The Jake Fonko Series: Books 1 - 3

by B. Hesse Pflingger

  “You’re new in this game, Fonko. They’ve been dorking around there for years, never came to anything. The Brits outfoxed them at every turn. We haven’t heard anything about that, and we’d be the ones to know. Of course, we haven’t yet broken their new codes. We were making good progress until ‘75, but then they abruptly revamped them and we had to start back again at Square One.”

  Hugh Gigot completed the circle-jerk: the current threat assessment the Shah relied on went from the CIA to the SAVAK to the National Security Agency to Defense Intelligence to the State Department to the CIA. That was a nugget of truth Gianni Franco was not going to enjoy telling His Majesty. Before I did that, I thought a chat with Emil Grotesqcu might be helpful.

  “For the life of me, Jake, I can’t get a line on your CIA assignment,” Grotesqcu was saying. I’d left a message for Vitaly Smirnoff at his hotel as instructed, and we’d met in a restaurant near the Russian Embassy compound where two westerners would not seem out of place. “Except for one brief encounter you haven’t been in touch with them, and you’ve done no electronic communication that we could detect. If your cables to Ben Millstein are in code, it’s one we can’t break. I’m sure you are a master of dead drops, but we haven’t seen any evidence of those either.”

  “I told you, I’m not working for the CIA.”

  “Oh, come on. Why else would you be here?”

  “Look, don’t make this public knowledge, but I was hired by the Shah to do some domestic intelligence for him.”

  He looked at me in disbelief for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Jake, you are really too much! So you come here as a carpet buyer, to cover your role as a spook for the Shah, which is cover for your CIA assignment. Who but you could have come up with those wheels within wheels? And carry it off so well? Of course, there’s been no evidence of your being in contact with the Shah either. Have it your way, there’s plenty enough going on here to keep me busy while I try to ferret out your activities.”

  “What, something going on with the student revolutionaries? I gather there are some Marxists in that bunch.”

  “There are Marxists in every bunch of student revolutionaries. The Shah did us friends of the people a big favor, expanding the universities. Some of our allies joined the faculty, shaped the curriculum, recruited eager young acolytes. And created a force of educated, unemployed, resentful youths. I can tell you one thing—forget the Islamists. The religious faction will be sidelined before long. We have the brains and the organization on our side, just like the Bolsheviks did in 1917. The fanatics topple the Shah, and then the Marxists move in and take over. Got this straight from MI6—we still have reliable sources imbedded there. They’re the ones that came up with that assessment. Ask your friend in the Mossad about it—I passed it on to her, and she’s fine with it.”

  “One more thing for me to check out. I haven’t seen Rachel for a while, time I looked her up. I think you were right that this place is going to blow. Do you know anything about that theater fire in Abadan the other day? Four hundred killed! That’s horrible.”

  “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” said Grotesqcu. “The SAVAK is blaming the Islamists, because they abhor modern entertainments. The Islamists are blaming SAVAK provocateurs. As if anyone is going to step forward to take the blame for an atrocity like that. But I think the fun is just beginning. Your American expats are about to see their cushy lives come to an abrupt end. And just maybe we’ll be able to do something about those NSA listening posts on our border.”

  The next day somebody burned out the Tehran vegetable market. And soon after that an earthquake destroyed the town of Tabas, killing an estimated 20,000 people. The Shah flew out, stopped at the airport, made some speeches to the local dignitaries and flew back, while students, mullahs and soldiers dug survivors out of the wreckage.

  Jake Fonko hied off on a buying trip to Shiraz, and Gianni Franco returned from Biarritz to the loving arms of Princess Ashraf. The Shah was cheerful as she ushered me into his office. “Good news, Jake. Our problem with the French woman has been taken care of. The man who brought her here is in the Ministry of Agriculture, in charge of our opium program. They deal with the 170,000 registered addicts, but also out the back door supply the 400,000 or so non-registered addicts. He gets rich, true, but he is unhappy with his job, doesn’t take to his clientele of addicts and drug dealers, thinks there is something unseemly about the whole enterprise. And then he is very unattractive, as you may have observed, and furthermore his wife is old and ugly and mean-tempered. All in all, a very discouraged man. Well! It seems that Mademoiselle Bimbeau was so extraordinarily appreciative of his manly talents that it genuinely touched his heart. So I bought her and gave her to him as a reward for good work. You see? Love will always find a way.”

  “Bought her? Is that legal?”

  “More like an extended lease. She’s with Madame Claude de Paris. It’s a high class whore house. She sends her girls down to the Kish resorts by the Concorde-load. My family and hangers-on swear by her service. She’s a madame. Don’t you have madames in Los Angeles?”

  “Not so’s you’d notice. With all the wannabe starlets and Valley Girls giving it away for free, madames don’t loom so large in that town.”

  “Hmm,” mused the Shah. “No wonder so many of our young men apply to get degrees from UCLA. They claim it’s the climate and the high academic standing that attract them, of course. In any event, this is not unusual—a ‘temporary marriage’ they call it. Out of every batch of Madame Claude’s girls a few make an impression and stay behind. Right now she’s occupying a comfy apartment in what amounts to a harem, and if she behaves herself and delivers, he’ll eventually tire of bonking her and send her back to Paris with a generous going-away present. She’s out of our hair, in any case, and I have cautioned her friend about keeping his mouth shut. Though it does disturb me that I cannot determine who sent her in to spy on you. Her friend? SAVAK? It’s a mystery…So, what have you got to report?”

  “After our helicopter tour you told me that you can’t be deposed, because you have 700,000 troops, the support of all the workers and most of the people. Further, that the opposition is weak because the Marxists and the Fundamentalists will never get together. I traced that assessment. It’s quoted by several agencies, each who credit it to some other source. Your SAVAK got it from the CIA, who got it from our State Department, who got it from Defense Intelligence, who got it from the National Security Agency, who intercepted it from SAVAK.”

  “So there is a circularity to it. It seems not to have originated anywhere.”

  “In Army Intelligence we call it a circle jerk.”

  “What might a ‘circle jerk’ be?” the Shah inquired. I explained it.

  He chuckled. “ Quite so. In Farsi we have a similar term.” The Shah sat thoughtful for a moment. “You know, I think it actually originated in an offhand remark I made months ago in the heat of the moment. And no one has dared contradict me?…We’re up shit creek, aren’t we?” he concluded.

  “Seems so.”

  “See if you can find us a paddle.”

  I was finally getting it about the Shah. He was sharp, very sharp. He was worldly. He had vision. He wanted to lead Iran to future greatness, and he meant well. His problem was that he wasn’t aware of a longstanding principle of leadership. A leader should be smarter than his followers, but not too much smarter—no more than 20 IQ points was a rule of thumb. Or if so, he should not let them know about it. The Shah was a straightforward and impatient man, and it didn’t register with him that half of the population was below average intelligence…and illiterate to boot. He wasn’t really interested in them, not as people; he couldn’t connect with them as people. Only as statistics.

  I had my marching orders. It was time to widen my inquiries.

  As for la belle Bimbeau—early on, Eddie Lipschitz’s uncle cautioned me against overacting.


  6 | Kish

  I called Amir Abbas Hoveyda to set up my next meeting with the Shah, and he got back to me: “Princess Ashraf will meet you in front of the Hilton at the usual time. She wants you to bring several days changes of resort wear with you.” To my puzzled look he added, “She did not say why, and it was not my place to ask.”

  That night Jake Fonko slipped into a back door of the Hilton, and the next morning Gianni Franco was waiting at the curb out front with his Gucci carry-on. The Princess pulled up in a silver Ferrari. I stashed my bag behind the seats and settled in. “Mr. Fonko, words are circulating around the Palace that I do not seem to be paying any attention to my toy boy, which is quite out of character for me and is causing unwelcome questions. Mohammad was concerned that we not blow your cover, so you are going to accompany me to the Kish resorts for a gay escapade. The season down there is just commencing, so I must inspect my new casino, and I will naturally take my toy boy along for company in that sybaritic hot spot. We will be back in two days, and then you will have your meeting with my brother. I hope you do not mind.”

  “Always at your service, Princess,” I said. “It will give me a look at another facet of Iranian life.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” she said with a smirk.

  She drove to the Shah’s pavilion at the airport and ushered me into one of his private jets. A passel of others were flying to Kish with us, mostly family members—cousins, uncles, nephews and so forth at various degrees of removal—plus some high government officials and financial heavies. All dressed in the best resort threads designers’ row could offer and were in high spirits. Gianni Franco was right in style. As befits a holiday fling with her new toy boy, Princess Ashraf settled in with me in back row leather seats. It was the first time I’d actually talked with her. She turned out to be a good old gal, at least in the context of Iranian royalty. I previously noted that she’d obviously been a fox at one time. At this point in her life she was very much a cougar. She’d had a son in her first marriage, and a son and daughter in her second. She was on her third husband. He lived in Paris, and she saw him from time to time. Between her posts with the United Nations and her business and financial activities she led a busy life. She was an international activist on behalf of women’s rights and human rights, which did not endear her to the rulers of the Arab nations and drove the Islamic Fundamentalists to a frenzy. She said nothing about toy boys and lovers, but I had no reason to disregard stories I’d head about that. “I was such a little ugly duckling as a child,” she sighed. “I suppose I finally developed some attractiveness, but I lacked confidence for the longest time. Finally I developed some, and now I can be a tiger when a situation demands it.”

  Kish, she explained, was an island in the Persian Gulf a little north of Hormuz. The Shah had ambitions of turning it into a posh destination resort for the wealthy of the OPEC nations, a playground for billionaires. It has a good seashore and climate but no resources, so everything has to be brought in, including labor, and it therefore is costing a fortune. “But,” she concluded, “it is progressing swimmingly…er, no pun intended.”

  “You run a casino there? I thought the Koran prohibited gambling.”

  “Both statements are true. The Koran prohibits pork also, and it is no problem for anyone to do without pork. The Koran prohibits charging interest, so we call it something else. Listen, people in this region are gamblers by nature. No wonder the Prophet (blessings be upon him) prohibited it. But for the ones who will not be ruined by it? Listen, people need to let off steam. Do you know that Saudi Arabia is so strict with women that all must wear burqas, they cannot go in public without an escort of a male relative, and they cannot drive automobiles? So what do they do? When the Saudi girls go on holiday, the moment the plane clears Arabian air space they rush for the lavatories in their burqas and come out dressed like Parisian catwalk models in the clothing they were wearing underneath. Everyone needs to sin a little. It is also written in the Koran that if one cannot always abide strictly by the words of the Prophet (blessings be upon him), Allah understands. So visitors to Kish just require a little more of Allah’s understanding. There are many ways to understand the Prophet’s teachings. Persia’s greatest poet, Omar Khayyam, had this to say:

  “Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring

  This Winter Garment of Repentance fling:

  The Bird of Time has but a little Way

  To fly—and Lo! The Bird is on the Wing.

  “And that is the way we look at it here in Kish.”

  She and the Ayatollah Khomeini would have quite a theological debate.

  We flew south over many miles of Iran’s desert region, then dropped down toward Kish, a small speck on a barren coast. The airport was fully modern to international standards. A large squadron of private jets sparkled in the sun around the tarmac. The air was clear and sea-scented, the climate ideal for a beach haven. The Royal family suffered no indignities of entrance formalities. A chauffeur-driven Bentley limo pulled right up to the plane, and the Princess and I set off for town. Here’s an image of Kish—multiply Las Vegas by two or three times and add a beach front. It was all there, hotels, palaces, villas, broad roadways, golf courses (that had to be watered continuously), glitz, glamor, lux automobiles, and a grand casino. The busy construction crews indicated that it would even bigger and better soon.

  Princess Ashraf ran the show, I just tagged along. The Palace, white-walled with sharply gabled blue roofs, sat right on the shore. We drove up to the portico and were ushered in. “This is how the other half lives, Gianni,” she remarked, gesturing around the opulent lobby as a flock of dogs rushed up, tails wagging, to greet her. Razi Q’ereshi could have retired on this job alone, had he barokered the carpets on the floor and the walls. About that comparison with Las Vegas, also double the quality of anything in Vegas. She checked in with the receptionist, then said to me, “We will spend the afternoon and the evening together, but it would not be seemly for you to spend the night in the Palace. I must be discreet with my toy boys, you know. So you will be staying in the hotel over yonder. My driver will take you there and get you squared away. Go to the hotel pool and enjoy yourself. Mention my name for anything you purchase, it is all arranged. I have some business to attend to, and then I will join there you a little later.”

  My hotel room left nothing to be desired. Elegant, comfortable and air-conditioned. I put on my Hugo Boss trunks and the hotel robe, went down to the pool, planted myself on a poolside chaise lounge and ordered a G and T and munchies from the barman. Then I lay back and eyeballed the other half. Er…maybe the other one tenth of one percent? I saw wrist watches that I couldn’t buy with my annual income. Women—apparently French, not Iranian—sashayed around in bikinis that would be ordered off the beach in South Florida. No one was going thirsty, and all the booze was top shelf. I wondered what the legion of lower class workers that kept it going thought of it all.

  The Princess joined me, demurely clad in a Hermes sarong. At her age a bikini would not have been kind to her. “So, Gianni, does this remind you of home?”

  “Which-a home-a you mean, Princess?” I asked.

  “Malibu, of course.”

  “Malibu has no public facilities to compare, but some of the private residences could give it a go. Barbra and Johnny live pretty well.”

  “Barbra and…?”

  “Streisand. And Johnny Carson.”

  “Oh, him. Yes, I watch his program sometimes when I am in New York City. He is very funny. So they are billionaires?”

  “No, but on the other hand, she can wear a bikini on the public beach.” Not that I was exactly desperate to see her in one, I didn’t add.

  “America does have its good points.”

  The Princess sent me back to my room to dress for dinner—informally, she said—then meet her in the lobby. From there we went to a dinner party she was putting on.
She made a show of coming in with me, but then assigned me to the equivalent of the children’s table, where I sat disregarded. Iranian royalty was not prone to democratic sentiments, so an Italian lounge lizard was an object of curiosity and gossip, nothing more. The Princess dined among her relatives, most of whom were men, and a raucous lot they were. Few brought their wives. Some brought more than one. I sat back and took the spectacle in. The food came, the wine flowed, the conversation (in Farsi) sparkled, a fine time was had by all…though the servers and bussers seemed tightlipped as they watched the throng gobble through a meal none of them could ever afford and guzzled through alcohol their Koran assured them would send them straight to Hell.

  After dinner we all trooped to the casino, and the evening got wild. Those Iranian billionaires did love to high roll. Chips of staggering value flew around the roulette wheel and the baccarat table. Blackjack and craps, not so much (those games required a little skill). Again the room filled with predominately men. The Princess was one of the guys.

  Bedtime came, and the Princess went. As she’d said, it wasn’t seemly for toy boys to stay in the Palace. “Come over here for breakfast, Gianni—9-ish would be good, meet me in the reception room. Do you remember my telling you that if you satisfied me, I would occasionally bestow on you expensive but useless gifts? You will find one in your hotel room. Good night.”

  The room seemed the same as when I’d left it. I was sort of poking around, wondering if she was playing “treasure hunt” with me, when someone rapped on the door. I opened it to find a hot little crepe suzette with a lascivious smile. “Bon soir, signore Franco? Are you in zee mood for zee leetle night cap?”

  I can’t say that my two days at Kish were the time of my life, but it was a welcome break from Tehran. Everybody pretty much ignored me, so I explored around. Outside the resort development there wasn’t much to see; Kish Island had been a barren desert sand spit, mostly supporting date farms. Now it was a simulation of the Paradise that awaited departed Faithful: clear water, abundant fruits, houris (though I doubt any were virgins) and all…um, scratch the booze and the baccarat tables.