Screaming Eagles

by Michael Lawrence Kahn

  I start to say something but Josh gestures with his hand waving me to be quiet. The blind fury that rumbles below the surface explodes. “I didn’t say that. Damn it, Jalal, don’t try to fucking manipulate us. I’m trying very hard to keep my temper, so don’t put words in my mouth. I am a black man, the only African-American here in this room, so don’t tell me that I don’t know about suffering and hangings and open season on my people. Stick around, my friend, when we have a few months or years to talk about it. I can tell you about killings and broken promises and viciousness and terror from the time we came here in slave ships from Africa.

  “A few years ago, three white boys tied a black man behind a truck and pulled him for two miles until the only piece of his body left tied to the rope was one foot. You don’t have a monopoly on being murdered. You see, 30 million of your people have suffered. Well, we blacks number over 50 million and I would say that we’ve suffered as much, starting out in boats in Africa and three quarters of us dying in boats before they arrived on the shores of America. We too were hunted because we were slaves, we were sold to the highest bidder; your people were not. Throughout our history, we too were hanged, and our balls cut off while a cross representing Christianity was burning next to us. So cut the crap.

  “In your warped mind, Jalal, you’ve already given up on your life. We haven’t. We don’t plan to, and I for one, am going to do everything I possibly can to come out of this alive. What I’m trying to do, and surprisingly, I seem to be the only one in this room trying, is to find a way to improve our odds so that you can succeed. If we can help you to succeed, maybe, just maybe, we can by some miracle remain alive. I’m going to need some time. I need to think this through.”

  Josh pauses, hands on his hips, leaning slightly forward, agitation a tornado on his face as he glares at Jalal.

  “Why don’t you get some sleep, Jalal? I’ll talk this through with Jay. Even if you don’t trust me, I feel sure that you trust him. Give us three, four hours, Jay will wake you then. Without sleep, you’ll be a liability to us. I’ll need you to be alert and ready to respond, and your lack of sleep could be dangerous. For the record, I don’t particularly like you. I know you don’t think much of me, but I’m taking charge as of now. If you or anyone else has a problem with this, let’s get it out now.” Josh stands across the room from Jalal, his gaze challenging the younger man to say something.

  Jalal says nothing. He has crossed his leg again, his hand inches away from his gun. Calmly, he returned Josh’s stare. His control is incredible. There are no outward signs of the tearing anger or fury that must be roiling in his gut.

  Josh says quietly “I know you think we Americans are stupid, but I’m not so stupid not to know that you’ve a gun in an ankle holster. Even a rookie cop would know that, so stop with your childish games. Either use it or don’t, because I’m waiting, motherfucker. I’m waiting for you to put up or shut up. If you’re not going to use your gun, get the fuck out of this room. We’ve got work to do. Leave us so that we can work without you whining and reminding us of your country’s piddling problems. I want clear thinking, not solutions that only benefit your country. I have a country, too.”

  Surprisingly, Jalal doesn’t argue. He gets up from the sofa and follows me to the guestroom.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  When I return, I scorch into Josh, my anger trapped as I try to control what needs to be said.

  “Josh, what the fuck got into you? Why’d you taunt him the way you did? Are you fucking mental? He’s not afraid of you. I’ve lived with the Kurds, seen them fight. Push him too far and he’ll come after you with a knife or bare hands. If he thinks you’re his enemy and can’t trust you, he’ll definitely come after you. He won’t let you leave this apartment, you fucking moron.”

  Josh shakes his head disgustedly. “Your friend wants to die a glorious death. If it means that we have to die with him, he could care less. I need him to know that I know he’s using us and considers us expendable. That’s why he got up and left us alone without an argument.”

  My anger simmers, dropping in magnitude as I absorb

  his words. “Why’d you think he gave up so easily? That’s not like him.”

  With Jalal out of the room, Josh relaxes “My, oh my,” he surrenders to a ruthless chuckle.

  “Don’t you see it yet, JR? Your friend has everything he came for and more, much, much more. Not only has he got your sympathy by playing on your massive guilt about his father, he’s succeeded in getting you to help him. Help was all he came for. You took his predicament and just his luck, I am a big fat bonus, because now it’s my problem also. He got two unexpected bonuses—you and me two for the price of one. Within a few short hours, he has a team on his side. The President and Congress will have to make difficult choices, and it’s likely the U.S. will side with Iraq.

  “JR, I’ve got the most to lose. If I help him, I’m damned. If I don’t, I’m also damned. He made me aware that my country is in danger, knowing that I can’t ignore the warning. He also knows that I’ll have to do something. He knows that if I tell the wrong people, for the rest of my life, I’ll be looking over my shoulder. He has me also trapped, drawn in whether I want to be or not. Anyone he came into contact with since he arrived in the States will have to be considered contaminated and suspect by all of the important people he’s accusing. To make absolutely sure that his accusations do not get out and are made public, we will all have to be eliminated. This will be done sooner rather than later. It will be swift, it will be sure, and it will be fatal. We will never know what hit us and that includes you, JR. With all the suicide attacks that have recently occurred, our deaths will be easy to cover up. Does that answer your question?”

  I ask, “Josh, do you mean what you are saying, or are you trying to put me down gently and walk away?”

  Josh settles into one of the two armchairs in my living room. “JR, I can’t walk away. You’d better believe it, buddy boy, you better believe it. Our plans have to be foolproof, or we’ll be dead by this time tomorrow. So, my friend, you guys better come up with some creative thinking. If you can call in markers, now is the time to do so. Go as high as you can, stretch those markers, but you’ve got to help me. I can’t do this alone. When Jalal wakes, he better take his nose that is out of joint, bury his resentment, and treat me as someone who wants to help America. If I’ve got to take this Sadegh guy down to do it, I am ready to do so. Your job now is to get him to understand that loud and clear.”

  I counter. “Josh, think of it this way, another country’s soldiers terrorists have invaded my country, they are the enemy. You ordered your people not to take prisoners because they are the enemy. Now you are telling me to look the other way when an American citizen, who is a terrorist, is ‘not going to become a prisoner for you’.”

  Carefully I continue. “When you and I watched that monitor when 500 people were murdered in the 747, if I could have provided you with Sadegh’s name, would you have arrested him and let the circus begin once he lawyered up? Meanwhile, 60 Arab countries will arrest ten Americans and hold them as hostages the day Sadegh is arraigned in court, just like when Khomeini took the 52 US Consulate staff and imprisoned them in different Iranian towns. There will be 500 hostages scattered all over the world. Once a night on prime time TV, one of them will have his throat cut. The massacre will be broadcast live on Al Jazeera television until Sadegh is freed and deported out of America. If you think I’ wrong, and believe the United Nations is going intervene, know that the UN will do zero, waffle around, and come out eventually on their side, not ours. They have an automatic majority against the US.

  Sipping my cold coffee, I go on. “Tell me what the mighty United States can do to 60 countries lined up against us? This is the apples for apples. You must decide. If you don’t think Sadegh will be the hero in every Arab’s eyes, if you don’t think hundreds of thousands of Muslims will gather and burn American flags, shouting ‘Death to the Infidels,’ you’re wrong.” />
  I take a deep breath, and say, “Josh, I’ll tell you where he lives in the northern suburbs and you go out and do due process.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  I conduct a large part of my business through international calling. A lot can be done before 9 am, and after 9 pm. In my apartment is a room that is a completely equipped office with computers, laser printer, scanner, fax machine, and copier, and video conferencing.

  Josh goes to my desk and begins making phone calls. Within fifteen minutes, the first faxes start arriving for him. I turn on the computer, and he types while talking on the phone. The copier starts printing the scanned documents he has requested.

  He calls his sister, Dinah. After Josh’s mentor, Reverend Blatt, died, Ann, the Reverend’s widow, came to live in Chicago. She brought Josh and his sister, Dinah, with her. Both Josh and Dinah joined the police force. With his street smarts, Josh was promoted rapidly. Dinah excelled, receiving straight A’s on police academy exams. She attended night school and obtained a law degree. Because of her uncanny abilities to accurately size up complex problems and find imaginative solutions, Dinah was transferred to Langley, and a few years later became the department head of a division of B.O.S.S., the Bureau of State Security. Ten years ago, she met her alter ego and married him.

  They had a four-year-old son, Sam, named after Dinah’s first love, a nineteen-year-old who’d been hanged by the Klan. Josh had been with Sam that night, running through the forest. He escaped. Hiding by climbing a tree, he’d watched Sam’s murder. Josh was then twelve years old. Dinah’s Sam is Josh’s godson.

  The public was unable to contact the department heads directly and Josh had to go through various secretaries before he could get to Dinah’s voice mail. He could have called her at home as he usually did, but she’d only call him back later in the evening. He couldn’t wait that long, so he left a message for her to call him as soon as possible.

  Josh waited 58 minutes before Dinah called him back.

  “Little brother, this better be one of those exceptional calls that merits having sixteen people twiddle their thumbs and wait in an adjoining office because I have an urgent call to make. Make it good, little brother, or your ass is grass.”

  “Listen, Mama Bear, I didn’t realize that you’ve grown into a bad-tempered grizzly. I hope my poor godson can survive your bad disposition and lousy attitude. Talking about my favorite person in the whole world, how is Tiger?”

  “Growing much too fast, talks back at me much too often, but I adore him more and more every day. His latest thing is wanting to ride around the world on a Harley-Davidson. Enough chit-chat, what’s up?”

  “We’ve got a possible Code Red Alert and I’m going to need some answers as quickly as you can locate them. Don’t wait to sort them into any chronological sequence. The suspect worked for the CIA in the late sixties and seventies, maybe longer. He was a SAVAK general who planned his getaway by making his superiors believe that he’d been killed when his offices were blown up. In those days, his name was Sadegh Muzahedi, spelled S-A-D-E-G-H M-U-Z-A-H-E-D-I. I do not know who his C1A control was, but in order for him to escape, you’ll need to check who the chiefs of CIA operations were in the Middle East in 1978-79. Muzahedi owned a lot of properties in the States. A year after he disappeared, his properties were all transferred to a man in Chicago named Martin Seymour, M-A-R-T-I-N S-E-Y-M-O-U-R.

  “I’m mainly interested in Seymour’s activities for, say, the last seven to ten years. Dig up anything you can, no matter how trivial it might seem. Scan or fax to thee numbers I’m e-mailing to you as we speak. Everything is really urgent Di. Also give me a telephone number where I can reach you directly. Lastly, don’t log in the faxes or scans that you send. I would prefer it if you forget that this telephone conversation ever took place.”

  Over the next few hours, Josh continues receive a stream of faxes and scans, all of which are copied. I use a color copier to enlarge the photos that arrive. Today’s Seymour is in his 50s, wears steel-rimmed spectacles, had a professorial face, and is bald on the top of his head, with close-cropped gray hair around his ears. Nondescript, easy to lose in any crowd, the perfect chameleon.

  Josh fiddles with his empty coffee mug, not bothering to fill it. I place all of Seymour’s photographs on a worktable. Carefully, using an enlarger, I examine each section of Seymour’s face. Nowhere can I see any similarities to the Sadegh I had known.

  The phone rings. Josh moves forward, picking it up on the second ring. “Di?”

  “Little brother, who the hell is this guy? As far as the CIA here is concerned, he never existed. We searched every place we could think of, using variations of the spelling of both names. Nothing. I then tried the CIA control who was stationed in Turkey for a number of years. Turkey’s CIA control was the closest to Iran. The man’s name was Esposito. In January of 1979, a few days before the Shah abdicated, Esposito flew to Germany and met with a plastic surgeon in a small village in the Bavarian Alps, Oberstaufen. The CIA used this surgeon extensively for our witness protection program. Two weeks after Esposito arrived there, and we presume he arrived with someone who needed a new face, both Esposito and the surgeon were killed when the car he was driving skidded off the road. The police report stated that the brake system failed. Oberstaufen is high up in the Alps and it was presumed they had been drinking too much and had crashed. We found no record of who the patient was.”

  “Thanks, Di. Can you scan that to me?”

  “Patience, little brother I’ve got more. What’s your rush? Are you catching a train or something? Here in the States, the domestic witness protection program is different from International. Usually a battered spouse or a guy who ratted on his partner to the IRS is relocated to an area in the States and surgery doesn’t take place, unless the Mafia has a contract out. Esposito spent two weeks at the clinic, and when the surgery took place, a file was opened with a number, not a name. Until the bandages came off, Esposito’s responsibility was to keep the file under lock and key. The file was given to the surgeon so that he could look at the various angles of the ‘before’ photos and see if the patient needed any additional surgery as touch-up once the bandages came off.

  “No photos were taken of the new face. When the surgeon and the patient were both satisfied, it was Esposito’s job to destroy all the ‘ before’ photos. On the last page of Esposito’s file, I found an inter-office memo, which was the Oberstaufen police report giving details about the crash, as well as a report by the surgeon’s secretary to say that the night of the accident, their office had been broken into. She estimated that about twenty files had been stolen.

  “Little bro, my gut tells me that your guy was involved in both the car accident and office break-in. No witnesses or loose ends, like the ‘before’ photos were left. Your guy is obviously a pro. We lost track of him for nearly a year, then a guy named Seymour appears out of nowhere and takes possession of the properties you mentioned, opens bank accounts, has a social security card, driver’s license, and every year, like all good citizens should, he pays taxes. Even the IRS considers him a model citizen.

  “Looking at my screen, he’s an average wealthy guy who keeps to himself and causes no one any trouble. In a few minutes I’ll be faxing all the data that we were able to retrieve, including his hobbies, associations, and the country clubs he belongs to.”

  “Di, I owe you.”

  “Never fear, little brother, I’m clocking it all up. Tell you what, when you come to visit us at Thanksgiving, if Sam is still on this Harley-Davidson thing, and you can talk him out of it, we’ll be square. Unfortunately, when he sets his mind on something, he becomes consumed by it and is as obstinate as hell, just like you’ve always been. Just my dumb luck to give birth to a son who does not take after his parents, but rather after an obsessive-compulsive uncle in Chicago who hopefully will now let me get on with my job that the taxpayers pay me to do.”

  “Di, you’re on, Thanksgiving it is. Love you, sis, and thanks for t
he help.” Josh puts the phone down. He then explains to me what he’s discovered about Martin Seymour.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We are sitting on the floor. Each scan and fax that arrived is examined by Josh, who passes it on to me, then we place it on top of the various piles of growing sheets positioned all over the carpet. Important information is in one pile to be reread once we come up with a plan of action. The fax machine and copier have been running continuously for nearly an hour. Suddenly, both stop.

  I get up to see if it’s run out of paper. It hasn’t.

  The last page I pick up is the list of organizations to which Seymour belongs, as well as a listing of his hobbies. I hand the still-warm page to Josh. He glances at it and gives it back to me. then suddenly takes it back, and starts reading it. “Leave it there for the moment.”

  Getting up gracefully for such a large man, Josh picks up the pile of important papers and says, “Why don’t we go sit in the kitchen, put these on the table, and make some fresh coffee.”

  Just then, Jalal walks in.

  Josh gets up doesn’t acknowledge Jalal and proceeds to the kitchen. Sensing that Jalal is aware of the snub, I beckon for him to follow me.

  Clutching the bundle of papers, Josh indicates with the fingers of his free hand that Jalal should not sit with us at the table, but rather should sit or stand near the doorway.

  “You may listen, but don’t interrupt us,” Josh says. “We’re trying to come up with a plan and don’t need any of your cockamamie input, OK?”

  Jalal doesn’t reply. I see a shadow of emotion flicker in his eyes. Helping himself to some coffee, he sits down, moving his chair slightly so that he can sit in a sliver of sunlight that slides through the top window of the kitchen.

  “Okay, guys,” Josh says, “I start off, then Jay, then you, Jalal. Options we have to kill Sadegh, a.k.a. Seymour. We don’t know if he’s protected by bodyguards, know nothing about his routine. Those things could take us months to establish. If we are able to apprehend or even kidnap him, what do we do with him? We can’t go to the authorities. We could torture him, but that won’t stop the grand design to bring down America. How will we know if he’s telling the truth or if he has planned for this eventuality and has a backup that if something were to happen to him that some other person would take over? If he’s Eagle One, and Jalal, I think he is, he must be in constant communication with Abdel Amir. There might be an