The Jake Fonko Series: Books 1 - 3

by B. Hesse Pflingger

  It was indeed, I thought as he drove away. It was indeed.

  The next morning I made the rounds of the carpet factories, primed for dickering. It was my argument that they’d soon not be able to move their carpets out, against their argument that soon the American shops wouldn’t be able to get carpets. I pointed out that other countries made carpets (though not as well as Iranians). I played one shop off against the others, and before my flight I’d bagged my two dozen Isfahans at prices I thought Ben wouldn’t object to, even including the air freight charges. I boarded my return flight in reasonably good spirits.

  Bristow Helicopters deposited me back in Tehran just in time for Black Friday.

  The Shah shuffled government personnel, trying to calm the growing unrest, and at the beginning of September he installed Jaafar Sherif Emami, a wily veteran politician, as Prime Minister. He promptly issued a new program aimed at reconciling all classes of people—increase government salaries, release political prisoners, allow legitimate political parties once again to operate, and hold free elections. Trying to meet religious objections, his program even proposed abolishing the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, one of the Shah’s most liberalizing creations.

  The move didn’t make a dent. On September 7 Tehran saw its biggest demonstration yet, 100,000 people thronging the streets demanding the Shah must go, and bring back Ayatollah Khomeini. The next day, Black Friday, the mob swelled and demonstrations erupted in other cities. In Tehran troops opened fire, the Jaleh Square Massacre. The government reported 100 dead, against the protesters’ claim of thousands. Demonstrations continued for several days after that. I’d previously observed them from a distance, so I joined one to get a feeling for the street. At first it went harmlessly enough, people marching, waving placards and pictures of Khomeini, chanting and shouting. I went with the flow and stayed off to the side, nobody paying any attention to me. I couldn’t understand most of what they were shouting, but they were angry and they meant it. Then the crowd shifted suddenly, and people around me took off running. I found myself exposed out on a flank, with a skirmish line of Army regulars about 30 yards away. A little miscalculation there, I thought, as I scanned the khaki-suited soldiers leveling their weapons. Might be teargas, might be rubber bullets, might be buckshot, lots of bad possibilities, no way to tell. Assuming the worst, and hoping they were going to aim high to disperse the crowd, I hit the deck. They weren’t out to slaughter everybody, just hoping to encourage people to give it up for the day, so the fusillade went above me, real bullets, and I didn’t take any rounds. I can attest that published government reports of casualties that day were on the low side. No one in the crowd fired back; they were unarmed. Two of the soldiers, tears in their eyes, threw down their guns and, tearing off their uniform patches, ran to join the crowd.

  Well, it was my first Islamic Fundamentalist street demonstration. Obviously, I had a few things to learn about Tehran anti-Shah mobs. Thing One: stay out of ‘em from then on.

  Finally, after Emami promised that martial law would be lifted within six months, the new government was approved on September 16. The streets quieted down, but not by much. Needless to say, the Shah had plenty to occupy him during those days. He didn’t have a lot of time to confer with Gianni. Remembering what Grotesqcu had said, I met with Rachel Millstein in a little cafe near the Israeli Mission, sitting at a table back away from the front windows. Like most cafes in Tehran it was colorfully and busily decorated. Oncoming autumn cooled the weather a little, so heat-avoidance was no longer an issue. Though dressed modestly enough not to draw hostile attention on the streets, Rachel looked plenty zaftig that evening.

  “Emil Grotesqcu called it right on the place being about to blow,” I told her. “He had an interesting idea about the course events will take. The religious faction will be sidelined before long, he said, because the Marxists behind the student faction have the brains and the organization, like the Bolsheviks did in 1917.”

  “Yeah, that sounds right. That’s what he told me.”

  “What’s Mossad’s take on it?”

  “There must be more danger threatening than anybody’s letting on. Why else would the SAVAK warn everybody not to spread alarmist rumors? That analysis better be right. Israel has a lot to lose if Khomeini takes over. Iran’s been a good ally. Mossad and SAVAK work together and share intel. Plus we do a lot of trade with the Shah, arms especially. We could work with a Marxist government here, but we’d be chopped liver if it went Islamic. What happened was, in 1975 the Shah got rid of the multi-party system and made Iran a one-party state, his Rastakhiz Party. So that outlawed the Tudeh Party, the major opposition and more socialist. The student revolutionary group includes both the remnants of the Tudeh Party and the younger cosmopolitans. They could step in and run the country, they’re connected. The bulk of Khomeini’s followers are uneducated peasants and lower class workers, a sort of sub-proletariat united by Islamic Fundamentalism. They’re pissed off at the Shah, but they don’t have much organization. God, I hope they don’t win. They hate Jews.”

  “So, what did you do with the analysis?”

  “Passed it along to the CIA. We’re working with them, and we figured they’d want to know.”

  “Want to go to my room and show me some carpets?” I ventured out of the blue.

  She looked at me pityingly. “Jake, oh Jake. Don’t take this personally, but that wasn’t personal.”

  “More of a professional bonding ploy?”

  “That’s a good way of putting it…but you know I did enjoy it. Not a good idea here. Not a good idea even for us to be seen together, though we have to risk it every now and then.”

  Iranian women were a no-no. Few single foreign women here. Bored American wives, with my free time during the day maybe an easy target but not advisable. Notwithstanding my taste of that little crepe suzette in Kish, I was getting horny as a hoot owl myself.

  The problem with this gig was social life. One third of me was Gianni Franco, an Italian playboy who couldn’t speak Italian. Aside from sitting mutely in bars and nightclubs in the expensive hotels, what could he do in the evenings without blowing his cover? Another third was my roving Iranian on the street, who’d be shunned by Americans and had to avoid any conversations with indigs that couldn’t be covered by “Allahu Akbar,” “ensha Allah,” “bebakhshid” (excuse me), “kheili mamnunam” (thank you) and “koja dast shu?” (where’s the bathroom?)—the only Farsi phrases I could reliably utter—and who had no place he belonged. That left Jake Fonko, American carpet buyer, to seek out excitement and companionship in an unexciting city where all but a few were poor, Muslim and hated Americans. The several thousand Americans in Tehran tended to stick together, and the ones working for corporations or the government stayed in their own enclaves. Others in town generally were hustlers after bucks so big that a carpet buyer was simply a curiosity. An agricultural equipment sales rep asked me how I could make a living on carpets here. “It isn’t easy,” I told him and changed the subject. Between mobs of Revolutionaries and the SAVAK, walking anywhere alone at night posed dangers not worth the risk unless absolutely necessary. I found some American hangouts and clubs where I could socialize and sift the scuttlebutt every now and then, but I had to take care not to say too much about my own activities.

  Hotel Semiramis housed transients, so it afforded passers-through that I could banter safely with in the rooftop bar. The customers there could have passed for the shadier extras at Rick’s Café Américain in Casablanca. The word was that the hotel staff collected supplemental paychecks from the CIA, the KGB and/or SAVAK. Judging from their lavishly applied bright red lipstick, the receptionists offered more than just concierge service. Having learned my lesson from Mimi Bimbeau, I gave them a pass. I did make the acquaintance of some American diplomatic couriers. They baby-sat diplomatic pouches to and from the Embassy and overnighted at Hotel Semiramis. They were based in Bangkok, and one of th
em hailed from Southern California, giving us things in common to chat about. Another one, a transplanted German, carried a portable radio which, if he hung a ten-foot antenna out his window, might give us a listen to BBC or Voice of America, news from outside in our own language which otherwise was scarce in Tehran. Many nights I spent reading or someplace staring at baffling TV in a language I couldn’t translate. Fast times, for sure.

  You ever notice how spy thriller novels rarely touch on how their heroes spend their off-duty hours? Not exactly spine-tingling, page-turning stuff.

  Dick Hedd emerged from an allleyway and fell in beside me as I reached an intersection. “Mr. Fonko, a word with you?”

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  “Have you heard anything lately?”

  “Just what you can see going on around us. I did hear an analysis making the case that the student revolutionaries, led by Marxists, were going to prevail over the Islamic Fundamentalists because of their superior minds and organization.”

  “Yes!” he exclaimed. “We got a confidential report that said the same. Pretty convincing, we thought.”

  “What action did you take?”

  “From the very top we have orders not to take any actions, pending clarification of the situation. President Carter says we can’t say anything critical of the Shah. We thought the best thing was to pass it along to SAVAK. So you are confirming it. That’s good. But what I was wondering is, you’ve been around to some other cities. What have you seen outside Tehran? You were in Kermanshah and Hamadan. What’s going on there?”

  What could I tell him that he couldn’t know if he just opened his own eyes? Well, if I didn’t give him something, he’d just keep pestering me. “In Hamadan and Kermanshah there are dark patterns,” I said, recalling some of the carpets I’d seen from those cities.

  MARK TWO.

  “Dark patterns, eh? Interesting…I’ll pass that along to our field ops people. Maybe we can head something off, for a change. Another thing I wanted to tell you, there’s a diplomatic shindig at the US Embassy this Friday evening, nothing formal, just a bunch of us getting together for a drink and a bite. You might want to come, meet some new people.”

  I said I would and got the particulars.

  Workers’ komitehs were calling strikes here and there, more frequently and longer as the days went on. Electric power went out every so often. Anti-Shah demonstrations continued in the city, but government troops were shooting fewer demonstrators.

  It was a TGIF gripe-fest of American and British embassy workers and camp followers, few if any corporates. Not exactly a British bun fight, not quite an American beer bust. Mostly, a bunch of nervous government paper-shufflers having drinks and nibblies and very agitated conversations about the troubles erupting in this strange foreign land. I talked to a few people I’d met in my roamings. Everyone was trying to find out what was going on…or rather, they had enough idea what was going on, and they were hoping to get a line on what was going to happen next.

  Dick Hedd guided me over to a couple of fellows sipping at tumblers of brownish liquids, “Jake, I want you to meet two of the hotshots over at MI6, Neville Wynne and Raleigh Bigg-Blunder. Jake is our American mystery man about town, I suppose you could say.”

  Brit stereotypes: bad teeth, tweedy, supercilious, amusedly cynical, condescendingly disdainful, knowing-which-forkish, and that BBC accent designed to make you feel like two pence—between the pair they pretty much met the specs. In the competition for Upper Class Twit of the Year they’d have been eliminated long before the quarterfinals, not that they wouldn’t have enjoyed the sport. “Heard tons about you, Jake,” remarked Bigg-Blunder. “Carpet buyer extraordinary, ahem, ahem. So you’ve been out in the field on quote unquote carpet buying trips? Hear anything we should know?”

  “I’ve heard that the Russians are cooking up something in Afghanistan.”

  They both guffawed. “The Great Game, Jake.” said Wynne “They’ve been after a route through there to India ever since we colonized it. We flummoxed them at every turn. Old news then. No news now. What could they do in Afghanistan anyway, rustle their goats? Bad news for the little boys, if they do that. Hear anything else?”

  “I heard that the student revolutionaries have the inside track on this commotion. Between the Marxists and the universities, they have the brains and the organization, The word is that the Islamists will depose the Shah, then the students will brush them aside and take over.”

  “My word,” said Wynne. “That’s our show, you know. Filched a report on that out from under SAVAK’s nose. Where did you come by it?”

  “A source in the KGB.”

  “Now how would they have gotten it, I wonder…”

  “Maybe that explains Trevor’s new Aston-Martin,” Bigg-Blunder chortled.

  “Wink wink nudge nudge say no more,” Wynne chimed in.

  “Is that solid intel?” I asked.

  “Sounds like it to me, the Bolsheviks and all that,” Bigg-Blunder said, “Worked in 1917. When the time comes they’ll brush this Khomeini fellow aside. How many divisions does the Ayatollah have, haw haw! So, now that you know one of ours, tell us one of yours. You’ve been to Shiraz. What’s the situation?”

  What could I say about Shiraz? Well known for village carpets. “In Shiraz they come from the villages,” I confided.

  MARK THREE.

  “Of course! Why didn’t that occur to us?” Wynne exclaimed. “Many thanks, Jake.” He turned to Bigg-Blunder. “Best we make steps back to the office, no time to lose. Thanks again. Toodles!” he shot to me as they turned and bustled away, depositing their half-finished drinks as they passed the buffet table.

  What’d I say? More to the point, how did they know I’d been to Shiraz? How were people learning about the buying trips I didn’t go on? Who knew anything about that besides the desk clerk at the Semiramis? One more thing to investigate.

  Jake Fonko went off buying carpets in Qom, and Gianni had another confab with the Shah. He was feeling upbeat about the SAVAK’s assessment of the students winning out, until I described the roundelay that intel traveled.

  “So it’s just another circle jerk?”

  “Afraid so, sir.”

  “That’s discouraging. You know, I said recently in a meeting with my ministers that Iran could survive a takeover by the students and Tudeh, but that son of a whore Khomeini would set us back 1000 years. Do you suppose SAVAK picked up on it and put this report out to mollify me? Look further into it. No one seems to know what’s going on, at least no one that reports to me. Find out.”

  “Can and will do, sir.”

  “Jake, you are more help than you know. Your information is invaluable, even if I sometimes have to pretend to others that I don’t know it. I told Hoveyda to give you a raise, retroactive.”

  “Thank you, sir. Take care of yourself.” I returned to the Hilton, and by the next morning Gianni Franco had taken off for the romantic Isle of Capri. If anyone asked, Jake Fonko had been mightily impressed by the fine silk carpets in the Holy City of Qom.

  My best source for local insight was Razi Q’ereshi. “I can’t figure where out these demonstrations and strikes are heading,” I told him. “There’s a lot of fist-pumping and placard-waving, and the demonstrators try to provoke the police and the militia, but I can’t get the sense of any program to it.”

  “A revolution is like a swarm of bees,” he said. “The swarm moves in a direction, but each individual bee has his own plan.”

  “But there are two swarms of bees here—the student group, and the Islamist group. Will the swarms merge, I wonder?”

  “A good question. Revolutions are carried out by the young. My son, Saeed, is of that age. Perhaps he would know better about that than I.”

  And so I talked to Saeed. He knew some of the student radicals, former schoolmates of his, but the Islamists were a puz
zle to him. I asked if he could get me in among the students and act as translator and interpreter. He was willing, but he first steered me to the costume department, as he put it, the section of the Bazaar where everyday worker’s clothing was sold. I got two outfits, a cotton shirt, baggy blue trousers and cheap sandals like the men south of the train tracks wore, and something a little more upscale to fit me in with the students, most of whom came from middle-class families. He told me to leave off shaving for three days and then to come back late Thursday afternoon.

  Rather than a demonstration, he was taking me to a general meeting. I changed into my student revolutionary outfit. Saeed gave me a little tube of grease, telling me to rub into my hair and tousle it up. And he handed me a fake mustache. I attached it to my lip, and we agreed I had promise as an irate student Marxist. They held their meetings in a hall at Tehran University. He drove us over in one of his father’s cars, and he briefed me over dinner at a café in the area. Outside the hall Saeed greeted a few friends but did not linger in conversation. It was a big enough crowd that no one noticed me when we took seats toward the rear.

  The speeches were in Farsi. Saeed gave me the gist in a low voice, spoken from behind his hand in such a way that anyone watching would think he was just making remarks about it. It reminded me of the American campus riots in the late 1960s—a lot of passion and denunciations and demands, but not much in the way of practical programs. Then one of the speakers caught me up short. “He says they were organizing general strikes in Hamadan and Kermanshah, and the SAVAK swooped in and arrested the organizers,” Saeed whispered. “He escaped the dragnet by a hair’s breadth. He’s demanding that they find the dirty pig who alerted the SAVAK and eliminate him.”