Assassins of the Turquoise Palace (7 page)

Noori spent hours, alone and alongside their respective families, trying to make a better husband of Aziz. His transformation had not come fast enough to keep his wife from leaving, which, in the end, made him doubt the wisdom of the transformation in the first place.

Reflecting on his marriage of twelve years, he would throw his hands up and exclaim, “Ever since we came to this country, I don’t know what my wife wants anymore. Shoes?
I buy her. Clothes? I get her the best. But these two . . .” pointing to Noori and Parviz, “kept coming here, hanging around with their crooked ideas, talking about
emancipating this
and
emancipating that
, until she got to be crooked herself, then upped and left one day.”

Aziz sounded jolly but what he said always left Parviz feeling blamed for the couple’s breakup. He did not think Aziz’s divorce was anyone’s doing but his own, but he did blame Noori and himself for the two bullets Aziz had taken. After all, Aziz would never have been in the company of the likes of the Doctor if it were not for them. Their friendship had exposed Aziz to danger and caused his wounds. The least Parviz could do to lessen his own guilt was to visit Aziz at the hospital.

The police, too, came to visit Aziz. Parviz would often arrive as a detective was leaving. The ongoing interrogation evoked even more pity in the visitor, who thought the patient was too frail for questioning. Aziz seemed to have aged years in only a few weeks. Seeing him, Parviz choked back tears and tried his best to appear cheerful. Aziz only moaned.

“What can I do, Aziz
jaan
?” Parviz would say in Persian.

There was always a fresh glass of water to fetch, sheets to untangle, nurses to instruct, inconsiderate visitors to manage or send away. It seemed to Parviz that most visitors came to pry, to satisfy their own curiosity rather than to tend to the patient. One couple had especially exasperated Aziz—grocery store owners who had supplied goods to Mykonos. They came one afternoon. The husband talked without pause,
shaking his head, reminiscing, retracing his conversation with Aziz before that terrible night.

“How destiny steers us all, Aziz
jaan
. Your voice is still in my ear, ‘Come help me on Thursday night, I’ve got guests coming.’ How you begged me. But Thursdays are my busiest days. Shipments coming in, deliveries to do. There was no way I could help out. How awful I felt turning you down. Or else I’d have been right there with you.”

Aziz grumbled that all he had ever spoken of was Friday.

The visitor pressed on, saying, “Believe me, you did. As God is my witness, you did. The Tuesday before, you said, ‘Come and help me on Thursday night.’ Destiny! How a man can escape anything but destiny.”

Aziz shook his head vehemently.

The earnest husband turned to his wife. “Remember, hon? Didn’t he ask me to come in on Thursday?”

The tearful wife nodded in assent.

It fell to Parviz to protect his bedridden friend from the needling of visitors. He interrupted and steered the conversation in a different direction.

“Did you know Noori’s parents have come from Iran?”

“They are here, those two?” asked the visitor. “Ay! No parent should ever see the day. Oh, cruel destiny!”

Aziz cast a grateful look at Parviz and collapsed into his pillow.

8

The man who translated the
Satanic Verses
into Arabic was kidnapped. His captors told him that the Ayatollah would spare him only if he’d undo his sin by translating the book back into English. Today, some scholars argue that the retranslated version is a major improvement on Rushdie’s original.

—Hadi Khorsandi, exiled Iranian satirist

Day after day, Bruno Jost pored over the transcripts from the interrogation of the detainees. Two of the suspects, Rhayel and Darabi, had kept a stoic silence. But Yousef had spoken at length. Jost would lay the pages side by side to piece together the passages he had highlighted throughout, tracing the obvious lies, unconvincing denials, and repeated contradictions, hoping they might lead to the secret the prisoner was clearly keeping.

Some lies were preposterously evident, based on preliminary intelligence he had received.

Some lies that were less evident became more so by the denials.

Abbas Rhayel and Yousef Amin had been an inseparable pair since 1989, when they first entered Germany through the Hungarian border and applied for asylum and other benefits in both Switzerland and Germany.

Emad Amash was the first in a string of pseudonyms Jost had to master while dealing with the prisoners, who assumed new identities as naturally as they changed wardrobe for a new season.

This was the false passport the police had found in the Amin apartment, the one in which Rhayel’s photo was to be pasted.

Yousef denied having seen it.

Lies were nothing new to the seasoned prosecutor. But Yousef’s lies were a promising sign—a sign of his reluctance to be detached. If he bothered to lie, it meant that he, unlike his teammates, cared enough to engage them. Jost always preferred a speaking prisoner, even if lying, to a stoically silent one.

He was always exact with inconsequential details, hoping they might divert his interrogators’ attention.

But Yousef’s lies ended if they seemed to contradict his wife, brother, and other family members.

Finally when asked about the considerable cash in his wallet he realized he needed help.

At the end of one such session, Yousef was shown the full text of his testimony to review. His translator pointed to the dotted line where Yousef was to sign. Talking, it seemed, came more easily to Yousef than did printing his own name beneath the statements. He paused, flipped through the document many times, then asked his translator to write on his behalf:

It was clear to Jost that Yousef was tormented. But it was his partner on the case, a senior federal criminal commissioner named Tony von Trek, who discovered why. Von Trek sat beside Jost during the interrogations and also escorted the prisoner to and from each session. At times, von Trek, playing the part of a tough cop whose main thrill was locking men up, would gather more in the trip between the prisoner’s cell and the interrogation room than they would in hours of questioning. (Others would have bragged about such tactful acts but von Trek was beyond boasting, especially with Jost, whom he considered a dear friend.) On the return trip to prison one day, without being prompted, Yousef had begun talking about his impending fatherhood and his wish to witness his son’s
birth in November. Appearing unimpressed, the commissioner enumerated the obstacles standing in the way of that wish, unless some evidence to clear him were to miraculously surface. Yousef had listened and said nothing. When they reached prison, the commissioner gave his card to Yousef and said that if he ever wanted to tell the truth all he had to do was call. He left Yousef with this parting thought, “The miracle is for you to make happen.”

In his cell, Yousef Amin began scribbling on the back pages of the prison manual chained to the wall of his cell, #404 B.

M . . . F?
N?
L?
K F A N Y?
M H?
F A N Y?
N F Y . . .
The meaning of love . . .

Yousef Darayi

He scribbled, and he prayed. But prayer could hardly fill the hours in solitary confinement. The manual had become his journal. He wrote cryptically, in codes and anagrams—a few letters here, a name slightly twisted there, a phrase or sentence—each a glimpse into his foreboding about his slipping resolve.
Rhagheb . . . Darayi . . . Oh, you, Rhagheb. I am Yousef Amin. Speak not! . . . Silence, silence.

• • •

Yousef was afraid to print the names of his accomplices. Rhayel was an old friend, and Darabi was the patron who had given him a job. Yousef was neither rich nor powerful, but his association with Darabi was his claim to fortune. He boasted of their association using the many photographs he staged alongside Darabi. In one, he directed Rhayel, dressed in a black leather jacket and denim trousers, to stand in profile against shelves full of fruit inside Darabi’s grocery. With the plump features of a child, Rhayel shyly fixed his gaze on the crate of onions he was emptying into a trash bag. The bag was held by Darabi, who peered into it with pride. In another photo, the three of them, all bearded, appeared side by side. The burly Yousef, bundled in a sweater and winter jacket, grinned mischievously, his head tilted to the right where the much shorter, balding, and smiling store owner stood, flanked by Rhayel, who towered over them both.

If he wrote too much, he tore out the page fearing what he might have revealed. Only once he gave in to fervor, dragging his pen so ardently that the imprint of his words marked the pages beneath:
Forgive me, I am repentant. My dear wife, forgive me! I am repentant.

More than a month had passed since the murders when a letter arrived at Parviz’s doorstep and lifted his spirits in a way nothing had in weeks.

Dear Mr. Dastmalchi
,

The office of the federal police requests your presence at noon on November 12, 1992, in Meckenheim to identify suspects in the assassination of the Iranian opposition on September 17, 1992. For your convenience the following will be provided:

1)
At the Köln-Bonn Airport you will be received by an agent and returned to the airport in the same manner.

2)
Your presence is very, very crucial. We ask that you accept this request and follow the instructions attached.

3)
If you have any questions, please contact us for clarification.

Sincerely
,

Garbotz, KHK Criminal High Commissioner

Together with Mehdi, who had received the same letter, Parviz headed to Meckenheim. As they waited for their flight at the airport, Mehdi spotted a member of the Bundestag among the milling travelers. “Isn’t that the famous Gregor Gysi over there?”

Parviz dashed toward Gysi, one of Germany’s most influential politicians since reunification. Like a traveling salesman, Parviz always carried in his briefcase several packets of information about the case wherever he went. He greeted Gysi, pressed a packet into the parliamentarian’s hand and
pleaded that he not let corrupt officials sacrifice justice in the name of national interests. Gysi slowed his steps to say that Germany’s courts and judges were among the best in the world. As he walked away, Parviz could be heard yelling, “It’s not your courts I worry about. It’s your politicians who will sell out, before your judges can have their say.”

At the federal police headquarters, the witnesses were ushered into separate cubicles. Staring at the seven men on the other side of the glass, Parviz and Mehdi were asked to identify anyone familiar. At first, the suspects were all clad in heavy jackets and gloves, their heads were covered with caps, their faces veiled with bandannas. Parviz focused on their eyes and brows. The attacker he had briefly glimpsed that night had dark penetrating eyes. In the first lineup, he spotted one man that most resembled his recollection. “Number seven,” he said to the agent beside him.

In the second round, the suspects took off their jackets and gloves. This time, Parviz examined their arms and torsos for heft, for the attacker had seemed towering and powerful.

Once again, he called out, “Seven.”

In the last round, the suspects rolled their sleeves to the elbows, and shed their bandannas and headgear to reveal their faces in full. Again, Parviz chose the same.

The agent asked what role Parviz thought number seven had played that evening. Without a moment’s hesitation, he replied, “He was the man standing behind me with the machine gun, the main assassin.”

Though he had doubts, he did his best to appear confident. Doubt was virtue to Parviz, because it prompted one to reflect. But this was no time for skepticism. He was at war, and wars were waged with conviction, not rumination.

The agent asked him to confirm his answer.

“Yes,” Parviz said again, “I’m perfectly certain I saw number seven shooting in the restaurant on the night of September 17.”

Parviz was not alone. Mehdi, too, had chosen the same man from the lineup, though with less certainty.

Number seven was Yousef Amin.

Like the chief gunman, Yousef was tall, broad, and bearded, with thick, dark hair and dark eyes. The thought that others might mistake them for each other had never occurred to Yousef and hearing of it enraged him. To have crossed the chief shooter by refusing to kill, to have suffered the berating by the others afterward, to have been locked up inside the apartment, all for not wanting to be the one to pull the trigger, only to be mistaken for the killer, incensed Yousef. In despair, he called his guard and asked to make a call. Within minutes, the telephone in Tony von Trek’s office was ringing.

“I can’t sleep. I’ve no peace. My wife’s going to have a baby and I’m afraid of not seeing her or my child for a long time. I want to tell the truth. But if anything I say leaks to the outside, it’ll be the death of me and my family.”

These were the first words Yousef told the small audience that included the prosecutor and the commissioner. Even in
prison, he had received several death threats—promising that if he ever spoke he would never see his son. Yousef pleaded that his confessions not be recorded, or at least be kept confidential. It was a request many prosecutors would have granted in exchange for cherished information. But German laws prohibited bargains, and Bruno Jost could not agree. Still, Yousef spoke. Speaking was his only hope.

His confession gathered like a storm. In the beginning, there came only a few minor details. He tried not to implicate Rhayel or Darabi and denied knowing them at all. Even after seeing that he could not escape the fact of his association with them, he tried to minimize the extent of their friendship. According to Yousef’s early accounts, the truly guilty had fled the country and those in custody were only unaware accomplices, like Darabi, who was merely the absentee owner of the apartment the team had used.

But confession begat confession. The more he spoke, the more he had to speak. Over the span of twenty sessions Yousef, both narrator and guide, told his tale. He took his audience on the murderous trail he had traveled in September. From 64 Detmolder Street #B, the graffiti-riddled, moss-colored entrance of Darabi’s one-bedroom apartment, to 7 Senftenberger Ring Street, the apartment of Darabi’s friend, where the team had spent the days leading up to September 17; to the café where the team leader had asked if Yousef would kill; even to the subway terminal he had crossed through that night. Yousef’s description of the BMW led the investigators to the city’s central pound where the car, strewn
with evidence and fingerprints, had been towed. The confessions alone would have been groundbreaking. The confessions along with the evidence—the recovery of the getaway car, the discovery of the teams’ apartments—marked the investigation’s greatest triumph yet.