Tomy and the Planet of Lies (9 page)

As the secret service agents didn't have the required pictures to hand, the group decided to meet again in two days time. I suggested our hotel and the others had no objections. “There's something else,” I turned to “Omar Sharif.” “We need a passport for Tomy.” After a bit of discussion in Arabic, “Omar” asked: “An Iranian passport?” “As a last resort, yes,” I answered, “But a Swiss one would be better.” More discussion, and then with a grin:

“We have good relations with the Swiss. Your country has represented the U.S.A. since the breaking off of diplomatic relations. We'll see what we can do.”

After a guided tour of the city and a visit to the National Museum, we returned to the hotel where we found a Herr Walter Schnebeli from the Swiss embassy waiting for us in the lobby. He was around forty years old, casually dressed and seemed a very accommodating type. He pulled a form out of his black briefcase and passed it to me: “Application for a replacement passport” was written in block letters at the top.

“It's terrible,” said Herr Schnebeli, “what happened to the young gentleman. He is your son, is he not?” I corrected that to “youngest brother,” which was more or less the truth—Tomy bit his tongue—and started to fill out the form. When I got to the field “Date of birth” I simply added ten days to my own: instead of April 14th, I put April 24th, and I added 22 years to my own birth year of 1935, in other words 1957. In the section “Place of birth” I wrote “Zofingen” and thought, this lie could blow up in my face at any time, because the Swiss authorities at home wouldn't take long to realize that no Anton von Däniken had been born on April 24th, 1957, in Zofingen. The height and weight I simply guessed and the rest I could see with my own two eyes: brown hair, brown eyes and, as a distinguishing feature, a birthmark on the back of the left hand. I gave Herr Schnebeli the form and he remarked what a small world it was, for he himself came from the neighboring town of Oftringen. Heavens help me! I really hoped he wouldn't come with the idea of asking Tomy about his youth.

“And now four photos,” said Herr Schnebeli in the friendly tone of a helpful civil servant. “You could be twins,” he added, and Tomy smiled. “Only the age difference and the teeth keep you apart.” The man was very observant. Tomy showed his front teeth in a big smile. Herr Schnebeli brought us to a photo shop, which was just around the corner from the hotel. After the pictures were ready, he gave us a letter written in Arabic with the Iranian state crest at the top, which had been stamped twice. Two of the photos would be needed for the visa application, he added helpfully, but not until the passport was ready.

After Herr Schnebeli was gone, I asked Tomy what was in the Arabic letter. He said it was an official confirmation that the passport belonging to Anton von Däniken, resident in the Sahedan Inn in Zahedan, had been stolen. They lied in their teeth.

On the next day, the inevitable occurred. Four secret service men and one woman, who we knew only too well, namely Chantal, entered our suite. “Ali” and “Omar” were among them: the other two I had never seen before. One of them was introduced as a doctor. To start with, they laid a picture of a bearded man on the table; then an aerial picture of a city; a close-up picture of a house and a geographical map scaled 1 to 5000 with an arrow over a building. Tomy glanced quickly at the pictures, as if it had nothing at all to do with him. Then he stretched himself out on the bed. Marc lay down next to him. I knelt in front of the bed. We all held hands, a situation that was met with a look from Tomy that said: You're all completely mad. A few seconds later he was gone. The doctor established that his pulse was weak, but stable, and his blood pressure had dropped considerably. He shined a light into Tomy's eyes and observed the reaction of his pupils. Chantal was breathing loudly and deeply: she stared uninterruptedly at Tomy's body. It seemed to me as if her eyes were about to fall out. Sweat was running down her forehead in tiny rivulets. The others, too, were staring at Tomy's pale body as if mesmerized.

Three minutes later, he was back. Marc and I already knew how this worked: the others held their breath in mute fascination. But what was up with Chantal? Hurriedly, she turned away, went off, and shut herself in the bathroom. Tomy stretched and then sat up and said something in Arabic. Now
we
held our breath. The secret service men all began talking at the same time, and I wanted to know from Tomy what he had told them.

“Ach, nothing much. The name of the man that I just visited,” he answered, as if it were the most banal thing in the world, “what he does for a living and that he has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.”

“Incredible!” Chantal exclaimed—she had reappeared from the bathroom and had clearly managed to regain her composure. She bent over Tomy and wanted to kiss him. He escaped her attentions by quickly turning his head away.

“He's exhausted,” I said to her, and Tomy looked up at me with dark eyes. Liar! he seemed to be saying to me. Later I found out that the procedure was not in the slightest bit tiring for him. He found it interesting to meet new and interesting people, but that was about to change.

After the sixth attempt, after Tomy had babbled out his report in Arabic, “Ali” ran to the nearest telephone. The whole cabal of secret service operatives, including Chantal, was shouting at the same time. She gathered up her papers and left the suite in a seeming panic.

“What the hell happened?” asked Marc, concerned.

“A well-known, high-ranking religious leader,” answered Tomy, and now I really felt that he looked exhausted. “A man so loaded with falsehood and lies that it makes this body, and me in it, want to be sick!” He looked up at us, helplessly. “What kind of awful beings are you? Erich, are there many like that?”

I didn't want to lie to Tomy, and he probably would have seen straight through any falsehood anyway and been horribly disappointed. Maybe he would have even left us. So, I explained a little about the lies in politics, religion and even in science. Marc grasped the situation and began to uncork a bottle of champagne.

“This'll do that body some good,” he said.

It did us all good. Right up to the third bottle.

While we were appreciatively serving ourselves champagne, I tried to explain some more to Tomy about our lying society. I mentioned how sometimes small lies were a lot less harmful than the truth. How the truth could sometimes injure people and cause them pain. I tried hard to explain the difference between the brutal truth, the injurious truth, and a white lie. I wanted him to understand why a white lie could be more merciful than the cold, hard facts, and how people could lie with gestures and facial expressions without even saying a word. I wanted to tell him the grown-up lies about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, but he knew about those already from my memory. Tomy seemed resigned and disappointed.

At some stage, Chantal called. She wanted to come to see Tomy, but he had no desire to see her and asked her to leave him alone. I was worried about him, but the next day the crisis seemed to be over.

Since the secret service agents left us in peace, we decided to look around Teheran on our own. We hailed a cab and set off. Every hundred meters or so groups of people on the sidewalk called out something to the taxi driver. A broad-shouldered man accompanied by a woman wrapped from head to toe in a long black burqa squeezed in next to us on the back seat. Two hundred meters further along the road: a student hopped in and took the tiny seat between the driver and me. My protests that I had booked the taxi for us alone fell on deaf ears. He didn't understand a word. The student explained: the people were shouting where they wanted to go to the taxi driver. Whenever there was room in a taxi that was going in the right direction, the driver had to take the people with him. Taxi rides with only one or two people were not permitted, even in a country overflowing with oil!

I wasn't overly impressed with the city. It was too loud, too dirty, and too hot. On top of that, were the half-mummified women—dreadful! So, we returned to the hotel. I remembered that we had a broken rear window in the car so I went to the concierge and asked him to look up the address of the nearest
British Leyland
representative. A short while later, as I drove out of the hotel garage, I noticed that another car was following us. How could I have been so naïve as to think that the secret service was finished with us?

* * *

On the following morning, we had another “session” in our suite. This time there were two more people from the “service” present. This time, in front of six witnesses, Tomy again scored a direct hit. The excitement among the gentlemen of the secret service was unbelievable. I took “Omar” to one side and made it clear to him that Tomy was close to exhaustion and that we wanted to continue with our journey. What was more, I added, the whole thing was dangerous for us. He, “Omar,” kept bringing ever more new faces and the circle of witnesses to Tomy's ability was getting ever bigger.

“What happens when one of these people turns out to be a bad egg?” I asked.

“Omar's” perpetual smile never wavered: that was impossible, he assured me, because only the best of the best had been informed.

“And what about that Ayatollah?” I insisted. “And the Saudi Arabian oil baron that we just met?”

“Omar” shook his head and promised that the service would look into my request.

“But for all our sakes,” I urged. “A dead Tomy is no good for you, and we shouldn't do anything to ruin the excellent relations between Switzerland and Iran. And,” this was the icing on the cake, “we would help you more, if it was against bands of murderers. What we've given you so far has busted the ring you were after, hasn't it?”

“Omar” shook his head, grinning as ever. This was presumably supposed to display his “appreciation” of our plight. And, while I thought I had bargained pretty well with him, in the eyes of the secret service people I had behaved like an inexperienced fool. But I didn't find that out until later—much, much later.

That evening, Herr Schnebeli brought Tomy's passport. If he had known that his embassy had just made out the first ever passport for an extra-terrestrial he would have flipped.

* * *

The next day Chantal turned up and asked Tomy to check out just three more people, and then we could go. I gave her Tomy's passport and told her, we would only play along if “the service” could provide us with a clean exit visa. “No tricks, please. For Tomy's sake.”

Everything worked out surprisingly well. A little less than three hours later Tomy was again clutching his passport, this time complete with exit visa. Four secret service men were again stood around Tomy's bed: Marc, Tomy and I were holding hands and I fervently hoped that the others would believe that Tomy's ability wouldn't work otherwise. We didn't score any direct hits this time. At the end of the session, one of the men introduced himself as a physicist. He had a request—namely that Tomy should take him over under more strenuous conditions. Tomy shrugged his shoulders and said there were no strenuous conditions for him, but the physicist didn't believe him. He pulled out a fine-mesh steel helmet, bent it into shape, and pulled it over his head, past his ears and nose. I whispered to Tomy that he should punish the physicist a little and make him run around the table a few times. We got back into our positions, Marc and I holding Tomy's hands as he lay back on the bed. As Tomy began to lose color, the physicist began to scream. Then he burst up from his chair and ran around the table five times. His companions fled in shock out of his way. The physicist, holding his mesh helmet like a stretched crown of thorns, staggered back into the bedroom and said, in his own voice: “I am overwhelmed. That's enough.”

Tomy returned to his own body and then we all gathered around the conference table. The physicist dabbed sweat from his brow and instructed those around him that Tomy's ability was uncanny and it was vital that it be researched. He made us an offer of one million dollars a year plus the use of a luxury villa, including staff. He was unable, under any circumstances, to offer any more. Such a talent as Tomy, he explained, had a duty to mankind to place himself at the disposal of science. When we didn't go for his offer and, instead, insisted that we wanted to go home, “Ali” began to make blatant threats. Tomy's ability could be a danger to Iran, he claimed, because he could be compromised at any time by enemies of the state.

Tomy got angry, and so did I. Was this the thanks we got for all our help, I asked Chantal, who looked away in shame. Tomy added:

“I will do what I want with my ability; I will do it when I want and for whom I want, and no power on earth can stop me. My abilities will never be used for liars or murderers. Now, let's bring this unpleasant discussion to an end!”

Ali and the physicist tried again to influence Tomy, Chantal taking the role of mediator. But Tomy headed off to the bedroom and closed the door. By promising to keep in touch, I finally persuade the group to leave. I went in and found Tomy lying on his bed staring at the ceiling, his hands clasped behind his head. I sat down on the bed next to him.

“I should go,” he said and looked up into my eyes. “But I can't leave you in this awful situation. After all, it's because of me that you're both here.”

“Thanks,” I retorted, not without irony. “I was the one wishing on a star to meet up with an extraterrestrial, even if I did imagine the experience would be a little different. Now you're here, and before you zip off home, I'd like to learn a lot more about you and your world. I'm an author and I have a lot of curiosity!”

“Me too,” admitted Tomy, smiling again, and he took my hand. He suggested that we should all go off to bed and get a good night's sleep so we could make an early start in the morning.

But before we retired to our beds, I wanted to know if we were in danger from the secret service. Was there anything they could still do to us? “Not a thing,” said Tomy wearily, “I would only need to take over their chief…”