They returned to the bazaar, where, among the mosques, the crowds of people and the shops, Ebtehaj seemed to relax a little. The variety of things for sale astonished Oster: copper, book-bindings, flags, haberdashery, saddles, tin, knives, woodwork, and carpets. Once or twice he stopped to have a look at something, reasoning that not to look at all might invite suspicion. There was even a moment to enjoy a coffee at the Cafe Ferdosi, so that by the time they returned to the rug factory, Oster was feeling slightly more well-disposed toward Persia and the Persians. This feeling did not last long. As soon as the three men entered the factory, one of the Kashgai tribesmen walked quickly up to Ebtehaj and said something that left the wrestler looking very worried.
“What’s wrong?” Oster asked Schoellhorn.
“It seems that we have caught a spy,” said the German.
In the back of the factory, seated on the floor and tied to an old loom by bunches of carpet thread, was a frightened-looking man wearing Western-style clothes.
“Who is he?” asked Oster.
Untersturmfuhrers Schnabel and Shkvarzev turned away from the prisoner to answer.
“Says he’s a Pole, sir,” said Schnabel. “And that he came here looking for a carpet. There’s plenty of cash in his pocket to buy one. But he also had this.” Schnabel showed Oster a semiautomatic pistol.
“It’s a Tokarev TT,” said Shkvarzev, removing a cigarette from the corner of his unshaven mouth. “Russian- made. But here’s the thing.” He took the pistol from Schnabel, dropped the magazine out of the Tokarev’s grip, and thumbed one of the bullets onto his palm for Oster’s close inspection. “It’s Mauser ammunition. German-made, and flat-nosed, too. Filed down, so that it makes a bigger hole on impact. To make identification of the victim harder. It’s standard SMERSH procedure.”
“SMERSH?” frowned Schoellhorn. “What’s that?”
“It’s a Russian acronym,” explained Shkvarzev. “It means ‘death to spies.’ SMERSH is the counterintelligence wing of the NKVD and Stalin’s personal assassination squad.”
Oster sighed and looked at Schoellhorn and Mehdizadeh. “We’ll need to find somewhere else to stay. Can you organize it?”
“That won’t be easy,” said Mehdizadeh. “It took a while just to find this place. But I’ll see what I can do,” he said, leaving.
“What shall we do with him?” Schnabel asked, pointing to the prisoner.
“There’s no time to interrogate him properly,” Oster said. “We’ll just have to kill him and leave him here.”
“On the contrary.” Shkvarzev was grinning. “There’s plenty of time to interrogate him. Properly, improperly, it’s all the same in the end. In five minutes I can have this fellow confess to the murder of Trotsky, if that’s what you want.”
Oster disliked torture, but he knew that there was no other way to be sure about what the Russians were already aware of. “All right,” he told Shkvarzev. “Do it. Just don’t make a meal of it.”
The carpets that had been crafted in the factory were made of wool, by hand. The finished product was usually laid out on the floor, and any bumps or small imperfections flattened out with a heavy iron filled with coals from the fire. As soon as the SMERSH agent saw that the Ukrainians intended to use the hot iron on his bare feet, he started to offer information. For a moment, Shkvarzev’s men seemed a little disappointed that they were not going to have the opportunity of inflicting pain on a hated enemy.
“Yes, yes, all right, I’ll tell you everything,” blathered the man. “I was snooping around the bazaar, hoping to find out something. Everyone in Teheran knows that this is where the resistance is centered, so I figured it might be a good place to look for you.”
“What do you mean, ‘look for us’?” demanded Oster.
“You’re the German parachute team. One of your Kashgai tribesmen came to the SMERSH building on Syroos Street and told us that two teams of SS had landed somewhere outside the city. For the Big Three Conference. He sold us the information. We’ve already picked up one team, near the radar installation at the airport. And it’s only a matter of time before you are arrested, too.”
“Get on the radio right away,” Oster told Schnabel. “See if you can raise von Holten-Pflug, if it’s not already too late. And better keep it short, just in case they’re trying to get a radio fix on us.”
“Who’s your boss?” asked Shkvarzev.
“Colonel Andrei Mikhalovits. At least he was — now there’s a new fellow in charge. A Jew from Kiev. Brigadier General Mikhail Moisseevich Melamed.”
“I know him,” grunted Shkvarzev. “He’s a state security commissar, third class, and the most hated NKVD officer in the Red Army.”
“That’s him,” declared the prisoner. “Of course, who knows who’ll be in charge by the end of the week. Beria’s deputy, General Merkulov, is arriving tomorrow. And then his secretary, Stepan Mamulov. Beria himself will be coming here, too, for all I know.”
“How many NKVD are in Teheran right now?” asked Shkvarzev.
“At least a couple hundred. And we’ve had about three thousand extra Red Army troops since the end of October. Commanded by Krulev.”
“Any other officers you know of?”
“Arkadiev, the Soviet commissar of state security. And General Avramov, from the Near Eastern Area Office. They came here to round up the remaining pro-German suspects. About three hundred Poles. Most of them first arrested in Poland.” To which he added, matter-of-factly, “They were shot. In the Russian barracks to the north of the city, in Meshed.”
“What was the name of the Kashgai tribesman who told you about the German parachute team landing in Iran?” asked Oster, speaking Russian.
“I don’t know.” The prisoner yelped as one of the Ukrainians pressed the hot iron against the sole of his left foot momentarily. “Yes, all right, I do. His name is Mehdizah.”
Schoellhorn swore loudly. “Mehdizah is another wrestler!” he said. “He was supposed to be looking after South Team.”
“What about our wrestler?” asked Oster. “Herr Ebtehaj. Maybe he’s in this, too. Maybe he tipped off our friend from SMERSH here. Maybe he’s going to come back here with the Red Army.”
“No.” Schoellhorn shook his head. “He could have betrayed us many times already. So why didn’t he?”
“If I may say so,” Oster said carefully, “all of this is a very long way from the picture you were painting earlier today. How a blind man can spot an NKVD agent.”
“Are you suggesting I’m a traitor, too?” said Schoellhorn.
“I don’t know what I’m suggesting. Christ, what a mess.” He removed his broom-handle Mauser from the holster inside his jacket and began to screw a silencer onto the end of the barrel. “I just wish that bastard Schellenberg was here to see this. It would be the last thing he would see, I can promise you that.”
Oster stood in front of the prisoner, the now silenced pistol still pointed at the floor and parallel with his trouser leg.
“I told you everything I know,” the Pole said, swallowing.
Oster smiled sadly and then shot the man three times in the head and face.
Shkvarzev nodded his approval. He had been wondering what the German captain was made of, how much stomach he had for killing, and now he knew. It was one thing to shoot a man in a fire-fight, with a rifle or a machine gun; but it was quite another to kill him in cold blood, as he looked you in the eye. This German was all right, he could see that now, and as Oster made the Mauser safe and unscrewed the silencer, Shkvarzev lit a cigarette and handed it to him.
“Thanks,” Oster said and, placing the cigarette between his lips, drew on it deeply as he holstered his pistol again. “Did you get through to South Team?” he asked Schnabel.
“No, sir. I don’t seem to be able to raise them at all. But I did receive a message from Berlin. We’re scrubbed.”
“What?” Oster’s face collapsed into fury. “Ask for confirmation.”
“I already did.”
Shkvarzev sighed. “So that’s that, then,” he said. “We’re scrubbed.”
“Like hell we are,” said Oster. “I didn’t come all this way to do fuck-all. If I’m going to die in a Soviet labor camp, it’ll be for a damn good reason.” He took a long drag on the cigarette and then flicked it at the dead man’s
