13

It didn’t take long for me to discover the reason for Kathy’s disquiet; driving in Tehran was strictly a question of survival. It took less than a minute at this time of day to find that Tehran’s only rules of the road could be equally applicable to trench warfare. Drivers bore down on me from both sides of the street; I watched a car passing another car, both of these cars passing a third which had wandered over onto the wrong side of a double line. Red lights seemed to serve primarily as a casual warning that there might be cars coming through an intersection. The behavior of the average motorist at any red light was to slow down, then inch out into the path of the oncoming cars until one driver lost his nerve and let the other driver through. Throughout the city, it seemed, driving was one prolonged game of Tehran Chicken. I tried to think of something witty to say, but it came out through clenched teeth as a kind of hysterical cackle.

“It’s strange,” Kathy murmured through her own clenched teeth. “On the one hand, Iranians are the most courteous and hospitable people in the world—that is, when they’re dealing with you on a personal basis. On the road, at the wheel of a machine, they’re not to be believed. Most of the American companies here forbid their executives to drive at all anywhere in Iran. You can see why.”

“Yup,” I said tightly. It seemed an incredibly sane policy. I would have added a few other things, but I was too busy dodging cars. Two Peykans were crumpled into each other in the opposite lane, halting all traffic while their drivers slugged away at each other.

“But there’s a tension underneath all that courtesy,” Kathy continued thoughtfully. “You can feel it. I guess they build up a lot of frustration opening doors for each other. A car’s so impersonal; I suppose they take out all their anger on each other when they get in one.”

Crazy sociology, but probably true. I nodded my head and mumbled something unintelligible as I continued my life-and-death struggle to get out of the city.

Forty-five minutes later we were on the outskirts of Tehran. Ahead of us, stretching south to the horizon, was the desert. I immediately felt an almost overwhelming sense of isolation; we’d been cast adrift from the cosmopolitan battleship of Tehran in a small, four-wheeled raft on a hot ocean of desert where time seemed to run backward. Kathy, for all her experience, seemed to sense this too. She was hunched down in her seat, hands clasped tightly in her lap as she stared out the window at the wasteland of mountains and sand, a devil’s playground with its own very special kind of barren, deadly beauty.

I was suddenly very conscious of the car; the desert was no place to break down, and the hum of the motor, the orchestrated jangle of thousands of moving parts, became magnified and took on special meaning.

“I have a friend who’s a soldier in the army,” Kathy said quietly, not taking her eyes off the alien world outside. “Twice a year they go out into the desert for maneuvers. Once, near here, some of the jeeps bogged down about three kilometers off the road. The men got out and walked another kilometer, but that was as far as they could go. There are places out there where the sand will suck a man right under.”

I thought she would say more, but she didn’t. I kept my eyes on the narrow, winding road ahead. The desert had thrown a cloak around both of us—a sudden, sharp reminder that life in many areas of the earth is constantly lived in the shadow of death. I remembered the music of the santur.

Kathy’s mood lifted when we reached Ghom, a small city about halfway on the road to Esfahan. She sat up straight and pointed to the crowds of women in chadors. “This is a very holy city,” she said, sounding like a tourist guide. “The Moslem holy men used to literally stone tourists; that is, when they weren’t spitting on them or kicking them.”

“Very holy of them.”

Kathy laughed politely. “Ghom was a very dangerous place for foreigners, even Moslem foreigners. That was bad for tourism, so the Shah decided to do something about it. The holy men, naturally, opposed him. One night the Shah sent in a hundred of his best troops to beat up all the holy men. That was the end of the problem. Ever since then, Ghom has welcomed tourists.” Kathy made no attempt to hide the admiration in her voice. “Now Ghom has grown. It’s entering the twentieth century, and all because of the Shahanshah.” She half-turned in her seat and touched my arm. “He is a very great man.”

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

“Starved.”

“Is it safe to eat here?”

“It’s all right to eat, but stay away from the water.”

“Cholera?”

She shrugged. “There’s always that danger. At the least, you’re likely to get T.T.”

“‘T.T.’?”

“Tehran Tummy: diarrhea. But there’s a good restaurant around the corner. Great chelo kabob.”

During lunch we spoke of other things while I wondered how Arsenjani was taking the news that I was missing. When we returned to the car I found that it had been washed, and I gave the man standing next to it with a wet rag enough tomans for a meal.

I invented a weak cover story about Nasser Razvan, Mehdi Zahedi and Firouz Maleki being acquaintances from the United States and had Kathy make a few more inquiries. That didn’t take long in Ghom, and she turned up nothing. We headed back out into the desert. Now the heat was a physical presence beating down on the roof of the car, making the air in our lungs heavy and sodden.

The afternoon wore on. I turned a bend and saw the sun setting behind a gargantuan army track that had tipped over on its side. Kathy was sleeping. I gently brought the car to a stop and got out to make sure the wreck was not recent, and that no one was injured. The cab was empty, and there was no way of determining how long the truck had been there; the desert air was dry as the sand, and I imagined that machinery could remain there for a long time without rusting.

A slight movement to my left attracted my attention, and I turned. There was a shack a few hundred yards away, almost obscured by a dune. In front of the shack a man was offering his praise to Allah; he was kneeling on a prayer rug, arms extended in front of him, his forehead touching the cooling sand. The dead, useless truck loomed in the foreground like a mummified dinosaur. I could not even imagine how the man sustained himself; he couldn’t farm the sand, and there was no sign of any vehicle that could transport him to and from Ghom, Tehran or Esfahan. Still, he’d made it through one more day, and that was sufficient cause for him to offer praise and thanks to his God.

I walked slowly back to the car and found Kathy awake, brushing her hair.

“It’s not far now,” the girl said, her voice burnished by sleep. I got back behind the wheel and drove.

The outskirts of Esfahan, unlike those of Tehran, were meticulously clean and neat, the gray streets sprinkled with colorful shops. I’d had it for the day. “Are there any good hotels around here?”

“One of the finest in the world, but it’s expensive.”

“We can afford it.” Considering my situation, I wasn’t going to worry about money; I might wind up a very small overturned truck, but since Arsenjani had funded the trip in the first place, I was going to make sure I went out in style.

“The Shah Abbas is about five blocks straight ahead.”

The Shah Abbas was everything Kathy had said it was, and more. Built on the site of an ancient caravansary—a meeting place of the caravans—the hotel displayed the kind of elegance that millions of dollars in government-supplied oil money can buy. And the elegance wasn’t all facade; the staff was excellently trained, probably in Switzerland, and the service was impeccable. Unfortunately, I was in no mood to enjoy it; I was running low on adrenaline, gnarled taut with tension. I decided we’d fly the rest of the way.

In the morning, Kathy’s face was beaming as she waited for me in the lobby.

“You look cheerful,” I said. “Desert driving suits you.”

“I feel like I’m finally starting to earn my keep,” she said brightly. “You remember those names you asked me to look up? Well, I found one of them.”

That woke me up. “What did you find out?”

“I got up early and checked through the Esfahan directory. There’s a Nasser Razvan listed. I asked a few questions and it turns out that the Razvans are a well-known and very rich family. Their home’s about half an hour’s drive from the city.”

The Nasser Razvan listed could well be the father. It figured: the young SAVAK agent from the well-to-do family. “Can you find out how to get there?”

“I already know. Do you think your friend will be there?”

“If he’s not, I’ll just say hello to the family.”

“We’ll need another car. I turned the other one in last night.”

I motioned to the desk clerk.

The Razvan home could have been more accurately described as a plantation; it stretched for miles in all directions: acres of carefully tilled land filled with crops and fruit trees. I steered the car into the main drive and stopped in front of a massive wrought-iron gate. There was a cluster of servants’ quarters behind and to the left of the gate. Farther up the drive, on the crest of a knoll, was the main compound, a Xanadu of multilevel dwellings all painted a glistening white. The front yard was a meadow boasting three Olympic-size pools of varying depths.

I pushed the buzzer on the gate. Instantly a man appeared at the door of one of the servants’ houses and trotted to the gate. “I’m Dr. Frederickson,” I said in Farsi. Kathy gave me a surprised sidelong glance. “This is Miss Martin. We’re friends of the younger Nasser Razvan and have come to pay our respects to the family.” The servant pondered this for a moment, then went back inside his house, presumably to telephone the main compound. I turned to Kathy. “From here on in, I’ll do the talking.”

Kathy nodded, her green eyes filled with questions. “You speak Farsi quite well.”

“Just a few polite phrases,” I said, avoiding her gaze.

The servant emerged once more and opened the gate. I got back into the car and drove it slowly up the driveway, then parked in front of the largest of the houses at the top of the knoll. A man and woman on the far side of middle age came out the front door and walked toward us at a brisk pace, the woman a few steps behind her husband. Both had the robust good looks and sheen of health that, after a certain age, are usually by-products of money. Twenty years before, the woman had been ravishing; now she was handsome, dignified. The man had pure white hair, and I put his age at around sixty. His eyes were a clear blue, and he moved with an air of strength and character. I suspected he’d earned his money; a man doesn’t develop the kind of metallic glint he had in his eyes by clipping coupons or sitting around watching oil flow through his backyard.

When I got out of the car, he offered me his hand. His grip was firm. “Our servant tells us you are friends of my son,” the man said in heavily accented but intelligible English.

“Forgive us for imposing on you like this,” I said, “but I was in a discussion involving your son and he certainly sounded like a man I’d like to meet. We were told he lived here, and I thought I’d drop in and say hello.”

The man reached back and squeezed his beaming wife’s hand. “Nasser is not here, but Shayesteh and I are very happy that you’ve come. You will, of course, stay for breakfast. My wife does not speak English, but if she could she would insist as I do.”

“We can only stay for a few minutes.”

“Nonsense! Allah would curse our home if we did not extend the hospitality of our household to admirers of our son. Come! We will eat!”

I took Kathy’s arm and led her up the stone steps behind the man and his wife. I could feel the tension in her muscles; she knew I was lying, and I could only hope that she’d stick with me a few more minutes.

We entered a cavernous living room. A few moments later, as if by prearranged signal, a team of servants appeared bearing trays filled with tea, thick coffee, Iranian bread and pungent goat cheese.

The senior Razvan had festooned the walls of his home with photographs of his son, and Nasser Razvan, Jr.’s, presence was very real. In the pictures he was wearing a uniform; it made him look different, somehow older. I was sweating under the steady gaze of the man in the photographs. Fortunately, the elder Razvan didn’t seem to mind carrying the burden of the conversation.

“I see your son is in the army,” I said, pointing to one of the pictures.

Razvan made a modest gesture with his hand. “Nasser is the youngest major in the Iranian army.”

And occupied an important post in the SAVAK, although that wasn’t something the father was likely to discuss with a stranger. I complimented him on his land, and he grinned broadly. I waited while he translated the comment to his wife. Kathy was sitting as far away from me as she could get, in a corner. Her hands were clasped tightly together in her lap, and she was watching me closely.

“My landholdings took many years to build,” Razvan said. “It was hard work, but it was also a pleasure, something that gave my life meaning. But now there is too much for just one man and his family. Large portions of my land have been broken up into parcels and given to the peasants by the Shah.”

“That would be the ‘White Revolution’?”

“Yes, and I am entirely for it. In fact, if I may say so, I was giving away land to my workers even before the Shah started his land-reform program.”

It didn’t surprise me; I instinctively liked the man and his wife. I wanted to ask about Mossadegh and the years of turmoil, but I couldn’t think of a way of approaching the subject without arousing suspicion. I let the old man talk about his son, for that was obviously his favorite topic.

After fifteen minutes I rose to my feet. Kathy with a sigh of relief, immediately stood. Razvan and his wife insisted that we stay longer, but I told him we had a plane to catch. The couple filled our hands with fruit, then escorted us to the door.

We hurried to the car, got in. Kathy’s face was pale.

“What was your real reason for coming here, Dr. Frederickson?” she asked tensely. “You seemed very nervous. That lovely old couple didn’t notice, but I did.”

“I can’t talk about it, Kathy,” I said tightly. “The tour’s over.”

I’d been right on my first run-through at the beginning with Ali Azad: the photographs in the Razvan home had been of the young man others knew as Mehdi Zahedi. I now knew beyond doubt who Mehdi Zahedi was, what he was, and thought I had a pretty good idea why Arsenjani and the Shah had gone to such great lengths to try to convince me that Zahedi/Razvan was a big, bad terrorist: they’d been trying to use me to put one of their top agents back into place. The information was a death warrant, but—with a little luck—it just might be turned into a bargaining point: my total cooperation in exchange for Garth’s safe return. And there was still the detailed report I’d sent to Phil Statler.

I drove slowly out the driveway, then stepped hard on the accelerator and headed toward the airport. “Listen to me, Kathy,” I said quietly. “You must do exactly as I say. I find I have to cut my vacation short.”

She turned away from me and stared out the window. We drove the rest of the way to the airport in silence. At the airport I pulled the car into a parking space and left the keys in the ignition. I hurriedly wrote out another three hundred dollars in traveler’s checks and handed them to Kathy.

“I can’t explain,” I said, touching her hand. “You’ve been wonderful. Now you must take this money. Turn the car in, then fly back to Tehran. If anyone asks you about me, just tell them the truth: I hired you as my guide. Otherwise, don’t say a word.”

Tears welled in her eyes, making them look like circles of wet green plastic. “Why, Dr. Frederickson? What’s this all about?”

“I just can’t tell you any more. It’s for your own safety, believe me.”

“It has something to do with what happened back in that house, doesn’t it?”

“Goodbye, Kathy.” I grabbed my bag and headed into the terminal. I could feel the girl’s eyes boring into my back.