The Peregrine Spy

by Edmund P. Murray

  Belinky nodded. “I do. I meet with Yevteshenko tomorrow.”

  “Not much notice,” said Frank.

  “Best I could do. Anyways, you two have been acting like you’re in a hurry.”

  “Where?” asked Frank.

  “Naderi Hotel.”

  Frank remembered it. He and Lermontov had met there once. The Soviets used it often, which could be helpful.

  “What time?”

  He wrote it all down for Lermontov.

  * * *

  They met in the first safe house Lermontov had brought him to. He does a good job of mixing up his venues, thought Frank. But no vodka, no caviar, no envelope of twenties.

  “My instructions from Moscow are to remain so long as you are here and useful to us.”

  “Good,” said Frank.

  “But we do not believe you Americans will be here for long.”

  “I’ve heard the embassy has contingency plans for evacuating nonessential Americans.”

  “Are you among the nonessential?”

  “No.”

  “Excellent. We should have an interesting few weeks. What do you have for me?”

  Rocky, on his own initiative, sanitized the cables reporting on the various armed services capabilities and gave Frank permission to pass them on to Lermontov. Frank added an envelope marked “open later” with the information on Belinsky’s meeting at the Naderi.

  “This is good,” said Lermontov, studying the cables. “Stick close to this General Kasravi. Anything about a coup attempt. If you want another bonus, he could be your key to the money box.”

  “What about Gharabaghi saying he’d resign rather than participate in a military takeover? Doesn’t that tell you something?”

  “Something. But we never put as much stock in Gharabaghi as your General Weber did. I’ll call attention to it in my cable, but don’t count on a bonus.”

  “This General Weber makes the rest of the American establishment look good,” said Frank.

  “Really? How so?”

  “He wanted the station to sit on our reports. Said they read too negative. Rocky, our chief of station, might have done just that. But Weber got him so mad he went ahead and filed everything.”

  “You are so naive,” said Lermontov. “Your fight isn’t with Rocky or the stupid general. Your fight is with the system. And what you don’t understand, by fighting the system you make it stronger. You fight the system to get your reporting accepted, reporting the system doesn’t want to hear. You succeed and the system is stronger, better informed, because you have fought it.”

  “Interesting,” said Frank. “But I still don’t think the system appreciates what I’ve done.”

  “Probably not,” said Lermontov with a rare smile that turned into a grimace. It must hurt that jaw to smile, thought Frank.

  “We should meet here again tomorrow evening,” said Lermontov. “Things are changing rapidly.”

  * * *

  Frank joined Rocky in the bubble after his meeting with Lermontov the next evening. He opened the eyes-only envelope among the material Lermontov had delivered. Rocky read the message aloud.

  “‘Meeting took place. Envelope with American currency delivered. Photo taken. Subject later taken back to our embassy.” Rocky handed it to Frank. “Done deal. Belinsky already told me. Seems kind of a … what’s the expression? Anticlimax? Like there oughta be rollin’ drums. Thunder and lightnin’.”

  “You cable James?” asked Frank.

  “On what Belinsky said. Yeah, I did. I’ll do another on Lermontov’s note. Looks like we got both those guys, Lermontov and Belinsky, off the hook. And put the fuckin’ mole on ice. Moscow’s gonna think their penetration agent nailed his man in Tehran. And he did. But it wasn’t our man. Lermontov can relax. The Soviet spooks will quit lookin’.”

  “Let’s hope so,” said Frank. He felt a profound sense of relief. The mole had been foiled and Lermontov was safe. Belinsky would not be arrested or disgraced. He felt no pity for the doomed GRU officer but also no urge to celebrate. They were still in the midst of a civil war; a fatwa with his name still carried a promise of death; deep within the agency, the unidentified mole continued to dig.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Frank and Gus sat in Stan Rushmore’s office putting together the last of their cables assessing the capabilities of the various armed forces to carry out a coup. At first, they could hear only the sound of car horns and truck Klaxons pounding out an incessant beat—blaat-blaat, blaat-blaat, blaat-blaat. They exchanged a glance. Without speaking, they slipped into their parkas, pulled their stocking caps low over their foreheads, and, though heavy gray clouds hung low in the sky, put on dark glasses and went outside.

  Taunting crowds had gathered outside the chained gates of the base. Frank and Gus, hands plunged deep in their pockets, their breath frosted, approached the guardhouse. Now Frank could pick out the words with the same incessant beat as the Klaxons—Shah raft, Shah raft, Shah raft.

  Frank had no idea what raft meant in Farsi. The echo of the English word conjured up an image of the Shah swept away by turbulent waters on a wildly spinning raft.

  “What are they saying?” Gus asked one of the Iranian air force guards on duty.

  “‘Shah raft,’ sir. In English, ‘The Shah has gone.’ See, Ayandegan, one of our newspapers, has already put out a special edition. Only four pages. Someone pushed it through the fence.”

  He handed Gus a broadsheet on which two words in ornate Arabic script took up the entire front page. “Shah raft?” asked Gus.

  “In Farsi, of course, sir. Also on radio. The Shah, himself at the controls of his 707, took off at fourteen hundred hours from Mehrabad Airport. But sir, we must ask you to retreat.” Behind him, the other guards nodded in agreement. Bearded faces pressed against the chain-link fence, staring at them, and someone started a chant of “Maag bargh Amrika.”

  “Doesn’t sound good,” said Gus.

  “No, sir. If they believe you are Amrikazi, it may incite them. We do not want them to attack the fence. Don’t run. Just, if you would, walk slowly away.”

  “Can I keep this?” Gus indicated the newspaper.

  “Oh, yes, sir. A souvenir.”

  Gus showed the paper to Frank, then held it up to the crowd with his left hand and began to chant, “Shah raft, Shah raft, Shah raft,” pumping his right fist in the air. Frank and the guards joined in, and soon cries of “Shah raft, Shah raft, Shah raft,” supported by the din of the Klaxons, drowned out “Death to America.” Frank and Gus turned and walked back to Rushmore’s office.

  “The revolution in action,” said Gus as they shed their caps and parkas.

  Frank, still mute, looked at his watch. The hands blurred, but his mind registered. Sixteen January, 1979. Two in the afternoon. The Shah has gone. He pictured an hourglass with the sand rapidly running out.

  * * *

  They turned their completed cables over to Bill Steele.

  “I’ll haul them up to Rocky at the embassy for you,” said Bill, “but it might be a while. Things being what they are out there.”

  “Understood,” said Gus. With chained gates and a volatile mob out front, Frank decided against risking a run through one of the back gates to get to his designated pickup spot for his meeting with Lermontov, this time near the south end of Park-e Farah, opposite the Inter-Continental Hotel. The roundabout route he considered added up to about eight miles. Even if he made it out of the base, too much could happen on a day like this over a course of eight miles. The threat of being shot by a newly religious Savak agent was bad enough. The prospect of being torn apart by a hysterical mob seemed much worse.

  Their cables presented a mixed picture. Frank had reported that, according to Kasravi, the homafaran almost to a man had taken an oath of allegiance to Khomeini. Many pilots had said they would fly no missions against people who supported the revolution. Shortages of spare parts, coupled with the homafar rebellion, made it likely few military planes would be
airworthy.

  Summing up Kasravi’s view, Frank had written that the general considered the Bodyguard the only reliable unit. He thought the navy fairly reliable but also fairly unimportant; the air force he described as unreliable and the army as by and large disloyal. He said he could not comment on the police and Savak. Frank also reported that Kasravi had said that the Bodyguard would close down the airport should Khomeini attempt to fly in from France and that the Bodyguard had also prepared secret plans for confronting possible mutiny by any other element of the armed forces.

  In a separate cable, Frank quoted Munair as relating the view of Admiral Hayati that the navy would be loyal but that logistics would limit its role. Frank cited the exact words Munair used. “Around the Caspian, we have little but a few patrol boats. Our strength lies far to the south, and the real test will come in the cities far from the Gulf.”

  General Merid, who had quickly proved himself the most eager of recruits, told Gus most enlisted men and junior officers would not oppose a popular revolution led by Khomeini. Gus’s cable quoted him as saying, “I know what the people upstairs may say, the Gharabaghis, the Bardris, the Hayatis. In their hearts, they know the truth. But they will say with American help they can do this thing. I have many friends, not alone in the army, but in the other armed forces, the police, even Savak.”

  As he edited what Gus had written, Frank wondered if all General Merid’ s friends came from Qazvin. “Forget the police,” said the cable. “Not even Savak can be relied on. Perhaps if the Immortals and the navy help the Americans to invade, then our military can do this thing.”

  “You must understand,” Frank reported Kasravi as saying, “our armed forces have no tradition of consulting with each other. The head of each branch reported directly to His Imperial Majesty. In times past, His Imperial Majesty felt it best to keep the various military branches from getting together. Politically, a good approach, perhaps, at the time. But now, how can we expect the army, the air force, the navy, and the Imperial Bodyguard all to work together to stage a coup when they have never worked together before?”

  “Does General Bardri share these views?” Frank had asked.

  “Yes,” Kasravi had answered.

  “General Gharabaghi?”

  “I do not know what General Gharabaghi thinks. He has, however, in my presence, told General Bardri he would resign rather than be part of a military takeover. You can quote him as saying that.”

  General Fritz will love this, thought Frank as he typed it into his cable.

  * * *

  Warm rain and swirling fog shrouded the subdued city streets. The crowds’ euphoria of the previous day washed away like the waste matter carried by the no longer frozen jubes. Ali drove with great care. “Thanks be,” he said, “we won’t have to drive up to the palace today. With this fog, and up there the rain may freeze, thanks be we won’t have to drive up there.”

  “Thanks be,” said Frank, sitting by his side as they headed to their morning Jayface meting.

  Ali glanced in the rearview mirror and caught Gus’s eye. “Commander Simpson, sir. Do you think you would like to drive this big Chevy?”

  “Not I,” said Gus. “Try Major Sullivan. I don’t want to drive anything in this town.”

  “And you, sir?”

  “Are you leaving us?” said Frank.

  “The Shah has left us.”

  “Yes, he has.”

  “Already they form revolutionary committees, especially in the countryside. They have weapons from the military, the police. Even many soldiers desert and join the committees. Soon they will have roadblocks, checking identity papers, searching cars, trucks, buses. It could become difficult for me to get through to join my family.”

  “I understand,” said Frank, thinking of his own family, thinking of Jake. Can I get through to join my family? Despite the risks, he’d managed to get Anwar and Mina and their kids out of Iran. He thought of the risk he put himself and Belinsky through in confronting Lermontov on the campus of the university and the even greater risk Belinsky faced in trying to entrap his GRU contact. Every trip through the city posed a danger. He thought of driving the Nova without Ali through a town he barely knew among people whose language he did not understand and realized that his palms had begun to sweat. All this and some holy man’s fatwa hanging over my head like a sword.

  “Without me, it would be better for you to drive this car than your little Fiat,” said Ali. “Strong. Bulletproof. Do you think you could handle it, sir?”

  “Last day?” asked Frank.

  “I do not want to leave you, sir.”

  “Not much advance notice,” said Gus from the back seat.

  “Sir,” said Ali, again glancing into the rearview mirror, “the Shah did not give his people advance notice.”

  “Ali raft,” said Frank.

  “Yes,” said Ali. “The Shah has gone, sir.”

  * * *

  Frank felt they had carried the gloomy fog that prevailed outside into their meeting room. The radiators hissed as they often failed to do on colder days, casting a damp shroud of oppressive heat. Their Iranian colleagues sat mute, barely acknowledging their arrival. He and Gus shed their suit jackets as well as their parkas.

  “Of course,” said General Merid, stirring himself as they took their seats, “we knew this would happen. Still, so sudden.”

  “True, General,” said Gus. “But still we have to soldier on.”

  “Ah, yes. We have much to do. A military takeover could … ah, take over at any time. We must be ready.”

  “Even if it never happens?” said Munair.

  “We must be ready.”

  * * *

  Frank drove the big Nova to the embassy, Gus at his side. “I hated to see ol’ Ali go,” said Gus. “Good man. Good driver. Not that you aren’t a good driver, of course. And a reasonably good man, but I hated to see Ali go.”

  “Me, too,” said Frank. “I just hope he makes it to where he wants to go.”

  “Rasht,” said Gus. “I remember him saying his family has land, fruit trees, up near Rasht. Wherever that is. Sounds like a good place to get to right about now.”

  Ali Zarakesh raft Rasht, thought Frank. He wondered if the construction would make sense to an Iranian. Shah raft Egypt. Ali raft Rasht. Anwar and his family escaped. But not Lermontov. Not Belinsky. And not me.

  * * *

  “He still fooled us,” said Rocky, as Frank and Gus settled into his office. “When he told you Egypt, we all figured Cairo. But I heard it on VOA this morning. He flew straight to Aswan. Landed the plane himself. Sadat there to greet him, red carpet, military band, twenty-one-gun salute. And no crowds. Pretty slick.”

  “He said he didn’t want to complicate security arrangements for his host,” said Frank.

  “He already has,” said Rocky. “Khomeini’s been on CBS, BBC, everything that’s loose, calling on Allah and all loyal followers of Islam to cut off the hands of anybody who takes in the evil Shah. And they’ve got an awful lot of Muslims in Egypt.”

  “Sadat’s got balls,” said Gus. “First Camp David. Now this.”

  “Look,” said Rocky, “the job you guys did on those cables Bill Steele brought down here, you guys did a terrific job. Especially what Kasravi had to say. Great stuff. General Fritz, when he read ’em this morning, he didn’t think so. What you had in there about his boy Gharabaghi really pissed him off. There goes another military hero. And the white horse he rode in on. Fritz didn’t want me to file ’em, and if he hadn’t been here bustin’ my balls maybe I wouldn’t file ’em. So you can thank him for the fact that your cables got sent. My lantzman back home, Mr. Brzezinski, he got on the horn to the ambassador asking him for a more balanced view.”

  “Balanced?” said Gus. “For godsake, we had Bodyguard and navy saying, ‘Count on us’; army and air force saying, ‘No way.’ Two up, two down. What could be more balanced than that?”

  “Four up,” said Rocky. “All positive. ’Cause that
’s what they want to hear. The military will take over and bring the Shah back to power.”

  “Without American support?” said Frank.

  “Suppose it turns out we did get it right?” said Gus.

  “Shoot the messengers,” said Rocky. “’Cause if you guys got it right, they’ve got it wrong.”

  “I wish I’d gone into another line of work,” said Gus.

  * * *

  A vacation aboard the royal yacht off the coast of Iran had turned into the flight into Egypt. That kept the Shah in the neighborhood, should the military recall him. Then, six days later, Frank learned at the embassy that the Shah, at the invitation of King Hassan, had left Egypt for Morocco. The Shah had added the whole of North Africa, Frank guessed two thousand miles, to the distance between himself and the Peacock Throne, He wondered if General Fritz still expected a coup.

  A suspicious calm slithered through the city. Though they had little to do, the hours slipped by, unnoticed, and their days telescoped into each other. Frank had the gym to himself every afternoon. He met with Lermontov every other day. He sought out General Kasravi so often that Kasravi asked him not to seek him out.

  “If anything of the least importance happens, or seems likely to happen, I will let you know at once. I promise you. I have not forgotten His Imperial Majesty’s instructions, and I will carry them out. But these days, nothing happens.”

  “It’s the awful calm before the dreadful storm,” said Gus one morning as they inhaled caffeine steaming from coffee still too hot to sip.

  * * *

  “As you know,” said Frank, “you’ve been most helpful to us,”

  “Good,” said Munair.

  They met in the deserted dining room of the Damavand in midafternoon.

  “It is better for you,” Munair had said. “So near to your embassy. Not far from Supreme Commander’s. Since you no longer have Sergeant Zarakesh to drive, I worry for you going very far in this city these days.”

  “I guess I have to agree,” said Frank.

  “I wish I could volunteer to drive you myself,” said Munair. “Even I discussed with Admiral Hayati, but we agreed it would not be wise. Also, though he would like to, it would not be wise for him to meet with you.”