A TIME TO BETRAY (17 page)

My relationship with Steve grew into a comfortable daily exchange between two businessmen—whose business happened to be espionage. Steve seemed steady, direct, and honest. He was a well-grounded man, quick on the uptake. When I was with him, I felt comfortable and what we did felt natural. I didn’t feel doubts and fears about the turn my life had taken when we were working together.

Hotel meetings turned out to have too many logistical complications, so Steve told me that we would continue our sessions at a safe house deep in the mountains above Malibu. I had to take a bus or cab to a predetermined location, walk a couple of extra blocks, and meet up with Steve. From there, we would continue to the safe house together.

The night before our first meeting at this new place, I examined all of the bus routes I was to travel. I memorized the information Steve provided about shopping centers along the way, which stores had back doors, which had big reflective windows, and where the restaurants were. All of this would help me if I needed to avoid having someone follow me. As it turned out, I would put this to use immediately.

At the first bus stop on the way to the meeting, I lined up with other passengers, checked the number on the bus against a printed schedule, looked around for street signs, and checked a map against the schedule. I looked very much the tourist. Just before I got on the bus, I asked the driver about various bus routes, hanging back to allow the other passengers to board.

One man wearing a baseball cap pulled low lingered behind me. He had a rolled-up newspaper in one hand and he kept the other hand in his pocket. He definitely set off my radar.

“Will this bus take me to Fox Hills?” I asked the driver, thinking quickly.

“Fox Hills?” the driver asked as though my question made no sense. “You’re on the wrong side of the street, young man. Take the bus on the other side.”

“Thank you.”

I casually crossed the street and caught another bus going in the opposite direction. The man with the baseball cap followed me. This sent a surge of adrenaline through my body as I struggled not to look at him. In my early meetings with Steve, he taught me some “spy tricks,” including how to lose a tail without being obvious. I did my best to remember his lessons now. I got off the bus at the Fox Hills Mall and wandered the stores, constantly checking reflections in the windows for the man in the cap. Heart pounding, I entered a bookstore. I picked up a magazine and stood reading it for a while as Baseball Cap wandered up and down the book aisles. After some time passed, I put the magazine back in the rack and left the bookstore.

I took several other evasive measures, but after each one, I soon spotted Baseball Cap again. My mind raced with the implications. I had to call Steve. I found a phone booth in the mall and dialed his number, but there was no answer.

I hung up, checked the number, and dialed again. Baseball Cap was across the mall talking to an old woman. He seemed to be asking for directions, as the woman pointed north and then west. Baseball Cap nodded and the phone kept ringing.

Dammit, Steve, pick up.

Frustrated, I was about to put the handset down when Steve finally came on the line.

“Steve, it’s Wally. I’m being followed.”

“Followed?”

“There is this guy who followed me from the bus stop to the Fox Hills Mall.”

“Okay, Wally, stay calm. Just go back to your hotel.”

“But what if he follows me there?”

“Do what I have taught you and try to lose him. I will call you in a few days to set up another meeting.”

I started to ask another question, but Steve had already hung up. This made me feel very alone and very vulnerable.
Maybe I should just abort the whole enterprise and fly back home.
If spy work was this dangerous in America, how much more dangerous would it be when I returned to Tehran?

When I went outside of the mall, I found Baseball Cap at the bus stop, probably waiting for me to make my next move. Steve’s suggestion to go back to the hotel was not going to work, so I went back into the mall and slipped into and out of several stores, ultimately trying on random outfits in a May Company dressing room for twenty minutes. When I finally came out, Baseball Cap was gone. It appeared that the evasive methods Steve taught me paid off.

Relieved and satisfied, I decided that instead of going back to my hotel, I’d go out to Tarzana, where my aunt Giti lived. What better way to throw off my pursuers than to act as normal as possible?

Aunt Giti lived in a neighborhood made up mostly of expatriate Iranians. Some had been around as long as she had and many more fled Iran when Khomeini came to power. I took a cab to the San Fernando Valley and asked the driver to drop me off a couple blocks from my aunt’s home so I could walk the rest of the way and keep my eyes open for anyone following me.

“Bia tu, azizam,”
Aunt Giti exclaimed when she saw me at the door. “Come in, my dear.” Hearing her speak Farsi with so much affection in her voice brought me an ache of longing, a reminder of the easy days of my earlier time in California when I didn’t have to lie and I didn’t have to look over my shoulder. This made me homesick for the home I once had, and I took my aunt to a nearby Persian restaurant on Ventura Boulevard, a popular gathering place for the local Iranians. I didn’t care if anyone followed us there. I was just another Iranian visitor on family business. This was the closest I had felt to normal in days.

As we ate, Aunt Giti handed me a couple of brochures her doctor had given her explaining the progression of Parkinson’s disease. “Reza, I dread what this insidious disease is going to do to me, but I’ve come to accept it. It’s hard saying good-bye to all I have here. But I will be happy and safe if I move to an assisted-living home.”

I wasn’t nearly as convinced as she was. Though one of the purposes I’d had in coming to America was setting my aunt up in a new residence, I wondered if this was really best for her. “But, Khaleh Giti, all of your family members are in Iran. You should be among them. We’ll take care of you. I will take care of you myself. …”

She interrupted me by shaking her head. “Don’t, Reza. Don’t make it harder for me. You know I would never return to Iran. It’s not the same there anymore.” She caught herself before the conversation turned more intense, smiled, and continued. “I wish your father were alive so he could see what a fine young man you’ve become.”

I knew then that her decision to move into a care home was final and that discussing other options would be heartbreaking for both
of us. I did what I could to make this easier for her, taking several days to arrange her move and put her house on the market.

When I dropped Aunt Giti at the assisted-living facility, she handed me a picture of her and my father on the Golden Gate Bridge. “This is the first summer your father was here. When he came to America, he told me he wanted to see this bridge more than anything else.” She managed a difficult smile. Smiling was much tougher for her now because of her illness. “After he saw that magnificent bridge, he told me he wanted to be an engineer. And that’s what he became. He was that kind of a man. He dreamed of something and he pursued it.”

She closed her eyes for a long moment before continuing. “After he moved back to Iran and married your mother, and, of course, you were born, he continued writing me letters and talking about you, Reza. He told me he had big dreams for you. He loved you so much.” At this point, she lost any semblance of control. She burst into tears and hugged me closely. “I am glad you came here, Reza. I am so proud that you cared so much that you left your wife to help your sick auntie. Your father was right—you are a great young man.” I held her for a long time while she cried. Then I helped her settle into her new home and promised I would visit her again before I returned to Iran. As I left her that day, I couldn’t help but feel a certain measure of shame. Yes, I’d come to her aid at a critical time in her life, but I’d used her as a smokescreen for my real activities in the U.S. Would I have been such a “great young man” for her if her needs didn’t match so seamlessly with my larger agenda?

It took Steve the better part of a week before he set up another meeting. On my way to our rendezvous, I noticed the same man again, wearing a different outfit and a different hat. I changed a few buses and managed to lose him with my very last transfer. This left me with a certain sense of accomplishment, but a far stronger sense of foreboding. I suspected that the Guards already knew of my contacts with the CIA. If that was true, my family was doomed.

But when I met Steve at the rendezvous point in his car, he was beaming. “Congratulations! You used your tactics to shake a very skilled operative.”

“Excuse me?”

“I assigned one of our people to tail you to see if you could spot him and shake him without panicking. You acted like a pro. You’re learning your lessons well, Wally. Just keep it up and never let your guard down. You’ll stay alive longer.”

I didn’t really need
that
reminder.

After a ten-minute drive through Pacific Palisades, we climbed up Las Flores Canyon to Piuma Road and the safe house. It was one of the most beautiful drives I’d ever made. Eucalyptus trees lined either side of the one-lane road that rose rapidly toward the top of the mountain. At the end of a driveway that approached from the rear of the house, a panorama opened up revealing a sparkling Pacific Ocean with the Channel Islands to the north all the way to Catalina Island and the Palos Verdes Peninsula to the south. We exited the car and approached a small wooden A-frame house whose front was all glass.

The interior furnishings were minimal, but the spectacular view was so diverting, I temporarily forgot why I was there. Several places in my country were this beautiful, and thinking of them now fortified my resolve. I wanted Iran to be beautiful for everyone.

Steve sat me down and we got to work, my appreciation of the setting soon forgotten. He took copious notes as we talked about the Guards: about how the regime formed them to protect the country and the revolution and to neutralize the regular army—and its many sympathizers—that had operated under the shah, about their training, the size of their forces, and their armaments.

“I knew several Guards members who traveled back and forth to Lebanon through Syria,” I told him. “They complained about the cowardice of the Shia Muslim militias in Lebanon fighting the Israeli occupation. They weren’t satisfied with the Israeli death toll.”

“What’s the Guards’ involvement in Lebanon?” Steve asked.

“They introduced training, arms, money, and, most important, the idea of martyrdom.”

Steve sat forward. “Tell me more about that.”

“Muslim youth in the Middle East are being brainwashed by the mullahs to think that sacrificing their lives for Islam is the greatest glory. Those who choose martyrdom are promised the highest place in heaven next to Prophet Mohammad and the great Imams.”

Steve said the CIA was concerned that Khomeini was extending his tendrils of control into surrounding nations. I informed him that Khomeini had already accomplished that goal. The Guards had established headquarters in both Syria and Lebanon, where they conducted the command and control of various radical groups, encouraging new recruits to carry out terrorist activities in order to achieve the rewards of martyrdom. Even where Khomeini didn’t control governments, he reigned in the hearts and minds of frustrated zealots who wanted to regain the past glories of Islam by force. Khomeini wasn’t merely the Supreme Leader of one nation; he was proclaiming himself the anointed head of the One True Religion who took orders directly from God.

“And anyone who dares to oppose Khomeini or the ruling clerics is defined as
mohareb,
those waging war against God. The Revolutionary Courts deal with them. These men believe that torturing the opposition to obtain a confession is proper. If a prisoner dies during torture this is fair and just, and comes under the auspices of Islamic law. Virgin girls have been raped prior to their execution so they would not go to heaven. Armed demonstrators are killed on the spot. There are no exceptions, not even for the wounded. Thousands of
mohareb
have been summarily executed without giving them a chance to defend themselves.”

Steve shook his head and then looked at me with an odd expression.

I guessed what he was thinking. “These are the people who will deal with me if I am caught,” I said.

He smiled wryly.

I went on to explain how Syrian diplomatic facilities and channels were at the disposal of the Guards. On Khomeini’s orders, plane after plane delivered arms and personnel to Syria to promote a new Islamic state. Often the Guards’ convoys received Syrian diplomatic license plates so they could operate in Lebanon without interference. At other times, the Guards were chauffeured in Syrian diplomatic cars. This effort created Hezbollah, which grew with the full financial backing of Iran, quickly becoming a major force in Lebanon.

Steve continued to pepper me with questions, taking me in many different directions. A conversation about where I worked wandered into questions about my friends and family, about my education at USC, and back to Iran and the Revolutionary Guards. This led to a discussion about who I worked with, and I finally mentioned a difficult subject for me: Kazem. I told Steve about the nature of our relationship and about why we continued to be friends, though things were not the same between us as they had once been.

“You know, Steve, I don’t know if I can trust him anymore. I suspect he was involved in Naser’s arrest. I wanted to leave the Guards after what happened to Naser and stay away from Kazem. I decided to stay on because I needed him to help me with my mission. He has a lot of contacts in the Guards and he can make things happen.”

I told Steve about our childhood. He smiled as I recounted the mischief we’d gotten into. But as we continued to talk, he began to understand how friendship took on a different cast in Iran when ideologies conflicted. In America, two friends could hold opposing political views and it would amount to no more than perhaps some heated arguments. In Iran, it could result in the arrest and execution of a friend—with his brother and sister thrown in for good measure.