Khomeini's Boy: The Shadow War with Iran (22 page)

2012

September

Saturday

Chapter Thirty-Two

The Iranian ambassador to Syria was a young man named Gholamreza Yazdi, and he was a perfect child of the Islamic Revolution. Iraqi troops killed his parents in 1980 during the initial phase of what devolved into the eight year Iran-Iraq war. Orphaned, he studied in the holy shrine city of Qom under the great thinkers of the Revolution. Those were men who called Imam Khomeini friend, and once might have challenged Ali Khamenei for the mantle of Supreme Leader after Khomeini died.

The ambassador was intelligent, pious, educated, and ruthless. Everyone knew that Yazdi was too young to handle Syria while Iran’s staunchest ally teetered on the brink, but no one did anything about it, because Yazdi had the goods. He kept a compendium of choice secrets about every member of the Supreme Leader’s inner circle. It had been easy enough to compile, once he understood who he was dealing with: if men claimed they spoke for God, they didn’t have much moral wiggle room in their personal lives, and even clerics needed a puff of opium or a sex holiday in Thailand once in a while.

The military was a different story, and that’s why he was still up at night, poring over paperwork and hidden communiqués, as he had both evenings since his disastrous midnight tea with colonel Jamsheed Mashhadi. The military, particularly the Revolutionary Guard, were a god-fearing bunch, but they never claimed to be superhuman. As long as they fought for God and the Hidden Imam that made them damned near impossible for a cleric like him to blackmail.

The Guard also maintained an empire of shell corporations making it the wealthiest organization in Iran, and now that Imam Khomeini was dead, it was a poorly kept secret that most of the military leadership thought that the time of the clerics was over: sooner or later it would be time for Iran to become a good old fashioned military dictatorship. The smart clerics, the ones at the top, were making inroads to survive that revolution within a revolution. The small fish like Yazdi just had to make friends where they could, and avoid making powerful military enemies.

Under normal circumstances, that cautious principle would have covered Jamsheed Mashhadi, a war hero and infamous operative whose very existence was known to only an elite few. Yazdi never would have dared to move against the maimed bastard if he wasn’t shielded at the absolute heights of the Iranian government. No, he refused Tehran twice before they finally hand-delivered the document that was sitting on his desk, the document that was either his ticket to Khamenei’s inner circle or his own death warrant.

He rubbed his eyes again and heard the antique grandfather clock in the embassy hallway chime the hour: three a.m. He’d been at the desk for three hours, staring at that hand-delivered piece of paper. The writing was smudged, because someone had taken the time to produce it on an actual typewriter. Farsi’s cursive writing system made mechanical typing a nightmare, but it showed how important that document was; it was hand-typed, hand-delivered, and did not exist in electronic form. If he failed, there would be no proof it ever existed.

And at this point, he had almost certainly failed. He hadn’t heard from al-Qaida, or whatever those sad Sunni radicals were calling themselves these days, since yesterday. They’d told him that Mashhadi was seized by a local commander outside of Homs who knew his business and would take care of the matter. The jihadist leadership assured Yazdi their man would beat a confession out of Mashhadi, then kill him and bury him in the desert. Yazdi didn’t know why someone in Tehran wanted that taped confession and he didn’t care: the hand-typed letter had convinced him of the gravity of the situation, and the rewards that it promised were enough to make him jump when the leadership said “frog.”

His al-Qaida pawns had seemed like such a good idea, too. Who in a thousand years would guess that the Iranian ambassador to Syria had assassinated a decorated Revolutionary Guard colonel by betraying him to Sunni fanatics like the scum who idolized bin Laden? No one. The plan was perfect: Mashhadi would die, and Yazdi would enter the clerical inner circle, as the letter promised. That promise wasn’t explicit, but the intent had been obvious, since its author addressed the letter to
Ayatollah
Yazdi, not just
Ambassador
Yazdi.

Then, on the previous evening, Yazdi had received another call on his secure phone, this one from the Hezbollah commander named Haddad, and Yazdi knew his plans were dashed in a matter of moments. Haddad proudly declared that Hezbollah had rescued Mashhadi and slaughtered al-Qaida’s fighters. Yazdi prayed that had happened before al-Qaida forced Mashhadi to confess. If that were the case, Mashhadi would still think it was nothing but a wartime coincidence that they’d caught him. But if those mongrel zealots had attempted to force a confession out of Mashhadi and botched it, Yazdi was a dead man. Mashhadi was cunning as a she-wolf with cubs, even if he played the simple soldier, and if he saw the Farsi confession script long enough to realize an Iranian in Syria had betrayed him, Mashhadi would rightly conclude that Yazdi had something to do with it.

Six hours ago, Haddad had given him another call: Mashhadi vanished shortly after saying he needed to confer with Yazdi in Damascus. The Hezbollah commander said Mashhadi had become unhinged after his captivity, to the point that Haddad almost had to kill him in self-defense. Yazdi thanked Haddad and hung up the phone.

The ambassador had been in his office ever since, staring at that letter with such self-induced nausea that he’d forgotten to get drunk, which had been his only goal ever since he got off the phone with Haddad.

The clock struck four and the phone next to him rang. He didn’t recognize the number, and there was no name attached to it. It rang three more times as he moved his quivering hand toward it. His ringtone was a famous Quran singer reciting lines from the holy book. Normally it brought him comfort and was also a cheap way to demonstrate his piety. Now, the singer’s clear, ringing voice made the hairs on his forearms stand up.

“This is Yazdi.” What else was there to say, really?

“I’m in your reception room, walking towards your office. If you’re in the office and you have a gun, empty it and leave the weapon on your desk, barrel pointed towards you.” Mashhadi’s voice was quiet and almost pleasant. Yazdi imagined that he wasn’t much of a yeller.

Yazdi took the snub nosed .38 revolver out of his desk, emptied the bullets from the cylinder, and positioned it the way Mashhadi had asked. Yazdi didn’t know how to fire the damned thing anyway, so it never even occurred to him to keep the gun and take his chances. Not against Mashhadi.

A polite knock came on the door. Embracing the surrealness of the situation, Yazdi heard himself say, “Come in, please.”

Jamsheed Mashhadi walked in wearing a dirty green uniform. He had a big grey pistol shoved into his belt and some kind of machine gun strapped over his right shoulder. It was the same kind that the embassy guards used. An AK-47 they called it, maybe? In the name of God, the most upright and merciful, why hadn’t Yazdi ever bothered to learn more about soldiers?

Both of Mashhadi’s hands were covered in blood up to the elbow, like he’d been crushing a vat of tomatoes into paste. “Good evening, Ambassador. May I sit down?” he asked.

The ambassador waved his hand towards an overstuffed blue leather chair sitting opposite his work desk. “Please do me the honor, Colonel,” he offered.

Mashhadi nodded and put down his machine gun against the doorframe. Then he walked over to the chair, sat down, and crossed one of his legs tightly over the other, European-style. He put a bloody hand on each armrest, darkening the blue leather. With his maimed left index finger he tapped out a tune.

“Would you like some tea, Colonel? Another cigar?” Yazdi surprised himself with the composure in his voice.

Mashhadi held up his right hand and demurred, “Neither, Ambassador. But I will take some of whatever I smelled on your breath when we met. And don’t wave your fucking hand over the desk again so long as that gun is on the table.”

Yazdi slowly pulled his hands back, until only his fingertips gripped the lip of his desk. It showed off his heavy gold rings and his immaculate manicure. The ambassador doubted either would ingratiate him with Mashhadi, but he didn’t dare take his hands from the table.

“Apologies, Colonel—my liquor cabinet is in the other room. I’ll need to ring my assistant to go get it.”

Mashhadi pursed his lips, which accentuated the black bags under his eyes and the bruises across his face. He’d been worked over like ground meat. “You don’t have an assistant anymore,” he said. The man tapped his lip, leaving a faint red stain in the divot beneath his nose. “But you strike me as a man who might keep a bottle hidden in your desk, next to that ridiculous little pistol.”

The ambassador flitted his eyes downward and responded, “Do you enjoy Johnny Walker, Colonel? Blue Label?”

The battered man shrugged. “I prefer bourbon, but after the day I’ve had, scotch will do. Especially good scotch that someone else bought.”

Yazdi nodded and reached down to the file drawer at the right side of his desk. He didn’t flinch when he heard the
click
of Mashhadi’s pistol being cocked. What else was a professional to do, really? He grabbed the hundred-dollar bottle of scotch by its cyan label and filled two stubby glasses with a generous pour each. Then he cleared his throat and said, “If I don’t have an assistant, then I’m afraid you’ll need to drink this neat, Colonel.”

Mashhadi smiled and took the glass with his left hand, never lowering the big grey pistol in his right. “I’m a neat person, Ambassador.” He took a swig and nodded his head as he savored the taste. He continued, “My job requires neatness in all things. Not just in how I conduct an operation—that should go without saying—but also in my interactions with others.” Another sip, and this time he bared his teeth afterwards as the liquor crackled down his throat. “I don’t use my notoriety to intimidate my peers, and I don’t use my successes for political gain. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I was even
at
the type of function you’d consider attending.”

For the first time in years, Gholamreza Yazdi didn’t feel like subtlety. He actually laughed, and said, “Neither of us really believes that, Colonel. Maybe you yourself don’t get caught in plots, but the Revolutionary Guard is using so-called ‘heroes’ like you to outmaneuver clerics like me, all the way up to the Supreme Leader. You know it, and you certainly haven’t done anything to stop it. You serve Qasem Soleimani, and the good general schemes every day for a way to put the mullahs in the dirt and his soldiers on the throne. What do you think Quds Force
is
, if not a plot for the Guard to extend its influence at the expense of the Supreme Leader?”

Mashhadi finished his drink in a single gulp then motioned for Yazdi to pour him another one. “That’s your problem right there, Ambassador: Iran
has
no throne anymore. That’s why we took to the streets and that’s why thousands of us spent a decade dying to defend Islam from a beast like Saddam Hussein. But I wouldn’t expect you to know the difference between patriotism and politicking, Yazdi. I still know how to die for the Revolution, and vipers like you only ever knew how to profit off it.
That
is why men like me are chipping away at the power of you black-robed parasites.”

Yazdi leaned forward and taunted his guest, “For someone who is so proud of his willingness to die, you’ve done a pretty good job of making other people do the dying for you. Colonel.” He pointed at the blood on Mashhadi’s hands. “I don’t suppose that’s the blood of Zionists and Yankees, is it?”

The colonel took another drink, watching Yazdi over the brim of his glass. Then he responded, “Those deaths are on you, Ambassador. You tricked those men into defending you even though you knew I was coming and that they would never be able to stop me.”

The Ambassador nodded, pouring himself another drink. “How did you do that, anyway? You walked in with that rifle,” he cocked his head towards the one on the floor, “But I never heard a shot fired.”

“The rifle was a backup plan in case you had better defenses here than I expected.” Mashhadi finished his second drink then pushed the glass forward to demand another. “You didn’t.”

Yazdi filled Mashhadi’s glass again. The bottle was disappearing fast. “So you killed them with your bare hands. On another day, I’d find that impressive. Today, I’d only call it—“

“Terrifying?”

“Misguided.” Yazdi knew it was finally time to gamble, and he pushed the hand-typed letter towards Mashhadi. “Read that, and we can stop bantering.”

The colonel pulled it toward him across the desk, staining it red with the fingertips of his left hand. His right hand still pointed that big handgun straight at Yazdi’s heart. Mashhadi’s shiny eyes swept over the short message quickly. His face went pale as he read and re-read it. Each time, his eyes fixed a bit longer on the signature at the bottom of the page.

“What’s wrong, Colonel? That’s the explanation you came here for, isn’t it?”

Mashhadi’s response was anemic, defeated. “Yes. I think that will do.”

Yazdi looked Mashhadi straight in the eye and recited the entire communiqué from memory. “Ambassador, I hope this letter reached your possession with its seal intact. I regret writing this letter, but we live in dark times, where men must sacrifice for the Revolution. In three days, you will receive a visitor from the Guard. He is Colonel Jamsheed Mashhadi of the Quds Force, and he is an American spy. Arrange for a third party to capture him, extract a pre-written confession of your devising, and kill him. I have the utmost faith in your ability to carry out this mission. On behalf of all the faithful I thank you for your sacrifice,
Ayatollah
Yazdi,” Yazdi grimaced and took a drink before concluding, “Your true friend Ali Khamenei, Leader of the Revolution and Guardian of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Mashhadi gestured at Yazdi with the gun. “And who gave you that?”

“It came this week from Tehran. A dozen intermediaries probably laid hands on that letter before it ended up in a diplomatic bag.” He pulled the letter back towards him, like it was a shield. “But I called Tehran immediately, and the right people verified its origin.”