The Peregrine Spy (6 page)

“Be careful what you wish for,” said Gus. “I got my wish, and working inside turns out … what’s the old cliché? The grass is always greener … someplace or other. But the deal I heard was they’d have brought you inside and qualified all your contract years for a pension.”

“Yeah. That was the idea.”

“But you didn’t have to come over here to get all that.”

“Well, no.” Don’t lie, he told himself. Just a stretch. “But Dan Nitzke made it sound like if I didn’t take this assignment they might have to take another look at the job in Washington.”

“That bastard,” said Gus. “Look, that job was yours. I heard it a couple of months ago. Straight from Dean Lomax. They felt you deserved it. Kind of a reward for all the stuff you pulled off all these years. Besides, they knew you’d be damn good at it.”

“How come you know so much about this?”

“Well,” said Gus, pushing away his empty soup bowl, “I was up for that job.”

“Oh, shit. I didn’t know.”

“Hey, it’s okay. ’Sides, I’m already qualified for a pension.”

“I was afraid, if I didn’t take the deal in Iran, all that might go down the tubes.”

“Might’ve,” said Gus. “But I don’t think so.” He turned the soup bowl in his hands, studying it, like a fortune-teller with half a crystal ball.

*   *   *

They found little to do on Friday. After a breakfast of strong instant coffee, they drove over to Dowshan Tappeh. Tom Troy’s offices were all but deserted. A young man in air force military police uniform sat by the phone on Troy’s desk, reading a battered paperback.

“Colonel Troy’s over at admin, meeting with regular air force types. Something they go through every Friday.”

“He leave any word for us?” asked Gus. “Simpson and Sullivan?”

“Just if you came by to let you know there’ll be an Iranian military driver here eight in the morning to take you wherever you’re goin’ tomorrow morning.”

“Good,” said Gus. “We should be well rested by then.”

“Know any place we can do some food shopping?” asked Frank.

“Not today. It’s Friday. Most everything’s closed. Holy day.”

Fasting and abstinence, thought Frank. He and Gus retreated to their dismal quarters and told each other war stories about hard times on other Third World assignments.

CHAPTER THREE

Frank woke, tense and sweating under the heavy blankets, vaguely aware of a troubled dream. He had no idea where he was and thought for a moment he was a child, an infant. He wondered where his son was. Jake? He pushed the covers off, sat up abruptly and called out, “Jake?”

He stared at the three curtained windows and remembered. Tehran. He’d set his alarm for six, but the clock on the dresser showed seven. He heard the thud of knuckles on his door.

“You awake?”

“Uh-huh,” mumbled Frank. “Sorta, yeah.”

“We’re late.”

Frank rolled out of bed and opened the door. Gus, in a robe, looked as bleary-eyed as Frank felt.

“What time we supposed to meet that driver?”

“Eight o’clock,” said Gus.

“Let’s move,” said Frank. “We’ll make it.”

He’d showered in lukewarm water, shaved, and dressed and was checking the knot in his tie at his dressing table mirror when he heard glass shattering behind him and metal skittering across the floor. He turned in time to see the grenade roll under the bed. He bolted from the room, hit the hallway floor, and turned a somersault that brought him to Gus’s feet. Gus peered down at him over the rims of his glasses, pivoted, hurled himself back into his own room, stumbled, and thudded to the floor. Frank cringed, thinking the grenade had gone off. He could hear Gus’s muttered curses.

“Shit, piss, fuck … what happened?”

“A grenade,” said Frank.

“Through the window?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure it wasn’t a rock?”

“It looked like a grenade.”

“A grenade would’ve gone off by now.”

“It rolled under the bed.”

Gus grunted. Frank could hear him struggling to his feet.

“Even under the bed, if it’s a grenade it would’ve gone off by now.”

Frank heard footsteps and looked up just far enough to see Gus’s shoes coming into the hall.

“What I suggest we do is we get out of here and tell our friends about it and let them send some bomb squad types over here and check it out.”

“Okay.” Frank warily pushed himself up.

“And if I’ve got any broken kneecaps,” said Gus, “I’m going to sue.”

*   *   *

Tom Troy wasn’t in, and a square-shouldered young corporal named Cantwell had told them Colonel Troy would have some paperwork to go through when they returned to the base in the afternoon. Frank and Gus exchanged a glance, shrugged, and, following Cantwell, carried their briefcases out to the bulletproof Chevy Nova that waited for them. Cantwell, in the uniform of the air force military police, cautioned them about the
jube
.

“Leastways, that’s what the I-ranians call it,” he said pointing to a guttered, frozen-over stream that ran along the side of the road where their car waited. Its exhaust had melted a hole in the ice. “Open sewer to me,” said Cantwell. “Got ’em all over the city. Looks frozen over, right? But some places that ice is real thin. You step on it and it cracks, no tellin’ what you might step into.”

“We’ll be careful,” said Gus.

A tall, heavy-set Iranian stood by the car. His round, weathered face wore a tired half smile.

“This is your Iranian military driver,” said Cantwell. “He’s authorized to shuttle you between here and Supreme Commander’s, where you meet with your Iranian counterparts. Sergeant, this is Commander Simpson and Major Sullivan.”

“Sergeant Ali Zarakesh, at your service.” He snapped to attention, but his civilian outfit belied the military posture. He wore a brown leather jacket over an open-throated shirt faded to an uncertain gray. Gus and Frank casually returned his formal salute.

Ali had warmed the car’s interior against the biting cold that had turned morning dew into hoarfrost. Steam covered the windows. “Don’t wipe,” said Ali, as he circled a gray rag over the windshield in front of him. “The driver has to see out. No one has to see in.”

Frank and Gus each wore dark stocking caps pulled low over their foreheads and winter parkas over their suits and ties. I wish I’d kept my beard, thought Frank.

Traffic was light. Only patches of overnight snow remained on streets that shimmered in the morning sun. Frank sat up front with Ali, asking about the route they followed.

“We drive west but not too far,” said Ali. “Not as far as the university, and a little south but not so far south as the bazaar.”

“And not past the Grand Mosque,” said Gus.

“Not past any mosque,” said Ali.

“Good,” said Gus.

From the occasional street sign Frank could make out through the veil of steam on the windows, he realized how often Tehran streets changed their names. The bilingual street signs impressed him. He had grown used to African cities, where street signs were rare and people knew the names of only a few main thoroughfares.

“Look, this one’s called Roosevelt,” he noted as Ali turned onto another broad street. “In Addis, the main drag was Churchill Road.”

“We have a Churchill Road here, too,” said Ali. “And another called Eisenhower. But I don’t know for how long.”

“The Shah must be a great admirer of America,” said Gus.

“Our pilots fly your F-4s,” said Ali. “Our soldiers shoot at students with your M-14s.”

Ali drove so rapidly and his turns were so abrupt that Frank soon became confused.

“Where are we?”

“Not far from your embassy. But burning tires block so many streets…”

For no reason Frank could see, Ali swung the car around in the narrow street, tilted two wheels up on the sidewalk, and sped back in the opposite direction.

They passed a vacant, muddy expanse littered with the prefabricated ruins of an abandoned construction site. A giant building crane, pitched at a precarious angle, slipped even further on its muddy base as he watched. Through the fogged windows, the image reminded him of the crane he’d seen through clouds and smoke as their plane descended into Tehran.

As Frank watched, the tottering crane seemed to bounce, then caught itself and held, like a skeletal version of the leaning tower of Pisa.

“What was happening there?” asked Frank.

“That one? Military barracks. And fancy apartments for officers with families. Stopped now. Like everything. All over Tehran, cranes like that stand useless. The Shah wanted to lift up the whole country. No more.”

Frank made mental notes but had trouble following Ali’s route. “I need a map,” he said to Ali.

“More than a map,” said Ali. “To know Tehran you need a hundred years. Only the martyrs know Tehran, and for them it’s too late.” Ali made a sudden turn to his right. “And you need a nose,” he continued. “To tell you what trouble or traffic comes soon and which way to change. And three eyes. Right, left, and rear view to see where you’ve been and who’s behind you.”

Gus turned and peered through the steamy rear window. With an index finger, he wiped a tiny patch clear. “Like the big black job behind us?”

Ali nodded. “Paykan. Persian copy of Russian car.
Savak
always use those when they want you to know they’re with you. Otherwise, they use blue Mercedes.”

“It’s nice to know we’re worth so much attention.”

“Oh, Americans always get attention here. It must be a very big country. So rich.”

Frank listened as Gus carried the conversation, impressed by the casual questions that began to develop a portrait and, beyond the portrait, the outlines of a landscape.

“You’re an army man?”

“Seventeen years, sir. I used to drive a tank, a Sherman tank. But now I have trouble with my kidney. So now for you I drive this American tank.” He patted the dashboard. “A good car.”

“I noticed you’re not in uniform,” said Gus.

“Commander Simpson?” said Ali, glancing at Gus in the rearview mirror.

“Yes.”

Ali turned to Frank. “And Major Sullivan?”

“That’s me,” said Frank.

“Uniforms are not very popular here these days.”

“We can appreciate that,” said Gus.

“Thank you, sir. I try to be careful. I have too many children otherwise.”

“How many?” asked Gus.

“Six, sir.”

“That’s not so many.”

“May I ask how many, sir, you have?”

“Oh, six less than you,” said Gus. “But we’ve learned to live with that.”

“It is God’s will.”

“Inshallah,”
said Gus. He fell silent, staring at the steamed-up window beside him. Frank sensed that Gus and his wife might not quite have learned to live with that.

“Are your children with you?” he asked Ali.

“My oldest, seventeen, is in the army. Stationed in Isfahan. I worry about him. It is a very religious city there.”

“Troubles?” said Gus.

“Not so much as here. But I worry about my son, about soldiers in a holy city like Isfahan. Many there support Khomeini and hate the Shah.”

“How ’bout your other children?”

“Well, they are in the north. I sent them with their mother to my family near Rasht. We have some olive trees up there, land I bought for my parents.”

Frank resolved to get himself a street map, even if it meant photocopying section by section the map on Tom Troy’s wall. He knew the day would come when he would have to negotiate the city without Ali’s help. Ahead, he spotted a long tangle of motionless cars. He expected Ali to make one of his sudden cuts into a side street. Ali continued straight ahead, edging to his left.

“Traffic jam?” asked Frank, wondering how a tie-up could have developed when there were so few trucks or cars on the streets.

“Not traffic jam,” said Ali. “Benzene line.” Ali now drove on the wrong side of a broad, two-way street. The few vehicles coming in the opposite direction kept to the far right.

The veil of steam on the windows had thinned and, refracted through streams of moisture, Frank could see the long cluster of double- and triple-parked vehicles. Drivers stood in groups, stomping their feet and flapping their arms to keep warm. From his newspaper reading Frank knew that Iran, despite its vast supplies of oil, suffered gasoline and fuel shortages because strikes and sabotage had hit the refineries as part of the growing rebellion against the Shah’s government. The jumbled knot of cars curved up a street to their right. He couldn’t spot the end of the haphazard line or the filling station it targeted.

“Peaceful,” said Ali. “But people will get killed on that line, get into fights and get killed, when it starts to move. Persians don’t know how to queue.”

Frank squinted through the steam-streaked window, troubled by the thought of even a few Iranians killing each other on filling station lines in the middle of a revolution that saw Iranians killing each other by the hundreds.

“The same for cooking oil,” said Ali. “Men will kill for benzene, and women will cut and scratch and claw, and yes, even kill for cooking oil.”

Ali turned to the right onto another broad avenue. On their left chain-link fences, topped by concertina wire, partly obscured a vast complex of two- and three-storied buildings of poured concrete. Armored personnel carriers and jeeps with mounted machine guns patrolled both sides of the fence. Two tanks stood sentinel outside what appeared to be the main gate.

For the first time that morning they encountered heavy traffic moving fast in both directions. Ali drove ahead another half mile and swung into a traffic circle with scattered vehicles that swirled like angry bees. Ali accelerated where Frank would have slowed, cut right where Frank would have eased left.

“Remind me never to drive in this town,” said Gus from his back seat. Frank made a mental note to drive like a New York cab driver.

Ali snapped the Nova to the right coming out of the circle. He crowded the curb, slowed, and began tapping his horn as he approached the main gate. He edged the Nova into the narrow alley created by the two tanks. He rolled his window down, stuck his head out, and waved toward a kiosk.

A young soldier with a corporal’s inverted chevrons stepped out, one hand holding a clipboard, the other on the handle of a holstered .45. A half dozen other soldiers with automatic weapons stepped out from behind the kiosk. They kept their weapons at hip level but trained on the car. Gus sank low in the back seat.