A TIME TO BETRAY (33 page)

I swallowed a lump in my throat and kissed him back.
“Manam kheili asheghetam.”

I looked at Somaya after I said this and said, “Oh, honey, I love
you,
too.”

She got up and laughed. “You think everything is a joke.”

I pulled her arm and had her sit next to us. “As soon as I have an opportunity, I will wrap things up. I’ll come back here and we’ll start a new life.”

The next evening, I left. I had to say good-bye to my family on another foggy, hazy London night.

This time, the sad mood of England’s never-starry sky was a perfect representation of my emotions.

THE SCOWL ON
the cabdriver’s face disappeared when I passed a handful of 1,000-rial bills (about fifteen dollars total) to him after asking that he not pick up any other passengers. Usually, drivers in Tehran make several stops to get as many as five people in one cab. Arriving in the early morning following a six-hour red-eye from London, I was exhausted and I needed to catch a couple of hours of sleep before going to the office.

The driver counted the money carefully, turned toward me with a toothy smile, and said he knew a shortcut we could take to avoid traffic. I nodded agreement as I settled in my seat. Seeing Tehran’s familiar landmarks out the cab’s window reminded me that my wife and son were no longer with me. I felt both relieved and melancholy. I already missed them, but I was glad they were no longer in harm’s way and that I would be free to pursue my commitment to being Wally without worrying about the consequences for them.

As though to reinforce that I’d made the right decision, we passed construction cranes with the corpses of three recently executed young men dangling like bait at the end of a fishing pole. A crowd stared blankly at the bodies silhouetted against the distant hills. People had become numb to the executions. At least most people had. Beneath one of the dead men, a black-veiled woman, likely the mother of one of them, wailed her heart out.

That afternoon, after my nap, I headed to work and went straight to Kazem’s office with the souvenirs I bought in London for him and
his new bride. Sitting behind Kazem’s desk was a Guard I knew but whose name I could not remember.

“
Salam
, Baradar Reza, come in,” he said when he saw me. “Are you here to see Kazem?”

“Salam, Baradar,”
I replied, telegraphing some confusion. “Yes, I am looking for Kazem. Is he coming back?”

“Oh, no. Baradar Kazem has moved to the commander’s office. He has replaced Baradar Rahim.” He smirked. “I guess you were gone too long!”

I felt stupid not knowing what had happened in the two weeks I had been away. “Then where did Baradar Rahim go?”

“Baradar Rahim has moved to another base,” he said as he pulled out a drawer and grabbed some papers, pretending to be busy.

I thanked him and rushed back to my building, where Kazem’s new office was also located. I went to his office and Kazem jumped out of his chair as soon as I entered the room, happy to see me. He’d never greeted me at the office this way before. Maybe being in the commander’s seat boosted his spirits.

“What did you do to Rahim?” I said brightly. “I’m only gone for a couple of weeks and you organized a coup and took over the base without me?”

Kazem burst into laughter and gave me a huge hug.

“After he came back from England, Rahim moved on to the MOIS. He is now involved with the organization and movements of our agents in Europe. Like it or not, I am your new commander.”

“I guess I’ll be okay with that,” I said with a smile. “Oh, before I forget, these are for you and your wife—a small souvenir from Somaya and me.”

I handed him a bag. Somaya had helped me pick up a sweater for Zohreh and a rain jacket for Kazem. Kazem thanked me for the presents and extended an invitation to stay at his house should I ever get especially lonely while my wife was away. It was a simple exchange between friends—the kind of thing that came naturally to people who’d known each other and had been as close to each other
for as long as the two of us had been. I realized, though, that we would never be having this exchange if Kazem knew about Wally. This led me to wonder how, knowing me for as long as he did, he
didn’t
know about Wally. How could he possibly have missed all my acts of deception?

The reality was that Kazem was not the shrewd, cunning person that so many Guards and clerics were. He was just a closed-minded one. My relationship with him was easily the most complicated in my life. I absolutely rejected everything he believed in, yet at the same time, I felt a deep attachment to him for everything we’d shared over the years. When I brought him presents, I was doing so from a source of genuine affection. At the same time, though, I never lost sight of how I could use my access to him to provide Carol with vital information, something that certainly fell outside of the scope of genuine friendship.

Shortly after my return to Tehran, I heard about William Buckley, the CIA operative Carol had asked me about who’d been taken hostage a year and a half ago in 1984. The evening news mentioned that the Islamic Jihad had announced the execution of Buckley in Beirut. Islamic Jihad was a front name for the Revolutionary Guards stationed in Lebanon, another example of their expanding power. They chose to create this front to generate confusion among American and Israeli intelligence. By doing so, they ensured that the enemy couldn’t trace their terrorist acts back to Iran, instead believing that this was a homegrown movement in Lebanon. I knew the news of Buckley’s execution had already reached Carol and that there was no point in reporting it to her.

By this time, Ali Khamenei had gained a second term as president in an election that saw stunningly few Iranians participate because they believed that the democratic process was a sham. They had every reason to feel this way, as the Guardian Council decided which candidates could run for office and the Council consisted of six members chosen directly by the Supreme Leader, Imam Khomeini, and six more approved by him after their nomination by the chief
justice, who was also handpicked by the Supreme Leader, and their election by the parliament. This meant that no one could attain power if they posed even the slightest risk to the status quo.

The regime anticipated that voting would be light and worked hard to maintain the illusion for the West that the people still backed the mullahs. They ordered all Guards and Basijis to show up to vote dressed as ordinary citizens and they bused people who had been relocated from cities affected by the war to polling stations, offering them food and shelter—and threatening to withhold such necessities from anyone who didn’t go along with their plan.

(Khamenei’s prime minister at the time was Mir Hossein Mousavi, the man whose defeat in the 2009 presidential elections led to such violent outrage on the streets of Iran. The remaining moderates left in the parliament—a holdover from the pre-Khamenei days—still had enough votes to force Mousavi on Khamenei when he became president in 1981, foreshadowing the clashes between this group and the radical right that would explode on the world stage nearly three decades later. Mousavi lost his position in 1989, when constitutional changes eliminated the role of prime minister.)

Meanwhile, in Tehran and other major cities, the Iraqi jets continued dropping bombs on the rooftops of Iranian homes nightly. At the same time, Guards and young Basijis continued their battle against the Iraqis at the front. Saddam’s weapons—including his vicious chemical ones—killed or severely injured many thousands of these brave men. The Mujahedin were also attacking our forces from their bases in Iraq after they moved their headquarters from France. This move brought more resentment and hatred toward the Mujahedin, not only from the Guards and Iran’s military fighters but also from most Iranians who saw their alignment with Saddam as a despicable act. And as all of this went on, Islamic rules in Iran became even more stringent. I felt under siege at every turn, and I know that many of my fellow citizens felt the same way.

I had told Somaya that I would visit them for our New Year in
the spring of 1986, but with the ever-tightening grip of the regime, I realized that it wasn’t safe to do so and that I had to disappoint her. Taking another trip to England at this point would have drawn more attention to me than I was comfortable with. As much as I missed my wife and son, and as much as I wanted to be an active part of their lives, I had to stay away from them until I knew I could be with them permanently.

My house felt empty and I was terribly lonely, though I was trying my best to adjust. Somaya and I spoke a couple of times a week, but it was hardly a substitute for a life with my family. A few months after our New Year, Kazem invited me to his house for dinner and I was delighted to have the company. His wife had gone to Mecca in Saudi Arabia for the umrah, a lesser version of the hajj, where Muslims submit themselves to Allah.

Kazem and I rarely socialized away from work now that we were both married, and I had not been to the home he shared with his wife. He and Zohreh had decorated it simply, with a few old Persian rugs on the floor, just a few pieces of furniture, and a couple of pictures of Imam Khomeini on the walls in the living room. They had short-napped, coarse carpet cushions on the floor and a few low tables here and there. While Kazem had moved up in the world, unlike so many who ruled the country, he hadn’t adopted the practice of decorating his home with goods stolen from those imprisoned or killed. This was yet another reminder that Kazem was a simple, righteous man. Sadly, he’d chosen the wrong ideology.

“When are you planning to go to Mecca and become a hajji?” I asked as we walked through the house.

“Maybe I will be lucky enough to have my name called soon,” he answered. “I would be honored to do my hajj.”

I was tempted to say something ironic—I tended to do this when faced with a concept I couldn’t comprehend—but I knew this was neither the time nor the place to do so. “
Inshallah,
you’ll be called soon” was all I said.

Kazem guided me to the kitchen, where the dinner he had prepared sat on a small table, waiting for us. He handed me a plate with rice and a ground beef kebab skewer. “It is nothing like your grandpa’s kebab, but I tried.
Yadesh bekheir,
” he said with his eyes fixed on the distance. It surprised me to hear him refer to our childhood days as “good old times.”
It was indeed,
I thought. I hadn’t spoken with him much about the past, believing that it would hurt too much to talk to him of the spirited times he, Naser, and I had shared. Now that he’d mentioned it, though, I found that I welcomed even a brief reminiscence.

But before I could take this further, Kazem said, “Did you know your friends were here recently?”

Confused by what he meant, I swallowed a big chunk of kebab, which stuck in my throat.

“Do you want extra butter on your rice?”

I gulped some water. “No more butter, thanks.” I cleared my throat. “What friends?”

He put two whole grilled tomatoes on my plate and said, “The Americans. They were here in Tehran.”

I didn’t really understand what he was saying, but still puzzled, I pretended not to be curious. “This stuff is good, Kazem. I haven’t had a good hot meal since Somaya left.”

“I’m glad you like it.” He paused to take a bite and then said, “Reagan sent his men here to negotiate.”

I crushed the tomatoes with my spoon over the rice. “He did? What were they negotiating? And why would we ever want to negotiate with them?”

“They met with Haj Agha Rafsanjani and his associates at Hotel Esteghlal. Listen to this: they brought a Bible, a cake, and a gun with them.” He shook his head. “As a sign
of friendship.
” He put his spoon down, cut a piece of lavash, and pinched his kebab with it to eat it. “The dumb cowboys think we will help release their hostages in Lebanon and try to improve our relationship with them. They are giving us arms—lots of arms—and they think in return we
will agree to be their puppets.” He took another piece of bread and dipped it in the bowl of yogurt. “But Haj Agha Rafsanjani knows how to play with these bastards and how to milk them.” He winked at me and put another piece of kebab on my plate. He laughed. “Dumb cowboys.”

That night, back at my house, I wrote a letter to Carol about what Kazem said. At the time I didn’t realize the importance of this new information and the potential impact it could have on my life. But when Carol didn’t show any interest in these details and didn’t ask any follow-up questions, I realized how foolish I had been. I had been risking my life to rid my country of the criminals running it and the Americans were negotiating with them. The CIA knew that the Guards were responsible for the barracks bombing in Lebanon that took the lives of 241 American servicemen. They knew that their own people, like William Buckley, were being kidnapped, tortured, and killed. Yet they were offering appeasement to these two-faced donkey-riding mullahs.

The notion of negotiations between America and the regime also chilled me for another reason. I began to consider the possibility that part of the deal-making process might involve exposing agents. Not long after my dinner with Kazem, three Iranians in the Foreign Ministry were arrested as spies working for America. Government papers disclosed the discovery of documents in these agents’ homes very similar to the documents I had, including codebooks. I wondered if America would turn me in as part of a grand bargain.

In November of 1986, radicals leaked the news of the arms-for-hostages deals to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which in turn published this information in
Al-Shiraa,
a Lebanese magazine. This triggered the Iran–Contra scandal. I learned later that the U.S. meetings were not limited to those held with Hashemi Rafsanjani and his contacts in Tehran. They also met with the Guards in Geneva, Brussels, Frankfurt, and Mainz. The CIA assigned the Guards’ negotiators the code names The Engine and The Relative, and they even facilitated a
trip for The Relative to Washington, D.C., where he received a tour of the White House.