The Dirty Team blew out of Tehran like a breeze.
The city looked like a battlefield from which everyone had gone home. Statues had been pulled down, cars burned, and trees felled to make roadblocks; then the roadblocks had been cleared--the cars pushed to the curb, the statues smashed, the trees burned. Some of those trees had been hand-watered every day for fifty years.
But there was no fighting. They saw very few people and little traffic. Perhaps the revolution was over. Or perhaps the revolutionaries were having tea.
They drove past the airport and took the highway north, following the route Coburn and Simons had taken on their reconnaissance trip. Some of Simons's plans had come to nothing, but not this one. Still, Coburn was apprehensive. What was ahead of them? Did armies rage and storm in towns and hamlets still? Or was the revolution done? Perhaps the villagers had returned to their sheep and their plows.
Soon the two Range Rovers were bowling along at seventy miles an hour at the foot of a mountain range. On their left was a flat plain; on their right, steep green hillsides topped by snowy mountain peaks against the blue sky. Coburn looked at the car in front and saw Taylor taking photographs through the tailgate window with his Instamatic. 'Look at Taylor,' he said.
'What does he think this is?' said Gayden. 'A package tour?'
Coburn began to feel optimistic. There had been no trouble so far: maybe the whole country was calming down. Anyway, why should the Iranians give them a hard time? What was wrong with foreigners leaving the country?
Paul and Bill had false passports and were being hunted by the authorities, that was what was wrong.
Thirty miles from Tehran, just outside the town of Karaj, they came to their first roadblock. It was manned, as they usually were, by machine-gun-toting men and boys in ragged clothes.
The lead car stopped, and Rashid jumped out even before Paul had brought the second car to a halt, making sure that he, rather than the Americans, would do the talking. He immediately began speaking loud and rapid Farsi, with many gestures. Paul wound down the window. From what they could understand, it seemed Rashid was not giving the agreed story: he was saying something about journalists.
After a while Rashid told them all to get out of the cars. 'They want to search us for weapons.'
Coburn, remembering how many times he had been frisked on the reconnaissance trip, had concealed his little Gerber knife in the Range Rover.
The Iranians patted them down, then perfunctorily searched the cars: they did not find Coburn's knife, nor did they come across the money.
A few minutes later Rashid said: 'We can go.'
A hundred yards down the road was a filling station. They pulled in: Simons wanted to keep the fuel tanks as full as possible.
While the cars were being fueled Taylor produced a bottle of Cognac, and they all took a swig except Simons, who disapproved, and Rashid, whose beliefs forbade him to take alcohol. Simons was mad at Rashid. Instead of saying the group were businessmen trying to go home, Rashid had said they were journalists going to cover the fighting in Tabriz. 'Stick to the goddam story,' Simons said.
'Sure,' said Rashid.
Coburn thought Rashid would probably continue to say the first thing that came into his head at the time. That was how he operated.
A small crowd gathered at the filling station, watching the foreigners. Coburn looked at the bystanders nervously. They were not exactly hostile, but there was something vaguely menacing about their quiet surveillance.
Rashid bought a can of oil.
What now?
He took the fuel can, which contained most of the money in weighted plastic bags, out of the back of the car, and poured oil into it to conceal the money. It's not a bad idea, Coburn thought, but I would have mentioned it to Simons before doing it.
He tried to read the expressions on the faces in the crowd. Were they idly curious? Resentful? Suspicious? Malevolent? He could not tell, but he wanted to get away.
Rashid paid the bill and the two cars pulled slowly out of the filling station.
They had a clear run for the next seventy miles. The road, the new Iranian State Highway, was in good condition. It ran through a valley, alongside a single-track railroad, with snowcapped mountains above. The sun was shining.
The second roadblock was outside Qazvin.
It was an unofficial one--the guards were not in uniform--but it was bigger and more organized than the last. There were two checkpoints, one after another, and a line of cars waiting.
The two Range Rovers joined the queue.
The car in front of them was searched methodically. A guard opened the trunk and took out what looked like a rolled-up sheet. He unrolled it and found a rifle. He shouted something and waved the rifle in the air.
Other guards came running. A crowd gathered. The driver of the car was questioned. One of the guards knocked him to the ground.
Rashid pulled his car out of the line.
Cobum told Paul to follow.
'What's he doing?' Gayden said.
Rashid inched through the crowd. The people made way as the Range Rover nudged them--they were interested in the man with the rifle. Paul kept the second Range Rover right on the tail of the first. They passed the first checkpoint.
'What the fuck is he doing?' said Gayden.
'This is asking for trouble,' said Coburn.
They approached the second checkpoint. Without stopping, Rashid yelled at the guard through the window. The guard said something in reply. Rashid accelerated. Paul followed.
Coburn breathed a sigh of relief. That was just like Rashid: he did the unexpected, on impulse, without thinking through the consequences; and somehow he always got away with it. It just made life a little tense for the people with him.
Next time they stopped, Rashid explained that he had simply told the guard the two Range Rovers had been cleared at the first checkpoint.
At the next roadblock Rashid persuaded the guards to write a pass on his windshield in magic marker, and they were waved through another three roadblocks without being searched.
Keane Taylor was driving the lead car when, climbing a long, winding hill, they saw two heavy trucks, side by side and filling the whole width of the road, coming downhill fast toward them. Taylor swerved off the road and bumped to a halt in the ditch, and Paul followed. The trucks went by, still side by side, and everyone said what a lousy driver Taylor was.
At midday they took a break. They parked at the roadside near a ski lift and lunched on dry crackers and cupcakes. Although there was snow on the mountainsides, the sun was shining and they were not cold. Taylor got out his bottle of Cognac, but it had leaked and was empty: Coburn suspected that Simons had surreptitiously loosened the cork. They drank water.
They passed through the small, neat town of Zanjan, where on the reconnaissance trip Coburn and Simons had talked to the chief of police.
Just beyond Zanjan the Iranian State Highway ended--rather abruptly. In the second car, Coburn saw Rashid's Range Rover suddenly disappear from view. Paul slammed on the brakes and they got out to look.
Where the tarmac ended, Rashid had gone down a steep slope for about eight feet and landed nose-down in mud. Off to the right, their route continued up an unpaved mountain road.
Rashid restarted the stalled engine and put the car into four-wheel drive and reverse gear. Slowly he inched back up the bank and onto the road.
The Range Rover was covered with mud. Rashid turned on the wipers and washed the windshield. When the mud splashes were gone, so was the pass that had been written on with magic marker. Rashid could have rewritten it, but nobody had a magic marker.
They drove west, heading for the southern tip of Lake Rezaiyeh. The Range Rovers were built for rough
