them I’m telling the truth … ”

  “They know all about us in Vienna,” Widgery said.

  “Then you smart people know that all I did was tell my Russian that I met this American guy, almost too friendly to be real.” He glanced anxiously at Widgery. “The Russian said go ahead, find out what he wants. When it got certain he was going to make a proposition, my Russian said okay, go along, tell Americans anything they want to know about.”

  “Didn’t your Russian ask any questions at all?” Trosper said.

  “Just details about Mr. Lynch — where he lived, how much he drank, if he’s a gay-boy, if he has money enough, if he cheated on my pay … things like that.” He turned sheepishly to Widgery. “I couldn’t answer most of those questions.”

  “That’s all they ever wanted?” Trosper asked. As Alizadeh recovered from his surprise, his English improved and he appeared to be more like the few other Iranians Trosper had encountered, a good linguist with an actor’s facility for adopting the manner of other cultures.

  Alizadeh shrugged. “Once the Russians were satisfied I’d told them all I could about my friend, Mr. Lynch … ” Alizadeh hesitated, and glanced at Widgery. “After that they never bothered much more … except every now and again to ask what you people want to know about Iran.”

  Grogan picked up his notebook, took a pen from his pocket, and slipped into the chair across from Alizadeh. “Okay, now let’s get started — at the beginning, please.”

  But it was too soon to expect cooperation. The Iranian had not begun to unwind and wasn’t even aware that he’d already confessed. There was no way Trosper could deflect Grogan’s direct question.

  Alizadeh stiffened. He fidgeted with the threads where the button had torn from his blazer. Then he said, “No.”

  Surprised, Grogan glanced quickly at Trosper and turned back to Alizadeh. “No?” he asked. “No what?”

  “No talk,” Alizadeh said. “Why should I keep answering any questions?” For a moment the Iranian looked older than his twenty-nine years. “What do I get out of it?”

  “I can tell you what you’ll get if you don’t cooperate,” Trosper said.

  Alizadeh shook his head. “What you want is that I tell you everything so you can say it’s of no interest and give me nothing … ”

  “We don’t work that way,” Grogan said. “But you’d better keep it in mind that you’ve committed a felony and are subject to arrest.” “I want to stay here, have asylum and enough money to get started again … ”

  “There’s no money up front,” Trosper said. “First we talk, and then we decide about staying here.”

  Alizadeh shook his head.

  “Unless you speak up, our hands are tied,” Grogan said.

  Alizadeh looked at Widgery as if to ask for help.

  “It’s now or never, Gholam,” Widgery said.

  Alizadeh shook his head in disgust. “You people forget some things — I have friends, what do I need you for?”

  “What friends, Gholam?” Widgery asked politely.

  “You smart people know so much, you know next to nothing. How do you think I got into the foreign office? Someone told some big shot in Tehran foreign office to make sure I get a job without any troubles. A while after I got the job and was assigned to Austria, the same fellow — maybe even someone else — offered someone a big … roshveh … a gift, like a bribe, to make sure his good friend Alizadeh gets assigned to United States. Can’t you people understand that?”

  “I understand,” Trosper said. “But I’m not sure who in Moscow could have arranged it all.” He wanted to make it a matter of fact that Moscow was involved.

  Alizadeh shrugged. “A big shot colonel, a family friend … ”

  “Who?” Grogan said sharply.

  “Sergei Golobev, he’s my mother’s friend, an important man. He got us out of Iran, and to Moscow. He fixed it for me in Moscow schools.”

  “And got you back to Tehran?”

  “Of course.”

  “And got you trained for this job?” Trosper asked.

  Alizadeh nodded.

  “And made sure that you were assigned here?”

  “Of course,” Alizadeh said. “He was very particular that everything was perfect.”

  Grogan flipped over a page in his notebook before looking up. “That’s a lot of work just to get you an easy job in New York.”

  “Not for my mother’s friend … ”

  “Perhaps not, but it depends on what he’s had you doing in New York,” Trosper said.

  Alizadeh had begun to relax; he drew deeply on his cigarette. “Nothing,” he said.

  “Nothing?” Trosper said.

  “Almost nothing.” The Persian’s glance moved quickly from Trosper to Grogan and Widgery. “The most I’ve done is write messages saying that Mr. Peter Lynch hasn’t told me anything worth writing about, and twice pick up messages from a man here.” Grogan put down his pen. “What man?”

  “All I know is codename — Adam.”

  “Who?”

  “Adam, that’s all I know.” Alizadeh pronounced the name as two distinctly separated syllables, with the stress on the second — Ad-AMM.

  “What messages did you pick up?”

  Alizadeh shook his head. “All I do is exchange bags, I never see what’s inside. But the bag is light, maybe just some letters, or a few rolls of film, something like that. No atom bomb, nothing too serious.”

  “Where did you meet Adam?” Grogan asked sharply.

  “First time at rock and roll records at Sam Goody’s at 43rd and Lexington Avenue. When he used some dumb recognition question about Chummy Checks, I knew this was the right guy.”

  “A question about who?” Grogan asked.

  “Chubby Checker,” Widgery explained.

  Grogan glared at Widgery and turned to Alizadeh. “Who was the man you met?”

  “Adam, the guy I was supposed to meet,” Alizadeh said. “So I put my airline bag down and picked up his.”

  “Then what?”

  “I went to Pan Am building, to news and magazine store at the head of escalator from Grand Central Station and gave the bag to Mr. Wright.”

  “Mr. Right?” Grogan asked. “How do you spell ‘Right’?”

  Alizadeh looked puzzled. “V-R-I-G-H-T,” he said.

  “Sometimes Iranians have trouble with W’s and V’s in English,” Trosper whispered. “The guy’s pseudo is W-R-I-G-H-T.”

  “Correct, Mr. Wright is the man Golobev told me I was to meet in New York,” Alizadeh said. “Golobev was worried there could be some mistake, so to be sure, he had Wright come to Austria, so he could introduce us before I left Vienna for New York.”

  Grogan turned away from Alizadeh and toward Trosper. He wanted to make sure Trosper understood the significance of having an operative travel from New York to Moscow to Vienn
a and back merely to meet an agent. Trosper did understand.

  “Is Wright a Russian?” Grogan asked.

  “Sure, but he speaks good English,” Alizadeh said. “He’s probably at the U.N. or the consulate here in New York.” He turned to Widgery. “I want something to drink. Some juice?”

  Trosper motioned to Widgery.

  “You said you met Adam more than once.” Grogan said.

  “Just the other day,” Alizadeh said. He ran his finger around the sweat-soaked collar of his shirt. “Thanksgiving Day, at the big parade, right on the sidewalk, by 58th Street. We swapped bags, and then I went to the JR record store at 86th and Lexington and slipped the bag to Wright.”

  Grogan glanced at Trosper and raised his eyebrows, another silent question. Trosper nodded agreement — the method was plausible, well within the usual practice. Grogan turned back to Alizadeh. “Tell us about your friend Golobev.”

  By the time Widgery came back with the orange juice, Alizadeh had finished the story of his mother’s relationship with Colonel Sergei Golobev, a senior officer in the Illegals Directorate, and had described their journey to Moscow.

  “ … from when I first left Iran with my mother nothing has been right,” Alizadeh continued. “I was young, just a lad really, but I looked forward to Russia. Of course, once I got there I hated it and wanted to go back to Iran. Finally, Golobev put me in a special intelligence school to prepare for work abroad.

  “All I wanted was to get back to Iran and my old life, so when I was ready they sent me on an Aeroflot flight from Moscow in a navigator’s uniform. I changed clothes at the embassy, took my new papers — all perfect, exactly as if I’d been in Iran all my life — and went directly to my cousins, no questions ever asked. My Russian is fluent, and I’d been working on English. I wanted to enter the university, but my Russian said I should apply for a job at the foreign ministry.”

  Alizadeh shook his head in disgust. “I should have insisted on the university, but everything in Iran had changed. I hated the mullahs, their new government, and stupid religious rules. There was nothing there for me, no opportunity anywhere. So I was glad to get away.”

  Alizadeh attempted a slight, ironic smile. Grogan nodded a measure of encouragement.

  “Everything was such a mess — I was so lonely, I even got married. Her family is old-fashioned, the mother always in a chador, probably even in the bathtub. Everyone very religious. Like everything else, marriage was another mistake.”

  “How come?” Grogan asked.

  Alizadeh shrugged. “In Iran a job at the foreign ministry does not sound important, but it is all right. Abroad, I’m just a clerk, a nobody. As soon as we got out, even in Austria, and my wife could see the shopping and conditions, she was at me all the time, complaining about money, about people at the mission, about everything. She was worse when we got here. She even thought I should defect, get a good job, settle in Queens.” He raised his eyebrows to emphasize the irony. “But when she couldn’t understand there’s no money for defectors now, I tried to shut her up by admitting I already work for you people.”

  Grogan looked up from his notebook. “You know you handed her a loaded gun … ”

  “I know now,” Alizadeh said. “She’s already threatened to tell on me … ”

  “Who would she tell?” Grogan asked.

  “Ahmed Kazemzadeh. He’s the VEVAK security guy. In the old days he was taken by SAVAK and tortured. Now he’s a fanatic, and wants to pay back everyone who supported Pahlavi … the Shah and his gang.”

  “Could she have told anyone yet?” Grogan asked.

  “One minute after she says the first word I’m done for. Kazemzadeh’s full of hate.”

  “Does she know about your work for your Russian friends?”

  “Of course not, I never make that mistake again.”

  “Which brings us to the point,” Trosper said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Alizadeh’s nervous energy had vanished and he seemed listless.

  “I mean what you are going to do from now on … ”

  Alizadeh shrugged. “After this, I’m through with you people for good.” He took a deep breath. “Your game’s over.”

  Trosper shook his head. “Nothing’s over … ”

  Grogan looked up from his notebook, but before he could speak, Trosper said, “There’s more to be done, a score or two to settle … ”

  “Not possible … ”

  “You’re going to stay right here in New York, in place at the Iranian mission until you see your man, Adam, again,” Trosper said.

  “After that, something will be worked out.”

  Alizadeh shook his head. “Not possible. Golobev gives me my orders — he knows what he’s doing.”

  Trosper laughed. “If Golobev knows so much, how come we’ve got you under arrest?”

  Grogan started, as if to protest, but Alizadeh, his energy rekindled, cut him off. “No matter what you say, you can’t arrest me … ”

  “You’re in custody,” Trosper said with a reassuring nod to Grogan. “Believe me, it’s much the same … ”

  “I’ve done nothing against United States, and I’ve got immunity,” Alizadeh said softly.

  “Immunity may be a big thing for you,” Trosper said, “but if something blows, just how much immunity do you think the VEVAK’s going to give you? They’ll hang you before you can even say you’re innocent.”

  Alizadeh shook his head. “Not possible.”

  “And what about your wife?” Trosper said. “How long will they have to slap her around before she admits that you told her months ago that you’re a spy for the Great Satan? Do you really think they won’t hang her?”

  Alizadeh dabbed again at the sweat running down his cheek.

  “How will they dispose of your kid? Some special orphanage — a place where they can really impress him with the error of your ways?”

  Grogan remained motionless, his eyes on Alizadeh.

  Widgery shifted uneasily in his chair and avoided looking directly at Alizadeh, slumped forward, staring at the floor. In the half-light, he might have been a rug dealer about to offer a few dollars for the cheap safe-house carpet. He did not look up when he said, “Okay, you win … ”

  Grogan beamed at Trosper.

  “There’s just one thing,” Alizadeh said. “I’ve been ordered back to Tehran. We’re scheduled to leave any time after Tuesday … ”

  “That’s four days,” Grogan exclaimed.

  Alizadeh nodded.

  42

  Washington, D.C.

  “Exactly what does this leave us?” Duff Whyte tilted back in his chair and crossed his arms.

  Castle flipped his red leather folder shut. “In the words of the poet, we’re left with ‘but a mouthful of air.’” His glance lingered on the three FBI representatives ranged in front of Whyte’s desk.

  “Zilch,” said Charlie Mayo, deputy chief of FBI operations. “Big-time zilch is what we’ve got.”

  “It’s not all that damned bad,” said Roger Brooks. “From a CI point of view, we’ve identified Slocombe, and we’ve seen him swap the airline bags with Alizadeh — an admitted Russian agent — who claims to have turned the bag over to a member of the Russian SVR.”

  “We’re talking arrest and prosecution,” said Ralph Nugent. “On the basis of your evidence, the legal staff sees no grounds on which the FBI can recommend prosecution, or which the attorney general could possibly accept as a basis for going to trial. Even if Alizadeh is able to identify Slocombe in court, all you’ve got is the word of a defected Iranian clerk against that of a highly regarded State Department officer. Alizadeh may claim that a Russian official instructed him to exchange flight bags with Slocombe but he can’t prove it. The FBI can’t prove that Alizadeh turned the bag over to the Russian, and we’ve no proof whatsoever of what might have been in the bag. Even Alizadeh admits he doesn’t know what was in it.” He turned to Mayo. “There’s not a scrap of legal evidence against Slocomb
e.”

  Mayo’s face flushed. “Which means our only chance to make a legal case is to tape and photograph a meeting between the two, and arrest Slocombe twenty seconds after he hands over classified material?”

  “Unless Slocombe’s willing to help you out by writing a confession, I’m afraid that’s it,” said Nugent.

  Trosper added to the gloom. “As of now, we’ve got four days to make the case. Any time after that, Gholam Alizadeh will have to take one of his options — return to Tehran if he’s convinced his luck will hold, nip back to Moscow and his sponsor Golobev, or jump ship here and hope that we’ll take care of him.”

  “We’re authorized to offer Alizadeh asylum,” Mayo said. “But the moment he takes it, he’s out of the Iranian mission, and of no use to anybody.”

  “Why does Alizadeh think he’s being called back to Tehran?” Brooks asked.

  “It appears to be a routine change of post,” Grogan said. “Counting the time he served in Vienna, Alizadeh’s been out of Iran for more than two years, and that’s about as long as Tehran leaves clerks abroad. Transfer orders are always urgent and come unannounced, presumably to prevent anyone from making a last-moment arrangement to drop out of the revolution. The fact that his transfer follows Volin’s blowing the whistle on him appears to be a coincidence.”

  “VEVAK?” Mayo asked.

  Grogan shook his head. “Ten seconds after the VEVAK thugs first suspected Alizadeh, they’d have tossed him onto a nonstop flight to Tehran.”

  “Moscow?” Whyte asked in an unconscious parody of Mayo. “What’s going on there?”

  “Right now,” Castle said, “a couple of their back-room boys are trying to make sense of some troublesome facts.” He opened his folder and glanced at a page of notes. “When Volin defected he had two equities to peddle — Charlotte Mills, whom Volin was going to handle in New York, and Clyde Pickett. Mills was hit a few days before Moscow knew Volin had deserted, and her apartment was burglarized. As Mike Grogan points out, the most plausible reason for two such high-risk stunts in New York would be to protect an even more important source than Mills. Moscow can only have assumed that Mills had become a threat to Slocombe. As far as Moscow is concerned, the Mills case is closed.”