The Chameleon Conspiracy dg-3

by Haggai Harmon

  My heart sank. My picture? When had it been taken? When I’d met with Lotfi last week, in Vienna, or even in Pakistan? The answer to that could help me build a new legend if I were caught. But who did I ask?

  “God. Well, it looks like I’ll be stuck here for a while.”

  “Unfortunately,” said Sammy.

  I thought for a moment. “Can you get me one of the wanted posters?

  “I’ll try.”

  “Does anyone know I’m safe here?” I asked. I didn’t know how much Sammy knew about my identity.

  “We reported that you’re OK. Everyone at home knows we’ll take good care of you. Do you need anything else?”

  “Just reading material in English and fresh food. Everything else I already have. Thanks for everything.”

  “It’s nothing,” said Sammy. As he was about to climb the stairs, he turned around and asked, “Did you really want to go to Mashhad in search of your roots?”

  I sensed that the question was loaded. I knew even less about Sammy than he knew about me, so I had to tread carefully.

  “Yes,” I said nonchalantly. “I was also planning to stop in Neyshabur, you know, to see the birthplace of Hakim Omar Khayyam. I think I have a relative there.”

  “What an interesting coincidence,” he said, with an edge I didn’t expect. “Neyshabur is also the ultrasecret future birthplace of the Iranian nuclear bomb.”

  “Really?” I said, striving to keep my voice level. I didn’t know where the conversation was going.

  “Yes,” he continued. “They are secretly building a low-level enrichment plant with a capacity to supply enough uranium to build three to five nuclear bombs a year.”

  “I read someplace that their plant is in Nat?anz.”

  “Nat?anz is for the UN inspectors to visit. Neyshabur is the real plant. It is built five hundred feet deep into the ground. It’s called Shahid Moradian, after some guy who died in the war.”

  “Interesting,” I said, trying to sound uninterested.

  “The Neyshabur plant was built by Russians. Very recently, Bulgarian transport planes brought tens of thousands of centrifuges from Belarus and Ukraine. Soon Ukrainian engineers will install them. Some of their families are already there.”

  “Wow. I know so little about that stuff, since I write fiction,” I said blandly. “I’m useless on science.”

  He gave me that look again. “So the only reason VEVAK is looking for you is because you met some people in connection with a book you are writing?”

  I shrugged. “I guess so. But who knows what goes through their heads?”

  “Maybe VEVAK suspects you had plans to go to Neyshabur for more than just tourism or family business.”

  “They would be wrong. I was going to visit Khayyam’s tomb. Look at some art.”

  “You couldn’t get near the plant even if you wanted to,” said Sammy matter-of-factly. “Neyshabur plant is protected by the special Revolutionary Guards Corps elite Ansar al-Mahdi unit.”

  “I had no intention whatsoever to go near any strategic installation I didn’t even know existed until you told me,” I said firmly. What I didn’t say though, was that I had wanted to become friendly with the Ukrainian families. Spouses always talk, regardless of their gender. Promising contacts could be developed by people with money and an agenda with people who come from a poor country like Ukraine and who have no particular allegiance to Iran.

  Sammy sighed, realizing that there was no confession forthcoming. “Be well,” he said curtly.

  Obviously he didn’t believe a word I said. On the other hand, I believed every word he said. The news about the Iranian Plan B, created in case the known locations were bombed, had been slowly trickling out. Now, Sammy’s words supported it. I had no way of knowing the weight of Sammy’s account, nor could I relay the intel home. Maybe Sammy had already done that. Or had he? Had the solitude of the stinking basement made me paranoid? Or maybe my healthy instincts had finally kicked in. Was I really hiding from VEVAK? Did I have proof, other than Sammy’s words? How could I be sure and believe him? Something about our recent conversation had jarred me. It had sounded like an interrogation.

  Was my escape and hiding a contingency well planned by the CIA in case of an emergency, or rather a well-orchestrated ploy by the Iranian secret services to extricate information from me, using a Kurdish contact to pose as my guardian angel? Perhaps the real Sammy was caught and he’d talked, and the person I was seeing now was an agent of the Iranian services. I quickly made a mental roster of my conversations with Sammy. Had I told him anything revealing? Had I disclosed my true identity? I was sure I hadn’t. I decided not to use Sammy’s messenger services to relay the messages that were burning in my head. The risk was too high.

  I was torn from the inside. The hint Hasan Lotfi had given me left me with no doubt. There was a major terrorist attack on the United States that Hasan, as chief of intelligence of the Revolutionary Guards, was planning, or at least knew about, and now he was using this information as a bargaining chip. Could I trust Sammy to convey the message? What if he was an Iranian agent, and the messages were to be stopped, or worse, altered? What if my assessment of Hasan was accurate, and now his arrest would frustrate a major intelligence achievement, too big to even think of? I had to find a way to send the message. I even toyed with the idea of letting the Iranians intercept my message. Fearing detection of their plan, or even being ambushed perpetrating it, they might abort the mission. The doubts were tearing me from the inside. I was also worried about Erikka and hoped she made a safe departure.

  Days went by, and I got used to my daily routine. Wake up at dawn, eat a small breakfast, boil hot water and wash up with makeshift towels I was collecting from the factory’s floor, and throughout the day read books Sammy brought me. I tried to exercise-pushups and crunches. At night I ventured outside to the yard to breathe fresh air. I grew a beard out of boredom. I hooked up a loose wire I found on the factory floor to the radio to enhance reception. That helped me tune in to an English-language radio broadcast from the Gulf States. But the news edition was short and general, except for Gulf-area local news. Still, if a major terrorist attack had hit the U.S., they surely would have reported it in their newscasts. So I knew for now that nothing major had unfolded yet.

  But that didn’t help ease my anxiety about the situation. In fact, it heightened it. It made me feel useless sitting there twiddling my thumbs in my little hole-in-the-ground hideout while the bad guys were probably putting their plot into action. I needed to get the hell out of there, but I was effectively trapped for now.

  It was also vital to hear the Tehran local news, and that I got only twice a week from Sammy, who brought me copies of the Tehran Times in English. I combed each copy to see if there was a mention of the manhunt for me. But I found nothing. I marked the passing days on the wall with a pencil. Forty-eight days had passed. Sammy never gave me more details on the manhunt and never got me copies of the wanted posters. That didn’t help increase my level of trust in him. I said nothing, though; I was completely at his mercy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I stirred awake. I glanced at my watch, but it was too dark to see the time. I turned on the light. It was three thirty a.m. “Shit,” I muttered, and turned off the light. Then I heard the same slow screeching metal noise with another muffled sound that woke me up.

  The gate? I raised my head from my stinking, lumpy pillow. The noise was too distinct to ignore. I quietly left my bed, climbed the steps to the factory floor, and peeked through the window. It was a crisp-cold and bright night. Other than the occasional noise of a passing car, I heard nothing. The area of the factory yard leading to the metal exit gate was empty. The gate was closed. Solitude was driving me crazy, I told myself. I was imagining things. I crawled back into my bed, which was still warm. I fell asleep.

  But it didn’t last long. I woke up again, unable to ignore a different sound coming from the outside. I decided not to venture to the factory f
loor again. I might have been going crazy in isolation, but the sounds I was hearing were definitely not a figment of my imagination. They were muffled, but very real. Maybe it wasn’t the gate. I couldn’t tell whether the sounds were coming from the yard, the factory main floor, or the neighboring houses. As always, I had to hope for the best, but prepare for the worse. I held on to my gun. Other than keeping quiet, like a mouse in danger, there was nothing I could do. I heard steps right above me. They were too obvious to ignore. I wasn’t imagining things. Somebody was walking on the factory floor.

  I clenched the gun, tiptoed to the kitchen to grab the sharpest knife I had, and hid behind the stairs. I tried to identify the steps. Was it one person, or more? I held my breath. I heard “my” name called.

  “Mr. Ian, where are you?”

  I didn’t answer. It was definitely not Sammy. I never had middle-of-the-night visits from Sammy. Was there an emergency that brought about the sudden visit? This person knew I was somewhere around here and knew my name. Should I venture out? I just sat there with the wheels of my mind racing trying to figure out what to do next. I decided to wait. Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.

  Padas?’s men knew exactly where I was hiding. There was no need to call out my name. One of them could go directly to the trapdoor and walk down the wooden stairs. I felt the adrenaline rush. This visit was not friendly. The trapdoor was the only way out of my underground shit hole, and venturing out could be devastating. I unplugged the electric power cable feeding the basement and just sat there looking up at the ceiling as if my eyes could see anything other than complete darkness. I measured the location and sound of the steps. They were probably made by one person. I didn’t hear talk. Ten minutes later the noises stopped, and a minute later I heard the gate screeching. This person left, or maybe wanted me to think he left. I stayed put, and fell asleep sitting on the floor with my head leaning against the wall.

  This time I woke up from the cold. The heat wasn’t working-my fault, having unplugged the power-and the temperature was near freezing. I hooked up the power again and the basement slowly warmed up. I still didn’t feel like venturing out to peep from the factory floor’s window. I vowed to stay in the basement the entire next day. Only during the following night did I quietly climb out to the factory floor. I needed fresh air, even if that air was the stale smell of an abandoned factory. To me it smelled like a field of roses. Under the entry door I saw a handwritten note. Mr. Ian, I was come to meet you, but you not here. I must to speak to you very important. I come again soon. Jamal

  I put the note back exactly the way I’d found it. Who the hell was Jamal? Obviously he knew I was around, he knew my name, but not my exact hiding place. His visit was out of the ordinary. Sammy came only at agreed-upon times, and never in the predawn hours. Was it a trap or a genuine attempt to communicate with me? The reasons the visitor didn’t know exactly where I was could be diverse, from simple forgetfulness to sloppy instructions from his supervisors.

  This guy is definitely strumming on my nerves.

  I didn’t want to think of the possibility that Sammy had been captured and his men had come to warn me, with only a general knowledge where I was hiding. I decided to wait until Sammy’s next scheduled visit on the following day. I slipped back to my hideout.

  The next day, Sammy didn’t show up. I sat tensely, waiting. It was already two p.m., and he had been expected to show up at twelve thirty. This time I wasn’t the wife in the jokes waiting for her husband to return from the bar with a fairy tale to tell. I was really worried. Sammy had never missed any of our meetings. I had enough food for another two days, so that wasn’t the immediate problem. But what if Sammy had been caught by the security police? What if he’d talked? As much as inaction pained me, I decided to wait another day. To be on the safe side I rationed my food consumption and ate only one can of tuna, one cucumber, and six crackers.

  Another day passed. Two more days passed. Sammy hadn’t shown up. I was running out of food, and I didn’t know what to think. Did his absence show he was an Iranian agent after all? Or maybe on the contrary, it showed he couldn’t come because of these security services? Anything could have been true. My food supply would last only one more day.

  I had one more option. Resignedly, I took out the white cloth and placed it on the machine facing the eastern window of the factory, my distress sign for the neighbor I had never seen.

  But that didn’t work either-there was no sign of the neighbor after twenty-four hours. The hollowness of hunger and fear had begun to overtake me. Pessimism was a luxury I couldn’t allow myself. I had to leave that place. I had enough Iranian currency to buy food. My overgrown hair and beard would make it difficult for anyone to identify me. For one single second I also entertained the hope that the VEVAK had forgotten about me, but I wasn’t that naive. I decided not to use the front metal gate, and went straight to the small door in the wall leading to the neighbor’s house. I waited until five thirty p.m. It was already dark.

  I tried the door, but found it locked. Damn it. I looked up at the ten feet of wall, took a deep breath, and climbed. It had been years since boot camp or training, but the boredom of solitary confinement had driven me to exercise. I landed on my feet on the other side of the wall. I looked around. I was in the yard of a three-story 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 month
s, 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.