condominium. It was a dilapidated building with chipping plaster and rusty railings. I quietly walked toward the street, and even the bark of a small dog didn’t shake me from my path.
I took a deep breath and enjoyed the cool air. But I wasn’t as calm as I wanted to be. Alex, my Mossad Academy instructor, had told us, “In clandestine intelligence work in hostile territory, what you don’t do is just as important as what you do.”
I walked slowly on the cracked, dirt-encrusted sidewalk, looking for somewhere to buy food. It was a drab area, one that hadn’t seen fresh development in decades, a mix of small industry, garages, and a few residential buildings occupied by tenants with no better place to go. There were only a few other people in the street, and nobody seemed to look at me.
Dan, you’re blending in, I thought. A bearded man in a country of bearded men attracts no attention.
A few hundred yards down the road was a small grocery, with dusty shelves piled with food. I decided against purchasing a large quantity of goods, fearing I’d attract attention. There was also the problem of crossing the high wall again. I selected a few items, making sure they were all within my reach on the shelves so that I would not have to speak with the owner-I couldn’t reveal that I didn’t speak Farsi. I paid and left. The owner said something, but my only option was to ignore him. He gave me an odd look as I left the store.
As I approached the factory, I stopped. Two cars were parked right in front of the gate and three men were talking to a woman in her fifties dressed in a black chador. She was waving her hands in excitement. My skin crawled: exactly the type of scenario I had to avoid. I slowly turned back and made a left turn into one of the alleys.
At first I thought of dumping the plastic bags with the food supplies to make my movement easier, but I decided against it. A man carrying groceries was commonplace and would help me seem like a local. I had no idea where I was or what I should do next. I knew one thing for sure: I couldn’t go back to the factory. First the unknown visitor in the middle of the night, then the note, and now this. And frankly I was tired of hiding. I was always more defiant than humble. Being meek went against my nature and training. “In hostile circumstances, you don’t hide, you maneuver, reposition yourself, and fight if necessary,” were the words of my Mossad Academy instructor.
I hailed a cab. “Bazaar,” I said, hoping it’d be enough. It was. Twenty minutes later we arrived at the bazaar. When I got out of the cab, I dumped the shopping bags into a trash can. As I started walking up the street looking for a restaurant, I saw a policeman looking at me suspiciously. With my overgrown hair and beard and clothes that, though clean, had not been ironed for two months, little wonder he became suspicious. He approached me, sized me up, and said something in Farsi. He wasn’t impressed with my ignorance and seized my hand.
“Tourist,” I said. “Tourist!”
He then repeated the word I could understand: “Passport.” My Ian Pour Laval passport was in my pocket, but I had no intention of showing it to him. Such a move was likely to send me into the hands of VEVAK in no time, and I still had use for my fingernails. A few people stopped to watch. My only prayer was that he would not try to frisk me. The gun was strapped to my calf and could be located quickly. I decided to talk in English instead of using body language. An obvious mistake, because a bystander intervened.
“I speak little English, you American?”
“No,” I said. “I’m Canadian, and I don’t understand what he wants.” I broke the rule that a good time to keep your mouth shut is when you’re in deep shit.
The bystander, a tall man in his early twenties clad in American-style jeans and a brown leather jacket, turned to the policeman and said something in Farsi. The policeman responded brusquely. The man turned to me. “He want your passport.”
“Well, I don’t have it here with me, but if he waits here, I’ll go to my hotel to get it.”
The policeman may have been a low-level cop, but he wasn’t stupid. He shook his head. He told something to the bystander.
“He go to your hotel.”
I had to isolate myself from the crowd, which was getting bigger by the minute. I tried to think of a hotel’s name that would be too far to walk to.
“Esteghlal Grand Hotel,” I said, remembering seeing that hotel when passing it on the Chamran Expressway.
“Very far,” said the bystander.
I raised my hands in frustration. “I can take a cab with the policeman. I’ll pay for the cab.” I was hoping that the bystander would not join us. In these circumstances, three is a crowd.
A cab was idling nearby, and I wearily hailed it, getting in it. As the cab pulled away, I considered my next move. The language barrier between me and the cop could serve my purpose. I slowly started looking in my pocket for a piece of paper and a pen, hoping to “accidentally” dig it up with enough money to cloud the cop’s judgment, but still protecting my ass if he proved to be the one of the few incorruptible Iranian cops and accused me of trying to bribe him. When I saw his widening eyes as he looked at the wad of Iranian currency I’d “unintentionally” pulled out of my pocket, I knew I’d be OK.
“My wife is asleep at the hotel,” I said pointing at my finger where a wedding band should be, and then I made the universal sleeping gesture, resting my head on my hands to one side. Maybe he’d agree to take the money and forget about the whole thing. I slipped him the money wad. He just took it and held it in his hand. He told the cabdriver to stop. I jumped out. The cop didn’t move. The cab drove away. Let the cop pay the $2 taxi fare. I’d left him with more than $25. I crossed the street and entered into another road against traffic, in case the cop changed his mind. But there was no sign of him. I found a small hotel two blocks away. I walked inside.
“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” I asked, hoping the man at the reception desk didn’t speak German. He shook his head.
“Francais?” No.
“English?”
He shook his head again. Good. That solved a lot of problems. I signaled with my hands that I needed a room. I paid in advance in cash for a week. He was so happy to see my cash that he didn’t ask for any papers. And even if he had, I could always have pretended I didn’t understand. I couldn’t show him my Canadian passport. My name was likely to be all over the place courtesy of VEVAK-if indeed anyone was looking for me.
I went up to the modest and so-so-clean room to freshen up. Moments later I went out to the street, entered the first restaurant I saw and ate my first cooked meal in months. I entered an adjacent store and bought a few clothes and toiletries. After a hot shower and limited beard and hair trimming, I was ready to plan my next move.
I needed to communicate with Sammy and get the hell out of there. I took every precaution I could. I’d learned not to mock the crocodile before I finished swimming across the river.
Early in the chilly morning, as the neighborhood slowly awoke, I went to a nearby pay phone and dialed the number I’d received from one of Padas?’s men when I arrived. There was a busy signal followed by a recording that sounded like an announcement that the number was no longer valid. I tried two more times and got the same recording. How come when I dial a wrong number it’s never busy?
I found a nearby bank and made a cash withdrawal through the ATM. I also punched a few additional strokes on the keypad, again frustrated by the short list of coded messages I’d been given. I returned to my hotel. Other than venturing out to eat, I stayed in my room most of the time. I patiently looked through the window to see if my ATM messages had gone through.
It was two days later that a short and stocky mustachioed man approached me in the street, just as I was about to enter the hotel after having dinner.
“I know how to find nice carpets made by hand in Kashan. Very cheap.”
At last.
He signaled me to follow him to a waiting car. Two other men were seated inside. I recoiled for a second. Perhaps it was a trap. But reason took over. It was unlikely that the VEVAK could intercept my communications with the Agency back home. Although there was a slight change in the code words, I wasn’t alarmed. If they were VEVAK, they could have arrested me without the introductions. I entered the car.
“Where is Sammy?” I asked.
They didn’t answer. “No English,” said a tough-looking guy behind the wheel. I quickly assessed my options
