Haggai Harmon - The Chameleon Conspiracy

“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 pocket, 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 Kashan. 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 Fars 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.