Protect And Defend

chapter 54
TEHRAN, IRAN

Based on his conversation with Rapp, Ashani had been certain the extra men at the airport were there to arrest him, but he soon learned he was wrong. An American submarine had sunk the Sabalan in the Strait of Hormuz. President Amatullah had declared a state of emergency and called for a meeting of the Supreme Security Council. Under normal circumstances Ashani would have had little difficulty believing that the Americans had acted so recklessly. All he had to do was revisit the tragedy of Iran Air Flight 655. On Sunday, July 3, 1988, the commercial airliner left Bandar Abbas for a short flight to Dubai, when it was shot down by the U.S.S. Vincennes. The Americans reacted to the tragedy by giving their cowboy captain a medal. In light of Rapp's phone call, however, Ashani had his doubts as to what may have led up to the Sabalan's being sunk.

This time, however, Ashani got the feeling that it was Amatullah who was acting like a reckless cowboy. He remembered the first meeting they'd had in the wake of the disaster at Isfahan. How Amatullah had come strutting in with General Zarif and General Sulaimani in tow. His promises of making the Americans and the Jews pay. Ashani had never encountered a more duplicitous man than Amatullah. He was a master manipulator of public opinion.

Ashani looked out the window of his barely moving sedan at the sea of bodies marching rowdily toward the old American Embassy. Apparently, Amatullah had closed the schools and ordered mass protests against America's aggression in the Strait of Hormuz. It was very convenient for Amatullah that Ayatollah Najar was in Isfahan with the Supreme Leader, meeting with aggrieved families from the tragedy at the nuclear facility. Ashani had so far been unable to reach Najar and was growing increasingly nervous. If Amatullah was crazy enough to kidnap Irene Kennedy, what would stop him from killing Najar, his chief rival?

The three-car motorcade finally reached the gates of the Presidential Palace. The normal security detail had been augmented by tanks from the Revolutionary Guards' 18th Armored Division. As the soldiers made way for his sedan, Ashani got the sinking feeling that Amatullah would not hesitate to use these shock troops to seize power. He would feel much better when Najar and the Supreme Leader returned to the capital. After entering the palace Ashani was escorted to Amatullah's office suite, where he found Foreign Minister Salehi, Brigadier General Sulaimani, Major General Zarif, and a handful of aides. They were all gathered around a large television watching a news conference, or so he thought.

As Ashani drew closer he could see that their focus was on President Amatullah, who was in the midst of delivering one of his impassioned speeches. He was dressed in his signature boxy tan suit with a dress shirt and no tie. Ashani found the fact that he was making a statement a bit odd since he had yet to meet with the Supreme National Security Council to discuss the situation, but then again, the man had a history of not letting facts get in the way of his message.

Amatullah was going through a timeline of the events that led up to the sinking of the Sabalan. Apparently two separate ships reported picking up a submarine on surface radar as well as visually confirming the vessel only minutes before the Sabalan was torpedoed. Amatullah was adamant that the Sabalan had done nothing to provoke the attack and called it a blatant act of war by the Americans.

"This act of barbarism is bad enough, but Iran's security agencies have uncovered something more treacherous. Over fifty years ago the CIA launched a plot to remove the rightfully elected Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh from office in my country. For the next thirty years the CIA backed the criminal Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and continued to meddle in the affairs of the Iranian people until we rose up in revolution and threw both the shah and the Americans out of our country. For more than twenty-five years now, we have been vigilant in our fight to remain independent from the corruption of imperial America."

Ashani glanced to his left and then right as Amatullah continued his litany of American deception and manipulation against the people of Iran. The generals and the foreign minister seemed excessively pleased with Amatullah's words. Most of his complaints were old accusations; more than a few of them complete falsehoods, but that did not stop these men from paying rapt attention. Ashani got the sense that the master manipulator was building toward something even bigger.

"As the entire world knows, earlier this week my country's nuclear facility in Isfahan was destroyed. The American secretary of state went before the United Nations and offered so-called proof that the facility was destroyed by Iranian saboteurs. She made it seem to the world that the United States had no hand whatsoever in the attack against my country. That it was simply average Iranians who were rebelling against an oppressive government. What she intentionally chose not to tell the world was that those saboteurs were recruited and funded by the CIA.

"For months now various intelligence services in my country have been tracking the movement of this dissident group of mercenaries. That investigation culminated in Mosul, Iraq, this morning when the group's leaders met directly with CIA Director Irene Kennedy." Amatullah held up an enlarged photograph of Kennedy.

Ashani noticed immediately that she did not look herself. Her straight brown hair was matted down and one side of her face looked red, as if she'd been hit. She had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and her expression was far from her usual calm demeanor. Ashani felt ashamed for his country and embarrassed for Kennedy.

"In Director Kennedy's possession was this." Amatullah held up a second enlarged photograph. "This briefcase and several others like it contained more than a million dollars in cash that the director of the CIA was delivering to her spies as a bounty for destroying Iran's quest for energy independence and self-government. I ask the world to stand up for what is right and help my country stop Imperial America's aggression. It is time for us to come together and stand up for true democracy and freedom and to fight against the capitalist pigs of America.

"Iran will not pump another drop of oil"-Amatullah shook his fist defiantly at the camera-"until every American warship has left the Persian Gulf. I call on my OPEC brothers to do the same. Together we will send a message to America that we are done being bullied. We have already demanded compensation of ten billion dollars for the destruction of the Isfahan facility and the hundreds of Iranians who were killed in this attack by America and her spies. With the sinking of the Sabalan and the escalating cost to clean up the disaster at Isfahan we are now demanding that America pay a total of fifteen billion dollars. In addition America must also apologize for what they have done and make a commitment in front of the United Nations General Assembly that they will cease meddling in the affairs of Iran."

Amatullah paused and folded his hands in front of him, adopting a less aggressive pose. "Until such time as America fulfills these obligations, we will keep CIA Director Kennedy as a guest of the country of Iran. And I can assure the international community that we will treat her with more respect and dignity than America has treated my Muslim brothers that have been captured on the battlefield."

With that parting shot, Amatullah turned and walked off camera. Ashani stood among the other advisors absolutely thunderstruck by what he had just heard. The mad genius and sheer audacity of Amatullah knew no bounds. The idea that the Sabalan had done nothing to provoke being torpedoed seemed a bit ridiculous, but what Amatullah had just accused Kennedy of was an outright lie. Only several hours earlier he had sat across from a very sincere and believable Kennedy and listened to her offer an aid package worth billions of dollars. She hardly seemed like a woman plotting the overthrow of the Iranian government.

Ashani looked around the room at the faces of the other men and got the uneasy feeling that they all knew something that he did not. The door to Amatullah's office opened, and the president burst into the room like an actor arriving backstage after delivering the performance of his life. Amatullah stopped triumphantly in front of the group with his chin held high. The generals offered their exuberant congratulations on a brilliant speech. The foreign minister, whom Ashani had forgotten about, was now standing in the corner behind him talking to someone on the phone. He began thanking the person loudly and then hung up.

"Wonderful speech, sir," Salehi said enthusiastically as he returned to the group. "That was Foreign Minister Xing. The Chinese have agreed to bring our grievances before the UN Security Council, and put pressure on the Americans to make reparations."

"Excellent," Amatullah said with more relief than surprise. Almost as an afterthought he noticed that his intelligence minister was now present. Amatullah looked at him with a hint of suspicion and then said, "Azad, you have made it back safely. I would like to have a word with you in private." Amatullah gestured toward his office and began walking.

Ashani did not move right away. His head was spinning with plots and deceptions. Defying the request would undoubtedly lead to bigger problems. With reluctance, he followed Amatullah into his office, and tried not to flinch when the door was closed behind him. Amatullah ordered the TV crew out of his office so he could have a word alone with his intelligence minister.

"I am sorry," Amatullah started the conversation, "that I did not let you know about this sooner, but I did not want you tainted by it until the intelligence proved to be accurate."

Ashani said nothing, but nodded as if it was a reasonable precaution even though it wasn't.

"Imad and his people have been working on this for months. I wanted to bring you in on it, but Imad feared that the Intelligence Ministry had an unacceptable number of people who were sympathetic to the MEK and other resistance organizations."

This was such an outright lie that Ashani could barely conceal his growing anger. In a measured voice he said, "I think I know my organization better than Imad Mukhtar."

"I will not argue with you on that point, but we have arrived here nonetheless, and your skill and support are greatly needed to help us get through this crisis. Can I count on you?"

Here it is, Ashani thought to himself. A test of loyalty. He contemplated the two generals in the other room, both fiercely devoted to Amatullah, neither of them afraid to use violence to get what they wanted. Less than a second passed as Ashani's thoughts raced to his wife and daughters and back again. Now was not the moment to take a stand against the madman.

"Of course you can," Ashani answered in his most sincere voice. "I know better than perhaps anyone, other than yourself, that this nonsense with America must stop."

"Good," Ashani said as he clapped his hands together. "Now as you can imagine, I am going to be very busy. The Supreme Leader is on his way back from Isfahan, and I must prepare to brief him as well as continue to lobby our allies to support us against this American aggression."

"How can I help?"

Amatullah led him across the office to his desk. "Imad is in need of desperate assistance. I'm afraid his network of agents may have been compromised. He has Kennedy in a safe location for the moment, but he thinks he might have to move her." He opened his desk drawer and withdrew a sheet of paper. On it was a handwritten list of ten phone numbers. The first two had lines through them.

"I have spoken with him twice. After each call move onto the next number."

Ashani took the sheet and looked at the numbers.

"If you go through all of them, start over at the beginning."

"What would you like me to do?"

"Call him. You will refer to him as Ali and he will refer to you as Cyrus. Find out what he needs. The last time we spoke he was confident that he could get Kennedy to confess, but he said the city is crawling with American and Iraqi military units."

Ashani felt a knot in his stomach. Mukhtar was a brutal thug. "Did he say where he was holding her?"

"No." Amatullah shook his head. "I asked, but he did not want to talk about it on the phone." He handed Ashani a mobile phone. "If there is an emergency, he will call you on this phone."

"Is there anything else?"

"Yes. If there is any way to get her across the border without being caught I want you to do it."

Ashani nodded dutifully and said, "I will look into it immediately."