were spared the worst of the blast. The move bought them only moments of life.
A second rocket ripped the Mercedes’ roof open, showering both the Pasdaran commander and the younger officer with lethal splinters. Then the first RPG gunner, hurriedly reloading, fired again. This third warhead streaked downward and exploded deep inside the vehicle, turning it into a shapeless pyre.
Defense Ministry, Tehran General Amir Taleh supervised the last-minute arrangements for the Supreme Defense Council meeting personally.
It was a sign of the mullahs’ confusion that they were unable to prevent him from hosting the gathering here on his own ground. Like the armed forces, their ranks had been thinned by the American missile strikes. Many of the ruling faction’s top men were dead buried beneath the rubble of the Parliament building and other official ministries. Power had been lost and gained, and political alignments were in flux.
Taleh stood near the door to the conference room, watching his nervous aides hurriedly arranging the maps and other briefing materials he’d ordered prepared. This was to be a critical meeting, one that would change the course of the Islamic Revolution, possibly even deciding its ultimate success or failure, and along with it the survival of Iran as a state. It was clear that changes were needed. Taleh understood that, even if the faqih did not.
Captain Kazemi appeared at the door to the meeting room, quietly waiting to be noticed. Taleh nodded to him, and the young officer strode over to the general, doing his best to look calm.
“Sir, we’ve just heard from the police. There’s been an attack on General Rafizaden’s car. He’s dead.”
Taleh’s eyes narrowed. “Go on.”
The staff clustered around Kazemi as he recounted the first reports flowing in: The convoy ferrying the new head of the Revolutionary Guards to the conference had been smashed in a swift, violent street ambush wiped out by some auto-weapons fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The only clues to the crime were some pamphlets scattered over the scene. Written in Kirmanji, they demanded independence for Kurdistan.
Taleh sighed audibly, and inside, the knot of tension almost disappeared. “Very well, Captain. We’ll move the meeting back an hour. The Pasdaran will need some time to appoint new representatives.” Kazemi asked, “Should we cancel the session altogether?”
Taleh shook his head. “No, Farhad, everyone else is already enroute. Unless the Imam directs otherwise, we will meet.”
He glared at the rest of his staff. “There’s nothing we can do about Rafizaden. Everyone, back to your tasks.”
The cluster of officers and civilians dissolved. Taleh turned back to his aide. “Do the police have any clues to the assassins’ identity?”
Kazemi shook his head. “Nothing much. Nothing more than a description of wellarmed men in civilian clothes. The entire attack was over in just a minute or two. They promised to send anything else they find to our intelligence office.”
Taleh allowed himself a small smile. “Good. Carry on, Farhad. You know your orders.”
The captain nodded crisply and hurried away.
The general also nodded, but inside, to himself. Over the next few weeks Kazemi would make sure that the Special Forces troops involved were transferred to other units in other provinces. As highly experienced soldiers they would be welcomed by their new commanders. At the same time, Taleh’s net of die-hard loyalists in the Army would grow.
That was a sideshow, though. The most important thing was that Rafizaden was dead, and the Pasdaran would be confused and leaderless.
Taleh looked at his watch. In a little more than two hours, the President, Prime Minister, the remnants of the Defense Ministry bureaucracy, the armed forces, and the Pasdaran would meet to decide on a response to this latest American attack. He now anticipated little serious resistance to his proposals. Though they were both mullahs, the President and the Prime Minister were also canny politicians, adept at setting their sails to ride out every shift in the Republic’s stormy factional politics. Neither man would choose to confront the man who led their nation’s armed forces not without assured backing from the Revolutionary Guards.
No, with the Pasdaran crippled, Amir Taleh would dictate Iran’s future course.
Perched on a small settee outside Taleh’s private office, Hamid Pakpour waited in mounting dread. He mopped the sweat off his brow, cheeks, and neck with a large handkerchief, acutely aware that his nerves were stretched to the breaking point. Why had he been summoned here? What could the head of Iran’s military possibly want with him?
Certainly, he was a prominent merchant and one of the richest men in all Iran. But he had always been very careful to stay out of politics. Just as he had always taken pains to make public his intense devotion to Islam and to the Revolution. Many in the government had received tangible proofs of his devotion discreet gifts of land or marketable securities.
Could that be the reason? Pakpour wondered uneasily. Did the general want his own “assurances” of the merchant’s loyalty? He prayed fervently to God that was so. Anything else would be disastrous.
Only the blind and the deaf could not know that Taleh had emerged from the chaos of the past month as he power behind the President and the Parliament. Security duties once the exclusive province of the Revolutionary Guards were increasingly performed by Regular Army units. The Pasdaran was little more than a pale shadow of its former self. Its best men were being transferred to the Army. Many of the rest were simply being pensioned off. A few, the most radical, were said to be under lock and key detained for certain unspecified of fences the state.
“General Taleh will see you now. Come with me.”
Pakpour looked up to find an Army officer standing beside him. Sweating again, he rose hurriedly and followed the taller man into the next room.
Even for temporary quarters, Taleh’s office seemed spartan. Beyond a single desk and two chairs, there were no furnishings. Maps of Iran and its neighbors covered the walls. The general’s desk held nothing more than a phone, a blotter, and a personal computer.
Taleh himself looked up from reading a dossier and nodded towards the chair in front of his desk. “Sit down, Mr. Pakpour.”
The merchant obeyed, conscious of the taller Army officer still standing almost directly behind him.
“Your family? They are well?”
Pakpour moistened his lips, somewhat reassured by the other man’s manner. No Iranian moved too quickly or too directly to the business at hand, preferring to open any discussion with small talk about small matters. Whatever Taleh wanted, he was evidently willing to observe the usual social niceties. “My wife and children are all in good health, General. They long for the spring, of course.”
“Naturally. This winter has been bitter for us all.”
Pakpour found himself relaxing minutely as the conversation drifted lazily through the prospects for warmer weather ahead.
When it came, the change in Taleh’s manner was swift, sudden, and horribly direct. He leaned forward, all pretence gone from his voice and manner. “You have close ties to the West, Mr. Pakpour.” He tapped the dossier in front of him.
“Ties which many of our fellow countrymen would consider treasonous.”
Pakpour paled. They knew. Despite all his precautions, despite all his clever bookkeeping, they knew. With inflation running at more than fifty percent a year, the sums offered him by America’s CIA for snippets of political and economic information had been too tempting to refuse. Gold held its value at a time when the rials circulated by the Republic were scarcely worth the paper they were printed on. He tried to croak out a denial.
Taleh cut him off with a single icy glance. “In fact, I fear that many would consider your connections to a foreign spy agency worthy of a death sentence.” He paused for a long moment before continuing. “I do not.”
The merchant sat dry-mouthed, stunned.
Taleh smiled thinly. “I have messages I want you to carry to the West, Mr. Pakpour. Messages I cannot and will not entrust to regular channels.” His smile disappeared, replaced by a frown. “The HizbAllah’s foolish war of terror against America has gone too far and cost us too much. I wish to end it. We have been isolated from the world for far too long.”
He closed the dossier on his desk with an air of finality and pushed it aside. “Will you act as my go-between
