City of Whispering Stone

by George C. Chesbro

  “We can only stay for a few minutes.”

  “Nonsense! Allah would curse our home if we did not extend the hospitality of our household to admirers of our son. Come! We will eat!”

  I took Kathy’s arm and led her up the stone steps behind the man and his wife. I could feel the tension in her muscles; she knew I was lying, and I could only hope that she’d stick with me a few more minutes.

  We entered a cavernous living room. A few moments later, as if by prearranged signal, a team of servants appeared bearing trays filled with tea, thick coffee, Iranian bread and pungent goat cheese.

  The senior Razvan had festooned the walls of his home with photographs of his son, and Nasser Razvan, Jr.’s, presence was very real. In the pictures he was wearing a uniform; it made him look different, somehow older. I was sweating under the steady gaze of the man in the photographs. Fortunately, the elder Razvan didn’t seem to mind carrying the burden of the conversation.

  “I see your son is in the army,” I said, pointing to one of the pictures.

  Razvan made a modest gesture with his hand. “Nasser is the youngest major in the Iranian army.”

  And occupied an important post in the SAVAK, although that wasn’t something the father was likely to discuss with a stranger. I complimented him on his land, and he grinned broadly. I waited while he translated the comment to his wife. Kathy was sitting as far away from me as she could get, in a corner. Her hands were clasped tightly together in her lap, and she was watching me closely.

  “My landholdings took many years to build,” Razvan said. “It was hard work, but it was also a pleasure, something that gave my life meaning. But now there is too much for just one man and his family. Large portions of my land have been broken up into parcels and given to the peasants by the Shah.”

  “That would be the ‘White Revolution’?”

  “Yes, and I am entirely for it. In fact, if I may say so, I was giving away land to my workers even before the Shah started his land-reform program.”

  It didn’t surprise me; I instinctively liked the man and his wife. I wanted to ask about Mossadegh and the years of turmoil, but I couldn’t think of a way of approaching the subject without arousing suspicion. I let the old man talk about his son, for that was obviously his favorite topic.

  After fifteen minutes I rose to my feet. Kathy with a sigh of relief, immediately stood. Razvan and his wife insisted that we stay longer, but I told him we had a plane to catch. The couple filled our hands with fruit, then escorted us to the door.

  We hurried to the car, got in. Kathy’s face was pale.

  “What was your real reason for coming here, Dr. Frederickson?” she asked tensely. “You seemed very nervous. That lovely old couple didn’t notice, but I did.”

  “I can’t talk about it, Kathy,” I said tightly. “The tour’s over.”

  I’d been right on my first run-through at the beginning with Ali Azad: the photographs in the Razvan home had been of the young man others knew as Mehdi Zahedi. I now knew beyond doubt who Mehdi Zahedi was, what he was, and thought I had a pretty good idea why Arsenjani and the Shah had gone to such great lengths to try to convince me that Zahedi/Razvan was a big, bad terrorist: they’d been trying to use me to put one of their top agents back into place. The information was a death warrant, but—with a little luck—it just might be turned into a bargaining point: my total cooperation in exchange for Garth’s safe return. And there was still the detailed report I’d sent to Phil Statler.

  I drove slowly out the driveway, then stepped hard on the accelerator and headed toward the airport. “Listen to me, Kathy,” I said quietly. “You must do exactly as I say. I find I have to cut my vacation short.”

  She turned away from me and stared out the window. We drove the rest of the way to the airport in silence. At the airport I pulled the car into a parking space and left the keys in the ignition. I hurriedly wrote out another three hundred dollars in traveler’s checks and handed them to Kathy.

  “I can’t explain,” I said, touching her hand. “You’ve been wonderful. Now you must take this money. Turn the car in, then fly back to Tehran. If anyone asks you about me, just tell them the truth: I hired you as my guide. Otherwise, don’t say a word.”

  Tears welled in her eyes, making them look like circles of wet green plastic. “Why, Dr. Frederickson? What’s this all about?”

  “I just can’t tell you any more. It’s for your own safety, believe me.”

  “It has something to do with what happened back in that house, doesn’t it?”

  “Goodbye, Kathy.” I grabbed my bag and headed into the terminal. I could feel the girl’s eyes boring into my back.

  14

  As I’d suspected, much of what Arsenjani had told me about the deadly GEM and SAVAK maneuvering in New York was true; perfectly credible facts all designed to set me up for the whoppers he’d tried to lay on me. By February, the two-pronged battle in New York and Tehran must have been reaching a peak, and it had been a question of whether the Shah was going to get the GEM leaders before they got him. Firouz Maleki had been captured, and Mehdi Zahedi had been flown back on an emergency basis to interrogate the GEM operative. There was no question that Zahedi had intended to return quickly, because he hadn’t even bothered to lay down a cover story to explain a longer absence.

  Here things got cloudy: Something had happened to prevent Zahedi’s return to the United States. Ali Azad had gotten nervous and hired John Simpson to investigate. Simpson, in an apparently miraculous wink of an investigative eye, had uncovered Orrin Bannon’s operation, discovered Zahedi’s real identity and role in the SAVAK, and tied it all together. Bannon had sent out an S.O.S., and Khordad had come running to try to protect Zahedi’s cover. Simpson had been killed, but not before he’d shot up Khordad badly enough to prevent the Iranian strongman from running back to his cover.

  Enter Phil Statler’s ex-employee to raise enough suspicions to blow Zahedi out of the New York water. When all else had failed, they’d used Garth to get me to come to Iran.

  I’d been feted, informed, lied to, flattered, the object of the game being to make me believe Zahedi was actually a GEM terrorist. I’d report this fact to Ali and eventually, as sure as the sun rises, Zahedi would pop up in New York to a rousing Confederation reception as the reincarnation of Che Guevara.

  It could mean Garth was already dead, but—even assuming I could come up with a plan—I couldn’t try to escape until I found out for sure. I’d have to confront Arsenjani and try to bargain for information about Garth and my way out of the country. But I was in no particular hurry now to see if the red in the carpet Arsenjani had rolled out for me was going to turn up blood. I’d turn myself over to the SAVAK in Shiraz. At the moment, I felt drawn to at least see Persepolis, the capstone of the culture that had brought Garth and me so much grief.

  The plane took off five minutes after I boarded. I stared out the window as the plane ascended, banked, then headed toward Shiraz. The mountains and desert below were even more barren than the stretch between Tehran and Esfahan. We were heading south into a wasteland where the temperature often hit a hundred and forty degrees and the sand was drenched with oil. Beyond Shiraz were the shark-thick Persian Gulf and the tiny Arab Trucial States. It was a desolate landscape with its own brand of beauty and enormous wealth; it was a land a lot of people felt was worth dying for.

  If I found out Garth was dead, I’d look for the first chance—however slim—to take out the current head of the SAVAK; the material and instructions I’d sent to Phil Statler would knock out the New York SAVAK operation. I’d never been fully optimistic about leaving Iran alive in the first place.

  The highway leading to Persepolis was new and wide, easy driving. I studied the land around me for some portent of what was to come, but there wasn’t any; as a result, I was totally unprepared for what I found rising into the sky at the end of the highway.

  Perhaps no Westerner could be prepared for the grandeur of Persepolis. It
was simply there, suddenly looming out of the nothingness of the desert. In Italy, and across Europe, conquerors had left ruins in their wake like great stone dung droppings. Not in Iran. The rulers of the Persian Empire, a civilization that had straddled most of the known world in its time, had elected to draw together all of its grandeur in one massive monument. What remained was in front of me.

  After parking the car at the side of the road, I walked up a long, sloping hillside to the acres of broken stone. I stopped in front of a pillar with a cuneiform inscription, then turned my attention to a large sign with an English translation that had been erected beside it.

  A great god is Ahuramazda; who created this Earth, who created yonder heaven, who created man, who created welfare for man, who made Xerxes king, one king of many, one Lord of many. I am Xerxes the Great King, King of Kings, King of the countries having every kind of people, King of this great Earth far and wide, the son of Darius the King, an Achaemenian. Says Xerxes the Great King: By the will of Ahuramazda I made this colonnade for the representatives of all countries; much else that is beautiful, I did in Persepolis, and my father did. Whatever work seems beautiful, we did it all by the will of Ahuramazda. Says Xerxes the King: May Ahuramazda protect me and my kingdom: My work and my father’s work. May Ahuramazda protect it!

  No one could accuse Xerxes of modesty; but the author of those words had known what he was talking about. I’d read the words in English, but the surrounding ruins were the only translation needed; they rang in the hot, barren desolation of the Iranian desert like a broken bell whose echo would not die. In the stone stillness, Xerxes the King whispered in my ear.

  Kathy had spoken at length about Persepolis, and I could almost imagine what the finished complex must have looked like: giant building blocks of stone hewn from Mount Rahmat, which loomed in the distance like some great, jealous god guarding its most prized possession; burnt brick, roof beams from Lebanon, floors of glazed tile and doors plated with precious metals; a vast wealth of gold, enamel, inlay work, matchless vases and statues. The treasure was gone, but fragments of the walls remained, and carved upon them were the histories of great battles, the struggle between Good and Evil. Mythical beasts and kings marched across the walls, all on a pilgrimage to this place, bearing tribute to the Shah, the mightiest of all.

  Ahead and to my right, the Grand Staircase remained almost intact, a great highway of pitted stone leading up to a scarred, time-eroded platform that once had covered an area of 135,000 square meters. There was a small forest of stone columns, but the rest of the city had been broken into a vast field of unrecognizable shards—except for one startling sculpture: the upper half of a massive winged, two-headed bull lay on its side, staring with huge, unblinking, sightless eyes back across the centuries.

  If there were other Iranian ruins comparable to Persepolis, they were buried in the earth, and except for the new highway, a man came to the dead city on roads choked with dust and lined with the poor. Persepolis alone remained as a snatch of eternal poetry in the heart of a sad nursery rhyme. Now only the desert wind whistled through the shattered stone splinters of what had once been the Hall of a Hundred Columns. The underground water system ingeniously designed to catch and hold the rain was empty, leaving Persepolis as dry as the land bed on which it slept. But men still battled for the city’s charms and the land to which they belonged.

  The city had stood for two centuries before Alexander had come to sweep it away. They’d been fighting in Iran down through the ages, and it seemed I was a part of the latest war, in which Garth and Neptune had become casualties.

  Standing in the midst of the ruins, I felt suddenly and profoundly American.

  Persepolis, like a city of whispering stone, spoke to me of many things: I was a stranger in a totally alien culture, a very long way from home, lonely, homesick and very much afraid of dying without ever again seeing any face I loved.

  I was certain that the city held other, less mystical, GEM secrets, but it was unlikely I’d ever learn them. I heard the footsteps behind me, but didn’t bother to turn.

  “It’s too bad you didn’t take my advice, dwarf. I rather like you.” Arsenjani’s voice was soft yet sharp, the tender thrust of a thin, finely honed knife. “Now I’m afraid I must ask you to come with me.”

  I turned and followed Arsenjani back to his car.

  15

  At the Shiraz police station I was marched to a small room in the rear and motioned into a straight-backed chair. A bank of bright lights shone in my eyes, just like in the movies. The only other piece of furniture in the room was a desk with a scarred, warped top. Arsenjani settled down on that and we stared at each other. He didn’t say anything; I didn’t say anything. I was in no hurry; considering the fact that I had only one card, I didn’t want to play my hand too soon.

  I hadn’t had anything to drink for a few hours, and my tongue felt twice its normal size. There were a glass and a carafe filled with water on the desk next to Arsenjani, and I assumed they were there as an incentive for me to give the right answers. That was assuming there were any questions left he didn’t already know the answers to. He seemed in less of a hurry to ask questions than I was to get a drink, so I decided to try the direct approach.

  “How about a glass of water for old times’ sake?”

  “Of course,” Arsenjani said absently. He poured me a glass from the carafe and I drank it down greedily. He refilled the glass and I drained it again; the water was cool and fresh. He offered me more, but I declined. My tongue was shrinking back to its normal size, and I didn’t need a stomach cramp. Arsenjani covered the carafe and pushed it behind him. “It seems you’ve discovered our little secret,” he continued drily. He was still smiling, but his eyes were colder than it ever gets in Iran.

  “What have you done with the girl? She doesn’t know anything.”

  “We’re aware of that. She’s already been in touch with us.”

  That came like a blow in the stomach. I thought of the young girl with the wheat-colored hair and green eyes and felt a sense of betrayal I knew I had no right to feel.

  “Naturally, we’d been looking for you,” Arsenjani continued. “Her call saved us—and her—a lot of trouble. Her behavior may shock you but, you see, Miss Martin knows Iran; when in doubt, call the police. She was simply protecting herself.”

  Given enough time to think about it, I’d probably decide she’d done the right thing. In any case, I had other things to worry about at the moment. The door opened and I glanced up at the man who entered. He wore a military uniform. The major’s insignia on the collar tabs harmonized with his commanding presence and clashed with his youth. I didn’t need an introduction.

  Mehdi Zahedi/Nasser Razvan looked even more undernourished than his pictures—a condition even the tailored uniform couldn’t quite compensate for. His skin looked like brown crayon over chalk; it was the kind of pallor a man gets from spending a lot of time in a hospital.

  Zahedi was no Atlas, but then he didn’t need to be. His eyes were a hot, wet black, and he moved with an electric air of complete confidence and authority that made him seem about a foot taller and fifty pounds heavier than he was. I was sorry I’d never heard him speak; I imagined he could really set a crowd to humming.

  “Greetings from the Confederation of Iranian Students.” I’d intended to sound ironic, but it came out merely silly.

  “Dr. Frederickson,” Zahedi said, bowing slightly. He spoke with a New Yorker’s accent, and I found that amusing; it was so amusing it made me even more homesick. “I’ve heard a lot about you, and I’ve seen you on campus many times. You’re called Mongo by your friends.”

  “A lot of your ex-friends are going to be calling you ‘spy.’”

  “You call me a spy. Ali and the others call me a revolutionary.”

  “Not anymore. Things change.”

  “Some things change, but this isn’t one of them. I’ll be returning to New York soon, but that isn’t your concern.”

/>   “My brother is my concern. There’s no more need to bullshit. Did you kill him?”

  “We’ll ask the questions,” Arsenjani snapped.

  “Look,” I said, deciding it was as good a time as any to slap my one card down hard on the table, “I’ve still got something to offer you. You’re hot to get Boy Wonder here back into place in New York. Frankly, I don’t give a shit what you Persians do to each other, so I’ll cooperate with you. I can easily give Ali such a story as you would not believe. If you release Garth, I’ll help you provide a cover for your man.”

  Arsenjani made a clucking sound. “I’m not sure we can trust you.”

  “I’ll write him a report, tell him I’m planning to stay on in Iran for a couple of months. At the rate things have been heating up, in two or three months either you’ll have crushed GEM or you’ll all be fighting in the trenches. My only price is that you let Garth go.” My next words were forced out of me as I felt tears well in my eyes and I desperately fought them back. “For Christ’s sake, at least tell me if he’s dead.”

  “We have our own excellent forgers,” Arsenjani said. “A report along the lines you propose is already being prepared.”

  “All right, you pricks,” I said heatedly. “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen if we can’t get down to some serious negotiations. Before I left I sent a detailed report to … someone. That someone will open it and release the information to my press contacts if he doesn’t hear from me soon. Those contacts will dig, and you’ll really be screwed when the newspapers get hold of this story. Old Himself, assuming he stays alive much longer, will be very unhappy with you. You’d at least better check with him before you do something stupid.”

  Arsenjani smiled thinly, then leaned over to the other side of the desk and pulled a drawer open. He drew out a large envelope and dropped it on the desk. I could feel the blood rush from my heart, and for a moment I felt faint. It was the report I’d sent to Phil Statler. My card had turned up a joker.