The Peregrine Spy (60 page)

“He won’t spell it out,” said Frank. “But he’s let me know he has contacts with
Savak,
J2. Sounds like Chuck’s been kind of careless.”

“This Munair,” said Rocky, “he wants to be helpful, right?”

Frank nodded. He’d spread the contents of his shopping bag on the glass table in Rocky’s bubble.

“And he doesn’t wanna go to the States.”

“He’s very devout,” said Frank. “He wants to live in the Islamic Republic.”

“The stuff he gave you on these revolutionary committees could turn out real heavy. We need more details. And keep after him about this
fatwa
business. Again, we need more details if we want to keep you and Belinsky alive. And functioning.”

“We’ve got to get Belinsky functioning quick on this GRU guy,” said Frank. “But I’ve got a hunch keeping Chuck alive and keeping him functioning may not both be possible.”

“What is it with you? You got a death wish about Belinsky? First you worried about suicide. Now you worry about homicide.”

“I worry about a lot of things,” said Frank. “Including my own little death warrant.”

“Don’t worry,” said Rocky. “Think. Think about Munair. Think about keeping Belinsky alive. And functioning. He does good work.”

“I’ll talk to Munair,” said Frank.

“I want you to recruit him,” said Rocky. “Not just for now. An agent in place. We’ll need some leave-behinds when they ship us all outta here. And he’s one guy who seems likely to survive once the holy ragheads take over.”

“I doubt he’ll go for it,” said Frank. “But I’ll do my best.”

*   *   *

“It’s a mission,” said Belinsky.

“A suicide mission?” asked the ambassador.

They’d sequestered themselves in the bubble with Rocky and Frank.

“No, sir,” said Belinsky. “Something I can do that has to be done.”

“Munair told me that if you go to Qom again, you’ll be killed there,” said Frank. “At the airport where your chopper sets down.”

“That means you get a chopper pilot killed, too,” said Rocky. “You ready for that?”

“Ayatollah Shariat-Madari is the only ranking clergyman we have contact with.”

“And that you have a good chance of being attacked, beaten up at the university or murdered in the bazaar.”

“Look, I can exercise more caution. And Frank, I appreciate you letting me know the danger. But we all take risks, don’t we?”

“Yeah, don’t we?” said Rocky, staring hard at Belinsky. Belinsky looked away.

“Yes,” said the ambassador, “we all take risks. But none of the rest of us have been warned that we might get killed. Warned by a man apparently in a position to know.”

“That makes me safer than the rest of you. At least I know what to look out for.”

“Chuck, let’s lay down some guidelines,” said the ambassador. “At least for a while, no more trips to Qom. Or the bazaar or the university. Get people to come to you, if you can. If not, stick to the embassy. We have a lot we need you for here. And you’re no damn good to us dead.”

Belinsky caught Frank’s eye. “I have some obligations as a consular officer,” he said.

“Turn them over to someone else in the consulate,” said the ambassador.

“There’s a couple he can’t turn over,” said Rocky.

“I don’t want to know about it,” said the ambassador.

“Matter of fact, sir, if you don’t mind, there’s a couple of … obligations Frank and myself need to talk to Chuck about.”

“I understand,” said the ambassador. “Gentlemen, I leave you to your sins.” He pushed himself up from the table. “Chuck, be careful.”

*   *   *

Rocky waited for the ambassador to pull the door to the bubble closed behind him.

“Okay, Chuck. You said you’d have something for us by today.”

Belinky nodded. “I do. I meet with Yevteshenko tomorrow.”

“Not much notice,” said Frank.

“Best I could do. Anyways, you two have been acting like you’re in a hurry.”

“Where?” asked Frank.

“Naderi Hotel.”

Frank remembered it. He and Lermontov had met there once. The Soviets used it often, which could be helpful.

“What time?”

He wrote it all down for Lermontov.

*   *   *

They met in the first safe house Lermontov had brought him to. He does a good job of mixing up his venues, thought Frank. But no vodka, no caviar, no envelope of twenties.

“My instructions from Moscow are to remain so long as you are here and useful to us.”

“Good,” said Frank.

“But we do not believe you Americans will be here for long.”

“I’ve heard the embassy has contingency plans for evacuating nonessential Americans.”

“Are you among the nonessential?”

“No.”

“Excellent. We should have an interesting few weeks. What do you have for me?”

Rocky, on his own initiative, sanitized the cables reporting on the various armed services capabilities and gave Frank permission to pass them on to Lermontov. Frank added an envelope marked “open later” with the information on Belinsky’s meeting at the Naderi.

“This is good,” said Lermontov, studying the cables. “Stick close to this General Kasravi. Anything about a coup attempt. If you want another bonus, he could be your key to the money box.”

“What about Gharabaghi saying he’d resign rather than participate in a military takeover? Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“Something. But we never put as much stock in Gharabaghi as your General Weber did. I’ll call attention to it in my cable, but don’t count on a bonus.”

“This General Weber makes the rest of the American establishment look good,” said Frank.

“Really? How so?”

“He wanted the station to sit on our reports. Said they read too negative. Rocky, our chief of station, might have done just that. But Weber got him so mad he went ahead and filed everything.”

“You are so naive,” said Lermontov. “Your fight isn’t with Rocky or the stupid general. Your fight is with the system. And what you don’t understand, by fighting the system you make it stronger. You fight the system to get your reporting accepted, reporting the system doesn’t want to hear. You succeed and the system is stronger, better informed, because you have fought it.”

“Interesting,” said Frank. “But I still don’t think the system appreciates what I’ve done.”

“Probably not,” said Lermontov with a rare smile that turned into a grimace. It must hurt that jaw to smile, thought Frank.

“We should meet here again tomorrow evening,” said Lermontov. “Things are changing rapidly.”

*   *   *

Frank joined Rocky in the bubble after his meeting with Lermontov the next evening. He opened the eyes-only envelope among the material Lermontov had delivered. Rocky read the message aloud.

“‘Meeting took place. Envelope with American currency delivered. Photo taken. Subject later taken back to our embassy.” Rocky handed it to Frank. “Done deal. Belinsky already told me. Seems kind of a … what’s the expression? Anticlimax? Like there oughta be rollin’ drums. Thunder and lightnin’.”

“You cable James?” asked Frank.

“On what Belinsky said. Yeah, I did. I’ll do another on Lermontov’s note. Looks like we got both those guys, Lermontov and Belinsky, off the hook. And put the fuckin’ mole on ice. Moscow’s gonna think their penetration agent nailed his man in Tehran. And he did. But it wasn’t our man. Lermontov can relax. The Soviet spooks will quit lookin’.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Frank. He felt a profound sense of relief. The mole had been foiled and Lermontov was safe. Belinsky would not be arrested or disgraced. He felt no pity for the doomed GRU officer but also no urge to celebrate. They were still in the midst of a civil war; a
fatwa
with his name still carried a promise of death; deep within the agency, the unidentified mole continued to dig.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Frank and Gus sat in Stan Rushmore’s office putting together the last of their cables assessing the capabilities of the various armed forces to carry out a coup. At first, they could hear only the sound of car horns and truck Klaxons pounding out an incessant beat—blaat-blaat, blaat-blaat, blaat-blaat. They exchanged a glance. Without speaking, they slipped into their parkas, pulled their stocking caps low over their foreheads, and, though heavy gray clouds hung low in the sky, put on dark glasses and went outside.

Taunting crowds had gathered outside the chained gates of the base. Frank and Gus, hands plunged deep in their pockets, their breath frosted, approached the guardhouse. Now Frank could pick out the words with the same incessant beat as the Klaxons—
Shah raft, Shah raft, Shah raft
.

Frank had no idea what
raft
meant in Farsi. The echo of the English word conjured up an image of the Shah swept away by turbulent waters on a wildly spinning raft.

“What are they saying?” Gus asked one of the Iranian air force guards on duty.

“
‘Shah raft,’
sir. In English, ‘The Shah has gone.’ See,
Ayandegan,
one of our newspapers, has already put out a special edition. Only four pages. Someone pushed it through the fence.”

He handed Gus a broadsheet on which two words in ornate Arabic script took up the entire front page.
“Shah raft?”
asked Gus.

“In Farsi, of course, sir. Also on radio. The Shah, himself at the controls of his 707, took off at fourteen hundred hours from Mehrabad Airport. But sir, we must ask you to retreat.” Behind him, the other guards nodded in agreement. Bearded faces pressed against the chain-link fence, staring at them, and someone started a chant of
“Maag bargh Amrika
.
”

“Doesn’t sound good,” said Gus.

“No, sir. If they believe you are
Amrikazi,
it may incite them. We do not want them to attack the fence. Don’t run. Just, if you would, walk slowly away.”

“Can I keep this?” Gus indicated the newspaper.

“Oh, yes, sir. A souvenir.”

Gus showed the paper to Frank, then held it up to the crowd with his left hand and began to chant,
“Shah raft, Shah raft, Shah raft,”
pumping his right fist in the air. Frank and the guards joined in, and soon cries of
“Shah raft, Shah raft, Shah raft,”
supported by the din of the Klaxons, drowned out “Death to America.” Frank and Gus turned and walked back to Rushmore’s office.

“The revolution in action,” said Gus as they shed their caps and parkas.

Frank, still mute, looked at his watch. The hands blurred, but his mind registered. Sixteen January, 1979. Two in the afternoon. The Shah has gone. He pictured an hourglass with the sand rapidly running out.

*   *   *

They turned their completed cables over to Bill Steele.

“I’ll haul them up to Rocky at the embassy for you,” said Bill, “but it might be a while. Things being what they are out there.”

“Understood,” said Gus. With chained gates and a volatile mob out front, Frank decided against risking a run through one of the back gates to get to his designated pickup spot for his meeting with Lermontov, this time near the south end of Park-e Farah, opposite the Inter-Continental Hotel. The roundabout route he considered added up to about eight miles. Even if he made it out of the base, too much could happen on a day like this over a course of eight miles. The threat of being shot by a newly religious
Savak
agent was bad enough. The prospect of being torn apart by a hysterical mob seemed much worse.

Their cables presented a mixed picture. Frank had reported that, according to Kasravi, the
homafaran
almost to a man had taken an oath of allegiance to Khomeini. Many pilots had said they would fly no missions against people who supported the revolution. Shortages of spare parts, coupled with the
homafar
rebellion, made it likely few military planes would be airworthy.

Summing up Kasravi’s view, Frank had written that the general considered the Bodyguard the only reliable unit. He thought the navy fairly reliable but also fairly unimportant; the air force he described as unreliable and the army as by and large disloyal. He said he could not comment on the police and
Savak
. Frank also reported that Kasravi had said that the Bodyguard would close down the airport should Khomeini attempt to fly in from France and that the Bodyguard had also prepared secret plans for confronting possible mutiny by any other element of the armed forces.

In a separate cable, Frank quoted Munair as relating the view of Admiral Hayati that the navy would be loyal but that logistics would limit its role. Frank cited the exact words Munair used. “Around the Caspian, we have little but a few patrol boats. Our strength lies far to the south, and the real test will come in the cities far from the Gulf.”

General Merid, who had quickly proved himself the most eager of recruits, told Gus most enlisted men and junior officers would not oppose a popular revolution led by Khomeini. Gus’s cable quoted him as saying, “I know what the people upstairs may say, the Gharabaghis, the Bardris, the Hayatis. In their hearts, they know the truth. But they will say with American help they can do this thing. I have many friends, not alone in the army, but in the other armed forces, the police, even
Savak
.”

As he edited what Gus had written, Frank wondered if all General Merid’ s friends came from Qazvin. “Forget the police,” said the cable. “Not even
Savak
can be relied on. Perhaps if the Immortals and the navy help the Americans to invade, then our military can do this thing.”

“You must understand,” Frank reported Kasravi as saying, “our armed forces have no tradition of consulting with each other. The head of each branch reported directly to His Imperial Majesty. In times past, His Imperial Majesty felt it best to keep the various military branches from getting together. Politically, a good approach, perhaps, at the time. But now, how can we expect the army, the air force, the navy, and the Imperial Bodyguard all to work together to stage a coup when they have never worked together before?”

“Does General Bardri share these views?” Frank had asked.

“Yes,” Kasravi had answered.