The Peregrine Spy (68 page)

He hesitated before he could continue. “Events last night, which I am sure we are all aware of, show us exactly what we must bend our efforts toward preventing. Two branches of the armed forces fighting against each other. We cannot have that. Our group, the Joint Armed Forces Ad Hoc Committee on Enlightenment, is the only joint working group involving … ah, at least in theory, involving all branches of the armed forces. As such, we must act as the rallying point for all those who recognize the vital need for unified military action.”

Good God, thought Frank, he’s gone mad.

“Now, more than ever, the military needs enlightened leadership who can work together. We will, of course, involve other, more senior officers of all branches of our military in this effort. But I promise you this, gentlemen. We will have a military takeover, and the Joint Armed Forces Ad Hoc Committee on Enlightenment will be its focal point.”

He again bounced on his toes. He scanned the room. And waited. Maybe this is why I had to be here, thought Frank. They’ll love it back home. The latest plans for a military coup. Straight from General Merid.

Gus straightened himself in his chair, studied the others, and said, “What do we do first?”

“Excellent question. Jointly, we will formulate a plan for a military takeover, taking into account all aspects of the current situation. Each of us will make a verbal presentation at our meeting tomorrow morning, Sunday morning, at which everyone will arrive punctually on time. Major Sullivan, I assign you the task of preparing a written draft ready for review and finalization by Tuesday. By then I shall have contacted General Kasravi and will invite him to our meeting. He will serve as our liaison to other senior officers.”

“You’ve talked to him about this?” said Gus.

“I shall do so as soon as possible,” replied the general.

“Are there any others you’ve been in touch with on this?” said Gus. “Political leaders? Opposition groups? Followers of the Imam?”

“I am in touch with a wide range of people across the entire political spectrum.”

“That’s good,” said Gus. “I can hardly wait to hear what General Kasravi will have to say.”

Frank remained speechless. No waiter appeared at their usual tea time, but Munair suggested a break. Frank caught Gus’s eye and moved toward the bathroom. He got to the hallway in time to see Munair heading upstairs to the third floor.

“I hope you got all that on tape,” said Gus as he and Frank peed jointly into a bunghole.

“I did.”

“Good. It should find a receptive audience at his sanity hearing.”

When the meeting resumed, Munair turned to General Merid. “General,” he said, “may I suggest, in view of your assigning us each to prepare ideas for a military takeover, that we might adjourn early today, adjourn now, so we may get to work on our assignments.”

“Excellent suggestion. You see, we work well—jointly. Together. Gentlemen, in your thinking on this concept, I want you to be creative and … dynamic.”

“Yes, sir,” said Munair.

“Meeting adjourned,” said General Merid. “We will meet tomorrow at zero eight hundred hours precisely.”

Munair took Frank by the elbow, steering him toward the door. “Could you and Commander Simpson wait for me downstairs? I need to have a private word with General Merid.”

Frank and Gus stood inside the glass doors. Frost had turned the glass opaque.

“I know you must have had an interesting night, which I’m dying to hear about,” said Gus, “but you have to admit so far at least it’s also been a pretty interesting morning.”

“So far,” said Frank.

“You got any good ideas for a military takeover?”

“Yeah. But Khomeini’s already carried out all my best ideas.”

They turned to see Munair hurrying down the stairs, dragging the shabby overcoat behind him. “Let us step outside.”

The morning’s clouds had dissipated. A cold, clear blue sky hung over them with a distant, white winter sun.

“See there,” said Munair, nodding to the west. Funnels of black smoke curled northward, signals that the earlier morning quiet had not survived. “We think you should go now,” said Munair. “General Kasravi has just now disbanded our committee.”

“I’m surprised he found the time,” said Frank.

“I knew how to reach him.” He handed Frank the shabby overcoat he carried. “Please, I cannot drive you. I have things I must do here. Give this back to my wife’s cousin. He will drive you. I contacted the guardhouse. They have gone to fetch him. He will pick you up soon here.”

“Thank you,” said Frank. “For everything. You’ve been a good friend … and teacher.”

“I am proud to have been your teacher. Your trip back to Dowshan Tappeh may be more troublesome than our trip here. My cousin does not speak English, but he knows back alleys, other ways even I do not. He will get you there. Now, I must leave you.” He extended his hand, first to Gus, then to Frank. For the last time, Frank glanced at the blood-flecked knot on Munair’s forehead.

“Good-bye,” said Frank.

“Farewell. And Major Sullivan, remember to be careful. Always.”

Munair disappeared behind the frosted-over glass door.

As they waited in the shimmering cold, Frank studied the stone stairs that climbed into a blank wall. He counted the towers of dark smoke gyring skyward. Thirteen. Fourteen. He thought of the day he had stood on this spot with Anwar the Smarter watching just four funnels of smoke. Watch the smoke signals, Anwar had told him, and maybe soon he could tell what would happen to Iran. Anwar had said he knew nothing about the stone stairs. Frank counted them. Sixteen, leading to a blank spot between second-floor windows. He wondered if the Shah, like Iran, had met the same fate as the stone stairway. He thought about the
Armed Forces Times
and the civic action program that had never happened and about his failure to recruit Munair.

“You’re awful quiet,” said Gus, as the orange taxi approached.

“I was just thinking,” said Frank, “about all the things we never managed to get done. Like find out where that stairway was supposed to go.”

*   *   *

The man he would never know other than as Munair’s wife’s cousin now wore the black-and-white
kaffiyeh
. Ignoring all who tried to flag him down, he drove with skill that reminded Frank of a combination of their army driver, Ali Zarakesh, and the old-time Jewish, Italian, and Irish cab drivers of New York, aware of every back street, pothole, shortcut, long loop around trouble, traffic light, and police threat. Like them, he talked without stopping, but Munair’s wife’s cousin, like the more recent clans of New York cab drivers, spoke a language Frank did not understand. He picked up the occasional word: Damavand,
Javand,
Dowshan Tappeh,
homafar, Maydan-e Jaleh,
and clung to the dashboard. Oh, wow, he thought with silent relief as the cab curled around a traffic circle and into a still-deserted Damavand toward the gates of Dowshan Tappeh. Farther up the wide street they could see the smoke and tracers of the continuing but dwindling battle.

After the long ordeal of getting through the gates, they pulled up outside Troy’s office. Frank dug into a pocket and pulled out a handful of rials he proffered to Munair’s wife’s cousin. With all the voluble vocabulary at his command, he refused. Frank could pick out only two words. Munair Irfani. Frank tried again, with wagging hand gestures to accompany his words, but again he was rebuffed. Frank tried once more, and Munair’s wife’s cousin accepted, grabbed the rials, and gruffly kissed Frank on both cheeks, making a sharp impression with his stubbly beard.

*   *   *

He’d had to tell his what-happened-to-you-last-night story in detail, first to Gus, then to Bill Steele and Corporal Cantwell, and finally to Tom Troy.

“You’re gonna have to run it all down again to Rocky and the ambassador,” said Troy.

“There is no way in hell I’m going to try to get down to the embassy today,” said Frank.

“Can’t say I blame you,” said Troy. “But Rocky may not see it that way. You had folks in a shit fit all the way from here to Langley.

Gus poked Frank’s arm. “Do a cable on last night. I’ll do our last stand at Jayface. Let someone else worry about getting them to the embassy. Standard operating procedure, right, Tom?”

“Okay by me,” said Troy. “Bill’s gotta get down there anyway, some-fuckin’-how. Gus, why don’t you set yourself up in here with my typewriter? I got a meeting to go to with the air force brass over in their admin building. Sounds like they might want to pull out today before the hostiles take over the whole base.”

“The better part of valor,” said Gus.

Frank gave Gus his tape of their final Jayface meeting. He was glad they’d gotten there. General Merid’s military takeover fantasy should make interesting reading back at Langley.

“It’s not on the tape,” he said, “but don’t forget to get in what Merid said about Kasravi dissolving Jayface.”

“It does kind of put things in perspective, doesn’t it?” said Gus.

*   *   *

Frank settled down at Rushmore’s typewriter, staring at the blank sheet of paper he’d rolled in. He’d told his kidnapping story so often he half believed it. The white paper looked so innocent. He could lie talking to people, particularly people who didn’t need to know the detailed truth. But he’d been a reporter too long to lie to a typewriter.

He recounted the saga of his night as it had happened. How Sa’id had waited for him in the dark gym. What each of them said. He did not try to analyze his own motives for deciding to go with Sa’id. Just described what he’d done. Short, declarative sentences. Subject. Verb. Object. No atmospherics. No description. It took a while to get started, but then it flowed.

He found Gus in Troy’s office, still pecking away at his Jayface cable. When Gus rolled his final page from the IBM Selectric, they edited each other’s efforts.

“Doesn’t sound like you got kidnapped,” said Gus.

“I didn’t get kidnapped.”

“But that’s what you told everybody.”

“Not everybody. I didn’t tell that to Rocky. I didn’t tell that to Langley.”

“Yeah, but Rocky heard it from Troy and by now probably from the ambassador, and Langley’s heard it from Rocky.”

“I guess.”

“You may have dug yourself into some deep shit with this one.”

“I guess.”

“Why’d you make up the kidnap story?”

“I guess because when I decided to join the
homafaran
in the middle of their war against the Bodyguard I knew it would piss off a lot of people, from Rocky to Kasravi. I couldn’t explain it, but I know I did the right thing.”

“Think you can explain it now?”

“No. Not beyond what I say in the cable.”

“You decided to do it?”

“Right.”

“You didn’t just let it happen?”

Frank studied him. “No. For a change.” He thought about what he’d done, then added, “For a change I decided to make it happen.”

“My advice?”

Frank nodded.

“Stick to the cable. Tell Rocky any talk about you getting kidnapped must have been some kind of misunderstanding. A story told secondhand, thirdhand. With everything else goin’ on, people won’t waste too much time nitpicking what happened to you. You may get away with it.”

“Maybe,” said Frank. Till someday Henry James has me put on the polygraph.

Troy, Steele, and Rushmore piled into Troy’s office. Frank and Gus looked up.

“Cut-and-run time,” said Troy.

“Shred and burn?” said Gus.

“You got it. If you guys are done with your cables, we could use some help.”

They started by cleaning out Rushmore’s safe, then put the cables they’d just finished into its yawning maw and locked it.

“Let’s not forget to give those cables to Steele before we pull out,” said Gus.

“We won’t forget,” said Frank.

“I’m pretty good on the shredder,” said Gus. “Why don’t I volunteer for that detail, and you can take those gym muscles of yours to give Big Bill a hand with the burn barrels.”

“Barrels?”

“That’s how it’s done when you don’t have access to the embassy’s Auschwitz ovens.”

Frank found Bill Steele and volunteered for the burn barrel detail. Cantwell and Rushmore joined them to roll out four heavy steel barrels from a storage room he hadn’t known existed behind Troy’s office. They positioned the barrels on the packed snow that covered the open area outside the Quonset hut and returned for four more. Frank noticed dozens of stacked boxes and several open-doored, empty safes.

“All this and more,” said Rushmore. “We’ve been gettin’ ready.”

“I’ll get some of these started,” said Steele when they’d spaced out all eight barrels. “Why don’t you guys start bringin’ out the money.”

“Money?” said Frank.

“Lots of money,” said Rushmore. “Other stuff, too.”

“But why burn good money?”

“We either burn it or the ragheads finance the rest of the their revolution with it.”

By the time they’d lugged a dozen cartons outside, Steele had four barrels smoking. “My guess is you’ve never done this before.”

“Here lately,” said Frank, “I’ve done a lot of things I’ve never done before.”

“Key thing is, is to be careful. We don’t want anything droppin’ or blowin’ away. These are big mothers, fifty-five-gallon drums, fiber insulated so the heat stays in. Packed with sodium nitrate and topped with starter mix, kerosene thickened by napalm, some other stuff. Take a quick look in.”

Frank bent and peered into the barrel long enough to see a wide-mesh screen licked by flames about halfway down. The smoke drove him back.

“Stuff’ll burn as long as you don’t pack it in too tight. And you gotta be careful gettin’ stuff outta the boxes and into the barrel without you lose any. But you can’t feed it in too slow or we’ll be here forever. We’re lucky there’s not much wind. God forbid snow or rain.”

He selected a box with a green
X
mark. “Rials,” he said and slit it open with a box cutter.

Frank stuffed his winter mittens into his parka pockets and picked out a stack of thousand-
rial
notes emblazoned with the Shah’s profile.