----
In contrast to the southern part of the city, Tehran’s northern section with broad roads and avenues, one-and two-story houses resembled a rural European town.
The staff car pulled up to the address on Kakh Street, an elegant section near Khayaban Pahlevi. Mayfield got out and walked up to a house overlooking the street. Across the top floor was a wooden screen, a closed-in gallery so women could gaze outside without being seen by passersby. He stood there for a long time, aware that she was hidden, peering out from behind the screen. Finally, a window opened and the woman stared down at him as if she were expecting him.
“It’s time we talked,” he said simply and waited.
“I’ll be down in a moment,” Julia Salinger said. And then she closed the window.
-Eleven-
Tehran. The Palace Hotel.
Salinger arrived back at his hotel shortly after nine, collected his key from the front desk and went upstairs. All he wanted at this hour was a hot bath, a drink, and time to process what he had learned in the Cairo office and during his visit with the Iranian police chief.
He unlocked the door. Julia sat in a winged chair beneath a lamp’s gray glow that shone like a hospital light. Her legs were tucked beneath her. “I had to come see you, Booth,” she said, sitting very still. “I hope you don’t mind.”
What was he supposed to say? He hadn’t seen his wife for months, and had long ago resigned himself he would never see her again. “Have you waited long? If I had known you were here . . .”
“That’s okay,” Julia said. “I enjoyed sitting here waiting among your things. It gave me time to think about what I was going to say. For some reason I wanted you to know I was aware that you were back. Sorry if that bothers you.”
Salinger walked to the bar and poured two scotches. He supposed that was still her favorite. He came over, handed her the drink, and then sat in the opposite chair.
They talked in low voices as if everything they said were new secrets. They discussed small things, mutual friends they had known, small, insignificant events passing through one’s life over the months of being apart, until finally the words seemed to die away.
Her father was William Darwin, a British officer in the First World War, who had defended the Khuzistan oilfields against rebel Quashqai tribes led by German agents. He had also considered himself an adequate amateur archaeologist passing his time with his daughter in the surrounding sites outside of Tehran. Julia’s mother died when she was young, and was rarely discussed. Her father died of old battle wounds the following year, but not before he expressed his last wish was she study art in London and expand her artistic gift. Julia had been teaching for two years at Oxford when she left on sabbatical to Cairo where she and Salinger met again.
For Salinger the time had melted away so quickly. Was it that long ago he stood in the morning air in front of the Naderi Café with his father? How old was he? Fourteen? A loaded Ford ‘camel’, a truck overloaded with luggage and boxes, ‘University Museum’ stenciled across the door, parked at the curb. His father and a tall red faced man discussed the upcoming trip into the desert. Though his father was anxious for them to go, Salinger really wasn’t that interested.
Until he saw the two girls coming across the street.
One was absolutely beautiful even at the age of fourteen. But the other girl—there was something about her—stirring emotions deeply in young Salinger.
The girls were holding hands, laughing, and skipping across the street. The man talking to his father introduced them when the girls walked sheepishly up to the men. It was the first time Salinger ever set eyes upon Julia and Goli.
Adventure filled the next three weeks. Conveys of trucks making its way through the pass of Firuzkuh into the Elburz Mountains. Julia and he having their first kiss just beyond the light of the campfire the fourth night of the trip. The mysteries of the desert and of first love became a marvelous new world for him. It began a friendship between the three of them lasting six years until Salinger’s father was reassigned to the States.
Salinger remembered one night as they sat near a campfire; Julia pulled out a photograph album and opened it up on her lap. She showed him a picture ‘when father was stationed in the Frontier Service in Burma . . . the photograph taken at a mountain outpost near Sinlumkaba . . . it’s where, mother died, Booth . . . a novelist who died of a fever before she had a chance to write her best stories’. Her father stood behind a wicker chair, posing proudly. At the table, young Julia sat having tea with her mother, a pad and pencil in front of her on the table.
Then—eight months later—a sad goodbye one night as the two teenagers held each other as closely as they dared beneath a palace gate. Julia cried until Salinger finally walked away after they promised they would write each other every day for the rest of their lives. But, as is often the case, time and distance eventually diminished the relationship. Salinger dated several girls in England, began his career in the military, and at some point Julia became a pleasant, distant memory he promised himself he would cherish forever. Until Cairo.
“I went to the doctor this afternoon,” she finally told him, her voice bringing him back to the hotel room. “When I came home Graham Mayfield was waiting for me.”
“He should have left you out of this.”
“Graham is doing what he thinks is best. He’s a good man and I know he thinks a lot of you, and he believes I should forgive you. Booth, he told me you were working on something very important. That’s why you came back to Tehran.”
“Mayfield sent me back to investigate the murder of a British officer.”
“Was he important?”
“Mayfield thinks so.”
“Is your business ever that simple, Booth? I’ve never known it to be that simple.”
Salinger leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. He rotated the glass in his hand. “Enough about that, the doctor—what did he say?”
“It’s never good news, Booth. Not anymore and I’ve accepted it never will be. I can’t remember the last time the doctor gave me news considered good,” Julia said softly. “There’s something I wasn’t going to tell you, but now you’re back,” she hesitated, “I’m going into the hospital in two days. There is a procedure the doctor is going to perform.” She tapped her forehead with a finger. “Relieving pressure, he said, a small chance, but worth taking he advised me.”
“I’d like to be with you when that’s done.”
“I know you won’t be able to be there, Booth. You’ll be busy chasing your spies. But I don’t blame you anymore, if it makes you feel any better.”
“Somehow it doesn’t.”
“I’ve thought about it,” she smiled weakly, “An artist gradually losing her sight because of one foolish moment . . . terribly thoughtless when one looks back on it. I blamed you for betraying me, Booth—if it had been anyone but Goli.” She rubbed her eyes with open palms. “Is it possible it didn’t happen all, Booth? Is this all some awful dream from which we two will wake up?”
Salinger’s heart sank. At one time their life was so happy, but now a time so distant.
They met again after all of those years at the roof garden of the Continental Hotel in Cairo.
It was July 1942 and British forces had halted Rommel’s Afrika Corp at El Alamein while Cairo’s destiny still hung precariously to battle reports from the desert. They didn’t know it at the time but the British offensive would break out of El Alamein and would capture Tobruk in November, all coordinated with the Allied landing in North Africa.
That evening the war seemed a thousand miles away instead of less than one hundred. The cool breeze drifted in from the Nile River as Salinger and Julia stood with drinks among a small group, their meeting chance in the vanishing sunlight.
Julia stood there with her dark hair brushed back from her wonderful face. First they discussed the war because that was what everyone talked about. Then they talked about their teenage crushes, and laughed about
it. When they grew tired of the crowd, they left and ended up at a sports club down the street, and had drinks at a table by the tennis courts.
Three months later they were married in Cairo, a simple ceremony among the lush garden of the Mena House Hotel. Forty-five days later Salinger received his assignment to begin OSS operations in Tehran. They looked at his new duty as a gift. After all, it was in that city where they spent their childhood together.
Salinger’s mind fast-forwarded to twenty-six months later.
After the breakdown in Bern.
It was the night he had confessed the affair to Julia. The fact that it was Goli, Julia’s childhood friend, deepened the betrayal beyond what his wife could bare. Once he gotten it all out, there had been no crying or yelling or arguing, only that one question from Julia—‘why? My God, Booth, why?’ Salinger couldn’t give her an answer, only the excuse he always gave himself, it was petty selfishness among all the pain he was going through. Julia’s affair months later with a French pilot, retaliation against his unfaithfulness, drove them an eternity apart.
Then that awful night . . . Julia had gone to bed early . . . a headache . . .
Salinger sat in the dark of their living room for another hour trying to figure out how they could ever make their lives right again. He finally went to bed at around four a.m. When he awoke, the red rim of a false dawn was behind the trees. Julia wasn’t in bed.
Downstairs was empty. The tea pot was cold on the back burner of the stove. He noticed the back door unlocked, went out on the back steps and called out for her. No answer. He wandered out into the backyard calling out again. No answer.
A chance glance out at the pond chilled his heart.
Standing dangerously close at the edge of the water, Julia ignored his yells and stepped out into the pond—it was the calmness on her face with which she had done it that twisted at his mind each time he relived it—until she gradually disappeared beneath the surface.
He broke into a run, yelling, though it was futile now . . . she was underwater. Still, he yelled and cried out for her.
When he reached the water there was an object, white, shimmering white out on the surface. Julia’s nightgown! He broke for the pond . . . screaming out her name . . . and dove in.
It took him two attempts diving beneath the murky waters until he finally touched her arm where she lay on the bottom in the mud. Frantically, he came up for air. Then again he madly dove back down. Finally, he had a solid grip on her and brought her up to the surface. His arm was locked tightly around her waist as he swam to the shore. He laid her out, her face ash-white, her skin quickly chilled. He pushed on her chest to force any water from her lungs, praying out loud for God to save her.
Finally—a gurgle—water bubbling from her mouth. Julia began to weep. When she looked up into his face there was only a cold stare. She cried out words frozen in his mind every day since. “Why didn’t you let me die?”
The horrible diagnosis came three days later. Julia has lost oxygen to the brain while under water. In the short period, the doctors informed Salinger, lack of air had created two scenarios. Over time they were certain Julia’s mind would recover its functions. But her eyesight would gradually diminish over the years. There was nothing else to be done.
Julia stayed in the hospital ten days. Then Salinger took her home and tried to make her comfortable. The next morning, she asked him to leave and never come back.
He was called to Cairo. For five months, Salinger had not spoken to or seen his wife until tonight.
Her voice was a beacon back to the present. “It’s something very evil you’re chasing after, isn’t it, Booth? The Nazis? Can you tell about it? Can you tell me if Goli is involved?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Mayfield said as much.” Now she was nervous and rattling on. “I don’t suppose it would do any good for me to ask you not to get involved. Oh . . . that would be silly of me . . . that’s your job, isn’t it? Catching those people.”
“Secrets, Julia, it’s always about secrets,” he told her. “Mayfield sent me here to find out how much injury has been done and if information have been revealed. You see there’s a German spy in Tehran and we have to know how much damage has been done.”
“And Goli?”
“Goli is apparently on her own personal crusade.”
“Surely you’ll have to talk to her.”
“I’ll have to interview her,” he said.
“But do you have to?”
“I’ve told you everything.”
“That’s it, Booth? That’s everything?”
Salinger sighed. “Goli may work for the Soviets.”
Satisfied, Julia sat back. Her tongue clicked in the back of her throat. “I understand, I really do, and I don’t blame you at all. You have to be involved, I can see that now.”
“I don’t like it one bit, Julia, and I told Mayfield. I’ve tried to stay out of your way.”
She laughed. “You’ve been back in the city for one day . . .”
“We knew it would happen, so the sooner the better, I suppose.”
“You’re doing your job, Booth. How could I be mad at you? So don’t be upset at Graham for coming to me.”
She stood and went to the door.
“How long, Julia?”
“Sorry?”
“How long will you be able to paint?”
“The physician said a year, maybe eighteen months. Then the deterioration will become much quicker.”
“I’m sorry,” Salinger said.
“I’m sorry too; we’ve wasted a lot, haven’t we?” she said. “It makes me think . . . to reflect on many things.”
“But you have to understand something,” he said, “coming back to Tehran is my chance to set things straight. Once I’m finished, I’ll leave quietly.”
“And there is something you should know,” she whispered. “I’ve never forgiven myself for Goli being sent to Bern to bring you back. I could have stopped it all then.”
“It was business in the beginning when they sent her for me. She worked for us then, and it all seemed alright.”
“And there is something else you should know,” she said softly. “I may not be able to live without you after all.” Then she closed the door behind her.
----
Four a.m. Sleep was impossible. Salinger slipped out of the bedroom. He sat at the table, turned on the lamp, and lit a cigarette. He studied a map of Tehran unfolded on the table, trying to unravel why Shahr-e Ray, where Fields was murdered, held another clue. He just couldn’t tie it together. Later there came the sound of traffic, of the city awakening out on the street below, the grinding sound of armored trucks and tanks.
At least he had been honest with Julia, he reasoned. This was all about more than murder. It was about secrets.
-Twelve-
“An interesting fellow, this Major Fields,” Allen Miles said. He was leaning against the window staring with a look of satisfaction at Leni. “His sister should be proud of his service to the country.”
Leni sat in a winged chair sipping on morning tea insisted by Miles. It was a clear, cloudless day, which explained Leni’s uplifted spirits on the drive over to the embassy after Miles phoned telling her he had information to pass on about Major Fields. “I actually knew very little about him, to be honest with you when you came to my office yesterday,” Miles admitted. “Somehow now I wish I’d known him. And if this tragedy hadn’t happened I probably would have. You know he worked out of an office in Tehran? And Cairo.”
“He must have been quite important.”
“Fields’s staff out of the General Headquarters in Cairo was later assigned as a special group encamped outside the city,” he told her. “Some sort of communications assembly, I believe, though if I were you I wouldn’t venture very far into that,” he said. “Communications is mostly hush-hush with . . . you know . . . all the leaders converging on the city. But you have to understand—and you would understan
d being married to the colonel—these military people sometimes lean toward the appearance of importance on matters, which actually isn’t sometimes at all. My suspicions are that’s exactly what Fields was attempting here. Making himself to appear more important than he was.” Miles came from the window and stood at her chair. “At any point—there you have it.”
“You’ve been most helpful, Allan. “Leni stood. “Maybe in some way we’ve helped a grieving sister.” Then she looked at Miles as though a thought had just come to her. “Perhaps someone at the encampment would be kind enough to hand over any personal possessions and I could forward the items on to her.”
“I suppose.” Miles stepped to his desk, and flipped open a file. “About seven miles south of the city on the road toward Shahr-e Rey. Have you been in the area?”
“I don’t think so.”
“A charming and romantic place, so I’ve heard.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Oh, never mind,” Miles said glancing down at the file. “The place is classified,” his mood darkened. “I’m afraid everything I’ve told you may have been wasted. You’d have to obtain a high level of clearance to get anywhere near the place.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that even an embassy officer’s wife can’t go there.”
Fields’s notes came to her. Classified? And when was Churchill arriving in Tehran? Yes, dear Benjamin you’ve given me a dear, dear present, haven’t you? She went and kissed Miles on the cheek. He blushed instantly. “Thank you, Allen. Do the authorities have any idea who killed him? Or why?”
“I wouldn’t have privilege to that information, Leni. God knows I wouldn’t want to be involved in a murder investigation.”
“Of course, you wouldn’t,” she said. Then she was at the door. “Thank you, Allan. His sister and I owe you a big favor.”
A Spy in the Shadows (Spy Noir Series Book 1) Page 9