The Peregrine Spy

by Edmund P. Murray

  “Maybe we should get out of here, too,” said Gus.

  “One last job,” said Troy. “The weapons.”

  “Can we have our shotguns back?” said Gus.

  “No way. Word is to surrender all weapons. The ambassador figures there’s no way we can fight our way out of Iran. So we turn over weapons and try to talk our way out. He has great faith in this yardbird character. Yardi, or whatever his name is.”

  “We’ve got a lot of shit back there,” said Steele. “Special weapons, explosives, more burn barrels. I could put a timer on some C-4 and blow it all.”

  “I like the idea,” said Troy. “But there’d be hell to pay if some Iranians wandered in after we pull out and got themselves killed. Frank, I hate to ask, but think you could go back over there and talk to your homafar buddies?”

  “What for?”

  “Well, I’d feel a lot better if we surrender our weapons to air force types rather than have them wind up with some raggedy posse of ragheads. And those guys seem to trust you.”

  “I can do it if I have to,” said Frank. “Except…”

  “Except what?”

  “Well, last night the homafaran emptied out their Dowshan Tappeh arsenal and gave weapons to the militants. They planned to take two truckloads of weapons to the university this morning.”

  “You get that in your cable?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Maybe when he reads it Rocky’ll understand why I decided to just leave our weapons here. Time to go. No shotguns, Gus. If anybody wants to keep his personal sidearm, make sure I don’t see it. And nobody’s gonna see mine.”

  They could hear signs of the fading battle as Frank turned the Nova up Damavand. “Poor bastards,” said Gus. “The Immortals don’t look so immortal anymore.”

  “I can feel some hints of mortality myself,” said Frank. “Watch out.”

  An open truck came barreling down Damavand toward them. Armed militants, firing their weapons in the air and shouting slogans, packed the back. The truck swerved around them.

  “We go to the house, wash up, pack what we have to quick as we can, and head for the bachelors’ compound, right?” said Gus.

  “Sound like a good plan,” said Frank, as he turned into their street. “Except…”

  Clusters of armed teenagers in green headbands chatted among themselves along the street. They raised their rifles and chanted, “Allah-o akbar.” Frank tapped the horn, blat-blat-blat, blat-blat, catching the rhythm of the chant. He kept his eyes straight ahead and drove past the young gunmen.

  * * *

  “Jesus, you look like hell,” said Todd Waldbaum as he let them in the door of the air force guards’ quarters. They told what had happened, and Todd offered showers and fresh clothes. “Major Sullivan, you’re about my size. I can come up with a clean shirt and a pair of slacks. Commander Simpson, you’re more Dwight’s size. He’s a toad, but I’ll get him to give up some duds.”

  “’Preciate,” said Gus. “Looks like you’ve got a crowd.”

  “More coming, most likely. Everybody’s assigned to a compound they’re supposed to hole up in.” Bill Steele and Cantwell joined them.

  “Looks like you guys didn’t make it home.”

  “We tried,” said Gus. “But we had unexpected company. Teenagers with M-14s.”

  Washed, shaved, and relaxed in clean clothes, Frank and Gus exchanged a glance.

  “Vodka in the freezer,” said Gus. “Scotch in the fridge.”

  “’Fraid not,” said Frank.

  “Surely these healthy young men must have something they’d let us have a drop of.”

  “I asked Todd about that. No booze at all. Embassy orders.”

  “No booze and no weapons,” said Gus.

  “They still have their weapons,” said Frank. “But all stacked together in a closet, waiting for somebody to show up they can surrender them to.”

  “Let’s grab a couple and go rob a liquor store.”

  “Good plan, except…” He realized he’d said that word often in the past hour.

  “Except,” echoed Gus. “I know. There’s no liquor stores left to rob.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  He decided he would attract less attention by walking to the new safe house. He knew he might encounter an Islamic patrol or a band of marauding teenagers armed with AK-47s. He knew he might arouse the suspicions of the nervous Americans now crowded into the air force guards’ bachelor quarters. He knew the risks, and he knew he had to take the risk. He knew he must do all he could to secure Lermontov as an agency recruit, to put to rest those rumors that Lermontov had already recruited him. Endgame. Checkmate. He understood little about chess, but those expressions seemed right.

  Expecting Lermontov at four, he crossed the quiet street at three-thirty. He reminded himself that he’d grown up in New York, where crossing the street was always a risk. Piece of cake, he thought as he walked half a block east, climbed the stone steps, and let himself in. The decor showed signs of what Frank had identified as early Bill Steele. Drawn blinds, no curtains, a Formica-topped dinning room table, tubular framed chairs, and bare wooden floors. The refrigerator, turned to the lowest setting, gaped at him like a toothless mouth when he opened it. He turned the setting up, hoping Lermontov would bring Stolichnaya.

  He extracted his tape recorder from his pocket and shed the parka. It still smelled of smoke and the acrid fumes of sodium nitrate, napalm, and cremated hundred-dollar bills. He edged his way down the narrow stairs that led from the hallway to the two-car garage he could unlock only from the inside. He undid the lock and tested the overhead door. It went up smoothly. He pulled it shut but left it unlocked. Upstairs, he sat by a front window. He lifted a corner of one blind and, with a wad of notebook paper, propped it open just enough to give him a view of the street.

  At a few minutes after four, according to Frank’s Timex, the lights of an approaching blue Fiat flashed on and off. He hurried down to the garage and heaved the door open in time to see the Fiat continue its way up the street. He caught only a glimpse but recognized the huge frame behind the wheel. He jerked the garage door down and locked it.

  He repeated the ritual the next day, thirty minutes earlier. At three-thirty, the blue Fiat again appeared. This time the lights flashed on and off twice. The Fiat’s front bumper nearly touched the garage door as Frank flung it up. Lermontov pulled in quickly and slammed on the brakes. The small car bounced as Frank lowered and locked the overhead door.

  Lermontov put a hand on the roof of the car to pull himself out. In his greatcoat and lamb’s-wool hat, he seemed to fill the garage. “I’m getting old. Or fat. Or something.” He reached into the back seat and lifted out his briefcase. “We should have met at my embassy. We seem to attract less attention from the Islamic neighborhood committees than you Americans.”

  “Considering what we have to talk about, that doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

  “No, not a good idea. My apologies for running off on you yesterday. I was already a bit nervous by the time I got here. Fires everywhere. Many roadblocks. Then, as I turned into this street, in my rearview mirror I spotted several of our brave Islamic revolutionary allies walking up the block. With M-14s undoubtedly provided to the Shah by his American benefactors. I suspected they might take too much interest in me, and in this house, if I pulled in.”

  “No need to apologize. Same thing happened when we tried to get home the other evening.”

  “I take it you now call the air force guards’ house across the street your home.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “No car in the garage. In these times, I don’t think you walked very far to get here.”

  “Someone might have driven me,” said Frank.

  “As a KGB asset, we will have to arrange some training for you in how to lie. You should have said, ‘Someone drove me.’ Not, ‘Someone might have driven me.’”

  “Gotta admit, I could use the training,” said
Frank. He often felt uncomfortable about lying. “How ’bout we go upstairs?”

  Lermontov got only as far as the foot of the stairs. “Wait. I think I’ll leave my overcoat down here.” He tossed his coat and hat into the car, then, moving sideways like a skier making his way up a slope, squeezed his way up the narrow stairway.

  “I hope, when I leave my current employer, the apartment you provide for me in Washington won’t have such a skinny staircase.”

  “I don’t know what kind of apartment they’ll provide,” said Frank. “I’ve never worked with a traitor before.”

  “Touché,” said Lermontov. “I didn’t know if we would be congratulating each other or crying in our beer. But some instinct told me your cupboard might be bare. So I brought.”

  He opened his briefcase and pulled out the biggest bottle of vodka Frank had ever seen. “What is that?” he asked.

  “Two liters. Export quality. I’ll leave it with you.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “It occurred to me you might need some reserves,” said Lermontov. “You know they may pull you out of here any day. They can’t, however, pull you out until the Iranians let them bring in some planes.”

  “It beats walking.”

  “Some people have gotten out by truck through Turkey, but I don’t recommend it.”

  “What about getting Russians out?”

  “No. Our embassy will stay. But once you’re gone, Moscow will recall me and, Inshallah, reassign me to Washington. Normally, that would be a six-month process. But, given these circumstances, we can expect an accelerated transition.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “We should meet at least once more at a Soviet safe house. It would be helpful, to keep Moscow interested, if you brought as much good material as you can get your hands on.”

  “That means I first have to find a way to get to the embassy. And right now we’re under orders to sit tight where we are.”

  “I have great faith in your ability to make yourself an exception. But we must also prepare for the possibility this will be our last meeting. In Tehran, that is.”

  “I don’t think it can happen that fast,” said Frank.

  “Who knows?” Lermontov’s neck disappeared as he shrugged his enormous shoulders. “Knowing how our bureaucracy works, it will be at least a month before I return to Moscow. Another two to three months, at best, to work out my assignment to Washington. By then you will have been contacted by someone under the direction of our rezidenza in Washington. Someone working under deep cover, as an American under the name Howard King. He will take you to dinner and suggest you begin working with him. You will express dismay at such a clumsy effort at entrapment. Ask him if he works for your Counter Intelligence office or the FBI. At some point he will say this is only an interim arrangement until ‘your friend’ arrives. Leave abruptly. If we do meet again here, at a Soviet facility, no matter what I say then about your contact with Howard King, this is the way you will handle it.”

  “Understood,” said Frank. Lermontov had again taken charge.

  “And of course our station in Washington still has an active penetration agent in Langley. We must move forward, but with great caution.”

  “Any chance you can identify him before we’re all out of here?”

  Lermontov was slow to respond. “Perhaps. But only if he does something foolish that reveals himself. And he does not seem like a foolish person.”

  Neither are you, thought Frank. Giving him up from here might convince our Holy Ghost that he doesn’t need you in America.

  “In all probability,” said Lermontov, “your second contact in Washington will come from me. But it will not come directly. You will receive a phone call at home from an Ethiopian. He will speak in Amharic, identifying himself as your old friend from Addis, using the name Hailu Gebre.”

  “I’m afraid my Amharic’s pretty rusty.”

  “Understood. He will switch to English and arrange to meet you for dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant. But at the appointed time and place he will not meet you. I will.”

  “You’ve read too many spy novels.”

  “In fact,” said Lermontov, “we use spy novels in our training programs. You should write one someday. I can guarantee you, KGB will buy hundreds of copies.”

  * * *

  Frank sat in the quiet house after Lermontov had gone, wanting a moment alone. He sipped chilled Stolichnaya from a coffee cup and thought about Belinsky, about Nazih, Sergeant Abbas, about the GRU and Aeroflot agents he had probably sent to their deaths, and again about Belinsky and the fatwa that named them both. He knew he had put Belinsky at risk. With Mina and Anwar. With his need for translations. His quest for Khomeini’s tapes. His scheme to entrap the GRU officer who could deflect Soviet counterintelligence attention away from Lermontov. Playing roulette, Russian roulette, with another man’s life. And losing. He raised the coffee cup and sipped a silent toast.

  He set the coffee cup aside. Belinsky put himself at risk. True enough, thought Frank, but he felt suffused by incredible, indelible guilt. His night would end in a sleeping bag on Todd Waldbaum’s floor. He knew he should feel grateful. Instead, he felt resentment. He wanted to be alone, alone with the way he felt. He knew two of the upstairs rooms had beds. He longed to crash up there but knew he must preserve the sanctity of the safe house.

  The phone rang. He stared at it. He reached out for the coffee cup and drained it. The phone went on ringing. His stomach knotted and the taste of bile rose in his throat. There was no reason for the phone to ring. And no reason to be afraid. He retrieved his smoke-scented parka and put it on. He slipped his tape recorder into a pocket and pulled on his black stocking cap and headed for the door. The phone still rang.

  * * *

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  “I took a couple of days off,” said Frank. “Cruised up the Caspian with Lermontov. Spent some time in Baku. Checked out their National Voice of Iran Radio setup. Picked up some caviar.”

  “Very funny. I know where you’ve been. What I don’t know is why the fuck you didn’t get down here any sooner than this.”

  “Just one reason. I was scared shitless.”

  “After some ’a the shit you pulled off lately, I thought you were supposed to be Sullivan the fearless.”

  He remembered Rocky’s words. Feel good is not my middle name. And fearless isn’t mine, he thought.

  “Not my name,” he said aloud. Again he thought of Belinsky, overcoming weakness. And fear.

  “You seen Lermontov?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Contact instructions for Washington in case we don’t hook up again here. He hopes we do see each other again with me bringing him a bushel of good stuff to keep Moscow wanting more.”

  “Put it in a cable. Moscow wants more, we’ll get’m more. The Holy Ghost is hot to trot. I’ve got a cleaned-up version of your cable on the to-do at Dowshan Tap. You can pass it to Lermontov. I also got an okay to give him a wrap-up on the pullout, the burn barrels, all that.”

  “Good,” said Frank.

  “Nothing is good,” said Rocky. “We just lost another war. The holy warriors took over just about everything, including your Supreme Commander’s Headquarters, all the prisons, the armories, the palace, Lavizan, the works. They say some Bodyguard units are still hangin’ tough. But yesterday Gharabaghi got together what’s left of the generals, and they come up with a statement sayin’ from here on out the military had declared neutrality and ordered the troops back to their barracks. Couple hours later the radio stopped playing John Philip Sousa. Some guy come on and said the revolutionary forces had taken over the station. He read Gharabaghi’ s statement, and I wish I had a tape and a translation to send to your good friend Fritz Weber.”

  “So do I. What do we do next?”

  “Nail Lermontov.”

  * * *

  Frank fumbled with the keys while he chalked a thick li
ne on the safe house door. He let himself in and locked the door. He listened and heard nothing but the quiet he wanted. He peeled off the parka, dropped it with his wool cap on a kitchen chair, and headed for the freezer. The phone rang. He’d told Bill Steele about the phone, and Bill had said, “You did right not to answer. If it happens again, don’t answer.” He told Rocky, and Rocky responded the same way. “Nobody’s supposed to be there, so there’s nobody there to answer the phone. If it happens again, let me know.”

  The phone kept ringing. Big brother, somebody’s big brother is watching you. He wondered if the caller could be a one-armed Iranian with his head shrouded by the hood of his black wool jacket and a Czech machine pistol tucked in a shoulder holster. He went into the front room and glared at the jangling phone and did something he hadn’t done since he was a teenager—the fuck you sign, left hand slapping into the crook of his right arm, closed fist directed at the phone. He went back to the kitchen, muttering, “Ring your ass off,” and poured a deep wash of vodka into a coffee cup. He climbed the stairs to the second floor, headed for the back bedroom and slammed the door shut behind him, hoping to muffle the sound of the phone. He sat on the edge of the bed, sipping vodka and telling his mind to forget the phone. But his mind kept wondering what would happen if he picked up the receiver.

  Nail Lermontov. He closed his eyes and saw the peregrine he’d watched one day as it nailed a pigeon in Central Park. How, he’d wondered, could an endangered species survive and make kills in midtown Manhattan? The world’s biggest pigeon, Vassily Lermontov. Nail him. He’d circled his prey for years, and now his wings caught air, but still he only circled as their Pan Am plane had circled above Tehran the day he arrived so long ago. The peregrine studied the pillars of smoke that drifted skyward, still dimly aware of the distant, insisting phone.

  * * *

  At four the next day the orange taxi picked up Frank on Zarrabi Street. The Chechen behind the wheel nodded as Frank climbed in.