Haggai Harmon - The Chameleon Conspiracy

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 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.