A Spy in the Shadows (Spy Noir Series Book 1) (10 page)

“I’m interested in Joseph Shepilov.”

“So, you believe the Russians are involved?”

“The Soviets—like our British friends—have their hands in everything,” Salinger said.

“Ah, but the fact is the British are the ones who sent you here to investigate.”

“That’s right.”

Chubok laughed.  “I suppose you are right.  You would like to see my file on Shepilov also?”

The chief pushed the intercom button and spoke in brisk Iranian.  Once he received a response, he turned back.  “It seems as though I remember a tragedy involving your wife?”

When Salinger didn’t answer, the police chief waved away this question with an open hand.  “Forgive me for meddling.  I have brought up a matter not to be discussed.”

The assistant hurried in and handed him two brown folders.  The young man hesitated, suspended in a stiff stance until his boss dismissed him.  Placing the folder flatly in front, he read for a long moment before looking up.  “Have you been in touch with Goli Faqiri since arriving back in Tehran?”

“I just arrived in the city this afternoon,” Salinger said.

Chubok removed two photographs from the folder and placed them on the desk.  He stabbed one with a forefinger and dragged it over in front of Salinger.  It was a photograph taken at some distance from across a street—unmistakably Goli and Josef Shepilov.

“We are operating under the assumption that she is now working with the Soviets.”

Salinger studied the photograph.  “In what capacity?”

“They are working very hard to eliminate all German agents from our city.  A noble cause, I think, and Goli would prove to be a great deal of assistance in that matter.  It’s their methods I regret.”

Salinger remembered.  The Soviets were brutal to those people in the mountains simply because they wouldn’t pledge allegiance.  In many cases those simple people didn’t even know what they were being asked to do.  He slid the photograph toward the police chief.  “How deeply is Goli involved?”

“We placed a tail on her two weeks ago.  We’re not overly concerned about her, but with the conference upcoming we can’t take chances on the usual suspects.  She’s involved with Shepilov, an ex-member of the Soviet Red Orchestra, arousing any suspicions you may have been suppressing.”

Chubok handed over the second file.  “The report on the murder scene in Shahr-e Rey.  Two of my best men were sent there in the middle of the night.”

Salinger read quickly over a single sheet of paper.  “Not much here.”

“When the British arrived that night, they cordoned the area off and my men were quickly dismissed, especially when it was apparent the murdered officer’s papers weren’t to be found in the room.”

Salinger placed the files back on the desk. 

“You can see from the report it was a fairly simple murder scene,” Chubok said.  “Fields dead on the floor, half dressed.  Whatever the motive, it is clear what took place.”

Salinger said, “Still, it does raise a question.  Is there any significance the murder took place in Shar-e Rey?”

“A good question of which I don’t have an answer.”

“I’m convinced Fields knew this person,” Salinger said, “And there was a feeling of trust in the matter.  He was an experienced intelligence officer.  Why else would he risk going to a hotel with his briefcase?”

“Still very careless, don’t you think?” Chubok asked.

If Shahr-e Rey didn’t mean anything, then why didn’t he have his hotel rendezvous, then go back to the city and retrieve his briefcase for whatever meeting he had planned after?  Then another thought.  “Or perhaps he wasn’t going to a meeting later after all.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

If Salinger was right then Shahr-e Rey could be useful as a geographic clue.  “I’m thinking of the opposite,” Salinger said.  “That Fields had his briefcase with him, not because he was going to a meeting, but that he left a meeting earlier and he was late to his rendezvous.”

“Of course, you’re right, and anxious to not be late, Fields would have showed up with the briefcase.  She must have been a special woman, Salinger.”  Chubok pulled his pocket watch out and glanced at it.  “Look at the time.  Did you eat on the plane?”

“I haven’t eaten all day,” Salinger remembered.             

Chubok held up a finger.  “A moment, then.”  He picked up the phone.  “Let me clear several items from my calendar and I’ll be glad to buy you dinner.”

-Nine-

Southwest of Tehran.  On the road to Akbarabad.

Corporal Warren Elliott of the British Army leaned into the curve, the thick dust cloud boiling up behind his Gilera motorcycle.  Once out of the curve and on the straight road again, he twisted the throttle and the motor responded immediately lurching forward.

The Gilera was his prize possession, borrowed from an unfortunate German courier ambushed eight months ago in the mountains.  The machine gave Elliott some pleasure, and as he soon discovered, the opportunity to earn spending money because the other lads were always buying rides on her.  A grand machine, 500cc of Italian beauty, she was worth every penny they paid him.  And it broke the monotony.  It’s not that the lot of them had it that badly, not now, not as brutal as those poor boys fighting their way up the Italian boot against some of Hitler’s finest troops.

Elliott and his bunch had earned theirs, though.  As part of the Western Desert Force in North Africa, they had seen the dirty part of war.  Now for Elliott and his fellow soldiers stationed in Iran their biggest enemy was heat, sand, and boredom while performing their main purpose to guard trains transporting oil, or escorting the occasional convey from Iraq or Turkey.               

A straight stretch of road and then into the next curve, Elliott let off on the machine, slowed and pulled in.  Three of his fellow soldiers, dressed in khaki battledress, sat in canvas chairs drinking beers around a trestle table positioned just outside the doorway of a clay building.  As Elliott pulled over to the side, they waved and laughed.

Four months ago they had converted this open roadside teahouse—the Iranians called them ‘chaikhanas’—into a regular English pub.  Why, if Churchill himself came over for a pint, Elliott reasoned, he would have thought he were in England.  A sign ‘The Fox’ hung over the doorway and inside a constant game of darts was being played.  The boys had even chipped in and had bought Atash, the proprietor, a waiter’s suit from a restaurant so they he would look like an English pub owner.  Atash, grateful for the commercial opportunity, played the part nicely, and had even arranged to have several different types of English beer brought in.

As had become the custom late in the evenings, beers were drunk on the ‘front lawn’, tables placed in the shade away from the Persian sun.

Elliott killed the motor and removed his goggles.  A group of Lur shepherds squatted in a circle twenty meters away, staring at them.  “She’s running like a dream today, boys,” Elliott said strolling up to the table.  “A maintenance sergeant gave her a tune up last evening while I was in the city.  It might cost you double for a ride today.”

“You’re a bum, Elliott,” Corporal Caldwell laughed.  “An absolute bum.”  Caldwell was eighteen, a boy from Southampton, fair complexion and thick blond hair.  To him, he wasn’t fighting a war; he had a free ticket to see the world.  “Always looking for the money angle, aren’t you?”

“Money can come in handy if you ever make it into Tehran,” Elliott cracked.

The group laughed.  They had over the last year and a half, become good friends.

“Besides,” the corporal said, “have you lost track of the time?  It’s almost time for her to pass by.”

Elliott took a long drink.  “Then I’m not too late.”

“But you’re cutting it close,” Roger Wallace said.  The oldest of the group, he was twenty-seven from London with a wife and two young children.  That was the hardest part for Wallace, being so far away from this family.  “She comes by like clockwork at five twenty every afternoon.”

Another long drink and his beer was finished off.  “I know that,” Elliott said.  He slammed the empty bottle on the table.  Atash came out of the dark doorway with a tray of fresh beers.  “Ah, my hero,” Elliott said.

“Life is good,” the Iranian said.  One of several English phrases he had learned since opening the ‘pub’.  Elliott grabbed a beer from the tray.  “Yes, it is my friend.”

“Hey—I think that’s her,” Caldwell said.

At first it was a dot of red, sand swirling up in funnels behind, far down the road.  Then it became an automobile moving at a fast speed heading right toward them.

“It is her,” Caldwell whispered.

The red 1935 Austin Sports Tourer was upon them, a gallant red machine with a wide grille like a goddess glaring straight ahead.  The top was down and they could see the driver, both hands on the wheel, staring down the road.  Then the machine, the goddess, was upon them zooming by at an incredible speed.

Catcalls and whistles from the men around the table.

The convertible slowed just for an instant, the beautiful brunette waved, and then gunned the motor.  The engine responded immediately, and then just that quickly, she was past them and heading away.

A dust storm enveloped the ‘pub’.  The men coughed and laughed and then fell silent until the Austin finally disappeared around the curve.

“Think the Tourer could outrun the Gilera?”  Caldwell finally asked once the sand cloud settled.

“It would be a good race, but I don’t think so,” Elliott said.

“A beautiful lady,” someone at the table whispered an oath of awe.

Elliott lifted his beer in a toast.  “Now that I can agree with.”  A beautiful machine and a beautiful woman, he thought.  They belonged together.

----

Goli Faqiri stood behind a massive mahogany desk in her office on the first floor of the villa.  She was tall with a slim figure and wore cashmere slacks, a white silk blouse.  Thick, wavy brown hair framed her face and noble features. 

This is where she liked to end her day, at her desk in the villa office completing several phones calls demanding her immediate attention.  Goli did her best thinking away from the stress of business, and prepared her papers for the next day’s work. 

Mahshid, her maid had prepared dinner.  Bahbak, her beloved Anatolian Sheep Dog, lay on the steps waiting for her outside a double set of French doors looking out over a vast garden and swimming pool.

She sat the papers on the desk and lit a cigarette, a habit she only entertained in private along with an occasional glass of wine.  The papers contained numbers of all her vast financial holdings.  The pipeline.  Railways.  Two newspapers.  A staggering amount of wealth. 

But Goli found it hard to concentrate on business this afternoon.

Going to the window, she held the cigarette close to her lips and stared across the lush garden and the gray mirror-still water of the enormous pool.  She had received word that Booth Salinger was returning to Tehran . . . creating an anxious knot in her stomach.  Goli never thought he’d come back.  But she had never been able to predict the events of her life.

Goli Hemmati was born in 1914 in Shiraz.  Her mother was a soft-spoken woman who influenced her life more than anyone else, whose only demand on Goli was that she work hard in school.  So, she was educated in a missionary school where she became fluent in English.  Her father, a physician, whose first love was archaeology, died in 1939, the year she entered Tehran University and majored in Persian literature.  After college, Goli took a job at Radio Tehran where her ability to speak English enabled her to become an assistant director of foreign news.  And a brief stint with British Intelligence.  Goli believed that she had found her life’s calling and concentrated on issues within Iranian society.  Poverty versus wealth.  Women’s rights.  There were certainly enough issues to go around.  It was during her research for one of those articles that her life changed unexpectedly and forever.

She met Bozorg Faqiri.  

Fifteen years older than Goli, Faqiri was considered one of the richest men in Iran.  He held controlling interest in railways, pipelines, in addition to owning a Tehran newspaper.  It was rumored he had friends in both German and Soviet ranks as the war clouds gathered.  There were also rumors that Faqiri was secretly involved in communist politics, and a strong influence in the underground movement preparing for a Soviet takeover of the country.

He had spotted Goli in a staff meeting he attended one winter afternoon.  Within six months, he promoted her to editor, for reasons she suspected even back then.  There were the late meetings at the office, and then late dinners discussing the newspaper business.  Gradually, the conversations turned to a more personal nature.  It was then that Goli suspected he was in love with her.

They married three months later, and he moved her out to his villa seven miles southwest of Tehran, giving her a luxurious lifestyle that she could have once only imagined.  He also moved
her mother out to the villa, where she lived until her death in January 1940.  During the first year of their marriage Faqiri found that Goli had the natural ability of a leader.  Her precise mind and straight-forward handling of situations impressed him so much that in the spring of 1940 Faqiri gave Goli the newspaper and under her leadership circulation and profits grew.

Power and money gradually drew her away from her love for writing and literature.  She felt the surge of power and authority as she worked with her husband controlling the destinies of the companies.

Then events drastically changed her idyllic life.  Her beloved husband was assassinated on the streets of Isafahan one morning in February 1942.  He had been involved for weeks in the Soviet effort to encourage Kurdish separatists to join their movement.  He had just returned from Baku where the Soviets had met with a group of thirty Kurdish tribal leaders when he made the fateful trip to Isfahan. 

Goli mourned for weeks. 

Then one day she decided that she had enough of self-pity and began working on a plan.  She swore that the men who had killed her husband would pay, and she spent unlimited monies hiring investigators to find the murders.  It was true that a man as powerful and rich as her husband had many friends and enemies, but who would go this far?  It was reasonable for Goli to suspect the British and the Americans because of her husband’s Soviet involvement.

Despite spending thousands, investigators found nothing.

In an attempt to work through her loss, Goli threw herself into running the companies.  It took her fourteen-hour days, learning whom among her managers she could trust.  Gradually she took control of the vast financial empire.  All the while, she waited patiently for that day when she could take out her revenge.

----

At dusk, she had taken her customary walk in the cool desert air, accompanied by Bahbak at her every step, a stroll that always reinvigorated her.  Then she took a swim in the pool and a hot shower before retiring once again to her office for some late night reading to prepare for the next day’s business meetings.

----

Shortly after eleven a dull wash of headlights swung through the dark yard.  Goli was still at her desk reviewing shipment figures involving her company in Isafahan.  Bahbak barked until Goli opened the door and told him to be quiet.  She stepped out into the cool night air and lit a cigarette.

The headlights went out, and then the closing of a car door.  Josef Shepilov walked up to her.  “Am I too late for a nightcap?”

Goli crossed her arms.  ‘You must have important news to drive out here at this hour.”

Shepilov shrugged, “Only information on the affair with the German commandos if you’re interested.”

Goli opened the door.  “Let’s get in out of the night air.”

He was tall and thin with a strong smooth face and dark hair and dressed in a brown gabardine suit.  A handsome man, Goli thought.  And she was certain that he was in love with her.  He took the chair opposite the fireplace. 

Somewhere in the Ural Mountains near a German colony, young Josef Shepilov learned to speak the language of Goli’s country at an early age.  Once graduating from espionage school in Leningrad at the outbreak of the war, he became a Middle East specialist for the Soviet Secret Service.  He was chosen to maintain surveillance of the German commandos almost from the moment they had parachuted into Iran, and reported directly to Stalin himself, ever since the Russian leader had arrived in Tehran.  Shepilov had known Booth Salinger when they had worked together in the mountains rounding up fighters, but Salinger had no stomach for the brutal Soviet methods.

For Goli, this man sitting in front of her fireplace—had promised her the one thing that had any meaning to her—he could provide the man who had ordered her husband’s death.

Goli poured two glasses of wine and walked over to Shepilov.  She handed him a glass then sat in the chair beside him.

Shepilov took a sip, letting a moment pass.  “There’s quite a stir about the murder of the British officer.”

“I heard the rumors,” she said.  “It would be a matter of time before they send Salinger back to investigate.”

He cut a glance at her.  “I would think you’d enjoy seeing him again.”

“Only if it helps our cause, Josef, the past means nothing to me,” she said.

“Should I really believe that?”

Goli ignored his comment.  “So, what have we learned of our German friends?”

He balanced the wine glass on his knee.  “Remarkable developments unfolding in your desert, seems the German parachutists did not use the airfields.  The borders have been closed, along with telephone, telegraph, and postal communications, common tools utilized by German agents.”

Goli had been aware of these measures taken by the Iranian government because they had affected the daily operational shipments of several of her companies.  “Except for the most vital food supplies, all rail and road transports to Tehran have been stopped,” she said.  “Also, air travel is detained, except for military and official aircraft.”

He seemed surprised.

“I own five companies operating internationally,” she told him.  “So where are our Germans?”

“Between the twenty-second and the twenty-seventh, six German commando groups were dropped by parachute and landed safely near Qum.  Another eight landed near Qazvin dressed in Russian uniforms, their task was to infiltrate among Soviet occupation forces and reach the city.”

“So they have all been captured?”

“Transported to Tabriz to be interrogated,” Shepilov said.  Then he slowly smiled.  “Except for the six . . .”

“Is Heuss among the six?”

“He is.”

It was all she could do to hold the excitement in.  “And you think—”

“According to our intelligence reports, Heuss was in the group that attacked your husband’s party that morning.  That’s exactly why he’s involved now . . . his experience in Iran.”

Goli raised her glass in salute.  ‘Your people have done an excellent job.”

“There is one problem,” Shepilov said.  “British Intelligence Service has been watching the German agents hidden in Tehran from the moment they arrived.  If the British get their hands on them,” he said seriously, “that would defeat both of our purposes.”

“You’re right of course, Josef, but give the German some credit, they’re good at these sorts of things.  And there are certainly enough Iranians to give them assistance.”

“But, if the British know where they are why haven’t they apprehended them?”

“The British are good at this game, also,” Goli said.  “They have wisely decided that if Berlin becomes suspicious in any way, their remaining agents disperse and evade capture.”

“Where did they get that idea?”

She smiled.  “From me.”

----

Later, when Shepilov had gone, Goli turned off the desk lamp, picked up a glass of wine and locked the French doors.