My news, the only good news the Shah had received since his departure, cheered him up. “So they will be in contact, and as events unfold I will be able to go to an American hospital and have my condition treated?”
“Yes, and it will be handled in strict confidence. They will work through you alone.”
“Jake, I cannot thank you enough. With that, I think your job is done. I no longer hold any illusions of returning to power. If I can get relief from this horrible disease and spend some pleasant time among friends and my family, that will be enough. I tried my best for Iran, but there is nothing more I can do. It is over.”
“You will never be forgotten, sir,” I said. That was the truth, and I left it there.
“I will see to something in way of severance payment and a going away gift. You have been more helpful than you will ever know.”
“Umm, regarding severance, sir. I seem to remember that Mr. Hoveyda opened a Swiss bank account in my name, to which I would be given access upon successful completion of my mission to your satisfaction.”
“Oh, did he? Let me think. Yes, I remember something about that. I believe he did. I am very sorry to say that there is a problem. You see, the Revolutionary Komiteh arrested him recently, tried him and executed him. It is a shame. He was a good man. I thought it might placate my opponents to remove him from office, and then to have him under house arrest until things calmed down. Events took their own course, and I was not able to save him.”
“Yes, he was a good man. I liked him. I am very sorry to hear his fate. Umm…what is the problem you mentioned?”
“Amir Abbas is the only person who knew the number of that account. At least he never told it to me. And without that number, no one can access that account.”
“Is there any way to find it?”
“I never involved myself in operational details, and needless to say events have limited my powers in Tehran. There is a man, he is in Basel, Switzerland, Mohammed Behbehanian, who until recently managed my personal fortune in Swiss banks. He is 78 years old. He worked for my father before me. He is an expert with Swiss banks, and he knew Amir Abbas well. If anyone could help you with this problem, it is he. I will set up an account for your final several months’ pay and your severance stipend so that you have funds at your disposal, and then let us plan your journey to Basel.”
Between the monthly salary I’d drawn and not spent while working for the Shah in Iran, the commission from Ben Millstein, and the little gift from Ross Perot, plus the appreciation on my Kruggerands, I didn’t really need that money. I was good for several years. But I could be a millionaire! And I was only 30 years old! I didn’t have to rob a bank. I didn’t have to hold some spoiled rich kid for ransom. I didn’t have to engage in any illegal activities at all. A million bucks was a lot of money back then. It was just a matter of finding the number of a bank account. How could I face myself if I didn’t even try?
The Shah cabled Mr. Behbehanian to expect me. The first thing I found upon arriving in Basel was March weather in the Alps. I hadn’t thought to look at a weather report, so was sporting desert-weight duds. Another spate of assembling suitable clothing—I spent a lot of time buying new wardrobes on this assignment. I got a room in the local Hilton and took a little stroll around town to stretch my legs. After months in the Middle East and North Africa, this was more like it. Medieval charm; prosperous people out on the streets; table manners I could understand; no sand, no heat, no flies; clean, crisp air flowing down from snow-capped mountains; superb beer in every restaurant; and girls it was safe to chat up.
We had a morning appointment. I found Behbehanian’s office in an unassuming building near the Hilton. In Switzerland money tended to lurk in unassuming buildings. His office was small, neat and tastefully furnished, but he obviously had not spent unnecessarily on it. He wasn’t selling anything, had no need to impress. He was round, balding, had a grey mustache. He looked like somebody’s grandfather, as he no doubt was.
“Mohammad Reza told me you urgently needed to see me, Mr. Fonko, but he did not elucidate,” he said. “How can I help you?”
I explained the situation to him.
“This is difficult, Mr. Fonko. Unfortunately, Mr. Hoveyda arranged that account for you, and also unfortunately, the Swiss banks are utterly incorruptible in matters of bank secrecy and security. That is why so many large, and often dubious, fortunes find their way here. As good a relationship as I have had with them over many years, there is no way to persuade those bankers to tell me anything—anything whatsoever—about that account. I doubt that all traces of the number passed away with him, so there is some hope of finding it. Possibly his brother, Mr. Fereydoun Hoveyda, would know where he kept records of accounts. He had no connection with the Shah, so I think the new regime so far has left him alone. If he does not know of any records, still the account number may be in the files in his former office, in which case you would have to gain access to the office and locate the proper file. In either case, you would have to go to Tehran. That would be your only chance to root it out. Are you sure you want to do that? It has become a very dangerous place, especially for Americans.”
“I think it’s worth the risk. I know the city fairly well. I don’t intend to stay there long, just in and out. If the number doesn’t turn up quickly, I’ll bag it and leave.”
“It may be difficult to get into Iran now, and even more difficult to leave if you are under suspicion.”
“Now that you mention it…and when I left I didn’t make a proper exit. Passport control never checked me out. They might have that on record.”
“If you are going to do this, you had best go in under false flag. Perhaps a Swiss passport? I know someone who could have one for you in a couple days.”
“Any and all help would be deeply appreciated, Mr. Behbehanian.”
“I will see to it. It will, of course, cost money. Tell me, how is the Shah these days?”
“Ailing and discouraged, but I think he accepts that Iran has changed hands.”
“It is all very sad. The Shah is not a bad man. He is a good man. He is a capable man of many talents. His problem was that he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and be a great man. He did not have it in him to be a great man.”
“He thought he was trying to improve Iran by modernizing it,” I said.
“Modernizing! The Shah’s father did all the modernizing Iran could stomach, outlawing the veil and all. Women’s rights, pah! Even many women did not want that. Mohammad Reza was educated here in Switzerland, and the 1953 coup that overthrew Mossadeq turned his vision toward the West. The beginning of his end was the festival he staged in Persepolis in 1971 celebrating 2,500 years Dynastic rule since Cyrus the Great, for which he constructed a tent city covering 160 acres. I know the price tag for that party—$120,000,000! And what did it purchase? International trash like Imelda Marcos from the Philippines, Hailie Selassie and his retinue of 72 from Ethiopia, and of course dignitaries from the Western petrol-consuming countries, all eagerly gorging on his caviar and swilling champagne from Maxim’s in Paris, while buttering him up, telling him how great Iran would be under his rule. His White Revolution followed soon, turning the mullahs against him.
“2,500 years since Cyrus? Pah! The Pahlavi family seized the throne from the Qajar Dynasty in 1921. I will tell you the root cause of the Shah’s great mistake. He sincerely wanted to help the people, but he didn’t understand them, and in the end the people defeated him. It was a clash of two deep and longstanding traditions: the tradition of the Peacock Throne, and the tradition of the peasants. For twice 2,500 years, Persian peasants have lived in poverty. It was the best that land could provide for them. You have seen it with your own eyes. Except for the petroleum, Iran is a poor, barren place. The people are long adapted to their poverty, it is their way of life. Instead of wealth they have the Faith, a comfort to them. The Shah tried to take awa
y their poverty—and then what would they have left? On top of that, he insulted their Faith with the dissolute ways of his corrupt family.
“And then the oil money came gushing in. For many years the price of oil stayed between $3 and $4 a barrel, and we were on a road toward prosperity of a sort, albeit at a measured pace, not so disruptive. Then in 1973 Israel defeated those idiotic Arab states in their Yom Kippur War. Their spiteful embargo tripled the price of a barrel of oil by 1975, to $12. Last year it was up to $15. But Iran did not cut production—the Shah pursued friendly relations with America and Israel—so money came gushing in, feeding the greed and luxury of the Shah’s family and hangers-on. It became as if someone had thrown a haunch of meat to an army of starving rats. The common people saw those obscene displays of new oil money and became discontent with their poverty. Resentment swelled.
“Where did all that money go? Modernization and weapons of war. Iran has become the most industrialized and militarized of Third World nations. The Shah even had dreams of nuclear power plants. But his modern Iran is a parody of a modern nation. The new industries have been put in place by the Americans, but the Iranians taking them over comprise workers who will not work, organized by managers who cannot manage. Inefficiency, mismanagement and corruption—some modern nation!
“So where could the people turn for leadership? The mullahs were happy to answer their pleas, and incidentally to get back at the Shah.
“And that is the tragedy of our dear Shah, as well as the tragedy of Iran.”
“I like him,” I said quietly.
“You’ve not seen him at his worst, as I have over the years,” said Behbehanian, “but I like him too. Despite his arrogance and wrongheadedness, he truly meant well, and he did the best he could to help Iran. But the moving finger writes and then moves on, as our greatest poet said, and the Shah’s tragedy endures. Enough of lamenting the inevitable. Go to the photographer across the street and have passport photos taken. Bring them back to me, and we’ll get you on your way.”
Three days later he delivered the passport, a forgery of course, but a good one. It was a brisk business in those days, he told me. “It is best you fly Lufthansa from Frankfurt,” he advised. “They are the most reliable western airline into Tehran now. The others either quit doing business there, or now are run by the new regime—with predictable results. I’ve prepared a letter for you to present to Herr Dieter von Boehm-Behzing, the manager there, and I’ve alerted him as to your arrival. He will fill you in on the local situation and offer his help. I think you will need all the help you can get, as you are entering a milieu fraught with great danger.”
I thanked him (and paid him for the passport), then set about making arrangements for the flight. I would be traveling as Zak Fahnke, a Swiss citizen, leaving my US documents in Basel pending my return. It was quicker to take the train from Basel to Frankfurt than to fly: the train serviced the airport there. At least I wouldn’t need to buy a new wardrobe for Tehran. I still had the clothes I’d brought out with me.
And so I journeyed on, in search of my million quarantined dollars. What I was to find was some of the reasons why greed is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
10 | Gasr Prison
What a difference two months makes. The Tehran Airport was still a mess, but a different kind of mess from when I cleared Iran. A chaos of Americans and other foreigners all trying to leave at the same time created the previous mess. The current mess consisted of debris left over from the previous mess, shabbiness stemming from lack of maintenance, and congestion due to apathetic service and lack of crowd control. Iranians never heard of queuing up. I breezed through the immigration gates with scant scrutiny—the passport officer didn’t really give a shit—and went to the Lufthansa counter, where Behbehanian told me his friend would meet me. Unlike counters at the other carriers still in operation, Lufthansa’s was relatively orderly, kept in line by German attendants.
I stood off to the side for a little while, not knowing whether I should join a line and if so which one. Presently a German man came around. He was of medium height, thin, with an aristocratic bearing. “Would you be Mr. Fonko?” he asked.
“Yes. And you would be Herr Boehm-Behzing?”
“Yes. Call me ‘Dieter’—it’s simpler. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Fonko.”
“Mr. Behbehanian prepared this letter for you,” I said, handing it to him. “It will explain why I’m here.”
Dieter opened the envelope and scanned the letter. “I see. You come on a dangerous mission. Any money you can rescue from these scoundrels is all to the good, but I don’t know that your chances of success are promising. Mr. Behbehanian said you might need some help. What can I do for you?” He was soft spoken but projected confidence and self-possession.
“I don’t know just yet. I’ll have to get the lay of the land. I hope to return to Europe within just a few days.”
“I wish I could do that,” he said. “May I see your passport, if you don’t mind?”
I handed it over, and he examined it. “Very well done…so you are Zak Fahnke? Close to Jake Fonko. From der Schweiz. Ausgezeichnet. You shouldn’t have any trouble using this. Did you bring any other passports?”
“I left my American one in Basel.”
“Also wise. Americans are not popular here at the moment. They like Germans well enough, but then Germans have had friends in the Middle East for a long time. Swiss are all right too. Do you have local money? They haven’t yet changed the currency. It’s difficult to get a good exchange rate. Swiss francs, German marks, are good. Beware black marketers on the streets: in addition to being possibly crooks, they may be government decoys looking for people with American dollars. I hope you have read the Koran. They are instituting Sharia law, and they can be overzealous. Ground transportation is difficult. Between the Revolutionaries’ interference and the usual incompetence, the whole city is still tied up in knots. The Revolutionary Komiteh has seized most of the foreign-owned business and now are busily running them into the ground.”
“Yet Lufthansa seems to be business as usual. How did you manage that?”
“About that: After the Ayatollah returned, my long-term Iranian assistant came up to me and told me I would be taking orders from him now. I looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘Listen, you worthless son of a whore. One more word from you and I will stop Lufthansa from flying here, I will close the office, you will be out of a job and you will never enter Germany again. Now go sit on your ass somewhere and stay out of my sight.’ It worked. They’re mostly bluff. Though I don’t know how long we will be allowed to continue operating. Things here get worse every day. This Revolution is not going away, and they are wahnsinnig—crazy. It is very late in the day. Do you have a place to stay?”
I said no, so he suggested a hotel he thought was reliable. He told me I could usually find him at the Lufthansa office downtown and to call upon him if I needed anything. But if I got caught doing anything I shouldn’t, he has never heard of me. I went to the taxi stand and found a crowd, serviced by very few shabby taxis. I eventually elbowed my way to a cab, arrived at the hotel and crashed for the night. The streets of Tehran, never a sight for sore eyes, were improved in one respect—the traffic flowed less congested, due to the petrol shortage and the wealthy laying low. Otherwise they were littered, debris-strewn and well-patrolled by Revolutionaries toting assault rifles. Many buildings were burnt out or otherwise damaged. Repairs hadn’t caught up with Revolutionary damage. Cleaning Tehran up completely would take a while.
After breakfast I checked out of the hotel and took a taxi to the Bazaar. When I showed up at Razi Q’ereshi’s shop he was looking a little wan, but he seemed glad to see me.
“Mr. Fonko, what I pleasant surprise. If it is carpets you are seeking, I certainly have an ample inventory. The Americans have gone, and our borders have tightened, to the detriment of the export market. America was by far
the largest buyer of Iranian carpets, and the current regime does not like Americans.”
It was evident. His piles of carpets reached higher than when I left. “No, I have other business, and I’m in town for only a few days. How is Saeed? Have you heard from him?”
At that he brightened up. “Yes, yes. He is in Chicago. He has a job as clerk in the Mercantile Exchange. It is only a beginning position, but I think he will advance rapidly. It is in line with his talents.” Then he reverted to wan. “Things have not worked out as we Bazaaris had envisaged.” he sighed. “We thought that, since we backed him so generously, the Ayatollah would view us favorably. You remember what I told you about a revolution being like a swarm of bees, and each bee has his own plan? This bee’s plan was wrongheaded. The mullahs positively adore money, but they do not like businessmen, an unrealistic conceit if you ask me. There have been certain pressures. It has gone especially hard for friends in the banking district. Some had been careless and neglected to arrange their transactions in a way to avoid calling their fees ‘interest’. The Koran is very unforgiving of interest, or ‘usury’, as it is called. A number of them have been tried and executed already, and the rest live terrified. I am not without concerns myself. There is nothing in the Koran against profiting from selling carpets, or even cheating infidels, but that is not my entire business. How is Ben Millstein these days?”
“He wishes he could get more Persian carpets. But I’m here for other reasons. I need to find Mr. Fereydoun Hoveyda. Could you help me with that?”
The Jake Fonko Series: Books 1 - 3 Page 42