A TIME TO BETRAY (43 page)

Fardaye ma ruze bozorge miaad

Begu keh dobare mikhanam

Ba tamamiye yaranam

Gol sorude shekastanra

Begu, begu keh be khoon misorayam

Dobare ba del o janam

Harfe akhare rastan ra

Begu be Iran, begu be Iran”

“Today is the day to shout for justice

Tomorrow is the promised day

Tell them I will sing again

Tell them I sing with all my companions

The anthem of freedom

Tell them; tell them I sing in blood

I sing again with all my heart

I sing the last song of salvation

Tell it to Iran, tell it to Iran”

Somaya turned in her seat, opened her eyes, glanced at the road, and went back to sleep. I wiped my face and turned down the music. She seemed to be in an uncomfortable position and I placed my hand under her neck to try to straighten it. She sighed and settled into a new spot.

I took my eyes off the open road for a moment to study her. Our life was so much simpler now than it had been during my years as Wally and as a member of the Guards. Gone was the disappointment and discord that had marked that time. Somaya and I didn’t argue now, and I no longer felt as though I was letting her down every time I went to work. She loved that the job I did now with a local software company had nothing to do with the Guards and “dirty bearded
pasdar
.”

Most important, I no longer needed to lie to her. My final lie came shortly after we settled in LA. In September of 1990, I flew to Washington, D.C., to see Gary. It felt different to see him in the U.S. While our meetings in London had always been shadowed by risk, this felt more like a reunion with an old pal. We talked about our new lives and what was happening in the world. Iraq had just invaded Kuwait and Gary characterized Saddam as an audacious man with a destructive mind.

“We’ve been following his troop movements for a long time,” Gary said. “It was clear that he was up to something. He had amassed a large number of his troops on the Kuwaiti border.”

“The man is a lunatic,” I said venomously. “He destroyed so many lives when he attacked Iran. If the U.S. knew he was amassing troops, why didn’t they send him a warning?”

Gary shrugged. “Maybe he interpreted our silence as a green light.”

The implications burned me, though I held my tongue. Had it been politically expedient for the U.S. to let this madman invade a neighboring country? Did they do so to give them an excuse for taking military action? Saddam and his army had become quite powerful with the help of the West. Now, perhaps, America felt it was time to undermine that military power as a message to all Arab regimes that without U.S. support they would fall. Millions of innocent people had suffered during the Iran–Iraq war. Had that been political maneuvering on the part of the U.S. as well?

“What do you say we go out for lunch tomorrow?” Gary said, changing the subject, though the thoughts lingered in my mind. “I can show you around afterward.”

The next day, we drove through Washington and down into Virginia, with Gary showing me different neighborhoods. “What do you think?” he asked.

In truth, it was difficult for me to think about anything other than the offer Gary had made during lunch. With no preamble, Gary asked me to join the agency to assist in covert operations around the world, making contacts among Iranians of interest working for the Islamic government. Showing me these huge homes in the prestigious neighborhoods of Washington and Virginia was part of the sales pitch. Gary told me that all I needed to do was bring my family east and we could live in one of these spectacular homes and sign up Omid in one of the best private schools in America.

Certainly this would be an upgrade. Upon our arrival, Somaya and I had rented a small town house and furnished it sparingly. Somaya had planned to go back to college, but she’d started volunteering at Omid’s school and had become a fixture there, telling me that being around children brought her levels of joy and serenity
she’d never known before. I loved this, but volunteering offered no income and I had yet to land a job. We were eating into our savings (the money Somaya thought I’d inherited from my mom), and it would have been impossible not to find Gary’s offer tempting.

Gary stopped the car at a nearby park. “Let’s walk around here.”

We got out and strolled. “Just think about it, Wally. I don’t need an answer right away.”

He kicked back a ball to a group of boys Omid’s age. “Thanks, sir!” one of the boys shouted.

Gary waved at the boy and then returned to me. “There would be intensive training, you would have us behind you wherever you traveled, and your family would be safe. And you have to admit that the salary is very impressive.”

The temptation grew stronger.
A huge house in this neighborhood? Omid playing with these well-mannered boys?

“I will think about it, Gary.” How could someone not
think
about something like this? But I had already made my decision and nothing would make me reconsider. The life Gary was offering—as appealing as it sounded and as much of an improvement as it would be over our financial situation—was not what I wanted. I had found my long-sought peace and tranquility in the arms of my wife and the smile of my son. I could not leave that behind again.

I wished I could do something to make a difference for my country. That desire would never leave me. But I had to admit something to myself: all my years of spying had not changed Iran for the better. The information I provided to America might have been useful, but it didn’t accomplish what I had hoped. And I couldn’t take any more chances with my life or with my family for this purpose.

During my short stay in D.C., Gary and I’d met a couple more times. He was still recruiting and I was still incapable of telling him that I was unequivocally through with the CIA. I’m not sure what was holding me back. Maybe some sense that losing my connection to the agency meant losing an essential part of myself. Maybe some sense that I’d come to rely on being both Reza
and
Wally. Maybe
some sense that turning my back on the CIA was one final betrayal of my homeland.

I never did tell Gary that I was done. Shortly after I returned to LA, he called to tell me that he had to take the offer off the table. He said that things had changed at the agency and that they couldn’t offer me a position. He gave me a new contact in LA to use if I needed something or had any helpful information to pass on.

I read between the lines. Gary knew what was going on in my head and he was making things easy for me. He’d given me what I needed from the agency at this point—a local connection in case something happened—and wasn’t going to ask anything more of me.

My contact with the CIA lasted on a local level for several years after that, during which I met with several different agents and sometimes with the FBI to offer help on suspected Iranian activities within the U.S. In one of those meetings, my CIA contact asked me to find an Iranian who would testify that Iran had developed a nuclear bomb. To me, this was a clear indication that the administration of the first President Bush had not succeeded in making the headway with the regime they thought they were going to make. It would have been pointless for me to say, “I told you so.”

Eventually, after shuffling through several other contacts, my connection to the agency died away naturally.

This left Somaya, Omid, and me to live our new lives in America. To protect our identities, we had changed our names upon arrival. We applied for citizenship shortly after we reached the five-year residency requirement. I remember crying the day we took the Oath of Allegiance, both for the blessing America had bestowed upon us and for the heartache that had brought us here. Through that oath, we vowed to support and defend the constitution and laws of the United States of America. And once more I wished that my adopted country would step in and spread its democracy, freedom, and human rights throughout the world, and especially to my homeland.

When we returned from our trip to Berkeley, Somaya spent a
great deal of time in Omid’s room trying to contend with the fact that her only child was now heading off on his own. Her mother had died a few years earlier after a bout with breast cancer and she tried to convince her father to leave London to live with us. He kept saying that he would, but he always found a reason not to do so. Finally, Somaya decided to go to England to bring him back with her. However, this trip would not happen.

The day before Somaya planned to fly to London, we were going through our usual morning routine. I was dressing for work and Somaya put on the television. Suddenly, I heard her screaming my name hysterically. I ran to the family room, where she sat on the floor, the remote in one hand and her mouth covered with the other.

“What is it?” I asked, worried about what could possibly have her this upset. Before she could say a word, though, I found the answer on the screen, which was showing a commercial jet crashing into one of the Twin Towers.

“Oh my God,” Somaya screamed. “That was the second building!”

We sat, shocked and confused, in front of the television for untold hours. Eventually, Somaya went to the phone to tell her father that she wouldn’t be visiting him any time soon.

I knew what bin Laden was thinking when he ordered these acts of terrorism on American soil. He believed that he could cripple the country with fear. He had completely miscalculated America’s resolve—anyone with the tiniest understanding of the U.S. would have known that they would recover from this—but he had dealt a devastating blow. And I had to believe that this happened because the government had not been more decisive in dealing with his prior attacks on America’s interests and entities. This lack of a response had encouraged him.

The pattern was clear to me. Being soft on bin Laden emboldened him to commit a heinous act. Leaving the Taliban unchecked allowed them to enslave their own people. Trying to appease the mullahs allowed a thugocracy to extend its reach. Did the message
finally get through as the towers fell? Radical Islamists had no regard for our values of human rights and democracy. When the West, the defender of such values, sidestepped those principles for vague political purposes, it left its citizens vulnerable.

For a short period, it seemed that everyone understood this. The world was in complete solidarity with America, Afghanistan was freed from the Taliban madmen, and bin Laden and Al Qaeda were on the run. I believed it was only a matter of time before this force created a united front against the mullahs—the terror masters of the world—and once more empowered the people of Iran.

But instead there was the invasion of Iraq and a divided world again. Though I was glad to see the fall of Saddam, I did not want to see innocent Iraqis suffer. I worried that America would not do everything they needed to do to help Iraq become a fully democratic country. I worried that they didn’t fully understand the mullahs’ plans for Iraq. For decades there had been close collaboration between the two Shiite hotbeds, Qom in Iran and Najaf in Iraq. During the Iran–Iraq war, they had formed the Badr brigades from Iraqi recruits and had helped create the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, now one of the largest and most powerful political parties in that country. The clerics in Iran had been methodically setting the stage for an Islamic government in Iraq that mirrored the one in Iran.

America had gone into Iraq to bring those people democracy. But the only true avenue to lasting peace in the Middle East was to help bring about a free and democratic Iran.

Would I live to see that day?

2005

GOD FINALLY GAVE
me the strength to do what I should have done many years before. This hardly seemed like a blessing at the time, and I would have done anything to change the circumstances, but I was convinced he was sending me a message and that I had to come clean, at last and completely, to Somaya.

She’d been diagnosed with breast cancer. My wife of twenty-five years, so young and so beautiful, was fighting for her life. She’d been through a highly invasive operation and was in the midst of four debilitating cycles of chemotherapy with the prospect of thirty-three days of radiation still in front of her, and she was struggling mightily to regain her strength, even though doctors couldn’t be certain at that point if they’d gotten everything.

Omid flew home as soon as he heard, deciding to delay the second semester of his senior year to be with his mother. Somaya didn’t want him to do this, but he insisted. He even shaved his head to show solidarity with his mother after the chemo had stolen hers.

I sat by her bed every night before she fell asleep. She was nauseous and weak, and she’d lost so much weight.

“Where is Omid?” she asked one night.

“He is in his room, honey. Do you want me to get him?” I kissed her hand. “Do you know what Omid told me the other night? He told me how proud he is that his mother is so strong. He also said he
has plans to move back to LA after graduation. Kelly is moving here with him. He wants to propose right after he is done with school.” I squeezed her hand gently. “Isn’t that great?”

Omid had told me nothing of the sort, but I thought I needed to break my commitment against lying to my wife to bring her some light now. Somaya was staring at the ceiling, but I saw a dim smile.

“If they marry and have a child,” I said, “we will be grandparents soon. Have you thought about that?” She turned her head to me slowly. “You’ll be a grandma—a fine, young, and beautiful one. We will have a ‘little Omid’ in our life again.”

I saw a tiny glow in her half-opened eyes and she mumbled Omid’s name. The Farsi word for “hope.” Then she rubbed her wet eyes. “I am glad we named him that. He is my hope. My only
omid.
” She sighed.

Before I sent our son in, I told him that, to give Somaya a little boost, I lied to her about his pending engagement to his girlfriend of two years.