Screaming Eagles

by Michael Lawrence Kahn

  Hell, maybe there is still hope. Her slender frame is clad in a pair of blue jeans, sneakers, and a white shirt. Her long black hair bounces up and down as she runs. I wonder if she is late for work, or maybe has kept her boyfriend waiting too long.

  She is shouting and pointing with her left arm as she continues running, pushing startled people out of her path. I see her hurrying toward three men who are standing in front of a furniture store. She is gesturing wildly, shouting at the men, all the time looking back at a small gray car slowly traveling toward the four of them.

  I stop walking. I’m about twenty yards from the girl, who had now reached the men. Something just doesn’t feel right. The tallest of the three men pulls a round object out of his pocket I recognize it immediately—a grenade.

  The man pulls wild-eyed at the pin, trying to move too fast. His inexperienced fingers are not able to grasp the pin. As I turn to run away from the four, I see straight ahead of me a man lean out the window of the grey car, which is now parallel with the man about to throw the grenade. The man in the car starts shooting.

  All four standing in front of the store are hit. For a second, they are still people. Then, as bullets continue tearing through them, they become rag dolls, their bodies uncontrollably jerking, sagging, and collapsing.

  The grenade falls from the dead man’s hand. The pin is now out around his thumb. Bullets still cut into them and shatter the panes of glass as the bullets enter the furniture shop. Instinctively, I duck, putting my hand in front of my face, trying to shield myself from shards of glass. I run as fast as I can. Everyone runs. Black chadors surround me like storm clouds. Running people push and shove. All of us smell death close behind us.

  Desperately, I claw my way over people who have fallen, trying to keep my balance. Cursing and bumping them away from me, I tick off the seconds in my mind, knowing that the grenade will explode.

  The blast pushes me gently. I feel it surge on my back, moving me forward. I try to brace myself and fight it, but its power is stronger than I am. I feel myself falling, put my hands out, as the force smashes me into the ground.

  Silence surrounds me. Everything is muted. I feel the slowness of motion as bodies fall all around me and on top of me. From far away, I can hear people moaning. My nostrils fill with the smell of unwashed bodies and vomit. The world seems too noisy. Why can’t they be quiet like I am?

  A jolt of memory goes through me. I feel my ears clear. Sounds aren’t muted anymore. Suddenly, everything becomes too loud. I know instinctively that I must get away from this place of death. Kicking my legs, twisting my body, hitting out, shouting at people who have fallen on top of me, I thrash around, trying to get up. An arm is lying across my face. I grab it by the wrist, angrily digging my fingers around the wristwatch, squeezing and trying to get it off my cheek, determined to break it if necessary. With all my might, I push the arm viciously away. The arm shifts easily. It has no weight, for it isn’t attached to a body. It drips blood onto my shirt, my face, my arm. I scream.

  * * *

  Once back at my apartment, I shed my bloody clothes and take a quick shower. I need to cleanse myself of the horrors I had just witnessed. Examining my torso in the bathroom mirror, I see that I am unscathed.

  The filing cabinet is open. Files, check stubs, documents, and miscellaneous papers are stacked in neat piles on my desk. I pack them carefully into my briefcase. Whatever the bank manager needs, I will have it. I have a complete paper trail going back four years of my transactions at Bank Saderat.

  My apartment is on the third floor. All the doors are locked and bolted. Some have heavy furniture leaning up against them to slow down someone trying to smash through. The front door is locked, bolted, and has an iron bar from top to bottom. I doubt if it will be strong enough to stop the intruders for long.

  I have a coiled rope in my bedroom that is long enough to let me escape into the alley. The rope is secured around a wall heater with a slipknot so I can release it once I have safely landed.

  In all the other rooms, I placed coiled ropes next to heaters, but have cut them through so they are hanging by threads. If anyone tries to follow me as they scramble out, they’ll crash to the ground. This will buy me some precious minutes to escape. Next to bedroom escape rope, I’ve placed a fully loaded gun, spare clip of bullets, a knife, and a can of mace. If the assassins come through my door, I will be long gone out the window. I know I can’t run into the main street, for soldiers will shoot anything or anyone that moves during curfew hours.

  A month ago, when I first heard about committee members or militia breaking into apartment buildings and killing occupants in the middle of the night, I prepared for this possibility. I had found a large dumpster about a hundred yards away from my building. If I could get there fast enough, it would be my hiding place until the sun comes up and the soldiers return to their barracks.

  I finish my preparations. Mentally and physically exhausted, I sit down on my leather sofa for what might be the last time and turn on the TV.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The TV is muted. I watch unseeing, instead remembering the day Kameran informed me that Prime Minister Hoyveda had warned the Shah that he was in danger of a Khomeini takeover.

  Kameran and Hoyveda’s friendship began when they had both been students at Teheran University. This high-level connection also allowed my company to bid for a number of large-scale government projects, like Iran’s first recycling and waste-to-energy plant. Because of the complexity involved when negotiating with international conglomerates, Hoyveda had kept Kameran apprised of the political situation on a day-to-day basis.

  Kameran shared Hoyveda’s concerns.

  One morning, Kameran returned from his briefing with Hoyveda and informed me that Hoyveda had put a freeze on our projects for seven days. Hoyveda had also informed the Shah that Khomeini’s taped speeches were being smuggled into Iran by low-level foreign diplomats. The Prime Minister demanded that the diplomats be expelled. Obstinately, the Shah refused.

  SAVAK, the Iranian secret police, had detained hundreds of suspects in the past few weeks. More than two thirds of the suspects corroborated that Khomeini’s speeches are telephoned into Iran, taped, and then played in mosques throughout the country at Friday morning prayers. The international telephone operators could not listen to every conversation—too few operators, too many calls. It was also possible that some of the pro Khomeini operators assisted with the calls.

  Dozens of soldiers had been attacked and many killed. Hoyveda, as Prime Minister, received these figures daily. He was alarmed, as were his advisors.

  * * *

  The Shah refused to cut direct telephone connections or monitor international calls. After all, it was he, Shah Reza Pahlavi, who had banished Khomeini from Iran. He could have had him executed. Instead, benevolently, the Shah had permitted Khomeini to go into exile in Paris, viewing the religious leader as a rabble-rouser of no consequence. The Shah had argued with Hoyveda that acknowledging him would accord him status. If Khomeini was ignored, the Iranian people would soon lose interest in him.

  Speeches are just words. Words could not stop bullets. Khomeini only had words. He, the Shah, had bullets, lots and lots of bullets. His army was even stronger than Israel’s. Israel and America were his good friends and allies.

  * * *

  Hoyveda was seriously considering resigning because the Shah would not heed his warnings that the insurrection would be internal, not an external invasion.

  Hoyveda, always in the background, never looking for headlines, is a perfect foil to the opulence and decadence of the Shah and his twin sister, Princess Ashraf. The Shah takes pride in his reckless expenditures, as does Ashraf. Hoyveda is the one to defend the twins’ excesses and put them into a context that until now his loyal subjects could understand and support.

  Searching doggedly, Hoyveda found clauses in the constitution that allowed the Shah to divorce Queen Saroya because she was unable to conceive a child, thus
allowing the Shah to choose a new wife and remarry.

  Cleverly playing to their weaknesses, Hoyveda was able to keep the mullahs happy, even as he eroded their power. His greatest strength however, was choosing the right military people, who were dedicated and loyal to the Shah. Hoyveda made the Iranian army one of the strongest in the region.

  * * *

  The Shah sat on the throne, but right behind him, in the shadow of power, his twin sister “Madam Ten Percent,” as Princess Ashraf is known, wheeled and dealed. She had her fingers in nearly every large-scale government project. Any man, any age, married or single, was fair game for the princess. She is an overt predator, never bothering to hide her aggressiveness. It is a game and her brother is not in any way concerned with what she does. It is also her birthright to do whatever she wished, whenever she wished, and to whomever she wished.

  The Shah owns a country and its people. Her rationale: if you own something and it’s all yours, you can do anything with it. Her twin had the fame and glory as a world statesman, in addition to his absolute and unlimited power. Why couldn’t she too have her own power base? If any company wanted to bid for government business, most times the boardroom negotiations were concluded in her bedroom if she was attracted to the negotiator. She flaunted her power.

  In his sermons, Khomeini calls her the “She-devil, the mother of all prostitutes.”

  The Lockheed scandal, in which a large American manufacturer paid monies under the table, was the first time she is unable to protect her “front men,” Khomeini pounced on this, pronouncing that this was the beginning of her end.

  The Shah lives in the Imperial Palace, but also maintains a penthouse at the Teheran Hilton, an entire floor. He had the Hilton build a special helipad, so whenever he had an urge to have a romantic evening, he could fly there from his palace. Residents who lived in the helicopter’s path would hear his helicopter overhead and smile. They understood that their virile ruler, praised be he, was a man, who like all men needs the comfort of a woman’s arms.

  Kameran lived near the Hilton and on most evenings when I visited him, we heard the helicopter. Iranians accepted the Shah’s and his sister’s behavior as was normal and expected from their monarchs.

  Khomeini did not. Whenever possible, he denounced their cavalier excesses as an abomination, robbing of the country’s wealth and condemned by the Holy Koran. The Holy Koran, he maintained, was his sword. He would defeat the Pahlavis and their followers. Their tainted blood would wash down the joub and the world would see the fires of Islam. The world would understand that Islam would become the new ruler of the new world, one country at a time. The flames of freedom would burn brightly. Sharia would be the law and the world would be at peace.

  * * *

  Hoyveda, in touch with the people, sensed their growing anger. He was convinced that the man, the Shah, he had served loyally for nearly twenty years had lost touch with reality. The new reality was that the people and the mullahs were actively supporting Ayatollah Khomeini.

  At first, I had not believed Kameran’s words or accepted Hoyveda’s fears, until the riots broke out on the sixth of September, 1978. That was the day martial law was declared.

  * * *

  Iranian television is heavily censored, so I listen to the Voice of America and the BBC news service on a Zenith transoceanic radio. I have not read in Newsweek, Time or the Herald Tribune any of the accusations Kameran and Hoyveda have made. However, as events started unfolding, I realize that the previous warning to me those long weeks ago had been right on target. I had just not listened. It is my fault entirely.

  If Hoyveda’s predictions are going to happen, civil war is imminent. Iran will disintegrate, and my business ventures will all be wiped out. Searching for answers, I asked Kameran to explain how the chain of events leading to the imminent collapse of our business had started. My situation was desperate and together we needed to come up with some sort of plan.

  Kameran’s brother-in-law, Mohmen, a retired brigadier, acted as a consultant for numerous American conglomerates. Kameran invited me to visit Mohmen to brainstorm and share my thoughts and observations on what the future held for Iran. We went to his office and what Mohmen shared with us that afternoon left me dumbfounded.

  Mohmen also consulted for Westinghouse, one of the largest American conglomerates in Iran. Mohmen had an office there, as do I. It is Mohmen who had introduced me to his sister’s husband, Kameran, who is now my business partner. Westinghouse has an enormous presence in Iran, with a virtual monopoly on at least a dozen of its subsidiaries that are supplying anything and everything to the Iranian government. Our ten-story building on Mirdemad Street, one of the main thoroughfares, has very tight security, as our main business is to supply the branches of the military with sophisticated electronic equipment. Westinghouse is also negotiating to build the first nuclear power station.

  The division I represented has the exclusive rights to sell Coral Ridge Properties, a Westinghouse subsidiary that constructs and built cities. Our two main projects are Fort Lauderdale and Coral Springs in Florida. Mohmen spent a lot of time in Pittsburgh, Westinghouse’s head office, as well as in Washington, where he is an accredited foreign lobbyist, Mohmen’s insight into American politics at that level and the connections he has in the Middle East are a tremendous help to Westinghouse. Mohmen’s understanding of Capitol Hill is far more incisive and accurate than mine. The fact that Kameran, and me in particular, had not heeded Mohmen’s earlier warnings is now coming back to haunt us.

  Mohmen’s office, like the man himself, was obsessively neat, nothing out of place or untidy. As usual, he was impeccably dressed in a thousand-dollar suit and silk tie bought in either Paris or Rome. A large silver tray was on his desk with delicate China teacups. Mohmen poured strong black tea and offered us sugar before sitting down. Dramatically, he bent one finger.

  “First reason,” he said. “The Shah relied only on the United States for arms. He could have bought them from France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and anywhere else, but he didn’t. Secondly, he also suffers from a lack of spare parts for all sectors of the military. Iran is not at war or currently being threatened, it has about thirty percent of its weaponry ready for immediate internal use. This is the accepted norm by most countries that are not being threatened. The global situations are constantly monitored for tensions, or unusual troop movements or buildups on any of its borders with Turkey, Iraq, Russia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. If anything would trigger an alert, it would be war games, or an escalation of rhetoric that could build into dangerous situations. The closer the war games are to any Iranian border, or troop movements in Iraq or Russia, the greater the alert. Iran would then turn to its arms supplier, America, for immediate shipment of spare parts to take it up to a 90-percent readiness.

  He continued. “This build-up to nearly war status had happened every few years, triggered mostly by Iraqi troop movements. Only twice was Russian deployment of troops a cause. Build-ups cost a great deal of a country’s revenues. When the war games cease, Iran will be left with a war-ready army, but it would have no war to fight. However, the debts Iran has incurred would have to be repaid rapidly. The Shah has always paid his debts promptly from oil revenues, so he is confident that America will supply him at any time. This has lulled him into a false sense of security, so Hoyveda’s warnings have fallen on deaf ears. The Shah cannot bring himself to believe what is true, that America is no longer the Shah’s best friend.”

  Mohmen poured himself a second cup of tea, then topped up mine. Kameran declined. Mohmen bent his second finger. “The CIA’s informants confirm Khomeini’s aura as a messiah is building him into a charismatic legend. Also, Khomeini has promised that all Iranians, not just the privileged few, would share in the bounty of Iranian oil. This bounty belongs to the people, all the people. It is the people’s right to receive their share. Khomeini promised, holding his Koran and lifting it above his head, that the oil was theirs and that he would give it to
them.

  “United States President Jimmy Carter, Andrew Young, and Zbig Brzezinski, the three most powerful men in the USA, have decided that if this does truly happen, it would be a bonanza. Now America sells to a small group of extremely wealthy people who run the country. They hide their profits in Switzerland and other countries, instead of building an infrastructure in Iran. Carter reasons that Khomeini would create a large population of middle class who would all buy their needs from friendly American companies.

  “For America, it is a win-win situation. Everyone would benefit. Thirty-five million Iranians would receive increased wages, increased status, and a viable middle class would be created. Moreover, the American business community would be standing first in line to sell them every conceivable product. Selling products to Iranians will create jobs. Jobs create revenues, which would help America to get millions of unemployed people out of the malaise in which the terrible recession of Jimmy Carter’s America is wallowing and battling unsuccessfully.”

  Finally, Mohmen’s third digit bent down. “Khomeini sees Communist atheism as a danger to his power base, which is the pure Islamist religion he plans to reintroduce into Iran. As a vocal anti-Communist and anti-Russian, he is without a doubt America’s soul mate. The Shah is also anti-Russian, so America has nothing to lose. The Shah, who has been invited to the White House by successive presidents, feted by members of Congress, and is called America’s best friend in the Middle East, has not realized that his country is disintegrating, rapidly slipping away from him. Iranian politicians see it. The military see it. The secret police have warned him, but Shah Reza Pahlavi, keeper of Peacock Throne, cannot or will not recognize these facts. Business leaders, military men, and political insiders have all began leaving on extended vacations with their families. They all are far wiser than the Shah. Jay, it might behoove you to follow their lead.”