Assassins of the Turquoise Palace (8 page)

9

[After the fatwa against my dad] we started to get death threats. The phone would ring. I’d answer, and someone would say, “I’m going to kill you. I’m going to cut your throat!” And I’d be like, “Daaad, I think it’s for you.”

—Shappi, daughter of exiled Iranian satirist
Hadi Khorsandi

By mid-November, two months after the assassinations, autumn had reached its maturity. Trees were bare. Gusts of wind unsettled the trash on the asphalt. The brutal cold that drives even the most ardent Berliners indoors was about to begin when Norbert Siegmund set out to follow the footsteps of the killers.

The most critical evidence in the case had been recovered. Three men had been charged with first-degree murder. Two of their accomplices were in custody on lesser charges. The investigators had declared victory. Yet these developments caused no celebration among the exiles. Hope still eluded the likes of
Parviz, Shohreh, and Mehdi. Their victory would mean unveiling the duplicity of the politicians who were keeping the truth from the public. The federal prosecutor was still pointing to the Kurdish armed group, the PKK, as his chief suspect, evoking the fear of a cover-up among the exiles. Caught between two opposing claims—one of victory and the other of hypocrisy—Norbert thought it useless to take sides. Instead, he took to the road.

Darabi’s biography guided Norbert’s travel. In 1982, Darabi had been arrested and temporarily imprisoned for his part in the death of a German student in a dormitory in Mainz. In 1983, Darabi had established the Iranian Islamic Student Association of Berlin and become the face of the city’s main Shiite mosque. In 1987, after six years in university, failing his exams, and being expelled, he had started his businesses.

The road also led Norbert to the headquarters of the Green Week exhibit, an imposing edifice of 115,000 square feet, built to withstand the traffic of thousands of livestock and tourists who fill its grounds every January. But in late November an eerie lull permeated the vast empty space. Norbert found his way to the main office, where a diminutive receptionist greeted him. He asked to see the director but was told no one was around.

“What is it you need?” she asked.

Halfheartedly, he explained that he was looking for information about an Iranian man in custody, someone who may have had a booth at the exhibit, someone guilty who was likely to go free if the truth about him went untold. He offered his card to the receptionist and asked to have her superior contact him when she stopped him.

“Wait here, please!” she said, then disappeared into a room and quickly returned with a file in hand. Addressing Norbert in a whisper, she leaned into him. “This is what you’re looking for. The police were already here for it. I kept a copy, just in case.”

She handed two pieces of paper to Norbert. The first was an application for a booth at the exhibit; the second, an official letter.

From: The General Consular of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Attention: Ausstellungs-Messe-Kongress-GmbH

AMK Berlin

Post Office 191740

Messedamm 22

1000 Berlin 19

Most respected madams and sirs:

The Consul General of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Berlin hereby confirms that Mr. Kazem Darabi has been empowered by us to clear all the issues or answer any questions that may arise from the Islamic Republic’s attendance in Berlin’s Green Week from January 22 through February 3, 1991.

Best regards,

M. Amani-Farani

Consul

Norbert read the letter, all the while the receptionist beamed at him. He was stunned, not only to have found the document he had no hope of finding, but also by the courage of the clerk who had jeopardized her job to help him. He took the pages, pressed the woman’s hand in his, and left.

Returning to Berlin, he ruminated over the lessons of his journey. He realized his own error. Ever since he began reporting the case, he had looked for a single leading hero. Instead, he had to look to ordinary people—a grieving wife, a traumatized survivor, a minor office worker—to the confluence of unsung figures each of whom had taken a heroic step. He felt exhilarated. He had found his life’s purpose and knew exactly what he wanted to be: nothing other than what he already was—an uncompromising reporter determined to unearth the truth.

Norbert contacted Bruno Jost’s office for a comment about the letter. Instead of granting him an interview, the press liaison offered a terse response that added nothing new to the federal prosecutor’s old statement:
We continue to believe the murders at Mykonos may have been the work of the Kurdish armed group, the PKK.

With every week that passed the federal prosecutor’s silence became more damning. A highly positioned source at BKA, the office of the federal police, had slipped a copy of a new document to Norbert’s colleague at the station. The vindication Parviz had been looking for was in Norbert’s hand. He called to ask Parviz to come to the station.

“The ballistic tests show that the handgun and the machine gun found in the Sportino bag were manufactured in Spain in the early 1970s,” Norbert said as he monitored the expression on Parviz’s face.

Parviz, puzzled, wanted to know what Spain could possibly have to do with the case.

“Spain doesn’t,” the reporter replied, “but Iran does.”

The test results revealed that the serial number of the handgun found in the sports bag matched that of a handgun sold by Spain in a 1972 shipment of weaponry to the Iranian Royal Army. The weapons had remained within Iran’s national stockpile, which, after the 1979 revolution, had become the property of the new regime. Thus the great likelihood that those in leadership with access to the arsenal had armed the assassins.

Joy transfigured Parviz’s face. He pressed his palms together as if in them he had finally captured the nightmares, the fears, and the doubts that had dogged him for weeks. “This is great news,” he said over and over. “The best news of all!”

Yet Norbert went on worrying about a cover-up, for the ballistic report had not been officially released. Parviz was less alarmed. Even if the politicians were keeping it a secret, Norbert and his colleagues would not, said the exuberant survivor.

Airing of this particular news, however, was a complicated matter. Norbert believed there were still loose ends to the story. Besides, a program as explosive as the one he had in mind deserved a national, not a local, broadcast. And the
next installment of the station’s nationwide newsmagazine,
Kontraste
, which aired monthly, was still days away. Parviz would have to do what he loathed: wait.

He caught sight of the whiteboard where the chronology of the assassination and all the following discoveries had been charted in multicolored markers. He scanned the most recent additions.

MACHINEGUN: Made by IMI manufacturers, Uzi model, serial number 075884, 9mm caliber, with a 32-bullet magazine

HANDGUN: Made by Llama manufacturers, Model X-A, 7.65mm caliber, Browning, serial number 517070, 8-bullet magazine. Sold to the Iranian Royal Army on June 15, 1972

He sat quietly for a few moments, his gaze shifting from the board to the reporter. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its sparkle.

“We all chase ghosts. I chase the ghost of a friend. You chase the truth your corrupt officials are about to bury. Wait a few days you say. Bah! It’s enough time to ship the bastards back to Iran or Lebanon and call the whole thing off.”

Norbert assured him that they were working furiously on the segment they hoped to air on the next broadcast, barring other disasters or breaking events. Parviz shook his head. For him, there was only one disaster, one report that could not be delayed. He looked at the white board once
more. In frustration, he copied the descriptions of the guns on a piece of paper and tucked it in his pocket. That piece of information was as much his as it was Norbert’s, or the station’s. The discovery was theirs, he granted them that. But the suffering that had led them to it was his.

There were other elements still missing from the segment Norbert was planning to produce.

“We say the police have five men in custody but we have nothing to show of them except a few phantom drawings you say are bad anyway. We’re TV. Without pictures, people aren’t convinced,” the reporter argued, hoping to convince his ally.

“Interview me! I can say what I saw that night in the restaurant and then in the lineup. I can describe them.”

Norbert persisted, “People have to see what you saw. We need visuals. A photograph.”

“Only one?”

“On my honor, Parviz! Even one photo will turn this program into the talk of the country.”

What would Noori do?
Parviz wondered as he walked home, reminiscing about their days of mischief. For the first time since the killings, he missed Noori instead of grieving for him. If Noori were around, he would know what to do. Noori was a great intellect and an even greater schemer. He had been Parviz’s senior by only three years, yet he had taken Parviz under his wing when he had arrived in Berlin in the early 1970s. Noori was the one to get the newcomer into the best dormitory in town, the one to introduce him to other
expatriates who helped the bookish eighteen-year-old evolve into a thinker and an activist.

The wind had numbed Parviz’s cheeks. But he walked unhurriedly, his attention wholly consumed by the piece of paper in his pocket. The proof was, at long last, in his possession. However indebted he felt to Norbert, his loyalty remained to his old friend. He would do what he could to find the photo Norbert wanted, but he would follow the timeline of his own conscience. He would yield to nothing and no one.

At home, he stationed himself behind his desk and began making calls. The first was to an old acquaintance at the Berlin Office of Foreigners Affairs, who owed him a favor. If there were any photos of Yousef, Rhayel, or Darabi, one had to be on file there. But the police, he was told, had already confiscated the files a few days earlier.

Knowing Yousef had once been an asylum seeker, Parviz turned to a colleague at the Red Cross who worked with Arab speakers. The colleague found a file on Yousef with a photo inside but upon closer examination the documents appeared forged, and the photo was not of Yousef.

Still, Parviz refused to surrender. He turned what he knew of Darabi over in his mind. Darabi had headed the Iranian Islamic Student Association, which had gone through several internal breakups. He called the association and said that he was looking for information about Darabi, who was in prison accused of murder.

“Darabi, the goat boy?” The man who answered struck a note of surprise at the other end.

“Goat boy?” Parviz asked.

“A chin as narrow as his, a nose so hooked . . . what else would you call him? You say
he
coordinated a murder? It can’t be,” the man said with a chuckle. “He wasn’t smart enough.
Coordinate
? He couldn’t coordinate his own shoes. Somebody put him up to it.”

Parviz suggested Iran and the other burst out, “Without them, he’d not have a pot to piss in. Grocer, my foot.”

Then, he added after a few moments, “But you’ll never get the Germans to admit it.”

Parviz let the gloomy comment pass. Instead, he asked if there was a photo he could see from their early days together.

“Nah,” the other answered. “Even if I had one, I’d have ripped it up by now. I told you already, I want nothing to do with him.”

It took a few more tries before Parviz finally relented. He admitted his failure to Norbert, then packed his bags and left home that weekend on a short trip to put the matter behind him.

But upon his return on Sunday evening luck, too, returned to him. There were a dozen messages on his answering machine, several of them from the federal police, urging him to get in touch immediately. With every new arrest or discovery, the police called the surviving witnesses to weigh in on their findings. Parviz dialed Mehdi. Whatever the news, Mehdi had to have heard about it.

“They’ve got a few albums,” Mehdi said, “with some hundred or so pictures in them.”

Parviz asked if Mehdi had seen anyone familiar.

“Few of Darabi in there, for sure. There’s one with him in the middle. The others next to him, I think, are
them
.”

Parviz did not call the federal police that evening. He already knew what they wanted of him. They would ask that he go to them, sit in a room, and look through the very images he had tried to find, and which, like so many other pieces of information, they were unlikely to release. He was through being the obedient witness.

Before he closed his eyes that night, he asked himself once more:
What would Noori do
?

Monday dawned with a bright new scheme in Parviz’s mind. He dialed the number the caller had left on his machine. When he introduced himself, relief rang in the agent’s voice who greeted him.

“What can I do for you?” Parviz asked, trying to sound unaware.

As he had expected, the agent asked that he go to their offices for a Mykonos-related matter.

“I’m afraid I can’t,” he said without hesitation. “You see, since this whole thing first happened, I’ve missed too many days of work. If I ask my boss for even another hour off, I risk losing my job.”

Then he proposed that they meet at his office instead, so he would not have to be out again.

• • •

The morning was all the time he had to set his plan in motion. He told his secretary not to leave her desk after lunch, because a few “high profile visitors” with little time to spare would be visiting. He instructed her to quickly photocopy a few items—an album or two on his desk open to the exact pages to be duplicated while he and his guests were out of the room.

At two o’clock two agents arrived, bearing an oversized briefcase. Settling in the love seat beside Parviz’s desk, they placed the first album in front of him. He began leafing through the pages with great care. In that first volume, he recognized no one. The second album followed. Halfway through, he spotted a familiar face, that of a man with a balding head, hooked nose, and deep-set eyes. Darabi was smiling at him, standing between two other bearded figures who towered over him. The one on the right resembled the man he had picked from the lineup. On the facing page, there were several other images of the same men in various poses.