“Someday I’ll learn to recognize good advice and follow it,” I said. “Maybe that account number will turn up, though God only knows how.”
“Where do you go from here?”
“Home. My work for the Shah is finished, but he is still in the Bahamas and it’s on my way, so I’ll stop in and see how he is doing. Thank you for your help. I am very sorry for what has become of your country.”
“Countries come and countries go. History is a long time. Something similar happens to every country, no doubt even your own country, sooner or later. I am lucky to be here in Basel. Were I in Iran I would by now have suffered Mr. Hoveyda’s fate, no doubt after some sessions with the interrogation specialists to disgorge what I know about the Shah’s accounts. It would be wasted effort as the Shah took them over personally, leaving me no access to them. I am not entirely safe and secure here in Basel, for that matter. Middle Eastern assassins pay little heed to national boundaries, and I am definitely a wanted man.
“Our great poet, Omar Khayyam, in his Rubiyat, had words for all of us—you, me, the Shah, the Ayatollah, the rich and powerful of all nations—to heed:
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes—or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two—is gone.
“You are the second Iranian to quote Khayyam to me,” I said. “He makes good sense. I’ll see about reading the whole work the first chance I have.” I wished him well and thanked him for his help. At least I got a Swiss passport out of it. Might come in handy someday.
The Shah’s credit was still good, so I flew first class to Miami, then hopped a puddle-jumper to Nassau Island. “Jake, good to see you again,” he greeted me. “Reports are that Iran has become an extremely unpleasant place under Khomeini’s rule. Imagine having to live under strict Sharia Law. Did your project meet with success?”
“You heard correctly about Iran. I couldn’t locate that account number, but I was glad to get away in one piece, which all things considered was very successful indeed.” I told him the whole story, which amused him greatly.
“This KGB agent. Why does he follow you around? “
“It’s a long story, but the KGB believes I am still with our CIA, and he is assigned to my case. Whither I goest, he will go.”
“It may be to your benefit, as it certainly was in Gasr Prison. He has a stake in keeping you alive. The adventures you have! As they say in America, you’re my kind of guy. I must tell you, I have been contacted by those you mentioned, and things are moving along well. However, our Bahamas visas expire at the end of this month. They have picked us as clean as they can and are insisting that we leave. So we are gathering ourselves up to move on. Mexico offered us a haven, and there is no time limit stipulated. An American, Mr. Robert Armao, highly recommended by my old friend, Nelson Rockefeller, has been handling arrangements for us here in the West. He has secured a compound in Cuernavaca. Do you know anything about it?”
“One of the most pleasant places in Mexico, from what I’ve heard. Mexico is a good country. They have great respect for wealth, and it goes a long way there.”
“They are certainly hospitable, though of course nothing is gratis for a deposed Shah on the run. I think I will be able to stop there until time for my treatment in the US. What are your plans now, Jake?”
“Head back home, assess the damage and put the pieces back together. No, actually I enjoyed working for you, sir. It was all a great adventure and it came right enough in the end. I just hope I did an adequate job for you.”
“Believe me, Jake, having someone tell me the truth for a change was a great blessing. Don’t be in a hurry to leave. Stay a few days and enjoy Paradise Island. We’ll find you a room in the hotel down the way.”
So I did just that. It was a posh, tropical resort, hardly a surfing mecca but I’d be returning to my own piece of one in a few days. I hadn’t had a decent ocean swim since Kish Island, and the warm Caribbean waters were fine for that. My tan needed some work, but I still looked good in a bathing suit. If my battle scars didn’t provoke interest at poolside or out on the sand, the would-be gold-diggers I chatted up around the bar invariably were intrigued by the finer points of Persian carpets. Being on friendly terms with the ex-Shah of Iran was a good conversation starter, and being on his tab certainly didn’t cramp my style. For all the time I’d been in the Shah’s employ, this was my first actual immersion in the Lush Life. Enjoy Paradise Island? Copacetic, mon!
The Shah never mentioned the Swiss bank account again, nor indicated in any way that he felt he should personally make good on it. It would have been out of line for me to suggest it. Place not your trust in kings, Hoveyda’s brother had quoted to me, but I couldn’t complain. The Shah had weightier matters preying on him. Like losing his country? Like facing cancer? And I was whining about a measly million bucks? Easy come, easy go.
As he bade me goodbye he handed me a package. “Princess Ashraf left this with me the last time she came through and said it is for you, and also to convey her best wishes.” It was small, but heavy. That kilo of ambergris she teased me with? In the privacy of first class I opened it on the flight from Miami to Los Angeles. It came with a note: “Gianni, it is my custom to leave my toy boys with a parting gift. With fondness and heartfelt thanks for the help you gave my brother, forever your Princess Ashraf.” Peeling back the wrappings revealed five translucent plastic cylinders, each holding ten gleaming gold Kruggerands.
Since I was going home for good I had Eddie Lipschitz come down to pick me up at LAX with my Vette. Not a scratch on it. He’d even had it detailed for my homecoming. Tooling up the Coast Highway I recounted my adventures. “Goddamn it, Jake,” he scolded. “I’m starting a production company with some people, and I had hopes you’d bring us back script material. We can’t make a movie out of that story. Who’d believe it?”
I opened up my Malibu pad and found it shipshape. The security agency had been on the job. All it needed was a trip to the supermarket. George Carlin had a bit about how to enjoy food shopping: (1) don’t eat for a week, (2) smoke five joints, (3) take along five hundred dollars. It wasn’t quite like that, but I did have to restock an empty refrigerator and most of a pantry. I took it easy a few days, called people, and in no time I felt at home.
With the house straightened out and “welcome back” parties out of the way, I drove over to “Ali bin Suleiman Palace of Fine Oriental Carpets” in Beverly Hills to check in with Ben Millstein. I was curious to see what Razi Q’ereshi had sent me.
“It’s over here, Jake.” Ben led me to a battered bundle swathed in heavy brown paper and tied firmly with twine. The customs label said it was “Turkish Woven Goods.” The air freight shipping label said it had emanated from Istanbul.
I know you shouldn’t be disappointed by gifts, but even so…I knew the quality of carpets Q’ereshi stocked. “I guess business was even worse than he was letting on,” I said. “He didn’t think much of Turkish carpets. He used to talk American tourists out of buying them.”
“Not so fast, Jake. This is a trick those Bazaaris use when they’re sending something valuable. There’s no duty on Turkish schmata. Let’s take a look.” He carefully snipped away the twine and cut away the wrapping paper. It was indeed a folded carpet, 6’ by 9’. We laid it on the floor, and I swear the entire room got brighter.
“Holy Moses,” Ben breathed. “You know what this is? It’s a superfine Naheen, wool and silk. Knot count about 800 or so per square inch. Only children’s small hands could do it. I’d estimate it took three or four year’s labor. They don’t make these any more. Most of my customers couldn’t afford the customs duty on this, let alone the carpet.”
12 | Back to Malibu
So, what happened next?
On October 22, 1979, the Shah entered New York Hospital�
�s Cornell Medical Center for cancer treatment, despite Jimmy Carter’s passive resistance. However, after treatment he wasn’t allowed to linger in New York for recuperation. He was shuffled off to Houston, and from there to Panama (courtesy of Manuel Noriega), and finally came to rest in Egypt.
The Shah’s acceptance by the US outraged the Ayatollah, and Iran erupted (again). Muslim sympathy protests raged across the Middle East. A mob stormed the US Embassy in Tehran on November 4th, taking 52 Americans hostage. The regime would hold them prisoner for 444 days. (Yes, “Kent Copley” numbered among them. “Dick Hedd” had been reassigned by then.) In retaliation the US froze billions of dollars of Iranian money held by US banks and embargoed trade with Iran, including carpets. For once, one of Ben Millstein’s carpet yarns came true—my buys really were some of the last ones out before they closed the border.
Ultimately the multi-millions the Shah spent, and the international uproar his entry into the United States provoked, bought him about eight months more of fitful, deteriorating life.
In December of 1979 Russia invaded Afghanistan, supposedly a surprise to the American intelligence agencies.
In February of 1980 my phone rang, a long distance call from Washington DC. The caller wouldn’t state his name, but it sounded official. “People tell me you’re a top intelligence agent and an expert about rescuing people in Iran,” he said.
“They must be people who never met me,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
“The Iranians are holding a bunch of Americans hostage. I’ve been thinking about mounting a rescue mission—bring a carrier group up the Persian Gulf, go in with a squadron of Chinooks and some Delta Force, extract ‘em. You have any thoughts on that?”
“Just off the top of my head, it’s a no-go.”
“Why’s that?”
“Number one, the logistics of an operation like that—very complex, too demanding, too many things to go wrong. Number two, locating the hostages in the city—it’s as big as Los Angeles, and they wouldn’t be all in the same place. Number three, you’d have two million angry Muslims armed with the Shah’s arsenal attacking your troops—it’s their turf, and they wouldn’t back off. Number four, without air cover the choppers would be sitting ducks for the Iranian Air Force, even as ineffective as they are. Number five, if it came to that, they just might execute the hostages.”
There was a long pause. “Well, there’s something to what you say. But there’s an election coming up, and I’m not looking too good on this issue. I’ll have to make some kind of effort. I’ll think on it. Thank you for your time, Mr. Fonko.”
Totaling up the damage, I realized that despite a few setbacks and fuckups, I came out in better shape than I’d first thought.
Mission accomplished: I’d provided good intel to the Shah and set in motion his American medical treatment, after which there was nothing more I could do for him. I’d done my job, and the pay I drew for the work was more than adequate.
Ross Perot’s check was generous to a fault, considering that all I’d contributed to rescuing his men was a namedrop and a little coaching.
With the embargo on Iranian carpets, Ben Millstein made out like a bandit on the ones I’d sent him. The commission he paid me was more icing on the cake.
The hostage crisis and the Russian Afghanistan invasion ran the price of gold straight up. I dumped my collection of Kruggerands close enough to the top to make that venture worthwhile.
Inflation had goosed the value of Chez Fonko handsomely, and thanks to Proposition 13, enacted while I was away, my property taxes were locked in at the 1975 assessment.
To combat inflation, Fed Chairman Paul Volcker took interest rates up to the highest levels in American history. I followed Evanston’s advice and punted the proceeds from my Kruggerands on 30 year Treasury Notes at 15%. “If that’s not a good investment, we’re witnessing the end of civilization as we know it,” was how he read it.
Razi’s carpet looked glorious in my living room, much marveled at by ladyfriends who’d come by to share a sunset with me. Dana Wehrli, now separated from her stock broker and none the worse for wear, was especially gushy about it. The thought crossed my mind that maybe the living room henceforth should be off limits for rowdy parties. Which was quickly shoved aside by another thought: We own things, not vice versa. No sandy feet allowed, however.
After Russia rolled into Afghanistan, Evanston picked up on his intel grapevine a rumor circulating that I was covertly running a mole in the KGB. He advised me to raise my rates.
Bottom line, my career as an international whatever-I-do had gotten a boost, and I’d cleared enough on this gig to float a decent lifestyle for a while.
On 24 April 1980 President Jimmy Carter launched “Operation Eagle Claw,” dispatching eight carrier-based choppers to rescue the 52 hostages. After numerous SNAFUs and two crashes in the desert the mission was aborted, adding to Carter’s image as an incompetent doofus. Was it really him that I talked to on the phone? Best if we don’t go there…
The Shah passed away in Cairo on July 27, 1980. Despite all efforts the cancer won the battle, as it inevitably does. Princess Ashraf decamped to her flat in Paris and declined to make further public appearances. Another sister built a compound in Santa Barbara. She took along for company a swarm of Iranian refugees who bought up swank SoCal real estate and gave their sons service stations for high school graduation presents, so many of them that LA became known, among the Hollywood set, as “Tehrangeles.” The word was that Madame Claude set up shop there as well.
The last I heard from Saeed Q’ereshi, he was partner in a hedge fund and lived with his family in Rowayton, Connecticut. Razi helped bankroll the fund. He left son Ahmad in charge of his carpet business in the Bazaar, which reportedly was doing well.
Many things commenced with the events of that fateful year 1979: In Iran, Islamic Fundamentalism took hold, a movement that eventually would spread throughout the Middle East. At the end of the day, could we have “saved Iran” except for all the indecision, fuckups and cluelessness? Not any more likely than saving the seashore from the incoming tide.
In Afghanistan the Russian invasion finally fizzled, largely thanks to the rebels shooting down their Hind gunships with American-supplied Stinger missiles. Which led to the Taliban and Al Qaeda a decade later.
In the US, four years of Jimmy Carter’s malaise led to the Reagan Revolution. So, by arranging for the Shah’s treatment, did I play a role in bringing down the Berlin Wall and ending the Cold War? That’s stretching it a little…
A few months after the Shah’s death in 1980 Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Army crossed the border in force to attack Iran, commencing several years of wanton but inconclusive slaughter. For all the billions the Shah had spent on weapons, jet fighters, infrastructure and defense, Iran could not use them effectively without American backup and support. Maintenance and logistics withered, properly trained personnel fled the country in droves, and soon warfare descended to the level of poison gas attacks and sending unarmed young boys to clear minefields by stepping on them. Don’t ask me to pick a favorite dog in that fight.
I’d meet Saddam a few years later.
Most importantly for me, 1979 marked a breakthrough in my career as…a freelance military advisor? A gentleman mercenary? An international private eye? Or was I just a former surf-rat with an unparalleled talent for getting himself into world-class scrapes?
But every time I pass through Switzerland I feel a twinge of wistfulness…like an ex-husband who’d lost everything in a bitter child-custody battle, passing through his old neighborhood. I’d sure like to visit my million dollars. If only I could get my hands on that damned account number!
Well, things went swimmingly for a while, pleasant if unexciting, until I got that phone call from my old surfing buddy, D.D…
A Note From the Editor
I was initially nonpl
ussed at the treatment Tinderboxed Press gave the first book in this series, Jake Fonko M.I.A., as I had hoped that the scholarly manuscript I’d so painstakingly prepared would be published in toto. NOT THAT I AM COMPLAINING. Considering that Tinderboxed is the only publisher even to consider taking on Jake Fonko’s chronicles, I am most grateful; and I deeply regret the problems my admittedly “less than flowing writing style” caused for the editorial staff.
Looking back on those several years of labor I and my assistant, Ms. Bertha Sikorsky, devoted to this project, we may have been perhaps unnecessarily thorough in analyzing and documenting the story of Mr. Fonko. Still, leaving more of the original material would have obviated many misunderstandings. For example, several colleagues have noted that in his meeting with Fonko, Emil Grotesqcu apologized for not offering Famous Amos cookies. In fact those cookies did not come on the market until that same year, so how could G. know about them? There are several possibilities: (1) F. misremembered the details of the meeting, (2) F. put it in to embellish the tale, as all of us may do from time to time, (3) the cookies had appeared earlier in the year, and someone had told G. about them, (4) the KGB had learned of the plans to bring them to market, and G. was trying to impress F. with his prescience. I devoted five pages to analyzing the issue from all angles, finally concluding that there is no way to know for certain. I also noted that Grotesqcu was less than prescient when he surmised that I Dream of Jeannie would end the career of Larry Hagman, who later found fame as “J. R. Ewing.”
Many such questions have arisen, which I had dealt with definitively in the original manuscript. But I appreciate that Tinderboxed is not a non-profit concern and must sell enough copies to lay readers to justify their efforts. I wish them Godspeed.
Mr. Fonko’s adventures in Indochina as recounted in Jake Fonko M.I.A. remain Top Secret/Need to Know, but events in Iran described here are well-documented and verifiable to a greater extent. Owing to Mr. Fonko’s disguising the names of most of the Americans involved in this adventure, I was unable to obtain eye-witness confirmation on many of the events related. However, the names of the EDS employees who took part in the prison rescue caper are public knowledge, so I contacted several of them. It was as Mr. Fonko said: to a man they denied ever having heard of him. Which I take as evidence that this story, incredible as it may strike some skeptical minds, is indeed true and factual. I asked about the superfine Naheen carpet given him by Mr. Q’ereshi. Mr. Fonko lamented that while he was on assignment in Bosnia and Serbia in 1992 his Malibu beach-front house was destroyed by the fearsome storms of that winter, washing his precious carpet out to sea. Typically, he shrugged off the loss of that priceless item with a wink and, “Easy come, easy go.”
The Jake Fonko Series: Books 1 - 3 Page 45