Deadly Ties

by Aaron Ben-Shahar

  The expert continued: “All this would not have happened without American money and Jewish domination of the global economy. The Zionists and the Americans had another goal in mind, namely, to seize control of Iran’s oil, and with it, to assume control of the whole of the Middle East. They came very close to achieving this with the help of the corrupt Shah, who took advantage of his people and only cared about his own family and cronies. The blessed revolution, led by our esteemed president, has saved, right at the very last moment, Islam, our nation and our glorious people. In order to preserve the country, we must fight the remnants of reaction within, fight the Zionists and America without, and bring El-Quds (the holy, i.e., el-Aksa and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem) back to the Muslims.”

  Mehdi’s training also included a theological lesson. A cleric, who came especially from the holy city of Qom, gave a stirring sermon about the supremacy and eternity of the Quran, and the holy duty to persecute all heretics.

  At the end of the seventh and final day, Mehdi met with Suheil Murhabi, his designated handler in Thessaloniki. “In one week’s time, you’ll be going back to Thessaloniki to continue your academic studies as usual. You are not to come to the consulate under any circumstances. Do not phone them either. We know the consulate is under constant surveillance and that all the phone lines are tapped. We also know that Greek intelligence is in close contact with both the Mossad and the CIA. We will contact each other using drop-offs, signs, and written messages. The city’s promenade has a white tower. Right next to it there’s a tall cypress and a bench. Once a week, you will mark a white ‘x’ right behind the bench’s top level. This would be a sign confirming you are fine. If you have an urgent message for me, make a cross, and then I shall meet you within two hours at the archeological exhibition on display inside the tower.”

  Murhabi continued. “Once a month, you will compile a report on your activity. At six pm on the first Sunday of every month, I shall meet you ‘by chance’ by the bench. After you recognize me, and only after you will have seen me sitting down, will you walk away. Leave the report in a paper bag, which you will put inside the trash by the bench. Do not sit at the bench before shaking off any surveillance as we taught you in the course. If you sense anything is off, keep walking. We shall meet the following day, same time and place. Now, in case we need you, don’t worry, we will find you. I am also giving you my personal number. You may only use it in case of emergency. Memorize it. Learn it by heart. It must not appear written down anywhere. Do not leave it around. What’s your bank account number? You’ll find one thousand dollars there each month. See you by the bench.” Suheil got up and left without shaking Mehdi’s hand.

  ‘My handler sure is tough,’ Mehdi thought to himself.

  ***

  Mehdi went back home to Tabriz to see his family and told them he had decided to return to Thessaloniki to resume his studies. They all expressed their regret at his decision, but, judging by the look on his father’s face and those of his two brothers, Mehdi realized some members of his family regretted his decision more than others.

  Once he returned to Thessaloniki, Mehdi relished his new post and adjusted to it with great enthusiasm. Having espoused the values of the Islamic revolution wholeheartedly, he grew more devout. Ali, his roommate, followed Mehdi’s transition with surprise, noting to himself with astonishment how his friend, a formerly avid student who couldn’t help focusing every spare second on his studies, turned into a leading social activist among the community of Iranian students on campus. Mehdi asked the university’s administrative manager for a list of all Iranian nationals among the overseas students, saying he would use it to promote the relations between the students and the university authorities, but he actually used it to form a social framework to promote his own political agenda.

  Mehdi’s reports to his handler were detailed, featuring a great deal of knowledge about the students and their political views. Most of them did support the Islamic revolution and identified with its principles. Nevertheless, Mehdi detected a small core student body that hated the revolution with all their heart. Some of them resented the fact that the revolutionaries had executed their fathers, and others belonged to families who had prospered under the former regime of the Shah and saw their wealth and power being taken away, often by force. Mehdi cataloged them by various groups and handed the referenced lists to his handler.

  One evening, Mehdi felt like a day off. He invited his friend and roommate Ali for a few ouzos at the nearby pub. As devout as he was, he did not consider ouzo haram, prohibited. As the evening progressed, and after his fourth shot, Ali told him he would be absent from their apartment the following week.

  “I didn’t know your mother was in such a bad shape.” He seemed to recall Ali telling him his mother had been ill.

  “My mother is feeling better. I’m going abroad.”

  “Abroad? Where?”

  Ali averted his eyes, lowered them, and, somewhat hesitantly, replied, “Don’t tell anyone. I am going to Israel.”

  “What? Why? What have you got to do with Israel?”

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time, but never got the chance. My real name isn’t Ali. It’s Eli, short for Eliyahu, as in Elijah. I come from a Jewish family whose members live not only in Tehran but also in Israel, so I am going to see them.”

  “How will you get there?”

  “Don’t worry about it. I am traveling via Rome, so nothing in my passport will ever disclose my having been to Israel.”

  Shocked to discover his close friend and roommate, his confidant, was a Jew, Mehdi took a bit of time to mull the news over. ‘I’ve shared quite a few secrets with this guy. But then again, he’s merely a Jew. He’s got family ties, and surely other connections too, with our Zionist enemy.’

  The following morning, Mehdi’s only thought was whether to act at once or to wait until after his dentist appointment that day. His deliberations could not be any shorter. The motherland won over. He cancelled his appointment, went straight to the bench by the white tower and made a cross on the bench with the white piece of chalk he always kept in his pocket. This was the first time he made this sign since the beginning of his career as an informant for Iranian intelligence.

  Two hours later, he walked into the exhibition at the white tower, where he saw Suheil, his handler, standing in front of a large window, watching the sea, his back turned away from the general public. Mehdi walked around the exhibition hall. ‘The coast is clear,’ he told himself after a while and walked over to Suheil. He watched the same view. Remembering what they had taught him, he kept his message short and to the point, as befitting an intelligence briefing.

  “I have just found out my roommate is in fact a Jew. He hid this fact from me all these years. His family is still back in Tehran. What’s worse is that he travelled to Israel earlier this morning and asked me to keep this under wraps. He told me he was going to Israel via Rome and that according to some arrangement he has with the Israeli authorities, they will not stamp his passport so as not to disclose the fact he visited there. You may find all the details in the pouch I hid.”

  The moment he was through, he was gone

  A few days later, a man turned up in Mehdi’s apartment. He told him he was a staff member of the Iranian embassy. “I’m here on behalf of our friends,” was all he said. He gathered all of Ali’s personal effects and documents and went away.

  Mehdi had not heard a word from Ali since their night out at the pub nor received any word of him. ‘I actually really do not care,’ he told himself. Indeed, he showed no sign of remorse or compunction. “Regret or bad conscience are for the weak,” he recalled what Suheila, his grandmother, had told him.

  Several months later, he heard on CNN that the leader of the Iranian Kurdish party had been assassinated in Germany along with his three bodyguards. The news bulletin further reported that three Iranian nationals
were arrested as suspects, and that an international warrant for the arrest of one Sallie Lakhian, a senior Revolutionary Guard official, had been issued. He was suspected of having directed the hit squad.

  Mehdi smiled proudly, recalling the occasion of his recruitment to the Revolutionary Guard by three seniors, one of whom was Sallie.

  Chapter Eleven

  When the Islamic revolution broke out in Iran, Kamal Mosseri was a young political science lecturer at Tehran University’s faculty of social studies. Like many of his peers, he grew a beard and kept it well-groomed with the help of bi-weekly visits to his barber. He also wore Western-style suits, which were very much in fashion among the faculty staff.

  Revolutionary Guard members who were on the lookout for replacements for the thousands of academics who had been executed, as well as for those who had managed to flee the terror that the Islamic regime had devolved into, soon traced Mosseri among the surviving staff members and ordered him to serve undercover as an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds-Force (QF) agent. With the aid of Iran’s embassy in Athens, he secured a position as a lecturer at the University of Athens, specializing in “managing international crises.”

  As part of his academic specialty, Mosseri traveled the globe extensively, fulfilling various tasks for Iranian intelligence in addition to his academic work. Nevertheless, unbeknownst to them, he was wholeheartedly against everything they believed in. On one of his visits to London, Mosseri contacted the CIA and quickly became one of their top agents in Europe, codenamed “Olympia.” He proved so important and valuable, he was assigned a personal handler, a rare and highly extraordinary occurrence.

  ***

  “Olympia is gone,” Michael Gilly, CIA station chief in Greece and a two-star general, informed the team of commanders convened round the desk at the agency’s meeting room in Greece. General Gilly, a silver-haired, tall and thin man with bright eyes, had become an intelligence operative after a long career in the US Army.

  “He told his handler,” General Gilly continued,” he was scheduled for a meeting with the security officer at Iran’s embassy on the 22nd of this month at twelve o’clock. We warned him this wasn’t looking good, but he reassured us and said the Iranians suspect nothing, and that he could, in the course of that meeting, glean important information.”

  The general continued. “Seeing as Olympia’s handler received no confirmation for the latter’s safe departure from the Iranian embassy, after the conclusion of that meeting, we put through our emergency protocol, ‘Meteor,’ into practice. It is designed especially for such cases. Per this procedure, we’ve had a senior Athens police officer contact the Iranian embassy and ask about Olympia. Well, they did confirm he was there, but claimed his meeting at the embassy lasted an hour and a half and that he left the building immediately after that.

  “The Greeks checked the surveillance camera surrounding the Iranian embassy. The footage shows Olympia entering the embassy building five minutes to twelve, but they feature no record of him leaving.

  “At our request, the Greeks checked the cameras again. It turned out there was a fuse short on the street where the embassy is located. It lasted half an hour, during which the cameras were out of commission. Nevertheless, the Greeks did not leave it at that and asked the Iranians for their own security footage, which runs on in-house embassy generators.

  “The Iranians raised an eyebrow at the Greek security services interest in an Iranian national. They also told the Greeks their generators failed due to the same electric grid malfunction.

  “The gist of it is that things don’t look too good. The Greek security services, together with the Greek police, are trying to locate the whereabouts of this person. I assigned Colonel Norton to widen the inquiry into the matter of Olympia. Unless we receive some new information within forty-eight hours, we’ll raise this issue to level four. I reported the case to HQ in Paris, and they asked us to keep them in the loop.”

  ***

  The team of commanders reconvened on the 28th for another meeting. This time, it was attended by the CIA head of operations in Europe.

  “The Greek security services,” reported General Gilly, “found no trace of Olympia. They said, ‘It’s as if Mt. Olympus has swallowed him.’ I always knew they were still living in a world of myths and legends…

  “The way things stand,” the general continued, “we’ve decided to raise this matter to level four. Colonel Norton will now deliver you his report on the findings of the investigation. I would like to make an initial note and underscore that things don’t look promising at all.”

  “As General Gilly just told you,” Colonel Norton began his report, “we’ve raised this issue to level four priority and clearance, only one level below that of a national crisis requiring the involvement of the president. We have also approached friendly organizations, so here are the relevant facts we’ve managed to uncover:

  “One, on the afternoon of the 21st, an Iran Air aircraft landed at Athens airport. This was an unscheduled landing. Three Iranian nationals carrying diplomatic passports were onboard. They were later identified as senior Revolutionary Guard intelligence operatives.

  “Two, Mohammad Fakhlazi, deputy head of Iran’s forensic pathology institute, who had attended an international conference in Vienna, suddenly left the conference, but the Austrian security service found no record of his departure from the country. It later turned out that on the 22nd, he took a night flight from Athens to Tehran on board an Iran Air jet.

  “Three, Dr. Ali Corazon, a senior surgeon at the Khamenei hospital, cut short a family vacation. He just happened to be vacationing in Athens with his family. He too boarded that Iran Air flight with the three diplomats back to Iran. An inquiry with Hilton Athens revealed he checked out in a hurry, leaving two days prior to his planned departure, although the two rooms he was staying in were reserved for two days longer.

  “Four, Alaa Morati, the Iranian embassy’s chief security officer, has not been seen since the 22nd. He seems to be hiding in the embassy.

  “Five. We received the footage of the persons entering and leaving the Iranian embassy building on the day of the 22nd from the Greeks, except for the comings and goings between the afternoon and between seven pm and eight pm. The Greeks told us the power was out again. We received permission from the Greek prime minister to look into what was causing all those power outages in Athens. Looks like someone messed with the switch.”

  “Six. On the midnight of the 22nd, the surveillance cameras picked up a black van with diplomatic license plates leaving the embassy’s own parking lot due south.

  “Seven. Very early in the morning of the 23rd, the Iranian tanker Choral Sea left the port of Piraeus, although it had unloaded only about one third of its cargo.”

  “Thank you, Norton,” said General Gilly.” As I told you, things don’t look too good. We’re continuing with our investigation.”

  ***

  Two weeks went by, and then the Turkish police released the following email:

  “A small, unidentified piece of a human body was recovered off the coast of Turkey. Please find the body’s DNA profile attached. We kindly appreciate any assistance in identifying the body and letting us know immediately.”

  ***

  “Olympia has been found,” Two-Star General Michael Gilly informed his colleagues at the CIA.

  ***

  On the morning of the 22nd, Mehdi was awakened by the sound of strong thumping on his door. ‘This is enough to wake a polar bear in the middle of his winter sleep,’ he couldn’t help thinking as he went over to open the door. Much to his surprise, he saw his handler Suheil Murhabi on the threshold.

  “Get dressed and have some coffee,” Murhabi, told him. “We have a few errands to run. This morning, at ten, your will have a visitor, Rubazi, your successor. You need to pass on to him all your material so that he may take over from
you. At four o’clock, they will come to take you to the airport. You will catch a flight to Athens, where you will take a taxi to the embassy. Use any taxi that may come along. Under no terms are you to take a taxi from the permanent taxi station at the airport. Tonight, at eleven, you will board an Iran Air flight from Athens to Tehran. Along with your plane tickets, I am also giving you a new passport instead of the one that got stolen from you. Now, hand over your ‘stolen’ passport. Now, please.”

  Mehdi gave Suheil his passport and they shook hands, and he then disappeared from Mehdi’s life completely. A few months later, Mehdi found out that some mysterious assassin had gunned Suheil down at the entrance to the White Tower on Thessaloniki’s main boardwalk.

  When Mehdi opened the envelope Suheil had given him, he found flight tickets and a passport with a recent photo of his, bearing the name Saddeq Kandasi. Saddeq immediately took to his new name. It reminded him of Mohammad Mosaddeq, who had served as the Shah’s prime minister between 1951 and 1953, long before Khomeini’s Islamic revolution. He recalled being taught that the Shah had had the CIA and MI6 oust Mosaddeq, his own popular prime minister, who had been duly elected by Iran’s parliament, over the latter’s policy of nationalizing Iran’s oil industry and his intentions to launch a semi-socialist agrarian reform.

  After spending many hours with Rubazi, his replacement as the operative at the University of Thessaloniki, Mehdi bid farewell to his apartment, fully aware he was never to return. He went to the airport to catch his flight to Athens. When he landed in Athens, he took a random taxi as he had been told. “To the Iranian embassy, please,” he told the driver.

  The arrival of Saddeq Kandasi was indeed expected. On his arrival at the embassy in Athens, a hidden button was pushed as he passed through the checkpoint, and a tall, broad-shouldered man came up to greet him and lead him into a luxurious waiting room on the first floor, where Saddeq found a pot of sweet tea, a pile of sandwiches and fresh Greek salad. After he had rested from his journey and helped himself to the tea and the food, a severe looking man walked in and motioned him to follow. This man led Saddeq through a long corridor into an elevator where the panel only had one button. As the man pressed it, the door shut, and the elevator descended all the way to the embassy’s basement, at least three stories, by Saddeq’s impression. Stepping out of the elevator, they confronted a high steel door. His escort pushed a six-digit code. The door turned and shut immediately upon Saddeq’s entry, leaving the man who had led him there outside.