The Peregrine Spy (4 page)

“That’s cool,” said Jake. He laughed, nervously. “Well, good luck over there.”

“Keep the faith,” said Frank.

That was their sign-off. “I will,” said Jake. Frank waited for the click of the phone and then hung up. He missed his son—and feared for the promise that they would be living together again. The promise hadn’t been broken, but he feared it might be in danger.

*   *   *

He’d flown over the Atlantic, across Europe, and deep into the Middle East, wondering what lay ahead. He stared at the empty plastic cup on the tray in front of him. Whatever comes, he told himself, I have to do this. He knew that the intelligence he could glean from his military counterparts, and the Shah, would be a vital part of the job, but he saw intelligence gathering as a cover for the task that really mattered: recruiting Lermontov. He realized he would be going against the directions given him by Near East Division and instead taking his guidance from Pete Howard. Again. Metamorphosing from a lazy fly on the wall to a hungry, circling falcon. He felt thirsty but did not order a drink. The thirst was for the job. He crumpled the empty plastic cup and stuffed it into one of the seat-back pockets. He pushed the tray up and locked it in place.

He knew he’d been hooked and resented the disappointment he had caused Jake. Again. He wondered when, if ever, they would begin the life both had looked forward to. Father and son. School. Trying to be a friend, role model, and teacher to an adolescent who often mystified him. Holding down a job that would seem like a regular job with a suburban office to go to every day. Eventually, a suburban house. What Jackie, if they were still together, would call “a normal life, for a change.”

Gus Simpson, who had boarded in Rome, had stretched out across a vacant row of middle aisle seats, securing seat belts above his knees and across his waist. Frank, standing in the aisle, had watched. “Snug as a roach in a hooch,” said Gus as he tucked two square white pillows under his head and pulled a gray blanket around his shoulders.

Frank looked down at the trussed-up form of the man he had heard so much about. He sensed the curiosity he felt about Gus must be mutual, but even in the plane’s secure, humming cocoon they remained wary, cordial, distant. Frank went back to his seat by the window and picked up the remnants of the previous day’s
Washington Post
and
Wall Street Journal
. He again scanned the key stories. Only two in the
Post
. Both on the front page. “Workers Strike Iran’s Oil Fields; Army on Guard,” read one headline. “Shah of Iran Given Assurance of U.S. Support,” said the other. Three of the
Journal
’s inside stories focused on the global impact of the oil strike. The main story warned, “Iranian Oilfield Strife Adds to Doubts About Shah’s Ability to Hang On As Ruler.” A page-one summary mentioned an “Ayatullah Khomaini” who called for more mass demonstrations near Tehran’s bazaar. A newspaper strike had shut down the
Times
and the other New York papers since August. Frank missed them. He considered himself a newspaper junkie and hoped the strike would not diminish the number of New York dailies. He believed no one newspaper, and no single source of intelligence, could ever get complex stories right. The newspapers couldn’t even agree on the spelling of Tehran. The
Times,
as he remembered, had it Teheran. It was Tehran in the
Post
and the
Journal
. He wondered if anyone had anything right about the country.

The plane rocked, and a brusque order to prepare for landing signaled a swift, bumpy descent. The clouds thinned; the plane stabilized, and patches of landscape shifted like a cubist collage in and out of focus: snow-smeared mountains sloping down through a desolate tree line; huge houses with brown, sprawling gardens and tin-roofed shanties.

A looming construction crane caught his attention. Pitched at an odd angle, it looked like a giant, distant, wounded bird, a pterodactyl fossilized into steel. A low cloud, swollen by smoke, swallowed it. The plane seemed to accelerate as it descended, suddenly free of the clouds. Frank counted the towers of smoke rising from the city—four, five, six, seven—and wondered what circle of hell waited. In some of the spiraling gray towers he could now see flashes of orange flame. What are we doing here? he said to himself. How did I let this happen to me? Again. He glanced up the aisle and saw Gus’s face peering around the seat. His thin hair stood straight up. He fumbled the wires of the eyeglasses over his ears, registered Frank, and said, “This it?”

“’Fraid so.”

“Shit.”

The landing flaps came down with a thud. Frank saw the cracked, potted, pale gray tarmac racing up at them. The huge plane bounced, wobbled, bounced again, and screeched along the runway with a fierce deceleration. The intercom crackled, “Please remain seated with your seat belts securely fastened while the captain taxis to a full stop at the … terminal. Thank you.” The plane swung in a semicircle and stopped.

Here I am again, he thought. A job to do. And I want to get it done.

Armored personnel carriers, two orange fire trucks, and a white ambulance with the Red Crescent cruised by. His eyes followed an open jeep with a uniformed driver and a mustached man in civilian clothes standing with one hand on a mounted machine gun. Frank wondered if the man in mufti might be an agent of
Savak,
the Shah’s secret police. The jeep sped under the plane’s wing. A phalanx of uniformed soldiers with assault rifles approached on the run. Peering down with his nose pressed to the glass, Frank watched green helmets disappear under the fuselage. The passengers sat for twenty minutes in silence before the plane taxied forward. He had expected something grander, but the terminal that edged into the window frame from the right appeared ramshackle. Pale, peeling green and white paint on a wood-frame building with boarded-up windows. He saw two lines of soldiers with M-14s propped on their hips, forming a corridor that led to a wide doorway. He noticed the sign above it that said in English
WELCOME TO TEHRAN
.

Maybe that’s how the newspapers should spell it, he thought.

*   *   *

Dan Nitzke had told Frank “how bad the agency needs you.” Then, once he was in Iran, the assignment had begun with two days off, Thursday and Friday, the Islamic weekend. Embassy offices functioned both days, but Tom Troy, who headed the agency base at the Iranian Dowshan Tappeh air force facility, told them Rocky Novak, their embassy-based chief of station, wouldn’t see them until Saturday.

“If that makes you guys feel like outcasts, get used to it,” said Troy. “This is a base station, on Iranian air force territory. Lemme show ya the map.”

The Sahab Geographic and Drafting Institute map of Tehran, thumbtacked to the whitewashed plasterboard wall behind Troy’s gunmetal desk, showed a confused maze of streets, relieved at its northeast end by a long, irregular rectangle of white. “That’s Dowshan Tappeh,” said Troy. “Pretty fair-sized air force base, specially for bein’ in the heart of town. Iranian flyboys tell us that’s the way the Shah wanted it. If it ever gets attacked by Iraq or somebody, there’ll be lots of civilian casualties in the neighborhoods right around it for the bleedin’-heart media cameras.”

“I remember them well from Vietnam,” said Gus.

“Like that,” said Troy. “Big as it is, you can see these two major runways, but big as it is the U.S. of A., which has got a couple of hundred air force advisers here, real air force, plus us, gets sequestered in this little corner over here. Locked gates between us and them and security checks every time our air force guys gotta go over there, which is pretty fuckin’ often since everything the Iranians got to fly is made in America and the Iranians never will learn to handle it on their own.”

Frank was used to hearing Americans complain about their host-country counterparts, but while they had Troy’s attention, he had other questions about Tehran.

“Where’s our other work location?” he asked. “Supreme Commander’s Headquarters.”

“Over here,” said Troy, pointing to a large hexagon with several buildings sketched in. “Again, right in the heart of town.”

“And the embassy?” asked Gus.

“Right here, a lot closer to Supreme Commander’s than we are here. Like I said, you guys are outcasts.”

Though he and Gus had worked together in Vietnam, Troy seemed brusque and distracted as he introduced them to the office they would share with others on his staff. He turned them over to Stan Rushmore, a gruff, heavy-set New Yorker. Evening had set in as Rushmore turned over the keys to the Fiat Millecento that would be theirs for the duration of their stay. “Which may not be long,” muttered Rushmore. Driving a Chevy Nova that looked huge compared to their Fiat, Rushmore led them to the house they would occupy. Frank followed, making mental notes on their short route to reinforce the hand-drawn map Tom Troy had given them. Rushmore pulled up at the curb in front of one of a series of identical houses. He climbed out of his Nova long enough to point to one of them and drove off.

“I get the feeling,” said Gus, “no one’s real anxious to have us here.”

“Somehow,” said Frank, “I get the same feeling.”

They noticed the broken lock on the wrought-iron fence at the foot of the stone steps of the house they would occupy. “Wouldn’t make much difference, would it?” said Gus. “Locked or not, that gate wouldn’t keep out much.”

Brick and poured concrete gave the house a solid appearance. Dark metal shades covered the ground-floor windows. In the damp, thickening twilight, the house stood like a blind sentinel, second from the corner in a row of five buildings, identical except for the varying colors of their front doors. The numeral 39, painted in black in stylized pseudo-Arabic script, stood slightly off center on the concrete arch over their dark green door. Lidless, empty plastic garbage cans were on their sides to the left of the steps, gaping at the street, rocking in the breeze that picked up as darkness gathered around them.

“Oh, well.” Frank struggled up the steps with his bags. He fished in his coat pocket for a set of the keys Rushmore had given them, turned the dead bolt, then noticed what appeared to be three bullet holes in the center of the door. He caught Gus’s eye and nodded toward the door. Gus leaned forward and grunted.

“Probably a traditional Persian symbol of welcome,” said Frank.

“Nice tight cluster,” said Gus.

What am I doing here? thought Frank.

He found the key for the lower lock and undid it. The heavy cedar door swung open on a shadowed hallway. He groped for a light switch, found it, flicked it, then flicked it two more times. The hallway stayed dark.

“Not to worry. Like a good Boy Scout, Father Gus came prepared.” Gus dropped his bags in the hallway, unzipped an outside pocket on one, and came up with a flashlight.

“Better close the door first,” said Frank.

“Good paranoid thinking.”

Gus pushed the door shut, then flicked on his flashlight. They found the kitchen, tried the light switch without success, then discovered three candleholders on the chrome-topped table. Gus lit the candies, then, hat and coat still on, picked up the sheet of paper under one of the candles.

“‘Welcome to your new home,’” read Gus, slumping into a chair. Frank watched from the kitchen door. “‘Rent on this unit paid by base command and cleared with appropriate USG agencies for official personnel occupying premises. Owner lives in the corner house, number 35. You need have no contact with him. Report all problems to base command.’ That’s Troy, I guess,” said Gus without looking up, “‘Expect occasional power outages. Do not overstock the refrigerator as power outages are frequent. And redundant. Servants service premises, including dishes and laundry Saturday and Wednesday. Leave individual laundry in individual rooms. Do your own shopping at official U.S. Military Post Exchange. The attached map shows PX location and local restaurants, none of which are recommended. You will find some basics in the cupboard over the sink. Sincerely, Base Command.’”

“Welcome to your new home,” said Frank. “I better put the car away.”

Two teenagers, eyeing the car from across the street, walked quickly away when they saw Frank coming down the steps. Following Rushmore’s instructions, he backed the car down the steep drive into the basement garage. He closed and padlocked the overhead door, surveyed the empty street, and climbed the stairs to the bullet-pocked entrance to his new home.

“Grab a candle,” said Gus, “Let’s take a look around.”

They discovered a spacious, sparsely furnished living room adjacent to the kitchen. Its three front windows were covered with the same heavy metal that lined the inside of the front door.

“Nice view,” said Frank.

They found a windowless bedroom behind the living room and behind that a utility room with boiler, hot water heater, washer, dryer, and ironing board. Rectangles where two windows and a back door might have been had been sealed up with concrete. They headed back toward the front of the house, and suddenly the lights came on.

“I guess that’s a power in-age,” said Gus.

They held on to their candles and glanced at each other. The lights faded off.

“Outage,” said Frank.

Upstairs, cupping flickering candles, they found four open doors off the hallway. The first led to a bathroom with a frosted but unsealed window. The back bedroom had two curtained windows looking out over a narrow alley and the shuttered back windows of another row of houses.

“With a little help from a rope, that could be our back door,” said Gus.

They found a middle bedroom without windows, an echo of its companion downstairs. The front bedroom featured a matching cherry dressing table, chest of drawers, four-poster bed, and wardrobe closet. The bed was made, thick with blankets and topped with a patchwork quilt.

“Nice room,” said Frank. With his coat still on, he’d only begun to notice that the house was without heat.

“You can have it,” said Gus, nodding over his candle at the three windows that looked out over the street. “I’ll take the cul-de-sac down the hall.”