The Chameleon Conspiracy

by Haggai Carmon

  I climbed into the back of the truck. I sat on a pile of old blankets padded with sheep’s wool, wrapped myself with one, and offered a broad smile to my new travel companions. They nodded and said something I couldn’t understand. So I just nodded back. The engine roared and the truck left the parking lot.

  I was troubled by not being able to communicate in any language with the driver or my travel companions. That could be hazardous in case of emergency, when reaction to perils needed to be immediate.

  I had to try my best. I blurted out, “Salaam Aleikum”—hello, or peace on you.

  “Aleikum Salaam,” they returned the greeting, without the least look of surprise on their faces. “Maen kaemi farsi baelaedaem”—I speak a little Persian. “Haletun chetoreh?”—How are you? They burst into laughter; I guess my accent wasn’t perfect, or maybe not even close. I thanked Erikka in my heart for teaching me these few sentences. Where was she now?

  “Aez ashnai tun khosh baek taem”—Nice to meet you! “Saelam ba ba! maenaem, adriyan.”

  “To bozorgi.” I didn’t know what he meant until he used his hands to gesture: you’re big. His friends burst out laughing. I grinned.

  From the position of the rising sun I realized that the truck was going northwest. We left the madness of the city behind and soon found ourselves moving along a busy highway. About an hour’s drive out of Tehran, we started to gain steadily in elevation into the mountains. I put my head on a blanket, covered myself with another torn blanket, and thought of my children. It was times like this that I missed them the most. They were used to months going by without word, but still I wondered if they worried.

  I must have fallen asleep, because the next time I looked outside I saw nothing but vast, empty land. What always struck me in countries like Iran was how drastically the line between city and country was drawn. One moment you could be risking your life in mad city traffic and the next be in calm country surroundings with no lights, no pollution, but a timeless scenery all around.

  Apart from a few stops for fueling, the ride was monotonous and without incident. At about eight p.m. we pulled off to sleep for the night. I couldn’t sleep just yet. I’d had my share during the day, so I decided to take a short walk in the moonlight to ease my tension. The hillsides were dotted with trees, and the hills sloped gently down into canyons. It was breathtaking. After my months of indoor living, I relished the outdoors.

  On first light the next morning, we continued. The landscape became higher and wilder, until the boulders grew to the size of mountains. The major roads disappeared and gave way to tracks populated by people who cared only about tomorrow’s meal, and not about terrorism or international politics. From the looks of it, they were living as their ancestors had lived for hundreds, or even thousands, of years.

  The scenery appeared to have been molded by endless earthquakes, with enormous boulders and uneven cliffs coming right to the edge of the road. Occasionally we would catch a quick glimpse of a mud-brick village. I saw several waterways carved in the rocks flowing down the slopes to the village for drinking and irrigating.

  An hour later, I felt the truck shudder. A car had rear-ended us. I peered over the side of the truck to see if we’d suffered any damage. Nothing serious. The men near me called to our driver, evidently telling him there was no need to stop. He continued driving, ignoring the impact and leaving the colliding car behind us.

  Our next stop was Mākū, an Azeri town along the road close to the Turkish border. It didn’t appear to consist of much. The landscape, though, was amazing. Volcanic cliffs rose around the town, giving it an aura of mystery. The small mud shacks ascending the cliff looked fascinating. Our driver had stopped for food. Since the truck couldn’t be locked and all of our meager belongings were in the truck bed, someone had to stay behind when the others took off. It was clear I was to be the one, lest I attract attention.

  I lay back on the truck bed, letting my eyes range over the signs. sina bairamzadeh internet café. Internet! I was considering running over and sending a message, but I changed my mind when I saw a police squad car parked right across the street. I hadn’t come this close to the border to be apprehended. Disappointed, I sat on the dingy blankets until our driver returned with a big plate of pilaf rice with lamb chops and warm naan, the local pita bread.

  “Maem nunaem,” I said. Thank you.

  “Khahesh mikonaem.” You’re welcome.

  We headed out of town and kept on until after dark before camping for the night in an off-road valley. My mind was still on that faraway Internet café. What news was waiting for me in my e-mail account?

  The new day began with a bright blue sky. Powerful winds made billowy clouds fly around the surrounding peaks and slide down the mountainsides. As we were still heading northwest towards Turkey, the mountain range that we were crossing seemed to be a slender backbone rising from the flat terrain; its peaks were still covered with snow. I couldn’t tell if we were a few hours or a few days away, and my efforts to communicate with our driver beyond basic greetings were to no avail.

  The villages in this region made more use of lumber in their buildings, and the terraced villages were abundantly green, making good use of the snowmelt I saw streaming down from the mountains into rivers and streams. I’m always a little disoriented for a short period in a foreign country with a different climate and people.

  Toward noon, the air became warmer once again, although the elevation was high. On the left, I saw a tartan green stretch of rice paddies, in terraces up toward the rugged slope of the mountains.

  We stopped, and everyone on the truck headed to the nearby stream for the first bath in days. It was bracingly cold, but we were all grateful to wash off the dust and filth of the road. I wondered how I looked to the world. It had been days since I’d seen a mirror. Was the grime helping me blend in?

  Three men on horses approached us. I stiffened, sensing trouble. Instinctively I looked for my gun, but it was buried in the pile of clothes I’d left on the water’s edge just a few feet away. But our driver spoke with them in a friendly enough manner, and pointed at me. He signaled me to come closer. I put my clothes on and walked shivering from the cold toward them. Our driver waved his hand toward me and then signaled at the horse riders. “Turkey, Turkey,” he said nodding his head, signaling me to join them. I retrieved my daypack and shrugged it on. I heard car engine noises. Two military Jeeps were approaching us, signaling with their lights to stay put. I didn’t have to look twice to realize that this time it was real trouble, and that I was their target. How had they found me here? I needed to move quickly.

  One of the horse men slipped his foot briefly out of one stirrup so I could use it, gave me his hand, and pulled me up to sit on the blanket behind him. My companions during the past three days waved at me.

  “Ba aman-I-Khuda”—May God protect you—they said with their hands over their hearts. “Baerat doa mikonaem”—I’ll pray for you—said the eldest man.

  I was so tense that I forgot the farewell words I’d toiled so hard to remember. I was too busy thinking how long it’d take before the Jeeps would catch up with us. My guide was cool and undeterred. He quickly steered his horse toward the dense woods up the hill on a narrow pathway. The Jeeps stopped, but not before we heard shots and angry yelling in Farsi.

  We galloped away through the woods, the thicket scratching my face and arms. I held the rider tightly. An eternity later, just when I thought that every muscle in my body, even ones I didn’t know existed, would never loosen again, we arrived at a simple mud-brick hut. We got off the horses and entered the hut. I felt I was dragging myself along every step. It was clean, with no running water or electricity. There were no beds in the hut, just old blankets on the floor. My hosts gave me pita bread with goat yogurt. No words were spoken, but warm hospitality was abundant.

  In the early morning, I shuddered awake, cognizant of light streaming into the hut. There was a smell of burning wood.

  One of the men
was making coffee on a small fire in the middle of the room. He offered me a small, ornamented, bronze-colored cup with thick, bittersweet coffee. It was no time to be picky. I held the cup in my hands to warm them up and emptied it in one gulp. Slowly, tentatively, I walked outside. Two of the men followed me and when they saw me looking around, they pointed at the huge mountain range ahead of us and said, “Ararat!”

  We were in a landscape of jagged stone high up above the timberline. Outside our hut I saw about a hundred tribesmen camping on the grounds.

  “Turkey,” said my host, pointing toward the ground. “Turkey.” That explained why he didn’t seem to be worried that the Iranian military Jeeps would continue their man-hunt. Although there’d been no checkpoint and no change in the terrain for the past few days, we were in a different country.

  I’m out of Iran! I’m in Turkey! I wanted to yell. Thank god. A pickup truck came through a dirt road to the hut, and my hosts signaled me to enter the truck’s cabin. I waved good-bye to them. We had barely exchanged a word, and I had no idea who they were. But they had saved my life, part of a team of anonymous lifesavers.

  The truck was driven by a small-framed, chain-smoking man in his late fifties. After a six-hour drive off-road we finally hit a paved road. The first sights that struck me with the reality of having finally left Iran were signs on a roadside gas station and restaurant in the Latin alphabet: kredi, with the capital I dotted. In his quest to modernize Turkey, Kemal Atatürk had made all Turks convert from the ornate Arabic script to the far more efficient Latin in six intense months in the 1920s.

  An hour later, the truck stopped in the center of a small town. There was a figure in the distance, with uniformed men on either side of him. I rubbed my eyes. Could it be? At last, a familiar face. Casey Bauer. I heaved a sigh of relief.

  The truck came to a stop. “Khuda hafez.” Good-bye. I used my Farsi cautiously. I gave the driver my gun. I wouldn’t need it in Turkey—keeping it could even get me into trouble. My driver smiled in gratitude and drove off, waving his hand through the open window.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Casey’s face split into a grin. “Good to have you in one piece,” he said, opening his arms for a hug.

  I nodded. “Thanks, I’m so glad to be back. Is Erikka OK?”

  “She’s fine. We managed to spirit her out through the Tehran airport. She’s back in Vienna.” He looked at me, at the traces of truck riding and Jeep-escaping, of horse back riding and mud huts on my face and clothes. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” he said, not unkindly.

  A hot shower and a shave in a modest local hotel and a hearty meal were all I needed.

  We drove toward Istanbul. Casey gave me a copy of a Turkish newspaper in English. The headline read,

  A SENIOR IRANIAN REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS OFFICIAL DISAPPEARED.

  TEHRAN SUSPECTS DEFECTION.

  “Is it today’s paper? I asked.

  “No, it dates back to about two weeks after your escape from your hotel.”

  I devoured the story.

  Iranian authorities are deeply concerned at the recent disappearance of Hasan Lotfi, a key security official of the Revolutionary Guards. Intelligence sources indicate that Lotfi, who was privy to Iran’s most closely guarded secrets, was under surveillance by his own subordinates after he held unauthorized meetings with people whom Iran considered enemies of the revolution, and was suspected of disloyalty. A spokesman for the Iranian Ministry of Information said only that the matter is under investigation.

  I put down the newspaper. “I knew it!” I said vehemently. “I knew it! Since I couldn’t control the wind, I adjusted my sails. My guardian angel in Tehran told me that Lotfi had disappeared, but I couldn’t ask for details. Did you get my ATM message about him?”

  Casey smiled. “Yes, that’s why I brought you this newspaper. We made immediate contact with him through Benny’s Kurdish friends, but before we could agree on terms, Javad Sadegh Kharazi, who worked as an aide to President Ahmadinejad’s close consultants in chambers, was arrested. Lotfi, who’d had previous contacts with Javad Sadegh Kharazi, was afraid he’d be arrested as well. So he put his faith in our goodwill without an agreement, and we got him across the border into Iraq.”

  “I’ll be damned,” I said.

  “Do you know why he made the first contact with you?”

  “No. When I first met him I felt he was sizing me up, or even suspecting me—natural, given his position. But then, as we talked more, despite all the taarof double-talk, I thought he might have been trying to tell me something.”

  We both knew what taarof was—an Iranian custom of engaging in flattery and false humility to make the other person feel good, but still preserving the original agenda, which could be selling you something, or even killing you. A way of suffocating you with compliments— sweet talk and a show of false humility to cloud your judgment.

  “What message?” asked Casey, though I suspected he already knew the answer to that question.

  “I thought all the talk of speaking in Canada was really about wanting help getting out of Iran. That he was dangling huge bait.”

  Casey smiled again. I had no doubt he was enjoying this. “And the bait was…?”

  “Information on a major terrorist attack on the United States, in addition to all the top-secret stuff he knew.”

  “But why did he choose you?” Casey repeated with a half smile, ignoring what I’d just said. Clearly Casey was toying with me.

  “Because I was a foreigner who was about to leave Iran and could carry a message?”

  “The only explanation is that he knew who you were,” said Casey evenly.

  “How? You mean he knew and still didn’t have me arrested? I know he was a classmate of Erikka’s and probably didn’t want to harm her. But leaving me intact, even though he knew who I was, just for old time’s sake, is a bit much, don’t you think?”

  Casey’s tone became serious. “Remember Parviz Morad, the Iranian defector that Benny brought over?”

  “What about him? Has he been reevaluated? He was too evasive in answering your questions regarding the identities of Atashbon members.”

  “Of course neither we nor the Mossad trusted him. But the final verdict came from a completely different source, BND. The German Federal Intelligence Ser vice suspected that the uncle, who posed as a dissident to Iran’s regime, was in fact working for it. BND wiretapped his telephone and intercepted the call Parviz Morad placed from the pay phone at the men’s room. As it turns out, Parviz Morad knew that his uncle was a turncoat and tried to use the uncle to cut a deal with the regime in Tehran. He’d offer his services as a double agent, reporting on his contacts with the Mossad and CIA in return for a hefty amount of money.”

  “Yes, he managed to call his uncle, whom he supposedly thought was an Iranian dissident in Germany,” I said.

  “The uncle turned out to be an agent of the Revolutionary Guards in Europe.” He let it sink in for a moment.

  “So he double-crossed us?”

  “At least he tried. He’s in an Israeli prison now.”

  “And he was reporting to Hasan Lotfi!” I said.

  “Right. The uncle, Morteza Mughnia, installed a watch on the safe apartment you were training in, which probably included taking your photo as a souvenir for his album. Two plus two is one suspect.”

  “The bastard,” I said in slight appreciation. “Hasan was playing a mind game with me. I was his insurance policy, just as much he was mine. Either I helped him out of Iran, or he’d turn me in for the brownie points.”

  “He was damn lucky that the U.S. forces on the Iran-Iraq border didn’t shoot him. His American School English came in handy there. Dan, you had good sense and good luck.”

  “Why did he defect?”

  “I suspect he was already working for a foreign power. He wanted to move out of Iran, but his handlers obviously wanted him to stay put. We estimated that he was an extremely valuable asset. But lately he’d been suspectin
g that his foreign contacts were compromised and he could be arrested soon. The arrest of Javad Sadegh Kharazi left him with no choice or time. He had to take off, or stay behind and get some of the treatment his subordinates at the Revolutionary Guards and their VEVAK colleagues give those who betray them.”

  “Does he know who he was actually working for?”

  “He says NATO, but we checked. No NATO connection.” “Benny?”

  “A possibility we can’t rule out. I’m sure Hasan would never believe it in a million years if we told him he was probably working for the Israelis. So we haven’t discussed it with him yet.”

  “Was Javad Sadegh Kharazi also working for the Israelis?” “No.” That was a very firm no, and it made me understand that even if I asked, Casey wouldn’t tell me who Kharazi actually did work for. I had my own guess.

  “What about the potential terrorist attack on the United States? Did he give you details?”

  “Yes. As always, the Iranians planned this attack through a proxy organization to distance themselves from any suspicion.”

  “Who’s the proxy this time?” I asked.

  “A new name they invented, the Messengers of the Faith. We have arrested twenty-one suspects who planned to bomb six major railway and subway stations throughout the United States, all on one day.”

  “Any connection to Atashbon?”

  “The members of the Messengers of the Faith don’t know the specifics of Atashbon, although they confessed to having contacts with individuals in the U.S. whom the FBI is investigating as possible Atashbon members. We suspect that identifying the targets and supplying the logistics was made by Atashbon members who were instructed by Tehran to ‘wake up’ from their dormant status.”

  “What did Lotfi have to say about that? Wasn’t this the bait he was dangling?”

  “So far he has confirmed the basics that led us to the Messengers of the Faith. But we’ve got a long way to go with Lotfi. He isn’t an easy client. His double-talk is driving our interrogators crazy. Even when it’s information that assures his ticket to freedom and safety, you can never get a straight answer from him. We must clear a few other things first. Atashbon waited twenty years; we can wait a few more days, or even weeks.” I wasn’t comfortable with the latter part of that answer, but said nothing.