“In fact,” said Lermontov, “we use spy novels in our training programs. You should write one someday. I can guarantee you, KGB will buy hundreds of copies.”
* * *
Frank sat in the quiet house after Lermontov had gone, wanting a moment alone. He sipped chilled Stolichnaya from a coffee cup and thought about Belinsky, about Nazih, Sergeant Abbas, about the GRU and Aeroflot agents he had probably sent to their deaths, and again about Belinsky and the
fatwa
that named them both. He knew he had put Belinsky at risk. With Mina and Anwar. With his need for translations. His quest for Khomeini’s tapes. His scheme to entrap the GRU officer who could deflect Soviet counterintelligence attention away from Lermontov. Playing roulette, Russian roulette, with another man’s life. And losing. He raised the coffee cup and sipped a silent toast.
He set the coffee cup aside. Belinsky put himself at risk. True enough, thought Frank, but he felt suffused by incredible, indelible guilt. His night would end in a sleeping bag on Todd Waldbaum’s floor. He knew he should feel grateful. Instead, he felt resentment. He wanted to be alone, alone with the way he felt. He knew two of the upstairs rooms had beds. He longed to crash up there but knew he must preserve the sanctity of the safe house.
The phone rang. He stared at it. He reached out for the coffee cup and drained it. The phone went on ringing. His stomach knotted and the taste of bile rose in his throat. There was no reason for the phone to ring. And no reason to be afraid. He retrieved his smoke-scented parka and put it on. He slipped his tape recorder into a pocket and pulled on his black stocking cap and headed for the door. The phone still rang.
* * *
“Where the hell have you been?”
“I took a couple of days off,” said Frank. “Cruised up the Caspian with Lermontov. Spent some time in Baku. Checked out their National Voice of Iran Radio setup. Picked up some caviar.”
“Very funny. I know where you’ve been. What I don’t know is why the fuck you didn’t get down here any sooner than this.”
“Just one reason. I was scared shitless.”
“After some ’a the shit you pulled off lately, I thought you were supposed to be Sullivan the fearless.”
He remembered Rocky’s words.
Feel good is not my middle name
. And fearless isn’t mine, he thought.
“Not my name,” he said aloud. Again he thought of Belinsky, overcoming weakness. And fear.
“You seen Lermontov?”
“Yesterday.”
“What’s up?”
“Contact instructions for Washington in case we don’t hook up again here. He hopes we do see each other again with me bringing him a bushel of good stuff to keep Moscow wanting more.”
“Put it in a cable. Moscow wants more, we’ll get’m more. The Holy Ghost is hot to trot. I’ve got a cleaned-up version of your cable on the to-do at Dowshan Tap. You can pass it to Lermontov. I also got an okay to give him a wrap-up on the pullout, the burn barrels, all that.”
“Good,” said Frank.
“Nothing is good,” said Rocky. “We just lost another war. The holy warriors took over just about everything, including your Supreme Commander’s Headquarters, all the prisons, the armories, the palace, Lavizan, the works. They say some Bodyguard units are still hangin’ tough. But yesterday Gharabaghi got together what’s left of the generals, and they come up with a statement sayin’ from here on out the military had declared neutrality and ordered the troops back to their barracks. Couple hours later the radio stopped playing John Philip Sousa. Some guy come on and said the revolutionary forces had taken over the station. He read Gharabaghi’ s statement, and I wish I had a tape and a translation to send to your good friend Fritz Weber.”
“So do I. What do we do next?”
“Nail Lermontov.”
* * *
Frank fumbled with the keys while he chalked a thick line on the safe house door. He let himself in and locked the door. He listened and heard nothing but the quiet he wanted. He peeled off the parka, dropped it with his wool cap on a kitchen chair, and headed for the freezer. The phone rang. He’d told Bill Steele about the phone, and Bill had said, “You did right not to answer. If it happens again, don’t answer.” He told Rocky, and Rocky responded the same way. “Nobody’s supposed to be there, so there’s nobody there to answer the phone. If it happens again, let me know.”
The phone kept ringing. Big brother, somebody’s big brother is watching you. He wondered if the caller could be a one-armed Iranian with his head shrouded by the hood of his black wool jacket and a Czech machine pistol tucked in a shoulder holster. He went into the front room and glared at the jangling phone and did something he hadn’t done since he was a teenager—the fuck you sign, left hand slapping into the crook of his right arm, closed fist directed at the phone. He went back to the kitchen, muttering, “Ring your ass off,” and poured a deep wash of vodka into a coffee cup. He climbed the stairs to the second floor, headed for the back bedroom and slammed the door shut behind him, hoping to muffle the sound of the phone. He sat on the edge of the bed, sipping vodka and telling his mind to forget the phone. But his mind kept wondering what would happen if he picked up the receiver.
Nail Lermontov. He closed his eyes and saw the peregrine he’d watched one day as it nailed a pigeon in Central Park. How, he’d wondered, could an endangered species survive and make kills in midtown Manhattan? The world’s biggest pigeon, Vassily Lermontov. Nail him. He’d circled his prey for years, and now his wings caught air, but still he only circled as their Pan Am plane had circled above Tehran the day he arrived so long ago. The peregrine studied the pillars of smoke that drifted skyward, still dimly aware of the distant, insisting phone.
* * *
At four the next day the orange taxi picked up Frank on Zarrabi Street. The Chechen behind the wheel nodded as Frank climbed in.
“No glasses. We go to Vassily’s house.”
Frank felt grateful. He wanted to see the city. Heavy traffic slowed their way. Long, peaceful lines waited at benzene stations. People shut up for days by the heavy fighting crowded the sidewalks under cloudy but mild skies.
“People think the war is over,” said the Chechen.
I wonder, thought Frank, remembering a phrase he’d picked up in Angola.
La lutte continua
. The war continues. Always. Everywhere. All over the world.
* * *
“Well,” said Lermontov, “it’s been so long since I’ve seen you. You must tell me what you did during the war.”
Sipping Lermontov’s vodka, Frank related in detail all that had happened at Dowshan Tappeh. “I’ve got two cables on what happened, one about the battle, one about the American pullout. Also traffic the station filed over the past couple of days, plus some the ambassador filed.”
“Just some?”
“I got all I could grab. Even some routine administrative stuff that may have some hints about the policy debate.”
“Such as?”
“First, there’s the big debate. Admit the Shah to the States. Keep him out. I brought you several cables on that.”
“It looks like you Americans will betray another ally. The longer his trip to America gets delayed, the less it seems he will ever get there.”
Frank suspected Lermontov worried more about his own prospects of getting to America than he did the Shah’s.
“Then there’s all the other debates,” he said. “Make a deal with the mullahs or send in the marines. Impose sanctions. Seize Iranian assets in the States. Stay here or pull out. Shut the embassy down. Keep it open. They have clearance from the foreign ministry to bring in two Pan Am flights this weekend to fly out all the Americans in Tehran. That sounds like the close-the-embassy side won. At least for a while.”
“All the Americans?”
“That’s what they said.”
“Even you?”
“Even me.”
“It could be as soon as the weekend?”
Frank nodded. “And I heard they might haul us all down to the embassy Friday evening and make us camp there overnight to make sure no one’s missing Saturday morning.”
“Then we have much to do. I’ve arranged for your taxi to pick you up on a street called Behshid that runs parallel to Nezamabad. Thursday at four.” He handed Frank a section of the city map. “If you don’t make it, I’ll see you in Washington.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Frank.
“Bon voyage.”
They clicked their glasses. Lermontov drained his. Frank sipped.
“Now, what else do you have for me?” said Lermontov.
“Lots of stuff, including a summary the station received of a cable filed by one of our people who met with the Shah in Rabat. Says the Shah looked like a broken man but that he was proud of the fact he’d avoided a bloodbath. Said he has no contact with any of the military leaders in Iran. Makes no mention of him coming to the States.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. Let’s take a look at all these wonderful documents.”
Frank emptied the contents of his briefcase onto the table. He knew Rocky had doctored much of the material, particularly what purported to have come from the ambassador, but he thought the final product would impress Moscow. Lermontov agreed.
“This should bring you an excellent bonus, but it may have to wait till we meet in Washington. Meanwhile, I have a modest bonus, a thousand dollars, for the material you brought last time.”
Frank counted the twenties, wondering if he would have to bum them himself. He signed the receipt.
“We need to spend some time on contact instructions in Washington,” said Lermontov. He repeated the contact instructions he’d already given Frank, with alterations. This time, under the watchful eyes of the Russian eavesdropping equipment, he told Frank to extend “the greatest possible cooperation” to Howard King.
“You know how I feel about working with anyone but you,” said Frank.
“You will extend complete cooperation, understood?”
“Understood,” said Frank.
Lermontov made him repeat the instructions.
“Good. If we do meet again, I will have you repeat this scenario again. Do not attempt to assist your memory by committing any part of this to paper.”
“Of course not,” said Frank.
* * *
“He goes through all that,” said Rocky, “knowing you’re wired.”
“He plays it to the video cameras.”
“Yeah, he does. And he plays it by the book.”
“I don’t see why I keep wearing that damn wire. We never use it.”
“We might need to check something someday. But the real deal is the tapes go to Henry James so he can convince himself you aren’t playin’ games.”
“Great. And if I ever slip up and say something on one tape that contradicts what I say on another, he can hang me.”
“Like that. So don’t ever slip up. Lermontov’s stuff includes a note for you. Says, ‘If you have a problem getting to me on Thursday, put a chalk mark on your safe house door early as you can. I’ll try to get to you that day. If not, I’ll come Friday.’”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t wait till Friday,” Rocky added. “You may be busy packing.” He pushed the note aside. “Somethin’ else we need to talk about. The
Wall Street
fucking
Journal
.”
“Please,” said Frank. “That’s one of the world’s great newspapers.”
“Yeah, I know. Too fuckin’ great. You heard what happened yesterday?”
“What?”
“Some guys tried to shoot up the Inter-Continental, where all the reporters hole up. Not once, twice. Bad news is they didn’t kill anybody.”
“Who were they?”
“Dunno. If I did I’d give ’em all medals for tryin’ and a kick in the ass for not killing at least this
Wall Street Journal
bastard.”
“What’s he done?”
“Stuff about our ops here started showin’ up. Accurate. No big stories, just stuff inside of the big stories they run on Iran these days. Nothing that could get anybody hurt. No names. Just … details. You got any ideas?”
“Only what I told you back in December, about someone giving Bill Steele’s phone numbers out, not just to the
Journal
guy. BBC,
Washington Post,
I forget what all.”
“Yeah, Bill and I talked. But what’s showin’ up isn’t just about Dowshan Tappeh.”
“Which means it’s gotta be someone in your shop.”
“Like who?”
“You must have a deputy who sees everything.”
“Not everything. Not the way I work. Some things nobody, not my deputy, not the ambassador, nobody sees.”
“Somebody does.”
“Yeah,” said Rocky, “the guy who gets it.”
“Maybe they have a leak at that end,” suggested Frank.
“But it shows up in stories filed from here, with this Arab guy’s by-line on it.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Frank. “A paper like the
Journal
may feed material from its Washington bureau into a story filed from here. Or from any other source, for that matter.”
“Like?”
“The wire services. AP, UPI, Reuters.”
“Do me a favor,” said Rocky. “Do me a cable. Langley’s comin’ down on my back to find the leak. Tell them what you just told me about how it could be comin’ outta Washington. Don’t overdo it. Maybe the problem is here. Say that. But at least give’m somethin’ else t’ think about.”
“There’s something else they should think about,” said Frank.
“What?”
“The guy who sends it.”
“Me?” Rocky’s eyes narrowed.
“No,” said Frank. “The guys in your communications room.”
* * *
At a summons delivered by Bill Steele, Frank and Gus were back in Rocky’s office the next morning.
“His nibs wants us up in his office,” said Rocky. “I don’t know what about. He said ten-fifteen, but with everything goin’ on around here, I got a hunch it’s gonna be sit and wait a while.”
Frank and Gus followed Rocky up the concrete steps to the ground floor. The marine they had first met at the back gates while a “Death to America” demonstration raged out front checked their IDs. “Good to see you gentlemen again.”
“Thank you,” said Frank. “Good to see you.” The marine buzzed them through the gate to the marble staircase that led to the second floor.
“Sir,” said the marine in an undertone to Rocky, “in view of the circumstances, perhaps you should know. Two newspapermen just went upstairs with Mr. Ross.”