The Chameleon Conspiracy

by Haggai Carmon

  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 months, 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.

  A cab was idling nearby, and I wearily hailed it, getting in it. As the cab pulled away, I considered my next move. The language barrier between me and the cop could serve my purpose. I slowly started looking in my pocket for a piece of paper and a pen, hoping to “accidentally” dig it up with enough money to cloud the cop’s judgment, but still protecting my ass if he proved to be the one of the few incorruptible Iranian cops and accused me of trying to bribe him. When I saw his widening eyes as he looked at the wad of Iranian currency I’d “unintentionally” pulled out of my poc
ket, I knew I’d be OK.

  “My wife is asleep at the hotel,” I said pointing at my finger where a wedding band should be, and then I made the universal sleeping gesture, resting my head on my hands to one side. Maybe he’d agree to take the money and forget about the whole thing. I slipped him the money wad. He just took it and held it in his hand. He told the cabdriver to stop. I jumped out. The cop didn’t move. The cab drove away. Let the cop pay the $2 taxi fare. I’d left him with more than $25. I crossed the street and entered into another road against traffic, in case the cop changed his mind. But there was no sign of him. I found a small hotel two blocks away. I walked inside.

  “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” I asked, hoping the man at the reception desk didn’t speak German. He shook his head.

  “Francais?” No.

  “English?”

  He shook his head again. Good. That solved a lot of problems. I signaled with my hands that I needed a room. I paid in advance in cash for a week. He was so happy to see my cash that he didn’t ask for any papers. And even if he had, I could always have pretended I didn’t understand. I couldn’t show him my Canadian passport. My name was likely to be all over the place courtesy of VEVAK—if indeed anyone was looking for me.

  I went up to the modest and so-so-clean room to freshen up. Moments later I went out to the street, entered the first restaurant I saw and ate my first cooked meal in months. I entered an adjacent store and bought a few clothes and toiletries. After a hot shower and limited beard and hair trimming, I was ready to plan my next move.

  I needed to communicate with Sammy and get the hell out of there. I took every precaution I could. I’d learned not to mock the crocodile before I finished swimming across the river.

  Early in the chilly morning, as the neighborhood slowly awoke, I went to a nearby pay phone and dialed the number I’d received from one of Padas¸’s men when I arrived. There was a busy signal followed by a recording that sounded like an announcement that the number was no longer valid. I tried two more times and got the same recording. How come when I dial a wrong number it’s never busy?

  I found a nearby bank and made a cash withdrawal through the ATM. I also punched a few additional strokes on the keypad, again frustrated by the short list of coded messages I’d been given. I returned to my hotel. Other than venturing out to eat, I stayed in my room most of the time. I patiently looked through the window to see if my ATM messages had gone through.

  It was two days later that a short and stocky mustachioed man approached me in the street, just as I was about to enter the hotel after having dinner.

  “I know how to find nice carpets made by hand in Kāshān. Very cheap.”

  At last.

  He signaled me to follow him to a waiting car. Two other men were seated inside. I recoiled for a second. Perhaps it was a trap. But reason took over. It was unlikely that the VEVAK could intercept my communications with the Agency back home. Although there was a slight change in the code words, I wasn’t alarmed. If they were VEVAK, they could have arrested me without the introductions. I entered the car.

  “Where is Sammy?” I asked.

  They didn’t answer. “No English,” said a tough-looking guy behind the wheel. I quickly assessed my options to escape. There were none. Two gorilla-size men were blocking the doors. I was in their net. I tried to figure out a good legend, fearing that the author’s cover would not hold water. Where had I been during the past six weeks? What did they know about my true identity? Had Hasan Lotfi had me arrested when I failed to deliver? I felt like a trapped animal.

  After an hour of driving in utter silence, we entered a small villa on the outskirts of town. Sammy came out of the front door and hugged me.

  “What happened?” I asked, still confused. Should I be happy or suspicious?

  “Your next-door neighbor was apprehended by VEVAK. I couldn’t come for you, not knowing how much he’d talked. You know, at the hands of VEVAK everyone talks. I figured you’d identify the danger and leave that place. I’m glad you did.”

  “What did the neighbor know?”

  “Luckily, he only knew that you were hiding at the factory, but didn’t know exactly where, because he wasn’t supposed to know. His duty was to observe the factory and alert us if there was an emergency. Did the VEVAK try to find you there?”

  I told him about the strange noises and the note I found. I had to.

  “That means he managed to send somebody to warn you,” Sammy said.

  “Or maybe he had to tell them about my hideout, and they tried to lure me out.”

  “Unlikely,” said Sammy. “If VEVAK were there, they’d come with full brute force and turn the place upside down. But what ever it was, it’s time to move. We think we can whisk you out now. Let me have all your documents; just keep your money.” He handed me a used Armenian identity card with my photo. “Use this only in an emergency—some cop may be stupid enough to accept this as genuine.” He handed me a hat that smelled bad and an ethnic-looking jacket.

  “Put them on.”

  “What are these?”

  “Qashqai clothes,” he said. “We’ll smuggle you over the mountains to Turkey with the help of our Qashqai friends. You must look like them and blend with the others.” Qashqai men wear a typical felt hat with rims considerably raised over the top. The jacket was also typical Qashqai.

  I knew from my briefings who the Qashqai were. A semi-nomadic tribe mainly located in Fārs Province in southwestern Iran, they were the second largest Turkic group in the country, after the Azerbaijanis.

  “Can I trust them to get me safely to Turkey?”

  “Of course, they’re very experienced. In the winter they move from the highlands north of Shiraz to the lowlands north of the Persian Gulf, and now they return to the highlands.”

  “I’m sure about that, but can I trust them not to turn me in?” I knew loyalties in this part of the world could quickly change.

  “They don’t know who you are, and I don’t think they care. They know you’re under our protection, and that’s all that matters.” He smiled. I wasn’t sure I could return the smile.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Sammy drove me to the parking lot next to Tarehbar Square, the wholesale fruit and vegetable market in south Tehran. He stopped next to an old truck and pointed at the driver. “He’ll take you across the border to Turkey. Be prepared for a long ride.”

  “How long?”

  “A nonstop trip from Tehran to the crossing point to Turkey would take about twenty-four hours, maybe a little longer depending on road conditions, since the snow is melting. But in this case, your entire trip across the border may take four to six days, including stops, because part of the way will be off-road on horse back.”

  I looked at the grizzled truck driver standing next to his shabby 1963 Mercedes Benz truck. Its sixteen-foot bed was covered with a canvas tarp with several patches, but new holes were in the making.

  “There’s no planned route, because if road conditions, police roadblocks, or the weather change, the driver will look for alternative routes.” Sammy chuckled. “There’s no itinerary of sites to visit or hotel reservations to worry about.”

  “Who are these people?” I asked when I saw three men climb into the truck.

  “Other passengers he’s smuggling. In fact, it serves our purpose, because you can blend with them.”

  “Blend?” I snorted. “I’m fair skinned and six foot four, and they’re dark and a foot shorter. I’ll be the obvious outsider.”

  “Not necessarily. We can’t do anything about your height, but your beard and these clothes do a good job of masking your appearance.” He pointed at a short man with a hat similar to mine. He smiled at me. “This is your driver. His name is Kashkuli Buzurg. He’ll take good care of you.” Sammy and the driver exchanged a few sentences.

  “What language does he speak?”

  “A dialect of Turkish. But like most Qashqais, he also speaks Farsi.”

  “And how do I commu
nicate with him?”

  “Let this be the least of your concerns. You’ll manage. Use your hands and body language,” Sammy answered.

  “When you get closer to the Bazargan border crossing to Turkey, police activity will increase. He’ll use dirt roads to bring you to a Qashqai camp. From there, they’ll take you on horse-back across the Zāgros Mountains in western Iran into the vicinity of Doğubayazit, Turkey.”

  “The Iranian police and military don’t supervise that border area?” I asked.

  “They know that the nomadic Qashqais move their herds twice a year in this area, so the police and army aren’t expected to immediately suspect such movement. The Qashqais summer location is about ten thousand feet above sea level. It’s still cold up there—not all the snow has melted.”

  The name “Doğubayazit” sounded familiar. Then I remembered: it was the city next to the Ararat mountain range, where the remains of Noah’s Ark were alleged to have been found. A strange thought passed through my mind. The Titanic was built by professionals, while Noah’s Ark was built by an amateur. Some people believe that a symmetrical, streamlined stone structure near there has the right dimensions and interior configuration, and symmetrically arranged traces of metal, consistent with its being the Ark. Also, anchor stones have been found near there. I always wondered, whenever I was scratching my aching skin in summer mornings spent outside the city, why Noah didn’t let the pair of mosquitoes stay behind and drown. He probably never experienced having a bloodthirsty mosquito in his bedroom at two in the morning that cannot be smashed or cast out. I looked at Sammy and felt a pang for having suspected him. I took a thick stack of U.S. hundred-dollar bills and offered it to Sammy.

  “Here, please take it. I can’t thank you enough.”

  “No,” he said firmly, pushing my hand away. “You’re very kind, but I can’t take it. Your people are helping us in many ways, and helping you is just a duty of honor for us.”

  Sammy shook my hand. “Good luck.” I hugged him. He walked to his car. Thank you very much, I wanted to say again, but he was already out of hearing range.