A TIME TO BETRAY (20 page)

The seat belt sign flashed and I tried to cajole myself to stay in the present. I thought about Somaya waiting to pick me up, and this time the thought filled me with excitement. I’d missed my beautiful wife terribly and maybe fully realized how much I missed her only now that I was about to see her again.

But first I needed to go through customs. Once again, anxiety seared me. Everything could fall apart in this instant.

All of the passengers on the plane received equal scrutiny. Still, I felt invisible eyes watching me specifically, and the tension built.
Remember, you are a member of the Revolutionary Guards,
I repeated continuously as I headed toward the front of the line.

As I did, I heard all tourist interviews start with the same question: “Where are you coming from, and what are your plans for your visit?” The first question for all Iranians was “Where have you been, how long did you stay, and what have you brought back?”

When it was finally my turn, I answered, “America and England. Visiting family. I don’t have anything to declare.”

One customs agent stamped my passport while another opened my luggage. My heart started beating harder as I watched him leaf through the layers of clothes. What if he found the codebook the CIA had given me? What if he knew the purpose of those papers in
my luggage? My breath nearly caught when he picked up the picture frame that had the codebook hidden in it. He kept the frame in his hand while he continued searching. Then he found the military book I’d purchased on the trip.

“Why do you have this?” he said, his eyes sharp, his voice accusatory.

Not wanting to sound intimidated, I adopted my own officious tone. “It is a gift for my commander in Sepah-e-Pasdaran.”

The agent’s expression changed to a faint smile. Or perhaps it was a smirk. Regardless, he quickly put everything back in my suitcase, saying, “There you go,
Baradar.
” He closed my luggage and waved me through.

No one else approached me.

No one pulled me aside and said, “We know where you’ve been, Mr. Kahlili. We know who you talked to,
jasoos.
Come with us.”

I felt the tension drain from me as I walked through the terminal to my waiting wife. Somaya looked even more beautiful than the picture in my mind, and my heart leapt when I saw her. Even though she’d covered her hair with a black scarf, her face brought life and strength to me. Was it her eyes or the way she looked at me? Was it her lips or the way she smiled at me? It didn’t matter; when I saw her, I knew I was home.

All I wanted at that moment was to run to her, to hug her and pull her so close that we could become one. But it was not appropriate to hug and kiss anyone—even your wife—in a public place in Iran anymore. Instead, when I got close to her, I wrapped my arm around her shoulder and whispered, “I missed you so much. I am so glad that I have you in my life.” She patted my back and smiled, saying, “I missed you, too.” Though I desperately wanted to cling to her, I pulled my arm away and we walked through the exit like two strangers who had just met.

I managed to maintain a happy face until we got home. But as soon as we walked into the house, I held Somaya in my arms and a
rush of emotion poured from me. I could not control my tears and I’m sure this worried Somaya horribly.

“Oh! Reza, are you okay?” she said, holding my face in her soft hands.

My emotions were still so overwhelming that I couldn’t speak.

She wiped my tears from her face. “I never want you to leave me again.”

I knew that I needed to get hold of myself. I couldn’t let her think that anything was wrong beyond my missing her and my having had a long and difficult trip. “I feel bad for Aunt Giti,” I said at last. “She’s so sick and I hated leaving her alone in that facility. I wanted her to come back with me, but she insisted on staying.”

Somaya smiled at me tenderly. But I also thought I caught a glimpse of something else in her eyes. Something that said she knew I wasn’t telling her everything. It might have been only my imagination, but I realized at that moment that I would continue to envision reactions like this from her as long as I continued lying to her.

We talked for a while about the time we were apart, and I caught her up on how well her parents were doing in London. Somaya told me how lonely she’d felt without me and how hard it was for her to deal with this loneliness, even though I had not been away that long.

“I was almost happy for my grandmother’s back surgery, though I know that is awful,” she said. “Taking care of her kept me busy and kept my mind away from how hard it is for me when we are apart.” She smiled at me. “I don’t want to give you a big head, but I simply can’t be away from you.” She kissed me and held me tight. Being with her in this moment was the best I’d felt in a very long time.

That night, Somaya and I made love passionately, surprised when the first rays of light signaled the coming of a new day. I held her in my arms, wanting this precious time to last forever.

But it was necessary for me to return to work. I tried to anticipate the day ahead of me and what my coworkers would say. I considered questions they might ask and attempted to have ready answers. I
was operating on no sleep, so I knew I wasn’t going to be at my best under any circumstances.

Returning to my Tehran office filled me with emotions that ran from trepidation and fear to bravado and enthusiasm. On the one hand, I was Wally, a spy working for the world’s largest intelligence agency. On the other hand, I was a member of the powerful Revolutionary Guards carrying out my duties as if my allegiance to Ayatollah Khomeini and his clerical regime were the most important thing in my life. Duality defined me now.

In my role as Wally, I would gather facts and information that only an insider with my connections could possibly access. There was an inherent danger to that. The regime was always on the lookout for spies, and when the United States took action on the information I would be providing, a red flag would surely go up among the Revolutionary Guards. How long could this go on before they traced the leaks to me?

As Reza, a member of the elite Guards, my role was to look and act the part of a devout Muslim enforcing all the new rules laid down by the mullahs. A full black beard was a mandatory accessory to the Guards’ uniform, and I sported one along with every other member of the Guards. The image of a scowling black-bearded Guards member in uniform mustered fear and garnered respect. Playing the part of a zealot did not come naturally to me, and there were times I had to do things I dreaded: cautioning young girls to cover up, barking at kids for not displaying proper Islamic behavior, taking on the persona of a fanatic. Back in Iran now, I knew I would have to try to convince myself that doing these things allowed me to maintain my role—and maintaining my role allowed me to contribute to the downfall of the organization to which I so fervently imitated allegiance.

Once I entered the base, I went straight to the office of Rahim, my commander. He greeted me, shook my hand, and then we kissed on each side of the face, as is the custom among Iranians.

“How is your aunt, Brother Reza? Were you able to move her into a home?”

“Brother Rahim, it was your help that made it possible. May Allah repay you many times over.” I went on to explain the situation with my aunt and that she was now living in an assisted-living facility.

“So what else did you do, Brother Reza? Where else did you go?”

“I visited some old friends from college. They were very happy to see me again. I also went to London and visited my in-laws on the way back.”

I did not go into any detail, as I was already getting nervous. Hoping to cut the conversation short, I presented the gift I’d bought for him in the U.S. because I knew he would love it. Titled
Jane’s Weapon Systems,
it was an impressive volume with color pictures showing virtually all of the weaponry used anywhere in the world at the time. This was the book that had distracted the customs agent. Rahim received the gift appreciatively, telling me that he was always looking for books and magazines on military equipment, which I knew because Kazem had told me this about Rahim months earlier.

I left to go find Kazem. As soon as I walked into his office, Kazem jumped up to greet me. With a grand gesture, he announced, “Reza, my dearest friend, world traveler and mystery man. Back from the United States at last,” and slapped me on the back.

We hugged and kissed the sides of our faces. As he sat behind his desk, he added with a wide smile, “You didn’t give away all of our secrets to the CIA while you were there, did you?”

The words stunned me and it took every bit of my strength not to let the shock of it show. For a brief moment, I thought my knees would buckle. But, of course, Kazem was only joking. Had the Guards known of my betrayal, they would have arrested me the moment my plane landed.

“Of course I did,” I said, recovering quickly. “To go all the way to America and not have a conversation with the CIA would have been crazy. And while I was at it, I had dinner at the White House.” We laughed together, but this failed to temper my uneasiness. We talked for a few more minutes—something innocuous about work—but
all I could think was,
This is how it is going to be from now on. I won’t even be able to have a simple conversation without being on guard and on edge.
I knew I’d created this life for myself. I even knew that I desired this life because of the benefit it offered my country. But it was going to take me a while to get used to it.

I prepared my first letter to Carol that night.

[Letter #—]

[Date:———]

Hi, Carol:

1—I am back safe and sound.

2—My family is well.

3—Today was my first day back at work.

4—Rahim and Kazem were happy to see me back.

5—I will look for your messages.

Wish me luck,

Wally

Hello, Wally:

We received your first letter.

We are happy you are back safely.

Our team is very excited.

Please confirm receipt of this message.

Please take care and stay safe.

Carol

Receiving the first message from Carol was thrilling, yet it unnerved me, as it was an unintended but firm reminder of the torture and death that would await me if the Guards ever discovered what I was doing. While I’d considered how my decision was going to affect Somaya, being home with her, feeling her close, and feeling her love made it exponentially clearer what I was risking with my activity. As with all young couples, we had made plans for our future together. We wanted a family. Had I compromised that?

“Don’t take any unnecessary risks,” the CIA mandated. “Don’t put yourself in danger. Be aware of your surroundings. Hide everything.” Routinely switching on a light late at night might arouse suspicion, so I used a small covered desk lamp in my study that was not visible from outside the house. Once in my study, down the hallway from our bedroom, I would quietly close the door and feel my way over to the table where the radio was.

Sitting alone in the near dark with headphones over my ears, I
toyed with the frequency control, twisting the dial and picking up chatter all along the band. Back and forth, back and forth, up and down, up and down—just like my life now. An enormous number of codes crossed over the air. It was an international cacophony a linguist would love—German, Hebrew, French, Arabic, and even Farsi. As tense as all of this made me, I had to smile. The spy world was active and I was now in the middle of it.

The CIA’s messages started Friday promptly at 3:00 a.m. The coded transmissions were not always easy to understand because they sometimes overlapped or were obscured by static. After a while, though, the garbled voices became easier to decipher.

I utilized the method I learned in London. First writing down the messages carefully, guessing at a couple of them, and then using the codebook, I deciphered them. Soon I recognized that these transmissions started with “Hello, Wally,” which I found enormously exciting. It was like passing a club’s initiation rite. This particular club—the CIA—had quite an exclusive membership, and I was just starting to wrap my mind around the idea of my being allowed to enter.

In time, my body clock adjusted in anticipation to my early-hour foray into the undercover world. Soon, I could awaken without an alarm at two thirty. Somaya accepted the pretext that I was getting up then because my best ideas for projects for the Guards came to me at night. She soon grew accustomed to my nighttime “insomnia.” I even prepared a bit of disinformation regarding my listening to the radio while wearing headphones. If she ever came down to see me doing this, I would tell her that the Guards wanted to know what the English versions of Radio Free Europe and Voice of America were saying, and that they’d charged me with this mission.

Destroying the evidence of the deciphered messages was imperative, so I employed a technique they’d taught me in London. I folded the pages on which I’d written the messages in an accordion shape, taking an inch from one side and then the other, and placed them one by one in an ashtray. I then lit these and they would burn
down without smoke. To complete the cleanup, I would flush the ashes down the toilet.

To let Carol know a message had come through successfully, I had to write an invisible letter the way David taught me in London. I made sure I followed everything I had learned. In another lifetime, I would have found it laughable that I was sitting in the near dark writing invisible messages. In my role as Wally, however, it was anything but funny.

I numbered each letter so Carol would know if she failed to receive one.

[Letter #———]

[Date:———]

Dear Carol:

1—Received your message successfully.

2—In a few days, I will be traveling to the front for a week.