By suppertime I’d established a link between my bank here and my bank back home, and taken stock of the immediate vicinity. The downtown crowd was cosmopolitan, many sporting western business apparel. There was money in the air. But also a sour vibe. The prosperous on the streets seemed uneasy, the more numerous non-prosperous, pissed off.
The next day I set off into the neighborhoods to the west of the central district. Businesses gave way to apartment blocks crowded in dense array. The streets became progressively narrower and more crowded, many barely wide enough for automobile traffic. Buildings were shabbier, shade trees scarcer. There were no longer so many office buildings, but rather, storefronts, walk-ups and street markets. Children were numerous, energetic and noisy. Women, a few veiled or chador-clad, haggled with vendors. Various barnyard critters wandered around—ducks, chickens, sheep. Often I was the only Westerner in sight. My olive skin and dark brown hair did not mark me out, as Iranians tend to be light-complexioned, but my American clothing and shoes might. On my mental to-do-list I added “get some local togs.” It wouldn’t be a drastic change: even Levis were catching on over there.
Man cannot live on bread alone, but in Tehran you could survive indefinitely on kababs, sold everywhere I wandered. I took lunch at a little café, bought a few odds and ends in shops and at market stalls. Hoveyda had told me to bargain at the stalls and shops if the offering price seemed outlandish—it was expected, and if you didn’t you were classified as an unmannerly fool. So I engaged in some friendly haggling. For the locals it was their way of life, and once I got into the spirit of it, a pleasant enough way to banter away the time. It wouldn’t become a life or death struggle in Tehran until later.
The next day I hit the famed Bazaar, the center of traditional business in Tehran and to where, as a carpet buyer, I would naturally gravitate. Getting there took a half hour through a new part of town. As I neared the main entrance on Khyabun-e 15 Khordad the crowd grew denser and the street energy picked up. On streets surrounding the Bazaar, office buildings and businesses gave way to residences, fortressed behind high, stark walls.
I’d been prepared for a combination of flea market and The Mall of America, but the Tehran Bazaar floored me. It was a city within a city, approaching a mile or so on each side, a rat’s maze of streets, lanes and pathways under interconnected roofs. Business bustled out of buildings, stalls, blankets and tarps, pushcarts and the pockets (some of them hidden inside long cloaks and kaftans) of roving hustlers. An old man sold maps from a little stand. He had an English version, unreadable even so. I had him mark “We are Here.” Merchants of various types were clustered together in distinct areas, so I had him trace a pathway to the carpet sellers. I figured I would first mosey around to get a feel for the place, then swing over and check out carpets.
As an ex-LRRP I can still find my way through a jungle blindfolded. The Tehran Bazaar defeated me within 100 paces. I started down a path between stalls, turned left, walked along a line of bookbinder shops, took a fork through a bunch of haberdashery shops and realized that I didn’t recognize the way back out. In my bedazzlement with the spectacle and crush I hadn’t noticed all the passageways that I didn’t take, nor realized that few lanes were straight. Well, what with the sights, sounds, smells and general hubbub, there’s no more fascinating place in which to be lost than the Tehran Bazaar. A congestion of all classes and all descriptions. Families blocking traffic as they meandered along hand-in-hand. Porters bent under burro-sized burdens. Women in heated debated with Hajj-capped merchants. I wandered from one clutch of merchants to another. I lunched on a ubiquitous kebab, chicken this time—they come in a variety of flavors. I perambulated hither and yon, among these goods and those services and that merchandise, amazed at the immensity and variety of it all. It put all the native street markets I’d seen to shame—three stories or higher of stores; banks; mosques; dark passageways. Eventually I found my way to one of the main drags. It was time to look at carpets, and my map indicated that department was about a quarter-mile further into the Bazaar’s depths.
I stepped into the first carpet shop I encountered, and I must have had “Live One” written all over me, because the experience was something like a donkey wading into a piranha pool would have. When I said I was just looking, the shopkeeper began pushing carpets at me. When I said I was not going to buy any of them another salesman joined him and hit me with more carpets. When I made to leave a pack of salesmen converged to stop me, flogging even more carpets. So much for the native politeness of Iranians. I elbowed my way out, and the same thing happened at the next shop, and the next, and the next.
Finally I’d had it up to here with carpet dealers. Pushy, insistent, grubby little bastards, shoving rugs at me that Ben Millstein wouldn’t have used for lining kitty litter boxes, telling me that Shah Abbas himself had woven them personally, and assuring me that the ridiculous prices they asked would soon drive them out of business. They didn’t let up, there was no respite.
The novelty had worn off. The Bazaar’s exotic fascination had morphed into hot, dusty, crowded, noisy and stifling, and it was starting to smell bad. I’d had a long day, enough for my first foray. I desperately wanted out, immediately—if I could find the way through the maze of stalls. Carpet dealers assailing me on all sides, I thought I saw daylight ahead and lunged toward it, but then yet another of them stepped out from his shop and blocked my way. “Excuse me sir. If you are in the market for a fine Persian carpet, perhaps I can help you?”
That was it. A fuse blew. “Why, indeed you can,” I snarled. “I am looking for a very fine carpet, a very rare carpet, a Shazam. No doubt you have one?”
He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment. “No sir, we have not seen any of those for a long time. Perhaps something else?”
“Then in your miserable shop you must have a Yerbouti?”
“Your desires are loftier than my humble shop can fulfill,” he said softly. “Perhaps if you gave me an idea of your desires I could find something suitable? Is it a city carpet you seek, or a village carpet…?”
“A suburban carpet,” I snapped. “About three freeway exits out of town.”’
“Do you have a knot-count in mind?”
“33 and 1/3, if you stock that quality.”
“Let me check, I may have just the thing. Wait a moment.” He went back to a row of rolled-up carpets along the wall. He’d intrigued me. I wondered what he’d come up with. He selected one, brought it over and unfurled it with a deft snap. It was a very nice 4’ x 7’ Hamadan, with a geometric suggestion of a floral design—sort of halfway between “village” and “city.”..”suburban.”
“I suppose this was woven by 72 virgins? Or did the Grand Mufti’s wives knot it by candle light in their yurt? “
“Oh no, sir, they make them in factories in the city of Hamadan.”
I was being a total jerk, and he was playing it straight. “Excuse me, sir…” I began.
“Q’ereshi, Razi Q’ereshi,” he said. “At your service.” I looked at him more closely. He was middle-aged, slender and dignified. His grey beard was neatly trimmed, rounding his chin from sideburn to sideburn. He wore a white, knitted Hajj cap that overlapped the boundaries of his receding hairline. His eyes lacked the rapacious glint of the other carpet salesmen, instead suggested competence.
“Excuse me, Mr. Q’ereshi. This is my first visit to the Bazaar, and I have found it very exasperating. I’m afraid your fellow carpet dealers put me in a cranky mood. I apologize for giving you a hard time.”
“They can be an importunate lot,” he agreed. “Frustration and bad feelings often result. Are you looking for a carpet for any particular room or setting?”
“Actually, I’m buying for a dealer back in the states, not myself.”
“Oh, which dealer is that, if I may ask?”
“Ben Millstein. Of Ali bin Suleiman in Beverly Hills, California.”
At this, he
abruptly became more focused. “Ben Millstein…yes, I know of Mr. Millstein. I will tell you what, Mr….”
“Fonko. Jake Fonko.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Fonko. I will tell you what, Mr. Fonko…I am going to give you a very special price on this carpet. I am going to ship it to Mr. Millstein, with my compliments, and I will inform him of our meeting in hope that we can do some business in the future. Come in to see me again, soon. But for now, go and refresh yourself, put the tribulations of the day behind you. The Bazaar can be a trying experience for an American newly in town. I see you have a map. Let me indicate the route to the refreshment stall I think you will like best. Their selection of fruit drinks is the best in the Bazaar and they serve with ice, which you can rely on them to make with safe water.”
I assured him I would be back and left in the direction he’d indicated. The route he sketched on my map was clear and direct. I soon found the stall he recommended, sat down and ordered a tall, iced pomegranate juice. By ten minutes I was feeling much better, and I counted my day in the Bazaar as time well spent, not least because of making Mr. Q’ereshi’s acquaintance. Thus fortified, I started back to Hotel Semiramis, taking a different route so as to learn that much more about the city of Tehran. And to confuse my enemies, whoever they might be.
Iran, the Land of Surprises. I opened the front door into Hotel Semiramis, breathed a sigh of blessed relief for the shade and the evaporative air conditioning, and made a quick scan of the lobby. And what did I spy with my little eye? Seated in a couple of chairs by the wall, Rachael Millstein chatting with Emil Grosteqcu.
4 | Bazaar
I slipped back out through the door, held stock-still on the sidewalk for a moment or two, then eased away along the street until out of the lobby’s windows’ line of sight. I took a seat inside a handy café across the way from which I could watch the hotel door, ordered a tea, and waited. Presently Grotesqcu emerged and sauntered down Avenue Roosevelt. It was him, all right. Like myself he had a changeling face—you couldn’t always be sure you’d seen him before—but this time there was no mistaking. The broad face, the straw-colored hair under a Panama hat, his pasty northern European complexion a little more sun-tanned this time. When he’d disappeared I left some rials on the table and returned to the Semiramis.
Rachael still sat where she’d been. As I approached she exclaimed, “Jake! Fancy meeting you here.”
“Rachel! What the hell are you…?” I took Grotesqcu’s empty seat.
“Oh, same as you, carpets and stuff.”
“Ben sent you? I don’t see the point. How did you wind up in the lobby here?”
“Well, actually I was sort of waiting for you. The clerk said you’d be back soon. Ben must have told me this is where you were staying. Didn’t you give Ben your forwarding address?”
Since I hadn’t known my address until I arrived, and hadn’t sent it to Ben, I knew that wasn’t true. She’d ferreted it out somehow. “That man you were talking to, who is he?”
“Somebody I met just now, waiting for you. He came over and started chatting me up. Said he’s a caviar merchant from Russia, here on a buying trip. Interesting guy. What, did you come in earlier?” Said very innocently. She’d spotted me.
“Ben’s more than just a carpet salesman,” I suggested. “This goes beyond carpets.”
“Well, yeah. Ben’s kind of involved in things. Has been for a long time, going back to the 40s, in Israel. He keeps track of happenings in this region.”
“What was he doing in the ‘40s?”
“Well, earlier he was a partisan in Belarus during the War, managed to avoid the death camps. Lived in the woods and swamps, survived by ambushing SS patrols and stealing their supplies. After the war he made his way to Israel with a bunch of displaced persons, got married, wound up in the Irgun with Menachem Begin until Deir Yassin, where he found out he no longer had the stomach for that kind of fighting. So he and his wife bailed out and went to America, taking Little Orphan Rachel along with them. Yes, I’m adopted, another D P. He had some cousins in California in the carpet business, et voila! He’s stayed in the game, doing what he can to help the cause from over there, and there’s more to do than you’d think. He brought me in when Chet Alverson queried him about prepping you for a gig in Iran. Big Oil? CIA covert ops guy? A carpet buyer as cover? We wondered, what’s up with this? Might be something interesting. So here I am. What’s up?”
“What did the caviar merchant have to say?”
“That’s a funny thing. He saw you come in and then go back out. I told him you were someone I knew. He said he’d like to meet you.”
“Was he more specific than that?”
“No. He waited a little while, but you didn’t come back, so he excused himself and said to tell you not to look for him, he’ll find you. You know him from somewhere?”
“All very odd,” I mused. Sure was. Too much happening too quickly. Rachel shows up in Tehran. Emil Grotesqcu blows into town. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, they just happen to wind up together in the lobby of my hotel. Did I hear Dooley Wilson playing “As Time Goes By” in the background?
“You wouldn’t happen to know if he’s a KGB agent, would you?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. They’re pretty thick in Iran, always have been. Common border. Oil. Gateway to the Persian Gulf. Control of the Straits of Hormuz. Warm water ports. They’ve tried to take the Shah out a time or two, but that man lives a charmed life. We swap intel with the Russians when it suits our purposes. We’ve a lot of common interests and enemies, you know. Say, did you give Charlie Goldenman my name?”
“Oh, you met Charlie?”
“What a creep. He didn’t exactly say it was you, but I kind of guessed. Thanks a lot. As if I need two-bit crooks in my life.”
The conversation continued like this for a while, but eventually talking around and past each other runs dry. I still had no idea what she was up to, and she wasn’t going to tell me, at least not right then. Finally she excused herself, having things to do, and departed.
It didn’t take Grotesqcu long to find me. I was exploring a new neighborhood two days later when I heard his voice behind me: “Do not turn around, Captain Vonkijovitch. Just keep walking.”
“You’re abducting me in broad daylight?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s not advisable for us to be seen together. There’s a little Turkish café around the next corner. Go left at the intersection.” I did as told. Midway down the block I heard: “This is it. Go in and get a table away from the windows. I’ll join you in a few minutes. I recommend the baklava, the real thing.”
I went in and he ambled on down the street. The café was practically empty at that hour. The windows let in little light. Ceiling fans wafted some of the heat out of the air. A suitable table in the shadows sat unoccupied. I took it and ordered coffee and baklava. He was right. The baklava was excellent. The coffee was Turkish style, strong and heavily sugared, fine as long as you stopped above the mud in the bottom of the little cup.
A few minutes later he came in and took a seat opposite me. “We meet again, Jake Fonko. In a more amicable situation than when we last parted.” To the hovering waiter he said something in Farsi, which presently resulted in a coffee and baklava set before him.
“Look, I felt a little bad about that elephant stampede, but I had the idea you might want to shoot us down, so I sent the elephants as a distraction.”
“Killing Clyde Driffter was one possible resolution to my assignment,” he allowed, “but by the time I got the elephants sorted out your chopper was out of range. No hard feelings, think nothing of it. Surviving an elephant stampede is the first thing they cover in Spetsnaz training. At the end of the day the situation worked out just fine for me. One of our Hinds came for me later. We ransacked Driffter’s compound and collected enough arms, drugs and valuables he left
behind to make the trip worthwhile, not to mention loads of information about arms and drug networks in the region—but that automobile! Really, the man is such a vulgarian. I put in my report that your espionage network broke our codes, learned of my intentions and alerted you, so the formidable Jake Fonko was able to slip away before I arrived. I’m afraid my little fib cost my service a bundle, as they hurriedly revamped the codes so it wouldn’t happen again. Jake, your derring-do is getting a lot of notice in the KGB.”
“My fifteen minutes of fame. So, what brings you to Tehran?”
“Same as in Phnom Penh—you. My assignment is to keep an eye on Jake Fonko, CIA super-agent. We have a long history of interests here, and when we learned you’d been dispatched to Iran, the KGB sent me straightaway to cover you, based on my previous experience. I have to hand it to you. Tradecraft advises keeping a low profile, but the first thing you do after Phnom Penh is get a bright red Corvette.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t make any difference if I told you that I’m not on a CIA assignment?”
“No difference at all. That’s what all the covert operatives say. I’m surprised you’re not on the Embassy payroll. Has someone in your agency finally learned something about cover?”
“I’m here to buy Persian carpets for a dealer in California. You want a good deal on a carpet? I know a guy in the bazaar.”
“Right. And I’m a caviar merchant. Iran produces the best, you know. It comes from sturgeon in the Caspian Sea. Next time we meet I’ll give you samples. Did you hear what happened to our friend DRAGONFLY? (I shook my head ‘no’) He’s back at work now, somewhere in Africa, I hear. It didn’t take them long to track him down and pick him clean of the fortune he brought out with him from Cambodia. I gather your friend Miss Poon Soh Soon was in on it, came out with a nice cut of the proceeds. (Gee, I thought, a nice girl like that? What is this world coming to? That might explain the Jaguar.) Then his taste for high living exhausted his Swiss bank stash in a few years. A shame he wasn’t the expert at managing money that he is at trafficking drugs and arms.”
The Jake Fonko Series: Books 1 - 3 Page 31