“Simple. The driver stopped the car in the middle of the street, lifted the hood, and made himself appear as if he were fixing something. But he didn’t touch anything. His hands were clean when he went back behind the wheel, purportedly to wait for help. Ten minutes later, he just closed the hood, started the engine, and left. That happened right across from the safe apartment.”
“I saw that car too,” I said, forgetting to mention that it looked odd to me, but didn’t rise to the level of a suspicion, when it should have. “Is that all?”
“No. There was another car cruising the neighborhood repeatedly for no apparent reason. Then Benny reported he was spotted yesterday as he returned to his hotel.”
“Is he still there?”
“No. He checked out. Finally, Parviz Morad was discovered making a call from a pay phone in the men’s room of his hotel lobby.”
“Was he unattended?” I was surprised at how that could have happened.
“No. He was under Mossad’s supervision at all times, but during dinner he went to the men’s room, and the Mossad agent waited behind the outside door. When Parviz didn’t exit immediately, the agent entered and saw him on the phone. These hotels sometime install pay phones inside the bathrooms.”
“Has Parviz been doubled?”
“I don’t know. Mossad is interrogating him. I’ve just heard he swore that he only called his uncle in Hamburg, Germany. Parviz claimed the uncle was a known dissident of the Iranian government.”
“What do we do now?”
“We wait for the result of the investigation and see if these incidents are directed at us or connected to Parviz’s phone call. If he double-crossed us, we may have to conduct a thorough damage control. Anyway, you’re not returning to the Holiday Inn. I’ll go out and buy you some toiletries and overnight stuff,” he said.
“Why don’t you just send someone to remove my luggage from the Holiday Inn?”
“Because the hotel and your room are under our observation. I want to create the impression that you still live in that hotel. Maybe these guys will be stupid enough to go there and give us a better idea who they are. Anyway, I don’t think you should leave this room until we assess the situation. Order room service,” he said, reading my mind.
An hour later John returned with a shopping bag. “There’s a change of underwear here”-he handed me the bag-“and shaving cream, disposable razors, a toothbrush, a comb, and toothpaste. That’ll keep you for a few days.” I looked at the bag; the underwear was oversized and looked ridiculous.
“Thanks,” I said without sharing my thoughts on his taste in clothing.
“Let’s continue with our original plan,” suggested John. “OK.”
I sat on the bed, and John took a chair next to the small desk and dragged it to face me.
“Let me go into the political structure of Iran.”
My mind was elsewhere, trying to analyze the unexpected turn of events. But John ignored my hollow look and continued. I had to listen-I was his captive audience.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran embodies Khomeini’s doctrine of Velayat-e Faqih, or ‘Islamic Rule.’ He advocated exporting revolution to extend his absolute authority over all Muslims. Central to the concept is the doctrine that all Muslims, wherever they are, belong to the Islamic nation, the Ummah -and therefore must obey the authority of the religious leader. It’s interesting to note that his followers attempted to broaden the definition of Islam. While most, if not all, Muslims consider Islam as their religion, while they belong to different nations, the Iranian doctrine tried to classify all Muslims as members of a nation.”
“Because the Iranians aren’t Arabs, and in fact are a minority in Islam,” I said.
“Exactly,” said John. “This is their sneaky way to install themselves as leaders of a group a billion people strong, rather than limiting their grip to only seventy million Iranians. They wrote a new constitution, which gives this immense power to one person to become the head of the faqih, the ruling council. Ayatollah Khomeini was the first head of the faqih. The supreme religious leader has almost unlimited powers. He appoints the chief judges of the judicial branch; the chief of staff of the armed forces; the commander of the Pasdaran; the personal representatives of the faqih to the Supreme Defense Council; and the commanders of the army, air force, and navy.”
“Democracy is dead, long live theocracy.”
“Obviously. The will of the individual has no meaning. For example, the faqih authorizes the candidates for presidential elections. If the supreme religious leader doesn’t approve, then a candidate cannot run. There’s no appeal.”
“Did the Iranian people accept that?”
“Many of them didn’t. Soon after the Islamic Revolution approximately fifty people were executed daily. On some days the number doubled. Many of the executions were public. We estimate that in two years the new regime executed seven to eight thousand people. Realizing that it would be only a question of time before a popular uprising would topple the new regime, they eased their grip a bit. But Iran continues to be a country where human rights-including women’s rights, the way we understand them- mean nothing.”
John’s mobile phone rang. He exchanged a few sentences and flipped the phone’s cover.
“OK. The number Parviz has called belongs to Mehrang Pahlbod, a sixty-year-old Iranian exile who has been a vocal opponent of the current Iranian regime. Parviz claimed that Mehrang Pahlbod is his uncle, and the pay- phone call he made was just to say hello.”
“I don’t trust this guy, and even if he’s clean, and even if the relative checks out OK, his phone could be tapped by the opposition,” I said.
“Right. We give zero weight to his explanation. But regardless, we had additional suspicious activities here that cannot be ignored. We’ll have to keep low for a while until we determine if these events are connected with our plan, or were just a part of their general monitoring of the activities of the Agency and Mossad personnel, without knowing what is brewing. Security says this hotel is unmonitored, so your curfew is partially over, and you may leave your room, but not the hotel.”
The next day, I was having a hearty breakfast in the dining room when a young man came to my table.
“Mr. Pour Laval?”
It took me only a second to respond to my new name. After all these years of using assumed names, I wondered why I had never become confused. My only fear was that I could one day bump into someone I had met while on assignment and forget what name I’d used then. What would I do? Ask him, Excuse me, can you remind me of my name? As a worst-case scenario he might think I was demented and suggest that I ask the nurse when I return to the institution for the feeble-minded.
“Casey asked that you please go out to a blue van parked near the service entrance.” He gave me the security password verifying the instructions that had come from Casey.
I went outside through the back door and made sure, as much as I could, that nobody paid attention to the ten seconds it took me to get to the van. The driver drove me to a new safe apartment in a residential area in the outskirts of Vienna.
“Please go to the second floor. Ring the doorbell of the Kraus family.”
Casey Bauer was waiting for me inside the apartment with John and another person.
“This is Tony DaSilva,” he said, pointing at a middle-aged man with a dark complexion. “Reuven reported that you successfully passed the test on the Iranian way of life.” Not a word about the sudden events of the past day.
“Test? I never took any test,” I said instinctively.
DaSilva smiled. “Well, you did. Not all tests are identified by the person being tested. Think about your exchange with Reuven in retrospect, and you’ll see what we mean.” During the segments of my training when we were playing mock scenarios of me being confronted by Iranian security officers, I had suspected I was being videotaped and that my behavior was being analyzed by experts.
“Do you also have it on video?”
“Yes,” he confirmed. “But for instructional purposes only, to learn from our mistakes, if something goes wrong,” he answered unexpectedly.
What a bureaucratic way of thinking, I thought. If I’m caught, they’ll need the video to cover their asses and show to any investigating commission that there was nothing wrong in my training or in the instructions they had given me.
