11

It looked as though I’d worn out my welcome; Arsenjani, without another word, rose and stiffly descended the stone steps to the car. I followed and got into the back, as before, but Arsenjani slid into the front seat beside the chauffeur. Cut off from any conversation by a glass partition, I leaned back in the rich-smelling leather vastness of the back seat and tried to relax; the car felt like a tomb.

A half hour later the car braked to a stop. I looked out the small opera window and was surprised to find that we seemed to be in the middle of the city, in front of a building that announced in both French and Farsi, BANK MELI. Across the street, barely discernible in the moonlight shadows, two soldiers with submachine guns stood stiffly at attention. The facade of the bank was shrouded in darkness, except for a single dimly lighted doorway on the left.

The glass partition in the car rolled down. “Go into the building through the lighted doorway, Frederickson,” Arsenjani said. “The car and driver will be waiting for you when you come out. I will not; I won’t be seeing you again.” He slowly turned around in his seat and fixed me with his eyes, which now seemed cold, hard, almost luminous. “I hope I won’t be seeing you again.”

“Who’s inside the building, Arsenjani?”

“No more questions. Go.” The partition whizzed up, ominously punctuating the SAVAK chief’s sentence.

Very conscious of the gunmen, I slipped out of the car and walked the twenty yards to the lighted doorway. I walked past another grim-faced guard, down a long corridor and through a massive armored door that had obviously been left open for me. I found myself in a huge chamber that shimmered with bright light. It took a few moments to become accustomed to the glare, and then I felt my stomach muscles tighten when I realized where I was.

The room was crowded with long rows of glass display cases. Inside the cases were dozens of gold, jewel-encrusted crowns and daggers; platters piled high with emeralds, topazes, opals, diamonds. I was looking at the most fabulous collection of treasure in the world—the Crown Jewels of Iran.

I heard footsteps behind me, wheeled and involuntarily took a step backward when I recognized one of the few remaining total rulers on earth. The Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, was wearing a beige cashmere sport jacket, gray turtleneck and matching slacks, black shoes; except for blurred photographs taken on Swiss ski slopes, it was the first time I’d ever seen him outside a military uniform with a chestful of medals. He was shorter than I’d imagined, but oddly enough he seemed even more regal in civilian clothes, removed from the trappings of crowns, jewels and robes; he was a man who obviously took the king business seriously. He wasn’t tall, but he had an electric, commanding presence, with sharp facial features. His hair was white and wavy, in sharp contrast to his piercing black eyes and eyebrows. He had the ruddy, weathered complexion of an outdoor sportsman and—as if to reassure me that even Shahs are human—a razor nick on his chin.

Human, maybe; but one casual cough from the man and Garth, I, or anyone else he didn’t fancy would be dead. Fencing with Arsenjani was one thing, playing with Himself quite another. He—or his naked power—frightened me, and I was going to be very careful of what I said.

He walked quickly forward, lightly pressed his fingertips together. “Welcome to Iran, Dr. Frederickson. Or may I call you Mongo?”

“You may call me anything you like, Your, er, Majesty.”

He looked at me oddly for a moment, then abruptly shoved his hands into his pockets and began to pace back and forth in front of one of the cases; the pacing was not nervous, but the casual—indeed, elegant—lope of a thoughtful man who knew he was completely in charge. “You’ve performed a number of times at Rainier’s Monaco Circus Festival. You are an incredibly gifted man, and I mean that in every sense of the word.”

I heard myself clearing my throat. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“Impressive, isn’t it?” he said, abruptly changing the subject and indicating the room with a grand sweep of his arm.

“Uh, yes, Your Majesty. ‘Impressive’ might be one way of putting it.”

He smiled easily. “There are some who’ll tell you that it’s all paste, that I’ve spirited the real jewels away to secret vaults in Zurich. It’s not true, you know. Everything you see here is authentic; the jewels form the backing for our currency.”

“I’d have thought you had enough oil to take care of that.” The Shah wanted to chat: I’d chat.

Pahlavi shook his head impatiently. “One day the oil will run out; thirty, fifty, one hundred years from now, and it will be gone. If we are not a completely industrialized nation by then, self-sufficient and independent of our oil revenues, we will again be nothing more than a once-great nation that other countries make sport of. I intend to make certain that does not happen.” He paused, touched his forehead, added distantly, “It’s hard being king.”

I looked into his face to see if he was joking. He most definitely was not.

“This country is my responsibility, Dr. Frederickson,” he continued, apparently seeing something in my face he didn’t like. “Mine alone. There is no one else to responsibly look after it. Can you understand that?”

“Uh, I certainly can.”

Something in my voice must not have rung true. “You don’t think much of kings, do you?” he asked, a slight, angry tremor in his voice. “I assume you find someone like me faintly … ridiculous?”

“On the contrary, Your Majesty: I find you most impressive.

“Ah,” he intoned, half-raising one regal, impeccably manicured hand, “but you’ve made certain moral judgments. Tell me: why do you assume somebody like Mehdi Zahedi or any one of the other GEM thugs can do more for Iran than I can? These people would bring chaos, I assure you.”

The point. It seemed the pawn was being given the royal treatment by the biggest major piece of all, the only piece that really counted. It made the pawn very curious. Others could argue, as I’d heard them do, whether or not the Shah of Iran was the ultimate existentialist hero; a self-made man who’d become an enlightened king, not because he had to, but because he wanted to. To me, at the moment, he was simply the most dangerous enemy I’d ever faced.

“Consider the possibility that GEM could cause enough upheaval to allow the Russians to move in,” the Shah continued. “They would, you know, given half a chance. They’ve tried it before, in the north. Would Iran be better off as a Russian satellite?”

“I’m sure not, Your Majesty,” I said quietly.

“GEM means to kill me.”

“I know, Your Majesty.”

He looked at me sharply. “Understand: I am not personally afraid for my life; I am prepared to die at any time. But my death would be a tragedy for Iran. I must remain alive in order to lead Iran to its rightful place as a leading world power. Iran needs me; my people need me.”

“Uh, excuse me, Your Majesty, but I don’t quite see what all of this has to do with me.”

Mohammed Reza Pahlavi removed a key from his jacket pocket and inserted it into the lock on one of the glass cases. Immediately the silence was shattered by an alarm. The Shah snapped his fingers; the guard in the room with us ran out of the chamber, and a moment later the alarm was shut off. The Shah opened the case and removed a huge diamond from a tray filled with more than a hundred. He held it up between his thumb and forefinger. “I believe that when this unpleasantness is over you will find, like most people, that you have developed an attachment for Iran—our magnificent culture, and our way of life. Perhaps you might even care to … represent … Iran in some capacity.”

In the silence I imagined I could hear my heart beating. “I’m sorry, sir,” I said carefully, watching him. “The main reason I came here was to search for my brother. I haven’t found him yet.”

“And you think your brother is here?”

“Colonel Arsenjani confirmed that he entered the country.”

“If your brother is here, then Arsenjani will find him for you,” he said impatiently. “It is not a problem.”

“It is for me,” I said evenly. “Until I know he’s safe, I can’t concentrate on anything else.”

“But you might be able to concentrate on … other things … if you were to find your brother?”

“Yes,” I said quickly.

The Shah stared at me for what seemed a long time, then unexpectedly broke into a smile which revealed absolutely nothing. “Then we can only hope that you find him soon. Perhaps by now he’s already back in the United States.”

“Perhaps.”

“It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Dr. Frederickson,” he said abruptly. “Your car is waiting for you, and I’ve assigned a guide for the duration of your visit. Please consider our country to be your own.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty, Do you think there’s a possibility that my brother might show up if I wait here long enough?”

“I’m sure you understand I cannot bother myself with such trivial details. These things are taken care of by the SAVAK. Of course, you should do what you believe to be in your brother’s interest … and your own. Goodbye.”

With that, the Shah brushed past me and walked quickly from the room. Although I was only a few seconds behind him, his entourage was already gone by the time I left the bank. The guards were gone, and the lights in the bank blinked off as I reached the sidewalk. There was a heavy grinding sound, then a bang as the vault door was closed and sealed. I got into the car and gave the driver directions to take me back to my hotel.

Even with my massive ego, I had serious doubts that I could be of any real use to Iran, in the United States or anywhere else; yet the Shah himself, if only as a sort of regal self-amusement, had seen fit to step in and make a kind of offer. Also, Arsenjani had told at least one big whopper: the leaders of GEM might be many things, but no one had accused them of stupidity; it would be sheer insanity for them to try to hide Khordad in a circus when the owner was obviously hyping him into a headliner with a major publicity campaign in every city. The deadly, maddening game continued, and I was getting tired of being treated like the village idiot.