Whirlwind Read online

  “You’re not telling us all the truth—teach him a lesson!”

  “Oh I amIamIampleaseeeeee…”

  Then reviving him and his babbling again, about Ibrahim Kyabi, Ibrahim’s father, the mullah Kowissi, who the Tudeh student leaders were, about his own wife, about his father and where he lived in Tbilisi, and about his grandfather who was in the tsar’s secret police before being a founding member of the Cheka, then OGPU, NKVD, and finally the KGB—founded in ’54 by Khrushchev after Beria had been shot as a Western spy.

  “You believe Beria was a spy for us, Mzytryk?”

  “Yes…yes…yes he was, the KGB had proof oh yes…please stoppppp…please stopppppp I’ll tell you anyththingggggg…”

  “How could they have proof to that lie?”

  “Yes it was a lie but we were to believe it we were…we had to had to had to…please stopppppp I begggggg you…”

  “Stop hurting him, you devils.” Armstrong’s voice came in on cue, “No need to hurt him if he’s cooperating—how many times do I have to tell you! So long as he tells the truth don’t touch him. Give him a glass of water. Now, Mzytryk, tell us all you know about Gregor Suslev.”

  “He’s…he’s a spy I think.”

  “You’re not telling us the truth!” Hashemi roared at him, on cue. “Teach him a lesson!”

  “No…no…noplease stopppppppppohGodplease stoppppp he’s he’s Petr Oleg Mzytryk my father my father… Suslev was his…his cover name in the in the Far East based out of Vlad… Vladivostok and and and another cover’s Brodnin…and and and he lives in in Tbilisi and he’s commissar and senior ad…adviser Iranian affairs and con controller of Abdollah Abdollah Khan…”

  “You’re lying again. How could you know such secrets? Teach him a les—”

  “Please no I swearrrrrr I’m not lying I…read his secret dossier and I know it’s true… Brodnin was last and then he… Allah helppppp meeeeee…” Again he fainted again. Again they revived him.

  “How does Abdollah Khan contact his controller?”

  “He…my…they meet when whenever…some…sometimes at the…at the dacha sometimes at Tabriz…”

  “Where in Tabriz?”

  “At…at the Khan’s palace…”

  “How do they arrange a meeting?”

  “By code…coded telex from Tehran…from HQ…”

  “What code?”

  “The… G16… G16…”

  “What’s Abdollah Khan’s code name?”

  “Ivanovitch.”

  “And his controller’s?” Armstrong was careful not to agitate the helpless man by reminding him he betrayed his father.

  “Ali… Ali Khoy…”

  “Who were Brodnin’s contacts?”

  “I… I don’t… I don’t rememb remember…”

  “Help him remember!”

  “Pleaseplease oh God oh Goddddddd wait let me think I can’t remember it was it was…wait he told me there were there were three…it was something like like like one of them was a color a color…wait, yes, Grey yes Grey that was it…and and an another was…and another was Broad something… Broad something… I think…you it was Julan Broad something…”

  “Who else?” Armstrong asked, hiding his shock. “The third?”

  “I… I cant remem…no waitttttttt let me thinkkkk…there was there was anoth…told me there were he told me about…about four…one…one was… Ted… Ever… Ever something… Everly…and and another there were…if… I…pleaseeee if I think let me think and it was it was Peter…no Percy… Percy Smedley yes Smedey Tailler or Smidley…”

  The color left Armstrong’s face.

  “…that was all that was all that he that he told me…”

  “Tell us all you know about Roger Crosse!”

  No answer.

  Through the mirror they saw the man writhing on the operating table, heaving against the wires as more pain was fed into him and, mixed with the moans, the words poured out again: “He he…stoppppppppppppp he was was head no assistant head of MI6 and almost our top English secret agent for for for…twenty or more years for us and…and Brodnin Brod my father found…found out he was a double…triple agent and ordered him Section 16/a… Crosse cheated us for years cheated cheated cheated…”

  “Who tipped Brodnin about Crosse?”

  “Idontknow I swearldontknow I can’t know everything everything only what was in his dossier and and what he told me…”

  “Who was Roger Crosse’s controller?”

  “I don’t know, don’t know, how could I know I only know what I read secretly in my father’s doss…you’ve got to believe mmmmmmeeeeeee…”

  “Tell me everything in the dossier,” Hashemi said, as vitally interested now as Armstrong.

  They listened, sifting the words from the screams. At times the almost incoherent mixture of Russian and Farsi as Rakoczy continued to bring forth more names and addresses and covers and ranks in answer to their questions, his memory prompted by new levels of pain, until he was spent and repeating and now confused, himself confused and no longer of value. Then mixed with the gibberish “…Pah…mud… Pah…mudi…”

  “What about Pahmudi?” Hashemi said abruptly.

  “I…he’s…helppp meeee…”

  “What about Pahmudi? Is he a Soviet agent?”

  Now only gibberish and weeping and confusion.

  “Better give him a rest, Hashemi. His memory’s too good to blow—we can get what Pahmudi means tomorrow and go back over the stuff.” Armstrong was equally drained, secretly marveling at the knowledge Rakoczy had provided. “I advise a rest period, let him sleep for five hours, then we could begin again.”

  In the chamber the two men were waiting for instructions. The doctor glanced at his watch. He had been at it for six hours without a break, his back ached and so did his head. But he was a long-term SAVAK specialist and very pleased that he had brought Rakoczy to the level of truth without drugs. Atheist son of a burnt father! he thought disgustedly.

  “Let him sleep for four hours, then we begin again,” came over the loudspeaker.

  “Yes, Colonel. Very good.” He peered at the eyes under the lids, then said carefully to his assistant who was a deaf-mute but could lip-read, “Leave him as he is—that’ll save time when we come back. He’ll need a wake-up injection.” The man nodded and, when the door was opened from the outside, both men left.

  In the room behind the mirror the air was smoky and dry.

  “What about Pahmudi?”

  “He has to be connected with Mzytryk, Petr Oleg.” Armstrong was sifting all Rakoczy’s information, awed.

  Hashemi took his eyes off the man lying on the table and switched off the cassette recorder, pressed the rewind button. In a half-opened drawer were seven other cassettes.

  “Can I have copies?” Armstrong asked.

  “Why not?” Hashemi’s eyes were red-rimmed and the stubble of his heavy beard showed darkly even though he had shaved only a few hours ago. “What was so important about Brodnin and those other names, Grey, Julan Broad something, Ted Ever something, and Percy Smedley or Smidley Tailler?”

  Armstrong got up to ease the pain in his shoulders, also to give himself a little time to think. “Brodnin was a Soviet businessman, KGB, but a double agent for us. There was never a suspicion he was duping us. Julan Broad something has got to mean Julian Broadhurst. We’ve never had anything on him, never a whisper, nothing. He’s a leading light of the Fabian Society, a highly respected member of the Labour party, in or out of the cabinet at his whim, adviser and confidant of prime ministers.” He added disgustedly, “Patriot.”

  “So now you have him. Traitor. So put him on a table for a few hours, milk him dry, then drown him in the Thames. Grey?”

  “Lord Grey, firebrand of the Left, ex-trades unionist, rabid leader of the anti-China anti-Hong Kong lobby, politely anti-Communist, sent up to the Lords a few years ago to create more trouble. We did an investigation on him a few years ago but he came up clean as a whistl
e—nothing except his politics.” My God, Armstrong was thinking, if they’re both spies and traitors—and we could prove it—that would rip Labour apart, let alone the explosion Percy’d cause the Tories. But how to prove it and stay alive? “We’ve had nothing on him ever.”

  “So now you have him too. Traitor. Clean him out and shoot him. Ted Ever something?”

  “Everly—golden boy of the TUC being groomed for high office. Impeccable centrist politics. Never a smell of pink let alone Communist.”

  “Now you have him. Rack him. Smedley or Smidley Tailler?”

  Robert Armstrong offered his cigarettes. Percy Smedley-Taylor: landed gentry, rich, Trinity College—an apolitical deviate who manages to keep his aberrations out of the press when he’s caught—well-known ballet critic, publisher of erudite magazines, with impeccable, untouchable connections into the highest and most delicate sources of English power. Christ Almighty, if he’s a Soviet spy… It’s impossible! Don’t be bloody silly, you’ve done too many years, know too many secrets to be surprised about anyone. “Doesn’t mean beans, but I’ll check him out, Hashemi,” he said, not wanting to share the knowledge until he had thought through what he should do.

  The cassette clicked off as the rewind finished. Hashemi took it out, put it with the others in the lower drawer and locked the drawer carefully. “Then deal with them in our fashion: send an emissary to them, Robert, to them and their lousy high-blown friends. They’ll soon give you plenty of pishkesh to compensate for your loss of pension.” Hashemi laughed mirthlessly, inserting a new cassette. “But don’t go yourself or you’ll end up in a back alley with a knife in your back or poison in your beer—these high-blown bastards are all the same.” He was very tired but his elation at all the marvelous knowledge Rakoczy had given them pushed away the need for sleep. “We’ve already got enough from him to dynamite the Tudeh, control the Kurds, stop the insurrection in Azerbaijan, make Tehran safe, Kowiss safe—and cement Khomeini into power,” he said to himself.

  “Is that what you want? What about Abrim Pahmudi?”

  Hashemi’s face darkened. “Allah let me deal with him properly! Rakoczy’s given me a golden key perhaps even to him.” He looked at Armstrong. “Gold for you too, eh? This Suslev—Petr Oleg—who murdered the great Roger Crosse? Eh?”

  “Yes. You too. Now you know who’s your top enemy.”

  “What’s Mzytryk, this Suslev, to you?”

  “I had a run-in with him years ago in Hong Kong,” Armstrong sipped some cold coffee, baiting the hook. “He could provide you—and me—with more gold than his son. He could peg Abrim Pahmudi, and if him, Christ only knows who else—perhaps the Revolutionary Komiteh? I’d give a lot to debrief Suslev. How can we do that?”

  Hashemi tore his concentration off Pahmudi and put it back on the personal danger he himself and his family were in. “In return you will arrange me a British passport, safe passage out, and a substantial pension—if I need it?”

  Armstrong put out his hand. “Done,” he said. The two men shook hands, neither believing the gesture had any value other than as a politeness, both knowing they would deliver if they could, but only so long as it was then to their own advantage.

  “If we get him, Robert, I control the briefing and I ask what I want first.”

  “Of course, you’re the boss.” Armstrong’s eyes veiled his excitement. “Could you get him?”

  “Perhaps I could persuade Abdollah Khan to arrange a meeting this side of the border. Rakoczy’s given us enough on him to make even him squirm though I’d have to be careful…he’s one of our best agents too!”

  “Barter the knowledge of the Section 16/a—I bet he doesn’t know they’ve betrayed him.”

  Hashemi nodded. “If we get Petr Oleg over the border, no need to bring him here. We could clean him out in our place in Tabriz.”

  “I didn’t know you had a place there.”

  “Lots of things you don’t know about Iran, Robert.” Hashemi stubbed out his cigarette. How much time have I got? he asked himself nervously, totally unused to feeling like the hunted and not the hunter. “On second thought, give me the passport tomorrow.”

  “How soon could you ‘persuade’ Abdollah Khan?”

  “We’d still have to be careful—that bastard’s all-powerful in Azerbaijan.” They both glanced at Rakoczy as he stirred momentarily, moaned, then went back into nightmare again. “Have to be very careful.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow. Soon as we’ve finished with Rakoczy we’ll visit Abdollah. You provide the plane—or chopper. You’re very friendly with IHC, aren’t you?”

  Armstrong smiled. “You know everything, don’t you?”

  “Only about Tehran things, Islamic things, Iranian things.” Hashemi wondered what McIver and the other oil support foreigners would do if they knew that Deputy Minister Ali Kia, newly appointed to the ATC board, had, some days ago, recommended immediate nationalization of all foreign oil-based companies, all Iran-registered airplanes, airplane companies, and the expulsion of all foreign pilots and personnel. “How are you going to service the oil fields, Excellency Minister?” he had asked when he had been told.

  “We don’t need foreigners. Our own pilots will service our own fields—haven’t we hundreds of pilots who need to prove their loyalty? I presume you have secret files on all foreign pilots, executives and so on. The, er, the komiteh requires them.”

  “I don’t think we have anything, Excellency. Those files were SAVAK-instigated,” Hashemi had said smoothly. “I presume you know those terrible people have an extensive file on Your Excellency?”

  “What file? Me? SAVAK? You must be mistaken.”

  “Perhaps. I’ve never read it, Excellency, but I was told of its existence. I was told it goes back over twenty years. Probably it contains nothing but lies…”

  He had left a badly shaken Deputy Kia with the promise that he would try to obtain the file secretly and give it to him and had laughed all the way back to Inner Intelligence HQ. The file on Ali Kia—his file—really did go back twenty years and contained unshakable proof of all sorts of smelly business deals, usury, pro-Shah voting and informing, together with highly ingenious—photographed—sexual practices that would send conservative fundamentalists into a frenzy.

  “What’s the joke?” Armstrong asked.

  “Life, Robert. A couple of weeks ago I had at my disposal a whole air force if need be, now I must ask you to arrange the charter. You arrange the charter, I’ll arrange the clearance.” He smiled. “You’ll give me the British passport, very bloody valid, as Talbot might say, prior to takeoff. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.” Armstrong stifled a yawn. “While we’re waiting, can I hear the last cassette?”

  Hashemi reached for his key, stopped at the knock on the door. Tiredly he got up and opened it. His fatigue vanished. Four men were outside. One of his own men, white-faced, and three Green Bands. Armed. He knew the oldest of them. “Salaam, General,” he said politely, his heart grinding. “Peace be upon you.”

  “Salaam, Colonel. Peace be upon you.” General Janan was hard-faced with a thin line for a mouth. SAVAK. He looked at Armstrong coldly, then took out a paper, offered it to Hashemi. “You are to hand over the prisoner Yazernov to me at once.”

  Hashemi took the paper, thanking God he had risked everything to capture Rakoczy and ram him through to the third level fast. “To Colonel Hashemi Fazir, Inner Intelligence. Immediate. By authority of the Revolutionary Komiteh: The Department of Inner Intelligence is disbanded, and all personnel absorbed into this organization at once under the command of General Janan. You are suspended from all duties pending further orders. You will hand over to General Janan the prisoner Yazernov and all interrogation tapes at once. [signed] Abrim Pahmudi, Director, SAVAMA.”

  “The spy’s still on the second level and you’ll have to wait. It’s dangerous to remove him an—”

  “He’s no longer your responsibility.” The general motioned to one of his men who
went out, beckoned to others in the corridor, then walked down the steps and into the chamber below, the doctor, white-faced and very nervous, now with them. When the Green Bands saw the naked man on the table and the instruments and the way he was wired, their eyes glittered. The doctor began to unwire him.

  In the interrogation room above, Hashemi looked back at the general. “I formally tell you it’s dangerous to move him. You’re responsible.”

  “Insha’Allah. Just give me the tapes.”

  Hashemi shrugged and unlocked the top drawer and gave him the dozen, almost useless tapes from the first and second level.

  “And the others! Now!”

  “There aren’t any.”

  “Open the other drawer!”

  Again Hashemi shrugged, selected a key, and used it carefully. If turned correctly, the key set the magnetizer into operation and wiped the tapes. Only he and Armstrong knew the secret—and about the secret installation of duplicate cassette recorders: “You never know, Hashemi, when you might be betrayed or by whom,” Armstrong had told him years ago when, together, they had installed the devices. “You might want to wipe tapes, then use the secret ones to barter for your freedom. You can never be too careful in this game.”

  Hashemi slid the drawer open, praying that both devices were operating. Insha’Allah, he thought, and gave over the eight cassettes. “They’re empty, I tell you.”

  “If they are, accept my apologies, if they’re not… Insha’Allah!” The general looked at Armstrong, his eyes granite. “Better you leave Iran quickly. I give you a day and a night for past services.”

  AT THE BAKRAVAN HOUSE, NEAR THE BAZAAR: 8:57 P.M. Sharazad was lying on her stomach on the bed, being massaged, and she groaned with pleasure as the old woman caressed oil into her bruises and into her skin. “Oh, be careful, Jari…”

  “Yes, yes, my princess,” Jari crooned, her hands softly strong, easing the pain away. She had been nursemaid and servant to Sharazad ever since her birth, and had given her suck when her own baby, born a week earlier, had died. For two years she suckled Sharazad and then, because Jari was a quiet and gentle woman, now widowed, she had been given full charge of her. When Sharazad married Emir Paknouri she accompanied her into his house and then, the marriage finished, happily they had returned home. Stupid to marry such a flower to one who prefers boys, however much money he has, Jari had always thought but never said out loud. Never never never. Dangerous to go against the head of the house—any head of a family—even more so with a money-grubbing miser like Jared Bakravan, she thought, not sorry he was dead.