Exit Wound (15 page)

49

‘The one and only difficulty with our new airport, Mr Munley, is its distance from the city centre. It will take us more than an hour to reach the hotel. No doubt you have heard about our traffic, Mr Munley.’

And the pollution, I felt like telling him, but thought better of it. Not that Majid took my silence as an invitation to shut up. I was getting the full Thomas Cook treatment.

‘Fortunately, we have a very good modern metro system. There are three different types of taxi, too. The yellow metered ones are best. There are also white non-metered taxis that ply certain routes, almost like a bus. And then there are private cars run as taxis, mostly by people in their spare time to supplement their income . . .’

He waved a hand theatrically. ‘But you don’t need to worry about any of this, Mr Munley, because for as long as you are here you are our guest and all your travel needs will be taken care of. The driver and I will pick you up at your hotel in the morning, I will be your escort at IranEx, and if you have any desire to see our city, then we will be only too happy to take you anywhere you please. My government wants your stay in Iran to be a memorable one.’

‘That’s great, Majid, thank you.’

These lads are OK, nine times out of ten. They’re very much like me in a way, victims of circumstance. Most think differently from what they say about the place they live because they have to live there. Most just toe the line and try to get by as best they can. The nutters who believe all the bullshit can normally be sniffed out very quickly. And even they eventually get to realize it’s all bollocks, no matter what side you’re on.

‘It is important to us that you see Iran in its true light. As a man of words, Mr Munley, I am sure you will already know that Iran is not the place it is characterized to be by certain sections of the West’s media. We are an open, democratic society and our only interest is in fostering peace.’

Try telling that, I thought, to the relatives of almost a hundred dissidents killed by Iranian assassins outside Iran in the thirty years since the revolution – or of the victims of the two hundred or so terrorist attacks around the world that had supposedly been given the backing of Altun and his mates.

Shia militias had been supplied by Iran, via Altun, with highly advanced IED technology, specifically to target our troops in southern Iraq. Missile technology was supplied on a regular basis to Hamas and Hezbollah. The list was endless. The missiles for Hamas and Hezbollah were aimed at Israel, even though there were tens of thousands of Iranian Jews, some of whom were in the Iranian parliament. They saw Israel as Zionist, not Jewish.

I treated Majid to another broad smile and turned my head towards the window. That’s just the way it is. If this lot weren’t the bad guys, then someone else would be. And I wasn’t looking for a cuddle.

We left the airport approach and drove past a hotel decorated with dozens of flags, not one of which I recognized. As we joined the newly tarmacked road for Tehran, I noticed some bodies standing on the roof of a brand-new multi-storey car park at the airport perimeter. They looked like soldiers or police, some kind of security presence. One was wearing a peaked cap.

There were three of them. The one with the cap had what looked like a radio pressed to his ear. Another was talking into a mobile phone, and the third was using binoculars to scan the runway.

Majid followed my gaze and shook his head. ‘Do you have these people in your country, Mr Munley?’

‘Sure. We have security everywhere. Brits are the most spied-on citizens in the world.’

The corners of Majid’s eyes creased in confusion. He looked almost hurt. ‘Mr Munley, I am not talking about surveillance. The people on this roof are interested in the aircraft that take off and land from this airport. It is their – how do you say? Their hobby?’

50

We hit the traffic in the southern suburbs and ground to a complete standstill. With petrol at about 5p a gallon, why would anyone bother to walk?

The road signs were in Farsi and English, and everywhere I looked I saw Paykans – the Iranian-built copy of the Hillman Hunter, a car that went out of production in Britain forty years ago. My dad used to have one when I was a kid. They only stopped making these things here in 2005. Not a moment too soon, judging by the shit coming out of their exhaust and adding to the thick smog. They looked like dustbins on wheels alongside the brand-new Renaults, Volvos, VWs and all the latest Japanese models on display.

As we trickled along, Tehran became more and more of a contradiction. One moment we were passing modern glass-and-steel office blocks that could have come straight from Dubai, the next I was staring into decrepit alleyways or at water-streaked concrete tenements that could have been designed by Stalin. And ten seconds later I could almost have been back in the Mall of the Emirates. Posters for Levis, iPods and Sanyo TVs were everywhere. Britney and Hannah Montana filled CD-shop windows.

Fast-food outlets sold Thai and Chinese on plastic trays. Young men wore Western clothes and shared hookahs at out-door restaurants. Outsiders might have expected angry crowds ready to stone any woman who showed a bit of ankle, but I saw plenty with their headscarves pushed back – a trick that must have kept them within the rules laid down by the ayatollahs, but only just.

If I was ever in any doubt about exactly where I was, the giant murals of Iran’s leaders, past and present, were constantly there to remind me. Top of the pops was Khomeini, whose face scowled back at me from the sides of buildings in every square we inched through. Next in the popularity stakes was the present Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, and behind him the president, Ahmadinejad – the lad who had made windcheaters the must-have clothing item in this neck of the woods, and who’d threatened to wipe Israel and the West right off the map. The only way I remembered his name was by pronouncing it ‘Armoured-dinner-jacket’, but I didn’t tell Majid.

‘You like what you see, Mr Munley?’

‘It’s different.’

‘Oh? I have never been to London. Tell me.’

‘You don’t see murals of Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair on the sides of buildings in London – but nobody liked them very much.’

Majid laughed.

We passed a billboard that displayed an evil-looking Bush, blood running from his pointed teeth. ‘
Marg bar amrika
,’ it said. I knew that one: ‘Death to America’.

Majid felt the need to explain. ‘You have to remember that in Iran our president answers directly to our Supreme Leader and the Supreme Leader is God’s chosen representative – a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. We note with amusement that it is Mr Ahmadinejad, our elected president, who receives a most unfavourable press in the West, but what your colleagues appear to forget, Mr Munley, is that it is the Supreme Leader who wields all the power. And the Supreme Leader, our spiritual guide, is given his mandate by God . . .’

There were also lots of posters in shop windows and pasted on walls showing the two main faces fighting the presidential election in June. Hard-liner Armoured-dinner-jacket and the reformist and former prime minister Mousavi. I’d lay money on who Majid was going to vote for.

Almost two hours after we left the airport, we finally arrived at a hotel that seemed to offer the best of both worlds – a tall glass-and-concrete number that looked like Stalin had designed it after a night on the piss at the Burj Al-Arab.

Majid handed me his business card and told me to call him if I had any problems. ‘Day or night, Mr Munley. I am here to help. May I suggest that you do not walk around the city? This is a free country, but Tehran has its darker side, like all capital cities, and the traffic can be dangerous. By now you will know that it can come at you from any direction. If you would like to go anywhere, see anything of our great city, Mr Munley, the driver and I will take you. It would be our pleasure. And please, Mr Munley, always have your passport with you at all times. For your own safety, you understand.’

As we walked towards the lobby, Majid pointed down the street to a busy junction. ‘We are on Mofateh Street. The big road that crosses it there is Taleqani Avenue. The Alborz Mountains – the range you saw as we drove in, and will see from your room – lie to the north of the city.’

He smiled again and this time I noticed a row of chipped white teeth. ‘Mr Munley, you have me as your guide. As I say, you can call me day or night. No problem too large or too small.’ He pointed to the card he’d given me. ‘What time do you want to arrive at the exhibition?’

‘How about as soon as it opens? I always like to be one of the first. Get to know the ground, that sort of thing.’

‘The exhibition centre is some way to the north. I will be here at six thirty. We have to allow for the traffic. Do you need any help checking in?’

‘No, you’re all right, mate. I’ll be fine.’

I bent down to get a view of the driver and gave him a wave. ‘See you later, mate.’

51

My room was on the seventh floor. It wasn’t much bigger than my cell at Paddington Green and stank of old cigarettes, but there was no point asking them to change from the one Majid had picked for me. How else would he have known what I could see from my window?

All the foreigners’ rooms would be crawling with surveillance devices. Even looking for the mikes and their transmitters would flag up things about me I didn’t want them to know. After all, I was just a geek journalist.

The view from the window made up for everything. I moved the plastic garden chair and got comfortable. Set between high-rise hotels and office buildings I picked out the spindly outline of the Milad Tower, the fourth tallest in the world, Majid had told me with some excitement, and the glowing minarets and dome of Khomeini’s shrine, another landmark he had proudly pointed out to me on the drive in.

I wondered what Altun was doing right now. Something more interesting than counting cars and minarets, I was sure. If his picture was anything to go by, he’d followed the Shah’s example and embraced all the trappings of the American Dream. Come the revolution, he’d slipped seamlessly into the new way of life. Maybe he was like the KGB guys before the Wall had come down, just someone who saw what was coming and adapted to make the best of it.

From then on, Julian reckoned, he’d been climbing the greasy pole. First as a back-room boy during the Iran-Contra scandal. He was still a back-room boy, by the sound of it, but one who’d helped Armoured-dinner-jacket into power – and was still the main broker when it came to deals between Iran and anyone who had a beef with the West. I bet that made him a very busy man.

The trouble was, Julian had no information on where he might be. It was reasonable to assume he still lived in the city, but that wasn’t going to help me get a cab to his place.

There was no getting away from the fact that this city was the capital of the most powerful and stable country in the Middle East. The lads buzzing about in their cars below me knew it wasn’t called the Persian Gulf for nothing. They were busy riding the Islamic fundamentalist wave and wiping out the last vestiges of a secular Middle East.

They weren’t doing the mad-mullah thing, though. They were cleverer than that. Armoured-dinner-jacket and his pals pursued Iran’s interests coldly, rationally and methodically. They were fighting an asymmetric war. Why take on the West militarily when they’d lose? Better to back a bunch of other nutters and let them do the fighting.

Everything boiled down to one central objective: clearing out the old Sunni order, the foundation stone of American interests in the Middle East. With Saddam – a Sunni – gone, they had a very friendly Shia government in Baghdad. They were backing the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, both Sunni power bases. How long could they last? The Af-Pak situation was a nightmare, and a fight Obama might very well lose. Then there was US-friendly Saudi Arabia with a Sunni royal family to sort out – and Altun tucked away in the shadows, keeping the pot on the boil by supplying weapons and the means to fight the
jihad
without Iran having to commit a single soldier.

I turned my back on the view and started to sort myself out.

There was a single bed, a fridge containing a jug of iced water, a wardrobe, a phone, a table and two plastic chairs. There was also a Koran, a prayer mat and slippers, and an old twelve-inch TV. A notice on the table in English and Farsi proudly announced that the Bandar Hotel had ‘why-fi’. The motel we’d stayed at in Dubai had had nothing on the Bandar.

The TV was even older than I’d thought. It didn’t have a remote. I hit the ‘on’ button. It took an age to warm up. As the speaker mushed away, I slung my clothes into the cupboard.

I pulled the laptop out onto the bed and fired it up as the TV behind me finally swung into gear. A slightly fuzzy Oprah was talking to a big-haired woman about losing her home in the recession. I pushed the channel button to see David Hasselhoff saving the world in fluent Farsi and Columbo tripping up yet another bad guy who was too clever for his own good. I didn’t bother trying to find the BBC Persian channel. Aimed at the hundred million Persian speakers in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, it was sponsored by our Foreign and Commonwealth Office – so it wasn’t top of the pops in a government-approved hotel.

This place really was a mosaic. They watched our films and TV, and listened to our music. They wore our clothes and ate burgers. But they had no problem strapping on an explosive vest and taking on a tank or foot patrol. Not because Allah wanted them to, but because it was seen as the only way to win. One thing was certain: we needed to sort our shit out and prepare for what might be coming our way.

Everything on the laptop Julian had provided was seriously geeked up for Jim Manley’s world. There were articles penned by Manley for a whole string of defence journals, email correspondence with his ex-wife about how the property was going to be sold and the cash divvied up.

The system’s history was everything you’d expect it to be. I flicked through email traffic with editors, public-relations consultants, sources within Britain’s defence industry, even plane-spotters.

Plane-spotters.

The guys on the roof of the multi-storey.

I wondered.

I logged on to the hotel’s free why-fi network. These lads had taken to technology obsessively, just like us. Farsi is the most common language on the Internet after English and Mandarin Chinese. Armoured-dinner-jacket even wrote his own blog.

The grindingly slow speed made me feel right at home. Access details eventually came up on my screen. I tapped ‘aircraft enthusiasts’, ‘plane-spotters’ and ‘Iran’ into the search-engine and hit ‘enter’. This would have been Manley’s porn channel for the night. Up popped a website called
www.iranianmetalbird.net.
Magic. The little fuckers got everywhere, even in a dictatorship. Though the West was poring over every aspect of Iran’s infrastructure, the mullahs hadn’t thought to shut the Internet door.

The website tracked civil and military aircraft that had taken off and landed at most of Iran’s major airports, and was bursting with photos – lots of photos. I didn’t expect to see Altun waving at the camera, but I clearly had a long night ahead of me.

I started by doing what Jim Manley would do pretty much as soon as he arrived. I sent an email to my editor, telling him that I was in the city and going to work tomorrow. I added a note about my new best mate Majid and what a nice, helpful guy he was. Someone in a Tehran basement would be poring over this any minute now, and I wanted to give those lads something to smile about.

I went back to plane-spotting at IKIA as Oprah put the world to rights.

The first clutch of pictures was of C-130s departing IKIA, and a Chinese copy of the MiG-21 landing at Mehrabad. There was even an email address for the guy who’d taken this last one and posted his comments – in English: ‘A Chengdu F-7M used for training flights, tail number 3-7714, taking off from Mehrabad Airport. For more information contact Ali on
[email protected]
’.

There was a knock on the door.

‘Mr Munley?’

I pulled back the bolts and found myself staring at the unblinking eyes of my new best mate. Maybe he’d already read my email and was here to thank me for my kind words.

‘I am sorry, Mr Munley. I hope I do not disturb you, but I forgot to give you this. My profound apologies.’ He handed me a bubble-wrap envelope. ‘It is the press pass for the show and vouchers for food here in the hotel, a gift from Iran. They have no restaurant but will bring whatever you care for so there is no need to go out and face the traffic. Have you tried your mobile yet, Mr Munley?’

‘No, I just emailed my editor.’

‘Your mobile, unfortunately, Mr Munley, will not work. We are taking great steps to update our systems. So you have another gift, a mobile phone for the duration of your stay.’

He smiled and I smiled, both knowing it was all to do with keeping tabs on my calls – and, of course, being able to track me with it once I’d tucked it into my pocket.

‘Thank you very much, Majid. Very helpful.’

‘I will see you in the lobby at six thirty tomorrow morning. I wish you a pleasant evening.’