Satan's Spy (The Steve Church saga Book 2) Read online

  Mousavi’s smile did not reach his eyes. “Why the visit to Kama Electric?” he asked, his gaze penetrating into Qazi’s skull.

  Zoran was shocked by the question. How did he know? Mousavi continued to finger the lighter in silence. Zoran’s mind raced. Visiting a power station was not against the law. He began to build a defense but could not articulate it before Mousavi stood, slipping the lighter in his pocket.

  “You’re wasting my time. I’m going to hand you over to Majid,” he said. “You tell him everything and you can go back to work. Make no mistake that you can fool us.” On his way out, Zoran walked by a chessboard set up on a small side table against the wall. Was it a decoration? Was it there to impress? A tactic to persuade visitors that a contest with Mousavi was hopeless?

  That afternoon, Zoran was brought from his cell to another windowless, but more spacious room. A photograph of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution glared down from the wall facing the door. Three chairs surrounded a rectangular wooden table, on top of which was a pad of legal size lined paper and a pen. A guard ordered Zoran to keep standing. Eventually, the door opened to a thin, austere, man in his forties with a lock of black hair falling over his forehead and a ragged beard. He wore the loose gray-brown jacket favored by the theocracy’s apparatchiks.

  “I know who you are,” his visitor said. “You can call me by my first name, Majid. I have been in this business ten years. I am the best, in all humility. That is a statement not of pride, which is not rewarded by Allah, but of fact. My mission,” he continued politely like a doctor explaining a procedure to an intelligent patient “is to find out who you work for. Two of our foes that come to mind are the Mujahidin-e-Khalq and the Jews. The MEK is a terrorist group protected by and working for America, for the CIA.”

  He had taken a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. “Do you smoke? No?” Majid lit up and took a puff. “If you answer my questions, you’ll probably live longer than me. I want you to live. The only road to that outcome is to tell the truth. I don’t use the polygraph. That’s for the CIA, slaves to their own technology.” Majid laughed quietly, inviting Zoran to laugh along with him. “You’re a Kurd so I don’t need to tell you about interrogations. I can play your mind and your body like musical instruments. This is not going to go away. Not without your cooperation,” he looked directly in Zoran’s eyes. “Your full cooperation.”

  Zoran grudgingly felt that Majid respected him. Perhaps they could discuss this situation as one professional colleague to another. However, Zoran also detected paternalism and condescension. Squaring his shoulders, he said what he should have said to Mousavi.

  “I am Doctor Zoran Qazi. I am here to help the Islamic Republic to weaponize the nuclear program. Instead of arresting me, you should be thanking me. I could have stayed in Germany and made money. If anything happens to me, your weaponization program will suffer a severe setback.”

  Majid ignored Zoran’s comment and walked around the table. “You don’t smoke, but perhaps there is something else I could do for you.” Standing close, Majid said, “Are you thirsty? Is there anything you want? I know what you Kurds like. He lowered his voice and said, “I could have a young boy sent to your cell later. Would you like that?”

  At Majid’s words, Zoran lowered his eyes. When Majid left the room, Zoran looked up and caught a glimpse of Mousavi in the corridor.

  Zoran was left alone for several hours after that initial exchange. Could they have found something suspicious in his room? What was on his computer? It was password-protected and email had not been permitted from Natanz. Did he have addresses that might create suspicion? Dr. Steltzer’s? When Majid came back he said, “Okay, if you’re ready to talk sensibly, we can still be friends.”

  Zoran did not admit to any wrongdoing, and he was left alone again, but only for a few minutes. The door opened and Zoran had another quick view of Majid talking to Mousavi before two guards entered the room. They first stripped him naked and then tied him to a bench face down. Then the pain started. The two guards took turns. One liked to use a whip; the other had a wooden cane. Zoran didn’t know how long he was there. He did remember that the beatings started on the soles of his feet.

  When the treatment reached his buttocks, one of the guards parted his cheeks, and the other pushed a stiff rolled-up piece of cardboard into his anus. Zoran screamed in agony and fright. He was sure his rectum was torn. His outcry made the guards laugh.

  “Next time you get the coke bottle,” one said.

  The other, laughing at the prospect, added, “The broken coke bottle.”

  The whipping and the caning continued. Just before the beating reached his head, Majid came back in. The guards untied him and let him sit up on the bench, which he did with great difficulty.

  “Give him his shirt back.” Majid said. “A Ph. D. deserves respect.”

  As Zoran put his shirt back on, Majid asked, “Tell me who sent you, the Americans? The Jews? Crazy Kurdish nationalists?”

  Zoran shook his head but the reference was close to sacrilegious. “My grandfather was not crazy!”

  “Yes, your grandfather’s crimes are in your file. For reasons I don’t understand, you were still chosen for this special education program.” Majid shook his head in disbelief. “So, now we know why. Tell me the who. And what is the mission exactly? I want names. Start at the beginning.”

  “You misunderstood. My grandfather was a Kurd nationalist, not me. I’m only here to help.”

  “We’re going to play a game,” Majid said. “It’ll probably be more fun for me than for you.” He asked the guard for his revolver. He then pointed it at Zoran’s knee and asked, “Who sent you? Who are you working for? Before you answer, let me explain the game. I have two bullets in here. I’ll spin the barrel each time before pulling the trigger. So each time the law of probabilities is on your side, right? Three-to-one in your favor. We’ll start at your knee and work up, OK? Now, again, who sent you?”

  “No one sent me!” Zoran cried.

  As he was untied, he made a desperate attempt to grab the gun. Majid easily stepped back out of reach and signaled to the guards. One grabbed him from the back, and the other swung a short iron bar at Zoran’s shoulder. In self-defense, Zoran moved his left arm to block the blow. The bar hit his forearm with a neat crack that broke the bone. Zoran fell, hitting his arm on the floor and causing his nerves to explode and his heart stop. He fainted. The guard revived him quickly and sat him back down, still half unconscious.

  “Who sent you?” Majid asked again.

  Zoran’s left arm shot spikes into his brain. His heart pounded; he could hardly breathe.

  “All right,” he said gasping. “My professor ... in Hamburg ... asked for help ... for his research ... a paper he’s writing.”

  “What is your mission exactly and who, exactly, sent you? Mossad?” Zoran was now in tears, from frustration, from fear, and from the pain. A small pool of blood had collected under the bench.

  “I have never met a Mossad agent, never,” he tried to shout but his voice was a mere whisper.

  Suddenly, Zoran felt another presence, and he turned to see Mousavi standing to one side. The iron bar that had broken his arm was in his hand. He took a step toward Zoran and, with the end, gave Zoran’s left arm a shove.

  After regaining consciousness, Zoran told Majid everything he knew about Dr. Steltzer.

  Back in his cell, Zoran’s review of events calmed him and he pulled the rough blanket closer. His hope that he had redeemed himself was confirmed when his cell door opened. A male nurse walked in and, under the watchful eyes of a guard, washed his wound, put his arm in a rudimentary splint and gave Zoran a painkiller. Zoran leaned back on his mattress after the door closed and he was again alone. He became optimistic. Finally, he was going to get out. He had, after all, committed no crime since he had not been in touch with the German professor since arriving in Natanz. He slept.

  * **

  Zoran didn’t know how long
he had slept when he was awakened and taken to a small courtyard dominated by a wooden platform over which several nooses swayed slightly. First he was in a stupor, refusing to accept any association between his fate and the wooden structure in front of him. Then, paralyzed by the shock that the scaffold was for him, for his execution, his mind made an enormous effort to face this impossible, this absurd reality.

  A uniformed guard on each side holding him under his arms, he walked up the steps and listened to the charges: espionage on behalf of external enemies. His eyes were first drawn to the two rows of nooses, all blue. Why blue? And then to the leaden sky against which black birds circled silently looking down at him. As his eyes came back to the prison, a curtain moved on a second floor window overlooking the courtyard.

  Then it struck him that this was all too real. His mind reset and he shouted his innocence until a black hood saturated with the smell of fear was put over his head and muffled his voice. He felt the blue noose being slipped around his neck and adjusted just so against his left ear. His grandfather’s picture flashed in his mind. Suddenly, he became weightless for an instant until the rope abruptly stopped his fall, breaking his neck with a sharp jerk to the right.

  * **

  Ali Mousavi let the curtain drop across the window. His thoughts were no longer on Dr. Qazi; they were on Dr. Steltzer in Hamburg. Although Qazi had been uncertain of the German’s sponsorship, Mousavi was not. Steltzer was a CIA tool. The Great Satan was devious and persistent, but clumsy. The Americans’ arrogance always caused them to over reach. In a battle against Persian subtlety and experience, the CIA could only field amateurs. It was like pitting a chess Grand Master against a mere novice.

  Overhead a black bird shrieked.

  3. Tehran: Early January 1979

  One of Marshall Church’s agents, a general on the Iranian army’s general staff, had been reporting that the Shah was confused by the guidance from Washington. Without clear direction from the top, the political vacuum was increasingly occupied by the leftist militias and by the mullahs. The generals were divided, and pro-Khomeini warrant officers were taking control of the air force. Armed groups allied with and fought each other, and the night belonged to them, but only its early hours.

  Kate, Marshall’s wife, wanting to maintain a normal routine for the three children, drove around stacks of burning tires three times a week at five in the morning to reach the Ice Palace for Steve’s hockey practice. “By that time, all the revolutionaries are asleep,” was her logic.

  The Church family lived near a mosque where anti-Shah crowds would assemble after the nine p.m. curfew. They could hear the rising level of their voices until the sound of powerful engines and clanking tracks of Chieftain tanks overwhelmed the chanting and the shouting of demonstrators. One night, a letter addressed to Marshall that had been slipped under the door carried a death threat against the Church family: “Leave Iran by 1 December or we will kill your family,” was the message. Kate and Marshall moved the three children from the front bedrooms, whose curtains were most vulnerable to firebombs, as had been proven in an attack on a German businessman’s house down the street a week before, to the master bedroom that had no windows. In the day, life limped along in a semblance of normalcy, and people walked around the sandbag shooting positions left behind by the militias for the next night.

  The American ambassador, dubbed “Candide” by Marshall, after Voltaire’s protagonist “all is for the best in the best of worlds,” would allow his political section to transmit only positive analyses to Washington:

  The bank that was closed a month ago by a fire has reopened; the Shah has everything under control and this minor unrest will soon be quelled; the militias will go back to their classrooms and everyone will live happily ever after. What revolution?

  It had taken the ambassador ten days to approve Marshall’s request to carry a weapon. His memorandum asking for authorization to use lower profile civilian license plates on his car to avoid the “shoot-me-I’m-a spy” diplomatic plates was still buried in Candide’s In-Box.

  * **

  Marshall turned the radio off and the rhythms of “Copacabana,” at least as ubiquitous during this revolutionary season as Khomeini’s propaganda cassettes brought clandestinely from Paris. He pulled the car over to pick up Abdelhak al Fassi, a tall, balding man with café au lait colored skin.

  “Al hamdu’llah for this revolution,” the Moroccan intelligence officer said. “It thins out the traffic.”

  Marshall sped away and turned right onto a street that led to the Sha-in-Sha expressway, a main artery linking Tehran’s northern suburbs to the downtown. To run agents in Tehran, car meetings had offered sufficient security in the past. However, because political turbulence had spilled out onto the streets, Marshall planned to rent a safe house for this operation. It was on his list but he hadn’t had time.

  “What are the Arab countries telling the Shah?” Marshall asked after reviewing the cover for the meeting in case they were arrested, basic tradecraft from Spying 101. “Which ones are supporting the mullahs?”

  “As you can guess, the kingdoms, Morocco, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are pledging support to the Shah,” al Fassi said. “But the PLO sees the turmoil as an opportunity. It’s putting its money on Khomeini. Arafat’s ‘Force 17’—his personal Mamluks and assassins—are training the ayatollah’s guard force in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. If Khomeini is successful in overthrowing the Shah, Arafat will have a powerful friend.”

  “Does the Shah have the guts to take control? The last time, in 1953, he skipped out, left the country. Is the Shah asking for sanctuary?”

  Church glanced at al Fassi, whom he had recruited for his excellent contacts in the Iranian military establishment and with the Arab embassies in Tehran. Although Marshall wasn’t absolutely certain that Al Fassi hadn’t reported the contact to his superiors in Rabat, his information was being read at the highest levels of the U.S. Government, but Marshall had to admit, with no discernible effect on U.S. policy. Al Fassi had already sent his family home to Morocco and had urged Marshall to do the same.

  Turning his eyes back to the front, Marshall let his question hang. A roadblock loomed ahead. He immediately regretted having waited for authorization to change the plates on his car. He slowed down and looked in the rearview mirror, but it was too late to turn around. The back door was closed; another roadblock had materialized a hundred yards back.

  In Iran’s extremely xenophobic and spy-conscious atmosphere, getting caught was not an option. Any official American was ipso facto a spy, and one meeting with an Arab diplomat on a quiet road at dusk was a sinister international plot. He would wind up first in Evin prison and then be at the center of a media blitz proving the Great Satan’s duplicity.

  One of the men at the roadblock held a long gun over his head with both hands signaling for them to stop. Marshall brought his vehicle to ten yards of the oil barrels barring the road, just as he had practiced during the “crash and bang” driving course that had been part of his basic CIA training many years ago. Then, however, the training roadblocks consisted of two cars hood to hood. He wondered if the barrels were full.

  He pressed down on the clutch with his left foot, put the car in first gear, and waited. Although he had managed to avoid them so far, he knew that these ad-hoc controls were sprouting up all over the city as the Shah’s uniformed army and police became less visible. Five days earlier, when Marshall had set up this meeting, he had not calculated that the roadblocks would appear before nightfall.

  He and al Fassi glanced at each other for an instant, and Marshall quickly reminded the Moroccan of their cover.

  Six men, none with a complete military uniform but each wearing either boots or camouflaged shirt or jacket, and one with a helmet, spread out and surrounded their car. Marshall could not see any other long barrel weapon among the group although they all could be carrying handguns. Making sure that his leather Eisenhower jacket was not in the way, Marshall felt for his
9mm Smith and Wesson in the door’s map compartment. Holding what looked like an Iranian army rifle, probably bought illegally or stolen, the leader pointed it at them as he walked toward the car and motioned for Marshall to lower his window. Two of the self-styled militiamen pointed at the diplomatic license plate speaking animatedly and laughing.

  “You are a diplomat? You speak English?” asked the leader with the rifle, a young man with a gold tooth affecting his leadership role in paramilitary garb.

  “Je suis Français—French,” Marshall replied hoping to get a free pass because the Ayatollah Khomeini was receiving rock star treatment in exile on the outskirts of Paris. Marshall hoped that none of the thugs knew the numerical system that assigned specific blocs of license plates to each embassy.

  “American, American,” another thug shouted accusingly, having made the correct assumption with or without knowledge of the licensing system.

  “And him?” the leader pointed toward al Fassi.

  “He is a friend. His car broke down. I am driving him home.”

  “You are an American. Give me your passport.” Gold Tooth seemed to be losing his patience.

  “We are friends,” Al Fassi said in Arabic leaning toward Marshall’s open window. “Let us through.”

  Gold Tooth’s smile disappeared. Marshall bit his lip; the politics of the revolution did not include total reconciliation with the Arabs that had invaded a millennium ago. Keeping his eyes on the leader’s now angry face, Marshall tightened his grip on his Smith & Wesson and started to raise it to window level.

  “Your passports. Both of you!” The leader ordered. He gave an order that sent one of his men toward al Fassi’s door while he stuck the barrel of his gun through Marshall’s window. The muzzle of the gun wavered toward the dashboard but remained inside the car. Without warning, the rifle fired sending a bullet smashing through the car’s windshield and pinging off a barrel.