A Single Spy

by William Christie

  Alexsi wasn’t about to surrender just yet. “The tribes are not an army. Whether you pay them or not, they’ll fight only if they feel like it. And they have to feel there is some advantage in it for them.”

  “The arms they acquire in combat with the Iranian Army, perhaps?”

  So they’d given it at least some thought. “If they think it will be easy enough.”

  “So it can be done,” said Matushkin.

  Alexsi sighed. If there was one thing a Russian learned at his mother’s knee, it was to recognize the inevitable. “There are only a few good roads, and the terrain is not suited to flanking maneuvers. If the tribes will fight, any force can be delayed. Not stopped, but delayed.” What he was really thinking was that if he played his cards right he could spend a few idle weeks enjoying the rough hospitality of the Lur, on Zahra’s introduction, and then back to Teheran as if nothing had happened.

  “Very good,” said Matushkin. “Your connections are with the Lur, correct? The Shahsavan would not be so friendly, if by some chance they did remember you after all these years.”

  It was always like a little knife, the way they constantly pricked you. He’d always been afraid that if they ever found out there was one little secret he’d neglected to tell, he’d turn a street corner one day and find himself shot in the face. “You realize the Shah crushed the power of the tribes. If they get it back, and become accustomed to using their rifles for more than stealing sheep and raiding villages, they will be very difficult to deal with.”

  “That,” Matushkin said, “is a problem for the British. Not us.”

  46

  1941 Western Iran

  There was no way to put off the Lur any longer. The news kept pouring into camp, with that near-telegraphic speed preliterate people passed information by word of mouth. The British had crossed the border from Khanaqin in Iraq. The Iranian defenders at the Paitak Pass, who should have been able to keep an army from advancing up that single road through the mountains, had run away in the dead of night. Kermanshah, the next city in the British line of march, had asked for a truce to negotiate a surrender, and there were scattered Iranian Army and police units in full flight toward Hamadan to the north.

  Exactly what the Lur had been waiting to hear. Demoralized soldiers fleeing in panic were just their meat. And nothing Alexsi could do about it. Because that was tribal warfare. Even if the chiefs hadn’t been enthusiastic, the tribesmen would have gone off hunting anyway. And then the chiefs would have lost both their face and their authority. So everyone was inexorably pulled along whether they liked it or not.

  Which was how they’d wound up in the bare brown hills above the Hamadan road, at the very northern edge of the Lorestan range. Alexsi was actually much more concerned about their bumping into one of the rival Hamadani tribes than the Iranian Army.

  They were lying in shallow scrapes half covered by sand under the broiling sun. At least the Lur were sensible enough to dress in light and roomy trousers and long-tailed jerkin shirts. And loosely wound cloth turbans. Everyone had their brown sleeveless capes tented over them, as much for shade as camouflage.

  But the Lur did know their camouflage. Alexsi doubted whether anyone would be able to pick them out of the hillside from farther than twenty meters, and they would be long dead by then.

  Now, as in any ambush, there was nothing to do but wait. One would have thought the tribesmen would be ill-suited to it, but as long as there was the prospect of fighting and loot, they would lie there for days without twitching a muscle. And nothing larger than a mouse could pass them without notice.

  Alexsi dozed off. It would be fine with him if no one came along the road.

  He thought he was dreaming when he heard that same low, muffled whistle the Shahsavan had used. But he snapped awake and saw six travelers on horseback hurrying down the road. Beside him Jafar Khan firmly whispered, “No,” and the order passed down the line. In camp there might have been an hours-long argument that would only end in at least the threat of violence, but on a raid one and all would obey him without question.

  Alexsi took a very short drink from the water bag he was using for a pillow, and went back to sleep.

  He awoke again to the sound of excited muttering and vehicle engines. Now this was definitely something. He braced his binoculars on the water bag and focused on the hidden bend in the road in the far distance.

  The vehicle sound had been deceptively loud echoing throughout the hills, and it took some time before the actual article appeared round the bend. Alexsi suppressed a groan once it emerged from the dust and haze. It was a Rolls-Royce armored car. Essentially, a four-wheel Rolls-Royce automobile sheathed in steel armor with a machine-gun turret. The Iranians had a few, but kept them in the armored car battalion of their only mechanized brigade. And if this was it, there would probably be Czech-built tanks with a 37mm cannon following close behind. If the Lur were foolish enough to open fire, the day would become both very noisy and very hazardous in short order.

  Alexsi pondered his options. If he told Jafar Khan not to open fire the young chief most certainly would just to show that he was not to be ordered around by the foreigner. Better to wait and see what happened.

  But the armored car was followed by trucks. Now that was lucky. Perhaps it was a supply convoy with an escort.

  As the Rolls-Royce proceeded down the road, Alexsi was finally able to make out the details through the heat haze. Oh, no. The armored car was flying the British flag from its aerial. Before someone made a horrible mistake he passed the binoculars to Jafar Khan, hissing, “English!” The Iranian Army must have been running away so fast they’d disappeared down the road before the Lur had even gotten into position.

  Jafar Khan gave him a look of surprise, then peered intently through the binoculars. He made a thoughtful clucking sound with his teeth.

  Alexsi could feel him wavering his way into potential disaster. And decided it was time to come in with an argument a tribesman would understand. “If you thought the Shah hounded you, then make an enemy of the British. Your camps will be machine-gunned by planes, and you won’t have a moment’s rest.”

  Jafar Khan thought that over and nodded. To Alexsi’s overwhelming relief. That would be all he needed. The Lur thought he was a German. He’d asked Zahra to tell them that, to protect his Swiss identity. She’d agreed, since the Germans had the fiercer military reputation and the tribesmen wouldn’t know what a Swiss was in any case. German or Swiss, the British would dedicate themselves to hunting down the fellow who’d ambushed their column. And he doubted whether the Soviets would be terribly pleased about it. They certainly wouldn’t tell the British it was their man who had done it. He’d never be able to go back to his fine life in Teheran, and he most definitely didn’t want to spend the rest of the war out in the desert with the Lur.

  Jafar Khan turned his head to give the order. And before he could open his mouth one of the Lur got excited and fired a shot from his rifle. Alexsi listened in dismay as the tribesmen on either side, probably thinking they had missed the command, opened fire also. Then he just dropped his head down on his water bag in utter despair as every Lur on the hillside started shooting.

  The canvas tops of the British trucks flipped up and the soldiers inside fired back from behind the wooden sides. The armored car swung its turret around and the Vickers machine gun laced a long burst at the muzzle flashes on the hillside. The bullets kicked up a shower of dirt, stampeding a few of the more nervous Lur into flight.

  “Now, Walters!” Jafar Khan shouted.

  Of course he hadn’t given the Lur a correct name, let alone one that anyone had heard before. Alexsi shook his head and bellowed back over the deafening sound of the rifle fire, “Too soon!”

  The British were well disciplined. Rather than be stationary targets the Rolls-Royce sped down the road, the trucks following. The machine gun kept shooting, though, and found the range of the hillside. The tribesmen didn’t like it one bit. A few more spran
g up and dashed down the reverse slope for their horses.

  Alexsi watched them. As far as he was concerned, having the whole enterprise degenerate into panicked flight would be the perfect solution.

  “Walters!” Jafar Khan shouted.

  “Not yet!” Alexsi shouted back.

  And then Jafar Khan’s pistol was pressing into his temple.

  Alexsi was nearly overcome by the stupidity of the world. Absolutely no one would listen to reason. The armored car had almost reached the prominent dark-colored rock next to the road. The one he had marked out.

  Alexsi grabbed Jafar Khan’s wrist with his left hand and pushed the revolver forward. It fired across the hillside to no effect except to completely deafen him. With his right he pressed the telegraph wires onto the two terminals of the salvaged automobile battery. The wires sparked and leaped up in his hand.

  A very long second of absolutely nothing. And then the road blew up in a huge black explosive cloud, the armored car appearing above it, sailing far into the air. It spun gracefully and fell back to earth, slamming onto its side in a tangle of wreckage.

  The Lur actually stopped shooting to watch it. Then an exultant shout went up and they settled back down, pouring rapid fire into the convoy.

  The smoke from the explosion blew away, revealing an enormous crater that completely blocked the road.

  Alexsi could see the trucks hesitate. The ones at the very rear began to turn around. Then someone obviously gave an order, and the troops all poured out of the trucks and leaped into the cover of the drainage culvert that ran beside that part of the road. Indian Sikh soldiers in their khaki turbans. Alexsi admired their discipline. In a matter of a minute or two all the trucks were empty and the troops were under cover and steadily firing back.

  Now, German troops would have plastered them with machine gun and mortar fire, pinning them down. And then attacked from the flanks, rolling them up with rifles and grenades. But the Lur had no mortars and machine guns, only rifles. And they were not infantry. A hand-to-hand knife fight was one thing, but not close combat against disciplined soldiers with rifles and bayonets.

  The entire affair would have ended inconclusively because the British were not about to accommodate the tribesmen by either running away or surrendering. The Lur would have shot from the hillside until they ran low on ammunition and then slipped away as darkness fell. Or sooner if British reinforcements arrived.

  And Alexsi would have been all for that. But Jafar Khan was shouting, “Walters!” again, and waving that old Webley revolver in a most threatening manner.

  There was no way out of this. In resignation Alexsi picked up the second bundle of wires and pressed them to the battery. The entire length of the culvert blew up, throwing men and their arms and legs into the air like dolls.

  The Lur stopped shooting again and watched in awe. Until Jafar Khan screamed and they all stood up and ran down the hillside toward the trucks.

  Alexsi stayed there and packed up his things, leaving the salvaged battery in his scrape. He kicked sand on it for good measure. Too clever for his own good, as usual. He’d joined the Lur with a string of horses packing Russian gold and twenty-five-kilogram sacks of potassium chlorate from the textile trade. It was one of the Abwehr’s favorite recipes for homemade explosives: potassium chlorate mixed with crude oil the Lur stole from the nearby Naft-i-Shah–Kermanshah pipeline. With a little sugar added. The mixture packed into a large cooking cauldron and buried in the road. Then when he saw the pile of small-diameter pipe the Lur had stolen from the oil rigs even though they had no earthly use for it, the brilliant inspiration of loading them with explosive and mining the culvert. Because he knew soldiers would instinctively leap into it for protection. Only sheer curiosity, combined with his vivid description of what would happen, had persuaded the Lur to overcome their aversion to digging. Yes, he was a genius.

  From his boyhood with the Shahsavan he knew that the more Lur who were killed fighting the more they would blame him. And the more loot they gained the more they would love him. His plans had all worked perfectly, and it was the worst possible thing that could have happened. He was ruined in Iran.

  Alexsi trudged down the back side of the hill to find his horse. He glanced at his watch. About fifteen minutes to loot before the British outside the ambush area set up their mortars and stampeded the Lur into flight. And perhaps an hour or two before the aircraft came looking for them.

  47

  1941 Western Iran

  The campfires were burning bright. Against his advice, of course. Alexsi had both ears cocked for the sound of aircraft engines. The tribesmen were babbling excitedly and showing off their British Enfield rifles. And handling Mills grenades with an insouciance that kept Alexsi’s eyes fixed on available cover within diving range. A gleaming Bren machine gun sat in pride of place at their circle for everyone to admire.

  Then the sheep came out entire, blackened from the oven pits, on an enormous hammered steel platter, splayed out on a bed of rice.

  The speeches had all come before the feast, while they were waiting for the mutton to cook. When it came time to eat the Lur were eminently practical.

  The sheep’s scorched face was directly in front of Alexsi. Jafar Khan gestured extravagantly for him to go ahead. Alexsi politely demurred. Jafar Khan insisted again. Alexsi politely declined. Jafar Khan bowed his head and reached out and plucked both the sheep’s eyes. He set them on his plate, and then transferred them to Alexsi’s. Alexsi bowed back and popped one into his mouth. Even though it was quite good, the events of the day had killed his appetite. Nonetheless he chewed and smiled and then carefully set the other eye back on Jafar Khan’s plate. Knowing everyone was waiting for him, he reached out with his right hand and tore some flesh off the sheep’s cheek and scooped up a palmful of rice hot enough to raise blisters on his hand. Another nod and Jafar Khan served himself. Then you could practically hear the grunt of relief that the niceties had now been observed, and the other tribesmen in the circle around the platter began tearing off chunks of flesh and handfuls of rice. Pieces of fat were flying everywhere, and all you could hear were the sound of bones being cracked open for the marrow. They made a platoon of famished German infantrymen look like a party of delicate aristocrats.

  They were still gorging when Alexsi rose under the pretext of relieving himself, really just to gain a moment’s peace.

  As he picked his way through the obstacle course of tent lines, a voice off to the side, in English, “Mr. Walters?”

  Alexsi recognized it. “Hoessein?”

  “May we speak?”

  “I will follow you,” Alexsi said. Whatever this might be about, he would not be the first to walk into it.

  He followed Hoessein’s dark form through the clusters of black tents. Outside the final ring, but not too far outside. There were sentries up in the rocks. Prudent camp raiders never forgot about being raided themselves.

  Alexsi squatted down in the sand. Hoessein took a little walk around to make sure they were alone. Now Alexsi was definitely curious.

  Hoessein squatted beside him and said in a low voice, “Do you remember the offer you made me?”

  “Of course, my friend,” Alexsi said. He had marked Hoessein from the start. A young man of about nineteen who, unusually, had been to school in Kermanshah. Very intelligent, but by no means a warrior in a culture that valued the manly arts. The Lur had no truck with an intelligent man who could not also shoot and ride better than the rest. The city Iranians would always consider him a tribal savage, while the Lur looked down upon Hoessein as at least half a contemptuous city man. Part of the tribe but always an outsider. The very type Alexsi had been taught to cultivate.

  “Does your offer still stand?” Hoessein asked. “Because I have valuable information for you.”

  “Then I have money for you. Or whatever it is you might require.”

  Hoessein dropped his voice even lower. “They intend to sell you to the British. To make peace wit
h them.”

  Alexsi merely nodded to himself in the darkness. It was shrewd. Almost shrewder than he’d given the Lur credit for. He was not one of the tribe. By giving him up they would be able to keep the British arms they had taken, or at least most after surrendering a token amount. And gain some gold. And not have to worry about British bombers flattening their camps. No one did betrayal while hosting you to a feast like the Iranians.

  He said, “You bring me one good saddled horse, and three more bridled. Two full water skins, bread and fodder in the saddlebags. And I will give you one hundred British gold sovereigns. If you can be ready as the moon rises tonight.”

  “Cash on the nail?” said Hoessein.

  Alexsi smiled at the expression. Jonathan Swift, as he recalled. “Cash on the nail.”

  Hoessein pointed in the near distance. “The little bowl in the rocks, outside the picket line. You know it?”

  “I know it,” Alexsi said.

  “One hundred gold?”

  “One hundred. You will need to get the stock outside the picket line.”

  “And you will need to get yourself outside the picket line,” Hoessein retorted. “At the first rise of moon.” And then he was gone.

  * * *

  IT WAS quite literally impossible to sneak out of a tent filled with sleeping tribesmen. Unless, of course, you put chloral hydrate into their warming nightcap pot of tea. The women bringing the tray in, and Alexsi jumping up and exclaiming, You have the best tea. The Lur saying proudly, Of course we do. Alexsi opening the lid and breathing the aroma in deeply, saying, I’ve never tasted its equal. Everyone watching him talking and gesturing animatedly, and missing the chloral hydrate bottle tucked away in his palm being poured in. The Lur added so much sugar to their tea that no one even noticed. Alexsi toasted their health and poured his out between crossed legs before rolling up in a blanket and waiting for the drug to take effect.

  He pulled up a stake and slipped out underneath the back, leaving them snoring away or dead—considering what they had planned for him he didn’t much care which. And once again carefully picked his way through the tent lines. It wouldn’t do to be shaking anyone’s tent at such a late hour.