4

The alarm had been set for seven, but I woke up fifteen minutes early with a clear head and no apparent aftereffects from the night before. It meant I was into the case, excited. I’d pay for the lack of sleep later, but at the moment I was anxious to get going; I had a lot of checking to do. But first it was bread-and-butter time. I studied my lecture notes for an hour over coffee and toast, then went to the university for my ten-o’clock class.

Ali Azad was waiting for me when I finished. He hadn’t shaved, and his jaw and cheeks around his moustache looked as if someone had sketched them in with a piece of charcoal. I wasn’t happy to see him; for now, the best lead I had was a nervous, big-spending American, and I wasn’t anxious to be delayed by a paranoid Persian. On the other hand, I couldn’t afford to cut off any source of potential help.

“I’d like to speak with you, Dr. Frederickson.” Azad’s manner was still tense, but the hostility and suspicion were missing from his voice.

“All right, I’m listening. But I need coffee.”

We went down to the Student Commons in the basement, where I bought coffee and Azad took tea. We went over to a corner table warm with the morning sun pouring in through an open window. He seemed to be having a hard time getting started, and after the episode in his office I wasn’t anxious to help. I let him stare into his tea while I lighted a cigarette.

“You really were looking for this man, Hassan Khordad,” he said at last. He sounded vaguely surprised.

“Congratulations. What finally convinced you?”

“One of our members followed you to The Santur last night. He heard you asking questions about Khordad.”

“I don’t like being followed, Ali,” I said evenly.

“We had to make certain you are who you say you are.”

“For Christ’s sake, Ali, I’ve been teaching here for more than five years.”

He bared his teeth in a grimace that might have started out as a smile. “You think I’m paranoid, Dr. Frederickson. Just remember the saying that even paranoids sometimes have real enemies.”

“Who are your enemies?”

“My government, and your government. The Confederation of Iranian Students is considered a threat to the stability of the Iranian Government.” He lifted his cup and stared at me over the rim. “Also, the Shah doesn’t like criticism. What the Shah dislikes, the United States Government also dislikes.”

“No offense, Ali, but any threat posed by your organization to the Iranian Government seems to me to be rather, uh, piddling.”

“We don’t like to think so!” he snapped, white lines appearing at the corners of his mouth.

“What did you want to talk to me about, Ali?”

“The fact that we do not trust people easily is not as strange as you may think. We are watched; the SAVAK photographs us constantly, and our telephones are tapped.”

“The SAVAK: that would be the Iranian secret police.”

“Correct.”

“You say they’re operating in this country?”

“Of course they’re here,” he said with a tight, wry smile. “Anywhere you find two Iranians, you can be certain one of them is probably SAVAK.”

“I assume you’re a legal resident of this country. If you feel you’re being spied on, why don’t you complain to the U.S. authorities?”

He looked at me strangely for a moment, then burst into an odd, hiccuping laugh that was razor-sharp with bitterness. “The authorities!” he yelped. “Oh, God, Dr. Frederickson, that is funny!”

“Ali, people are staring.”

Suddenly he leaned forward, half-rising out of his chair. His breath, tinged with the smell of spice, hissed in my face. “Don’t you think the U.S. authorities know the SAVAK operates here? The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. help them.” He paused, apparently displeased by something he saw in my face, and sat back down in his chair. “You don’t believe me?”

“C’mon, Ali, you’re going to blow a blood vessel. I know the SAVAK is here; I read the papers. I’m just not sure how much help they get from us.”

The desperate anger in him seemed to pass as quickly as it had come. His shoulders sagged and he sighed resignedly. “It doesn’t matter,” he said quietly. “You will find out for yourself if you continue to investigate this matter. In any case, I have decided to trust you.”

“Gee, Ali, that’s swell.”

He missed or ignored the sarcasm. “I want to help you, Dr. Frederickson.” He’d begun to talk very rapidly. “I can’t tell you where your man is, but I can tell you what he is.”

“I thought you already had: he’s a nasty refugee jock from some Iranian gym.”

“There’s more. I said he was an assassin, but I didn’t tell you why I was so sure. And I am sure. I’m also sure I know whom he came here to kill.” His voice grew softer, then broke, as if he were choking on his words. “I believe he may already have succeeded, and that’s why you can’t find him.”

“Let’s back up a minute, Ali. Khordad’s been with an American circus for two years, and the last time we spoke you hadn’t even heard of him.”

“I don’t have to know him personally to know what he is; he is SAVAK. If he were not, he would have no interest whatsoever in joining an American circus. You simply must be made to understand that. Hassan Khordad’s only purpose in coming here was to take care of some kind of business for the Shah. Sincere members of the Zur-khaneh are interested only in developing the body, mind and spirit; they care nothing for circuses.” He paused, drummed his fingers on the table. “Just last month an anti-Shah general was assassinated in Iraq by a group of SAVAK agents. Check it out if you don’t believe me.”

“And you claim the Shah ordered that?”

“Of course not. The Shah doesn’t order any of these things, any more than your President personally gives orders to an individual C.I.A. agent. It just isn’t done that way.”

“Who gives the orders in Iran?”

“The head of the SAVAK is a man by the name of Bahman Arsenjani. Arsenjani is very powerful; he comes from a family that is famous for producing SAVAK personnel. Indeed, it’s rumored that he uses members of his family to spy on other SAVAK agents. It is Arsenjani’s job to anticipate the wishes of the Shah. If Bahman Arsenjani thinks that the Shah would be made happy by somebody’s death, Arsenjani will see to it that the individual is killed. Arsenjani is ruthless, and he has a completely free hand. He will go to great lengths to search out and destroy the Shah’s enemies, wherever they may be. Perhaps now you’ll understand why I believe that Hassan Khordad was sent here to kill an enemy of the Shah, and that the circus was only a … a … what do you call it?”

“We call it a cover. Whom would Khordad want to kill?”

“Mehdi Zahedi. Mehdi is the president of our chapter, as well as president of the national organization. He is a student here.”

It was the name Anna had spoken over the telephone. It still sounded familiar and I still couldn’t place it. I said so.

“Mehdi is a postdoctoral economics fellow,” Ali said. “But this year he has been away from the campus a great deal. He is a wonderful speaker and is very good at organizing demonstrations. That is what he has been doing.”

“Speaking and organizing against the Shah?”

“Of course. He began receiving national attention around December.”

“When does he find time to study?”

“He studies,” Ali said with a shrug. “He is a genius; as far as I know, he’s never failed an examination. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of him. There was a long article on him in The New York Times.”

“When?”

“Sometime in January.”

That explained it; I’d spent the entire month of January holed up in an experimental crime lab. “Go on,” I said.

Ali whispered something I couldn’t make out. I leaned forward and asked him to repeat it.

“GEM,” he said, quickly glancing over his shoulder. “The Shah may deny that it exists, but we know—”

“Hold it, Ali. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He swallowed hard, and I watched as his eyes grew wide and very bright with excitement. His voice was still barely above a whisper, but it hummed with passion. “There is an organization in Iran we call the Grouhe Enghelaby Makhfi—‘secret revolutionary group.’ They have had that bastard Shah chasing his tail for years; GEM has become a legend. Twice, it is rumored, they almost killed the Shah. Soon—Allah be with us—they will succeed. The Shah and SAVAK deny that GEM even exists, but we all know better.”

“Did Zahedi belong to GEM?”

Ali sadly shook his head. “If Mehdi had been GEM, he wouldn’t have been here. No one knows who belongs to GEM. I … I would gladly trade the rest of my life for the chance to serve just one year with GEM … if only they would ask me.” Incredibly, there were tears in his eyes. He quickly wiped them away with the back of his hand. “But the way must be prepared. The new John Foster Dulleses of this world must know that Iran can be free without posing any threat to them. Your government, your people, must be prepared for the death of the Shah and the coming revolution in Iran. That is what Mehdi had been doing so well. Mehdi was speaking, and people were listening. That is why he was so dangerous to the Shah.” Ali paused and stared directly into my eyes. “Mehdi has been missing since February twenty-second. I don’t believe it is a coincidence that your man is missing too; Hassan Khordad was almost certainly sent here to assassinate Mehdi.”

“Khordad was here a long time before Zahedi surfaced,” I said. “Besides, the dates are wrong. Khordad left the circus on March fifteenth. That’s three weeks after your president turned up missing.”

Ali was studying the palms of his hands. “I can’t explain that; I just know what I feel in my stomach. It is enough that both of them have disappeared.”

“You think the Shah really considered Mehdi Zahedi that much of a threat to him?”

“Yes!” Ali said, his eyes and voice heating up again. “Our struggle can succeed only if the United States stays out of it. Don’t underestimate the role public relations plays in modern-day revolutions.”

“That’s not exactly Maoist thinking.”

“It’s realistic thinking. The Confederation, with Mehdi as our spokesman, has been acting as the unofficial propaganda arm of GEM. In view of recent Iranian history, it is vitally important that the United States Government be persuaded that its interests will not be harmed by a revolution in Iran. Nothing else can be accomplished until that basic step is taken.”

Ali swallowed the rest of his tea in a single gulp, then wrapped his hand around the cup so hard I was afraid it would shatter. I moved my chair back a foot. “In the view of your government,” he continued, “the Shah represents stability in the only Middle East nation, except for Israel, uncompromisingly friendly to the United States. Never mind the fact that Iran is a total police state. The Shah spends millions of dollars a year polishing his image. What we needed was a spokesman who could effectively present the truth about that pig Pahlavi to the American people. The fact that people—important people—were starting to listen to Mehdi was sufficient reason for him to be killed.”

“All right; you had an Iranian Alexander Solzhenitsyn.”

“Exactly, GEM, when it is able to surface and fight openly, must be seen as a group of freedom fighters, the hope for Iran’s future. Mehdi was able to drive that point home. At this very moment there are thousands of political prisoners rotting in Iranian jails. Some are tortured so badly they can’t walk, talk, piss or shit; they die in the poisons generated by their own bodies! If we can make the American public aware of this, they will make it very embarrassing for this government to interfere in our revolution.”

“Who finances you?”

“I won’t tell you that. I will say only that much of the money comes from Iranians living in the United States. They are men opposed to the Shah who feel, for one reason or another, that they can’t be quite so outspoken.”

“That’s called hedging your bets.”

“Of course. But it makes no difference to us; we’ll take anyone’s money.”

“When did Zahedi begin all this activity?”

“He’s been in the graduate school a year and a half, and he’s been politically active since the day he arrived.”

“Where’d he come from?”

“Iran. Tehran University. He left when he realized he could no longer tolerate seeing his country raped by the Shah.”

“Why did the Iranian Government let him out in the first place?”

“Mehdi hadn’t been politically active in Iran. He realized it would be useless to try to raise his voice in a country where he would be thrown into prison five minutes after he opened his mouth. Originally he simply planned to leave. It wasn’t until he got here that he realized he had special gifts of leadership which could contribute something to GEM’s cause. He quickly rose to the presidency of our local chapter, and was elected national president six months after that.”

“Still,” I said, “Khordad was here before your president started his political number. Unless this Bahman Arsenjani is psychic, it wouldn’t make any sense for him to bury an agent in a circus while he was waiting for Zahedi to get his act together.” Actually, I was in no position to discount any possibility, especially in view of the fact that Khordad had almost certainly had a contact at the university; that contact could have fingered Zahedi, marked him as a target. But Ali was more than a little excitable, and I wanted to make sure I had all my facts straight before I started drawing any conclusions.

Ali’s face was flushed. “I’m not saying Khordad was originally sent here with a specific order to kill Mehdi. I am only saying he was sent here on the Shah’s business, and that business became the killing of Mehdi. If you don’t want to believe me, that’s your business.”

“It’s not a question of belief, Ali. It’s a matter of making all the pieces fit.” One problem was Khordad’s behavior. Governments don’t send amateurs out to bring off assassinations on foreign soil; disappearing and leaving all your belongings behind was definitely sloppy and just didn’t match Ali’s fantasy of a cold-blooded, professional agent.

Ali had begun to sulk. He was beating a nervous tattoo on the tabletop with a long, manicured fingernail. “The pieces will fit, Dr. Frederickson. But Mehdi is one of those pieces; you can’t solve your puzzle without him.”

“All right, let’s go over it again. Your president just vanished on February twenty-second.”

“He didn’t exactly ‘vanish.’”

“What, then?”

Azad thought for a moment. “He received a call that morning at the Confederation office. I was there when it came in.”

“He must have received lots of calls.”

“Yes, but they didn’t usually upset him.”

“This one did?”

“Yes. He told me he had to go to Washington that evening for a meeting with some Congressmen. He said he’d be gone three days.”

“And when he didn’t return, you notified the police?”

“Yes. They were very polite about it,” Ali said, sarcasm bleeding into the bitterness in his voice. “They said they’d certainly let us know if they turned up anything on him.”

“I take it you didn’t believe them.”

“If Mehdi was murdered in this country by the SAVAK, your government will make certain nothing is done about it.”

“You really believe that?”

Ali stared at me for a long time, then said quietly, “It is a fact.”

I decided to change the subject. “So, the gist of all this is that you’d like me to let you know if I turn up anything on Zahedi while I’m looking for Khordad?”

“Yes and no.”

“Give me the no part first.”

“We will not ask you to work for us without payment.”

“That’s not important; I already have a client. I’ll let you know if I find out anything. What’s the yes part?”

“We knew we couldn’t count on the police, so we used some of our money to hire our own private detective. He came highly recommended. Two days after we hired him, he called and told me he thought he had a good lead.”

“Did he say what it was?”

“No, and we haven’t heard from him for over a week. There’s no answer at either his home or his office; I was hoping you might know him, or know where to find him. His name is John Simpson.”