Emil Grotesqcu.
“So when the CIA sent you back to Tehran, the KGB of course dispatched me to cover you. Why on earth did you have to come back? Wasn’t it bad enough the first time?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. How did you wind up in Gasr? “
“Being a Russian on a Wednesday would be crime enough for the Komiteh. But as I said, I’d been a little mischievous. The SAVAK had taken down one of our networks, so I was tasked with assembling another. One of the men I approached was an informant, and my name wound up in some files, where the Komiteh saw it. They nabbed me before I even reached the Russian Embassy. Charged me with espionage and sedition, among other crimes. What about you?”
“Seems the clerk at Hotel Semiramis had been keeping a dossier on me, which was embellished by others; and then he caught me rifling through files in one of the Ministries.”
“I’m afraid I’m a little to blame there, as my paying him to report to me on your activities probably piqued his interest beyond casual.”
That son-of-a-bitch clerk had been getting rich off me. Who else was he taking money from? I should storm out there and demand a finder’s fee. “They said Sadeq Kahlkali would be in charge of my tribunal. You know anything about him?”
“Oh, you in BIG trouble now, boy,” Grotesqcu drawled, channeling a Southern sheriff. “He’s one of the Revolution’s most enthusiastic lights, a protégé of the Ayatollah. One of their eminent political theorists, too: ‘ Human rights mean that unsuitable individuals should be liquidated so that others can live free,’ he once said, and I gather he intends to make the word the deed. Ha ha, up yours, Jimmy Carter! Josef Stalin couldn’t have stated it better.”
Changing this unsettling subject, I asked, “When did they bring you in?”
“Yesterday. My trial comes up in a couple days, they said. Just a formality. They’ve already decided to shoot me. How about you?”
“They have it mind to torture me to find out information that doesn’t exist, then videotape my beheading.”
“That’s the problem with being an American. They know the leverage your country’s obsession with the so-called sanctity of human life—American lives, anyhow—gives them. A video like that would have your President Jimmy Carter weeping from dawn to dusk. Wouldn’t work with a Russian. They couldn’t air the video there, and the KGB would find some way to get more than even for trying to embarrass them. They’ll just shoot me with without ceremony. That’s acceptable.”
“We don’t have much time. Is anyone else in this cell?”
“There is a poor soul who had been in the wrong kind of businesses, in addition to sharing in the Royal Family’s corruption. The fellow in the back bunk imported liquor and retailed it to various high officials. He is beside himself, practically catatonic. Fears Allah’s wrath or something. They’ll be coming to get him for his trial tomorrow morning.”
“How do they orchestrate that?”
“I saw them take one fellow away this morning. Two guards and a jailer. That’s all they need. These Iranians are not a spirited bunch. They don’t resist. Ensha Allah, as they say.”
Obviously I needed out of there—I’d soon be facing a trial by agony in a court of no appeals. No way could anybody come to my rescue. Escape would mean getting out of this cell, wending my way through squads of armed fanatics and slipping past three guarded doors. Scant cover was available for concealment, and I’d seen no other ports of exit. Any violence I tried would be answered with gunfire from trigger-happy goons who weren’t afraid to die. I couldn’t speak their language, another barrier. If I enlisted Grotesqcu, he at least spoke Farsi, but he looked so unmistakably Western that he had no chance of sneaking out unnoticed, whereas I had a chance of passing as Iranian. If there were some way to combine my looks and his Farsi…
Then I remembered Señor Wences from the Ed Sullivan Show in the ‘50s, the way he made his hand puppet and the head in the box talk. I was so intrigued that I read up on it and tried to imitate his act. Dad feigned being impressed, at least. Mom didn’t know whether to gush or to cringe. An idea took shape. Grotesqcu had been here one day already—they knew who he was, “the Russian devil.” Whereas I’d been brought in late at night: the day shift hadn’t yet seen me. The Komiteh had been in power only a couple months, so probably the prison wasn’t fully organized yet, which was in our favor. If we could make our try early the next morning, we just might pull it off. “Do they have ventriloquists in Russia?” I asked Grotesqcu.
“You mean with the dummy on the lap, throwing their voice sort of thing? I’ve always wondered how they did that.”
“Between the two of us, the guards shouldn’t be a problem,” I explained. “That will get us out of this cell. The trick will be clearing the prison compound. You speak Farsi pretty well, and I could pass for Iranian.” I outlined my scheme, and he agreed it was our best, hell our only, chance.
“Ventriloquists do it by talking without moving their lips and moving the dummy’s mouth so that it looks like the dummy is talking. In this case I’ll be the dummy, you’ll be the voice-thrower. Try it, start practicing. B’s, p’s and m’s are the hardest part.”
Gasr Prison operated 24/7. Every now and then guards and jailers brought some enemy of the Faithful down the corridor to stow in a cell. Or came down the corridor and retrieved one. The ones they retrieved never came back. There wasn’t much clamor from the doomed prisoners in the cells—a few wretched prayers, some groans from the injured or tortured, mainly. We heard faint volleys of rifle shots every now and then. We got what sleep we could, despite the muffled hysterics of the back-bunk rum-runner. I made a point of staying in the shadows so that passing guards wouldn’t get familiar with my looks.
Grotesqcu said that after they brought the morning meal the corridor got busier, so we’d best make our move before that, if possible. Luck was with us—they came for our cell-mate early, and we were awake and alert. He whimpered in his bunk at the back of the cell, refusing to come out. The two guards went in to roust him, the jailer standing in the doorway. The guards were stocky men with wrestlers’ moves, and they carried their assault rifles with the safety catches engaged. I figured them for amateur toughs, used to meeting no resistance to their bullying. Grotesqcu edged over toward the cell door, while I drifted up behind the two distracted guards. Grotesqcu had Spetsnaz training, so knew SAMBO: he’d be okay.
They were prodding at the guy with their rifles, shouting at him. I sidled over to get in as good a position as I could manage, then shouted Allahu Akbar and pointed at the ceiling. The guard nearest me looked up, and I smashed his windpipe with a judo chop. Before the other could react I kicked one of his knees apart, and when he hit the ground I put him out with a kick to the temple, then likewise finished off the first one, who was writhing on the floor groping for breath. The jailer by the door was down and out as well.
“Now comes the hard part,” I said to Grotesqcu, as I set about exchanging some clothes with the guards. The plan was this: posing as a guard, I’d march Grotesqcu, hands up in the air, out of the cell block with a rifle in his back. If any talking was necessary, he would talk and I would move my mouth. The signals: wave his right hand around if he was going to say something, then drop the elbow while he was talking. We’d rehearsed it a little, but to say it was a desperate scheme was optimistic. At least I’d have the gun and an extra clip, but say that I downed a dozen of them…then what? We stowed the bodies under the bunk beds, closed the cell door and started briskly down the corridor. Maybe they’d blame it on the guy cowering on his bunk, who was doomed in any event. “Keep that safety on,” Grotesqcu growled over his shoulder.
The Iranian lazy lack of interest in their work tilted in our favor. First hurdle, the jailer at the cellblock door: Grotesqcu waved his hand. I watched the elbow, mouthed like crazy while it was down. The guard waved us through. We bustled out into the yard, scattering
wandering chickens and turkeys. Next hurdle, the gate to the main hall. The incoming stream of prisoners had not abated—The Revolution Never Rests! We marched right by the line-up, barely slowed down for the guards. Right hand waved, elbow down, and Grotesqcu snapped something pre-emptory. I lip synched it with a snarl. Had the guards been lip-readers they might have caught on, but they weren’t. They stepped aside, and I jabbed Grotesqcu in the ribs to hurry him along. One more gate’s worth of guards and we were home free. They had enough on their hands with the inflow, we were just a passing distraction. Our luck held, and we marched down the street out front. “What was I saying to them?” I asked.
“You were ordered to take the Russian devil to the Komiteh immediately. We were already behind schedule. You’d been late with a prisoner once before, and you feared the consequences if it happened again. They understood. They’d seen enough consequences of failure.”
“So far, so good, but we’ve got to get away from this place, and we can’t walk the length of Tehran with this gun in your back.”
“Wait,” he said. “Here may be the solution.” Up the block a black-burqa-clad woman with a rifle was waddling along toward us. A female Revolutionary Guard on her way to work. Grotesqcu looked around—we were a couple blocks and around a corner from the prison. Few people were on the street, and people minded their own business when armed Revolutionary Guards escorting prisoners were in proximity. “Get ready, you’re going to propose something to her. Do it with a leer. And then you’re going to force me over into that alley there.”
We intercepted the woman, sidling over in front of her to block her path. I mouthed some sort of risqué invitation. She stopped. I said something else. She gave a hesitant little smile and looked at Grotesqcu’s crotch. I said something else, and he moved forward toward the alley. I followed his lead, prodding him with the gun muzzle, him now addressing me over his shoulder with a pleading voice. The woman followed along, a mischievous glint in her eyes. A few yards up the alley we came to a halt. Grotesqcu, looking greatly distressed, reached down and shamefacedly began unzipping his fly. The woman bent down to look, whereupon he lifted a swift knee into her face, knocking her unconscious.
“What was that all about?”
“You asked her if she’d like to see the uncircumcised member of the infidel dog, that she’d be amazed at the size of it. Curiosity got the best of her. They’re a horny lot, these people. Let’s get this burqa off her.” She was stocky, with a big wart on her chin and bushy eyebrows that met over her nose. For women like her the burqa was a blessing. A peek at Grotesqcu’s willie would have been the thrill of her life. Revolutionary Guard was a big step up from chasing goats around in her village, empowered and meaningful work. The National Organization for Women would be proud.
“What now?” I asked.
“I’ll put this on, and I don’t think we’ll have any trouble after that. Just a man and his wife on the way to market. Women must be accompanied in the new social order, you know. At least there’s a chill in the air. These things were oppressive in the summer months.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“Jake, you can blend in with this crowd. I needed some way to move around undetected. Say, how do you think the terrorists do it in these countries? Get sent some time to a Baltic country where the crowd looks like me and just watch my smoke.”
So we ambled through the back streets of Tehran, attracting no attention. Keeping his face covered up to his eyes, he didn’t look too much uglier than the woman we’d taken the burqa from. We reached the central district, and Grotesqcu stopped in the shadows of a building at an intersection. “Jake, this is where I leave you. I’ve got a way out of this hellhole, and I’m sure you do too. That was a close call back there, never a dull moment with you around. But try to get better assignments, okay? This whole Iran business has gotten way out of control. When the Shah started modernizing we thought we had it in the bag. Plenty of discontent and resentments to nurture, plenty of useful idiots available to infiltrate his new universities and steer their consciousness in our direction, and then we’d have our access to the Gulf. But these religious zanies subverted the students’ revolution. They hate all of us western devils, and there’s more sympathy for them among Muslims abroad than anyone suspects. If there’s bloodshed with that mob at the US Embassy, we could be looking at World War III. “
“It seems to be the will of the people,” I remarked.
“The will of the people, the general will, that gibberish of Rousseau’s? That’s our line. We use it all the time while we’re busy subverting it. Then, after we take over, we use it to justify what we do. But you know, this Revolution really did turn out to be the will of the people. They accomplished an amazing thing, the first revolution of this magnitude that overthrew an entrenched government by sheer weight of numbers, without an armed insurrection. Well, they got what they wanted, and it serves the fools right.
“The irony of it is,” he continued, “that we’ve been flooding this region with anti-Semitic and anti-American propaganda for years now, local translations of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and all that drivel, to undermine your influence among the proletariat. And what did we accomplish? We fired up the Fundamentalists and undermined ourselves as well! They hate us godless oppressors as much as they do the Zionists and the capitalists. We’ll be trying something different in Afghanistan, but I have to wonder if there’s any way to win with these people. Sometimes you just want to throw up your hands…” he sighed.
“I’ll tell you what. When I get back to KGB headquarters I’m going to concoct a dire Russian plot in Thailand—a scheme so sinister and devious that only Jake Fonko can handle it—then I’ll leak it to the CIA. Phi Phi Island is an undiscovered tropical paradise. Scuba like you wouldn’t believe and some of the best marlin fishing in the world. We’ll have a holiday on agency money. See you next year in Phuket! Ciao!” He pulled the rifle out from inside his chador, held it at port arms and marched off toward the Russian Embassy. Nobody was going to mess with him in that rig.
He still couldn’t believe I wasn’t with the Company. Of course if I weren’t Jake Fonko, CIA Super-Hotshot, they’d reassign him to other duties. Can’t blame him for staying in denial, he was making a cushy career out of me. What the hell, as enemy operatives go, Grotesqcu was okay. If our little charade was diverting KGB resources away from more serious matters, I suppose I even could fancy I was helping our side. He might have been causing trouble in Afghanistan, you know.
I still faced another nervous mile to the Bazaar. I couldn’t be sure but what they’d put out an APB on me, so I avoided routes with the busiest streets, stayed close to the buildings, did what I could to alter my appearance and insinuated myself into crowds when possible. I slipped back into the Bazaar and round-aboutly threaded my way to Q’ereshi’s shop. I lurked back in the hubbub, scanned for any surveillance and waited until the coast seemed clear. I moved quickly, greeted him in passing and hustled back to the office to shed my guard outfit and change into civvies. Razi and his son, Ahmad, were delighted that I’d survived the night and begged to hear all the details. I extemporized a yarn that did not involve Gasr Prison, no less unbelievable than what had actually happened, and they settled for it, though suspecting it was a tale of Sheharazadian proportions. I told them that I would be returning to Europe on a flight the next day, and I called Dieter at Lufthansa for arrange it. As Zak Fahnke had not been caught doing anything in Tehran that he shouldn’t, there was no trouble at Dieter’s end. That taken care of, we repaired to the best restaurant in the Bazaar, where Razi sprang for a celebratory Iranian feast. I hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s dinner, so doubly enjoyed the spicy spread of meats, rice, savories, fruits and succulents.
The next day as I was leaving, Razi said, “Mr. Fonko, to make amends for my duplicity and show my gratitude for what you did for me, I took the liberty of shipping a token of my great esteem f
or you in care of Ben Millstein. It will have arrived by the time you return to California. Please, if you can, find out how Saeed is doing, and tell him that his family in Tehran is all right. Confidentially, some of us are already working on getting US visas. And remember, I will always be your friend.” Yet I will always be an infidel, I thought. Still, he’d treated me well and been very helpful. Perhaps that’s all one should expect of any friend. “And I yours,” I avowed, and meant it. “We will see one another again.”
The taxi ride to the airport was the usual ordeal. Q’ereshi vouched for the cab driver when he engaged the cab, so I had no reason to distrust him, though he seemed nerve-challenged to have me as passenger. Armed Revolutionary Guards—peasants in uniform, women in black chadors, all looking stern in their defense of the Faith—stood guard at many points along the route, and I noted a lot of traffic stops involving luxury cars. Probably just run-of-the-mill Third World shakedowns by underpaid police. My cab was beaten up enough not to draw that kind of attention. We reached the airport in plenty of time, and despite the congestion, Lufthansa check-in was efficient. Zak Fanhke caused no concern at passport inspection, and soon I was boarding my Frankfurt flight.
A couple hours later I saw the coast of the Mediterranean Sea come into view under the wing. Flying against the time zones, we’d set down in Frankfurt in mid-evening. The Frankfurt Flughafen was a city unto itself. I planned to stay in an airport hotel, then take the train to Basel in the morning and check in with Mohammed Behbehanian. I wondered if they would give my irretrievable million dollars to the poor children. But I suspected it was more likely that the Swiss bankers would just keep it for themselves.
11 | Paradise Island
Mohammed Behbehanian was relieved that I’d survived my fool’s errand into Iran. “I tried to dissuade you, Mr. Fonko, but youth is often resistant to wisdom. So it all came to naught? Sometimes naught is still better than the alternatives.”
The Jake Fonko Series: Books 1 - 3 Page 44