Defection Games (Dan Gordon Intelligence Thriller) (21 page)

“Where were you?” I asked in a calm tone, although I was on fire inside.

“Oh, I sat at the front engine talking to the
engineers
. I’ve always been fascinated by trains,” he said matter of factly.

I needed to take a deep breath or else I’d scream at him with the full throttle of my lungs. “General Madani, please let
me know next time you are leaving the cabin, there are serious risks involved if you leave without telling me.”

He didn’t respond, or even look at me. He entered the cabin and sat looking outside, clearly sending me a message to get off his back. But I wasn’t going to. I also didn’t like the story about the
engineers
, but as long as Madani was back in one piece and the train was moving, I could live with some wrinkles in the plan.

Hours later we arrived at Tabriz and customs officers boarded the train. I had just one bag with clothes, a laptop computer with articles I purportedly had written, a camera, and toiletries. They didn’t bother with my luggage. Their only concern was whether I was carrying large amounts of money or drugs. When I said that I wasn’t, they moved on to Madani. He was pale and I sensed a light tremor of his right hand. After reviewing his papers, they moved to the next cabin. Madani and I were relieved. 

The train continued to Urmia, the capital of Salmas
township
,
the last stop in Iran. I looked in my guidebook. It described
Salmas township as located 854 km northwest of Tehran, and as a beautiful city with attractive bazaars and stone mosques.

I used that opportunity to start a conversation. “My guide book says that we are already in the Iranian province of West Azerbaijan and that it has a Kurdish origin.”

Madani nodded, “And there are good mineral water springs here that have therapeutic qualities,” he said after a long period of silence.

From the train, I could see Lake Urmia. I opened the window. We were at 4,000 feet and a cold breeze went through the cabin. The train stopped. Through the window I could see a small blue sign hanging from the outside wall of a dilapidated but clean building, saying “Salamas Station” in English and Farsi. Lamp poles were painted blue and white and the platform was paved with uneven wood logs.
The cabin door was opened and two Iranian Police and Immigration Control officers, dressed in green uniforms, boarded for final passport control. We gave them our passports. Although I was carrying a foreign passport, the officer holding it just flipped through the pages and returned it to me without saying a word.

The officer holding Madani’s reddish-brown Iranian passport opened it, gave Madani a glance, and said something to the other officer. Madani’s face went frozen, getting a grayish tint. He was visibly nervous. He should be. If this were more than a
routine passport review, he could be taken off the train without much ado. I was just as nervous, with my stomach turning, but put on an indifferent face. There was a fast exchange of questions and answers between Madani and the officers. Although I could barely understand a full sentence, my limited command of Farsi was sufficient to understand that their questions concerned the route Madani was taking. As expected, they asked him why he was on board a train to Turkey when his exit visa allowed him to go to Syria only.

“I’m not going to Turkey,” I understood Madani to say. “The train is going to Syria through Turkey because Iran doesn’t border with Syria.”

I couldn’t understand the officer’s next question, but I gathered from Madani’s answer that a train ticket was cheaper than flying.

One officer left the cabin, taking Madani’s passport with him. The other officer remained standing in the cabin. Tension was in the air. If for any reason, whether related to Madani’s planned defection, or due to any bureaucratic problem, Madani was not allowed to continue on the train, then the operation was doomed and I was toast.

I exchanged looks with Madani, hoping that he would not tie me to him. I wasn’t sure what to do next. Remain an anonymous passenger who just happened to be in the same cabin with Madani, or come forward and identity myself as a journalist accompanying Madani? I decided to keep quiet and see how the situation developed. If Madani’s problems were pre-planned by the I
ranian secret
police, then he must have been under photographed surveillance that undoubtedly captured me in Madani’s company prior to our joint train trip. Therefore, trying to distance myself from Madani, pretending to be a complete stranger, could potentially dig me into a hole and make me also a suspect in whatever they were suspecting Madani of.

After ten or fifteen long minutes, the officer returned to the cabin holding Madani’s passport. He snapped something in Farsi and Madani got up, gave me a helpless look, took his suitcase, and followed the two officers as they exited the cabin. That was a time to decide: to follow him and the officers even if they got off the train, or continue the ride until the next stop in Turkey, 20 miles away, to report to Eric what had happened. As I was pondering what to do, I heard doors slamming. It was the moment to act. Duty first, I concluded. I grabbed my bag and ran to the door, jumping to the platform just as the train started moving. I looked around, but I didn’t see Madani. The platform
was vacant. I searched around the terminal building, but there was no Madani or his police escorts. I went outside and entered a beat-up cab, signaling the driver to take me on a tour of this city of 75,000, hoping I’d see Madani in a police car. Just as he started the engine, I changed my mind. Madani could still be in the terminal building or in its vicinity. The border control police must maintain a local facility to process and question all suspects they remove from the train in this last Iranian stop before the Turkish border.

“Stop!” I said. The baffled cabby looked at me. I gave him a few Rials, exited the cab, and reentered the terminal building.  Except for a cleaning woman wiping the floor, it now was empty. I asked her where the police station was.

After a second she said, “
Polise?”  I nodded. She pointed her finger outside and said, “Salamas.”
I ran outside again and re-entered the cab. The cabby didn’t seem to have too much business.

“P
olise,” I said. A few minutes later, he dropped me off near a small building.
“
Polise!” he announced.

I entered the small building. There was just one officer there behind a desk. I introduced myself, hoping in vain that he spoke English.

I heard voices of people arguing in Farsi coming from the back.

“Madani,” I said, “I’m looking for General Madani.”

The officer went to the back and left me standing. The door opened. One of the officers who had taken Madani in emerged.

“I’m looking for General Madani,” I said, without asking if he understood English. “I’m writing an article about his pilgrimage. Is there a problem I could help you with?”

             
“Madani
is a
PJAK terrorist,” he replied.

I knew that PJAK was an outlawed organization with ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), trying to establish an independent Kurdish state.  PJAK had been staging cross-border attacks in Iran since 2004. However, I didn’t want to appear too politically savvy, and pretended not to understand what PJAK was or why Madani was detained.

“Terrorist,” the officer said, “PJAK terrorist.”

That couldn’t be true, I thought. Madani was ethnic Iranian with a rich military past that had no connection, to my knowledge, to the Kurds, unless he was double dipping. I couldn’t challenge the officer without alienating him.

“Can you release him on bail?” I asked, “I could sign for him.”

“Sign?” he said in contempt. “Bail money,” he said, rubbing his thumb and index finger together in the too-well-known sign for demanding payment.

“How much is the bail?” I asked. To me it was clear that we were talking about a bribe.

“One Million Rials.”

I quickly calculated the amount. In U.S dollars it was just over $100.

I handed him the cash.

“No,” he said, and took out a form from the desk drawer. He filled in the details in longhand, and handed me the form – all in Farsi - to sign. I signed and handed him the cash. He put it in the drawer, went to the back, and returned with Madani. That was the first time Madani smiled at me. The cabby was still waiting outside. We had him drive us to the terminal. “There’s another train in a couple of hours,” said Madani, “let’s wait in a café nearby.” He seemed cool.

The whole incident was peculiar, bordering on the bizarre. First, they tell me that Madani is a terrorist and then, within ten minutes, they release him on $100 “bail”?

Furthermore, I was an English speaking westerner, in this remote area that had recently been in the news following deadly attacks attributed to PJAK and rumored to be supported by the CIA and the Mossad, and yet nobody bothered to ask me anything or at least to copy my passport? The little devil in me moved nervously. I smelled a rat. There was an abnormality here, in an intelligence lingo. First releasing “a terrorist” then not even getting the details of the person travelling with him?
Unless they already had my details, which made the stench even stronger.

The train arrived and we boarded to continue with our journey. I looked out the window at snow
-
covered mountains in the distance while the train was crossing a bare plateau. Poplar and pine trees covered with snow were glistening, and herds of sheep were looking for food in the few green spots between the clay and gravel roads.

A
fter passing the border station of Razi on the Iranian side, the train stopped in the Turkish border station of Kapikoy.
Time to get out again. A customs official behind a glass window pointed to a picture of Ataturk, the founder of the state, and
asked a young Scottish woman tourist cheekily, "Do you know who that is? Welcome to Turkey." The Scottish woman took off her headscarf with a sigh of relief.
I remembered from my briefing that the
railway linking Turkey to Iran, Iraq, Central Asia, and Pakistan goes through Kapikoy
, so that Turkish officers could check passengers’ visas. The next stations going west were Van,
the ancient cradle of Armenian civilization,
and Van jetty. In Van jetty, passengers get on a ferry for the five-hour voyage across Lake Van to Tatvan jetty. Then passengers traveling to Damascus continue with a Syrian train. I looked up the schedule:
The next stopovers in Turkey were the cities of Malatya, Sivas, Kayseria, and Ankara, before arriving at Istanbul's Haidar Pasha Railway Station.

My notes said that then, after passing Fevzipasa Station, the train stops at the border station of Islahiye, which controls the exit from Turkey. Then Syrian officials check passports and conduct customs inspections at the Syrian border station of Meydan Ikbis, and the train departs for Damascus. I closed my notebook.

We arrived in Istanbul without incident, making our way through the station’s bustling crowds. In the corner of the high-ceilinged station, a group of whirling dervishes were spinning in ceremony, surrounded by onlookers. For a minute, I was reminded
of the street performers in the Times Square train station, back in New York. This station, however, was more
storied
than any subway; this station was the final stop on the famed Orient Express. As Madani and I exited the station, I recalled how that simple phrase, “The Orient Express” seemed, at one time, synonymous with all kinds of intrigue, with impeccably dressed spies in suits. And right as I was thinking about this, in fact right as I was specifically trying to recall the last time I was able to fit into a size XL suit, a slob of a man swerved into me, dripping coffee all over my shirt, then mumbled an apology. As I tried wiping the dark stain off, I was almost run over by an angry old lady shouting in Turkish.

      “No,” I thought. “My life is nothing like the Orient Express.”

      Through the haze of afternoon smog, I spotted two distinguished looking men, tall, and just this side of nondescript, walking towards us. One carried a small backpack. Madani spotted me spotting the men; he and I exchanged eye contact:
Is that them? Yes
. The men got closer, and closer, and—passed us. As I turned to watch, the coffee-man came up to me again, so uncomfortably close I could smell the drink on his breath.

      He said, “Didn’t we meet in Vienna last year?”

      So this was
him
. Our contact. Could I trust him? Hot coffee or no, I was hoping so -- the little devil in me was somewhat uncomfortable. Did the agency really send that slob? I looked at the coffee man and said, “No. I think we met in Paris.”

     The man held his hand out to me.

     “I’m Scott,” he said. And then he motioned to a squat, balding man in a suit, who, I guessed, had merely been pretending to look for a cab. He too held out his hand to me.

     “This is Thomas,” Scott said. “
and
, oh, sorry about the,” and he pointed to my shirt. I waved it off.

     So, Scott and Thomas it was. They looked at Tango, then at me, and asked, “And this is?”