The Peregrine Spy (25 page)

“Maybe you’re right,” said Frank.

“No maybe about it.”

Frank took a sip of vodka and thought about unsent cables. “So what do I do? Forget what Anwar tells me about a coup? Forget what the
homafaran
tell me? Ignore what I get from the Shah?”

“What you do is have another drink,” said Gus, pouring more Scotch. Frank put a hand over his own glass and shook his head. “And if … I’ve got an idea. If Rocky keeps putting your cables on hold, which he will, how ’bout you put that novelist skill of yours to work and do an atmospherics. You ever do an atmospherics?”

“You forget. I’m that outside guy who doesn’t much get to write cables.”

“Let me ’splain you. An atmospherics…” Gus paused, sipped his Scotch, and went on. “Okay. An atmospherics is a cable that gives a picture of, well, the atmosphere around a critical situation. Like the war we’re in the middle of. The weather, the attitudes of the man in the street, the feelings in the air, paranoia, fear, confidence, whatever. The background, the feel of the situation. Not the hard intelligence. But … but, if you’re clever about it, you can maybe sneak in more hard intelligence than, well, than might get cleared by the station in a flat-out intelligence report.”

Frank took a very small sip of vodka.

“Pete Howard’ll love it,” added Gus. “Oh. And long. An atmospherics should be long. Maybe twenty pages. You don’t send immediate flash. Maybe immediate or even just priority. But it goes cable. It gets read. And chances are, if it’s well written, it gets well read.”

Frank cupped his vodka glass in both hands and peered at Gus.

“You wanna give it a shot?”

Frank nodded. “Let’s give it a shot.”

Gus drained his glass. “See? I always get my best ideas when I’m half in the bag.”

Frank wondered. He walked his vodka glass to the sink and dumped it.

CHAPTER NINE

Frank and Gus followed a marine guard up the final flight of stairs to the bubble. Through the plastic, Frank saw a ghostly figure seated at the head of the table. The door gaped open, like a surprised mouth.

“Unusual,” said the marine. “Mr. Novak left the door open. Guess he wants you gentlemen to go right in. If you would, please close the door after you.”

“Thank you, son.” Gus turned to Frank. “Why don’t you go first? In case he’s packing a nine millimeter.”

Rocky had summoned them to the embassy within minutes of their return to Dowshan Tappeh from their morning Jayface meeting. “He’s pissed again,” Tom Troy had told them.

Frank took a deep breath and led the way. Gus gently closed the door behind them, creating a whoosh of air, a partial vacuum, and an audible click. Frank shivered. He felt as though the bubble had mummified him.

“Nice going, Mr. Sullivan.”

Frank read the anger in Rocky’s tone. “What’d I do?” he asked.

“Sit down. Both ’a yiz.”

Frank and Gus exchanged a look. They picked out chairs next to each other, halfway down the table from Rocky.

“You listen. I’ll read.” Rocky picked up a sheet of paper from the glass tabletop and glanced at it. “At the recommendation of the National Security Council, no fucking less, Sullivan, you’re approved for an assignment of indefinite duration as an adviser to a military newspaper and with unlimited access to the Shah. Cable doesn’t say so, but it looks like your old rabbi, Pete Howard, took you under his wing again. I can smell his armpit.”

“Why Pete Howard?”

“He’s on loan to NSC, right? At the request of Zbigniew fucking Brzezinski, no less, right?”

Frank glanced at Gus. “What about my partner?”

“Is his name KUPEREGRINE? The cable anoints you as emissary to the Shah. For an indefinite fucking duration. Some fucking body, and I gotta believe Pete Howard, read the ambassador’s cable and decided it’d be a good idea for you to meet with the Shah. Which means nobody paid attention to my cable.”

None of this is my doing, thought Frank, but he knew that did not matter in Rocky’s mind.

“Since KUPEREGRINE is not cleared with host country,” said Rocky, crumpling the cable, “the chief of station is pre-fucking-cluded from notifying the Shah. Everybody knows you’re agency, but since you’re not officially declared, you can’t officially have anything to do with me. So the ambassador can let the Shah know, but your chief of station can’t let the Shah know. Nice going, Sullivan.”

“Don’t put this on me,” said Frank. “I had nothing to do with it.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you found some fucking way to fucking back-channel me. You know what it means t’ back-channel me? It means stick it up my ass. Cable says we’re authorized to inform the Shah that approval comes from a very high level. Ambassador wants to stretch that to the highest level. Like it comes from one head of state to another. He thinks the Shah’ll like that. Meanwhile, you can bet his nibs is gloating his rosy ass off. Not saying anything. Just gloating. He wanted you to meet with the Shah. He got what he wanted. He wanted this fucking Jayface operation. Our beloved ambassador got what he wanted. He thinks you oughta stay here. He’s getting what he wants. And he ices me out. Simpson, this shit is about Sullivan. What the fuck are you doing here?”

“I’ve been wondering that since the day I got off the plane.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Rocky. “I know why I wanted you here. Whatever happens next, it affects both ’a yiz. It also affects Bunker, who finally gets here tomorrow. I knew I shoulda kept you assholes under wraps till Bunker shows up. Now we got fucking Sullivan here gets to meet with the Shah on a steady basis. No matter what, it compromises your deal with the Jayfacers. I spelled this out to Sullivan whenever the fuck it was last week after your first Jayface meeting when Nazih the faggot in front of God and everybody said the Shah wanted to meet with your asshole sidekick, Sullivan here. What compromises Sullivan rubs off on you.”

“I don’t have any problem with that,” said Gus. “I think it’ll do us some good. Having a partner who meets with the Shah will give us a leg up with our Iranian buddies.”

“You guys must read the same fairy tales. That’s what your fucking buddy, Sullivan, said.”

“He’s not a dumb guy,” said Gus.

“You got balls, Simpson. I’ll say that for ya.”

“Thank you for noticing,” said Gus.

“Fuck you. The whole world knows you got balls. Except maybe Sullivan, here. The outsider. You know what this ex-marine pulled off on Guadalcanal?”

“I heard about the Purple Heart. Not the details.”

“Fuck the fucking Purple Heart,” said Rocky. “Anybody stubbed his toe in combat coulda got a Purple Hard-on. Simpson here came away with a whole chest full, Medal of Honor on down.”

“On up,” said Gus. “The tin plate in the top of my head’s the only decoration I remember for sure. And I wish I could forget that.”

Frank wondered how many brain cells of memory Gus had washed away with Scotch.

“Damn thing still hurts when the weather turns cold,” said Gus. “And goes off whenever I walk through one of those airport security cages.”

“Way I heard it,” said Rocky, “a Jap machine-gun nest mowed down a whole slew of our friend’s jar-head buddies. Medics couldn’t get in t’ pull out the wounded. Quiet li’l Gus here managed t’ get up the fuckin’ hill and took out the fuckin’ machine-gun nest by himself with half his scalp flappin’ in the wind by the time he got there. How the hell did you do it, Simpson?”

“Quickly.”

Frank and Rocky both laughed, and Frank suspected Gus had worked that response before to deflect words that embarrassed him.

“Otherwise they’d have got the rest of my scalp.”

“Quickly, Sullivan. That’s how Simpson did it. Quickly. And without a rabbi.”

Frank had never heard Rocky talk at such length about someone else’s heroism. He knew Rocky had to have a reason behind it. There it was. The kicker was in the rabbi.

“This outfit could use more Simpsons. Guys who get the job done. Quickly. No bullshit. Guys who were gung ho marines before they became GS whatevers.”

Rocky had begun to take himself so seriously that Frank expected a chorus of “Semper Fidelis,” but Gus again diverted the rhetoric.

“We didn’t know from gung ho. I think somebody made that up later on.”

Rocky tried again. “It true what Tom Troy tells me about the way you handle a knife?”

“Not really,” said Gus. “Those who can, do. I taught.”

“You still handy with a blade?”

“I’ll never know. At my age there’s no way I’ll ever try to stick anything that might stick back. Long time ago I figured out GS bureaucrats have a longer life expectancy than gut stabbers.”

“Backstabbers do better,” said Rocky, poking at the cable he’d crumpled.

Frank winced.

“That fucking cable comes from Near East Division. You can tell they’re not too fucking happy about taking orders from the National Security Council, so they say requirements follow.”

He shifted his focus to Frank, apparently ready to get back to business.

“Sullivan, since you don’t know how the bureaucracy works, I’ll tell you what that means. It means the division is gonna cook up a laundry list of questions you’re supposed t’ get answers to from the Shah. More questions than you could possibly ask, and the kinda questions the Shah won’t wanna answer any damn way. Near East managed to delay the whole deal till they get full details on how the newspaper operation’s gonna work and till Bunker gets here to bird-dog the laundry list. So your friend Pete Howard may have set you up for a nice friendly walk with the Shah, but Near East will set you up to come out of it looking like you stepped into a pile ’a cow shit.”

Rocky smiled. Frank guessed that for a change Near East had done something that made him feel better.

*   *   *

Frank drove. Gus talked.

“Take a look at it from Rocky’s point of view. He doesn’t want us here in the first place. He takes a dim view of this Jayface idea. Maybe, maybe not, Jayface is another brainstorm of Pete Howard’s. Plus the ambassador likes it. Chief of station by definition never likes anything the ambassador likes. Even worse, from what I know, in times past the Shah and the agency’s chief of station always got on real tight. All the way back twenty-five years ago, Kermit Roosevelt. Then Dick Helms. Rocky doesn’t rank in that old boys’ league. The Shah meets with the ambassador more than he does with Rocky, and then you come along.”

“Me?” said Frank.

“Yeah, you. All of a sudden, you get to meet with the Shah. And Rocky doesn’t even get to set it up. The ambassador can tell the Shah. But, like he said, your chief of station is out of the loop. You can’t expect him to love your ass.”

*   *   *

Back at their Dowshan Tappeh Air Force Base offices, they settled in at Stan Rushmore’s typewriter, drafting a routine cable on their morning Jayface meeting. Tom Troy joined them, pulling up a metal chair and straddling it.

“You guys’ll have this place to yourselves for a while. I hadda send Rushmore down to Isfahan. Be there a while. Shit hit the fan pretty good down there.”

“So we heard,” said Frank, thinking of Ali’s son. He did not want to talk about it.

With the nosiness of the good spy, Troy had ignored his lack of a need-to-know and took a keen interest in Frank’s cultivation of an Iranian Air Force major.

“Sounds like your Anwar’s recruiting himself,” said Troy.

“Could be,” said Frank.

“Plus, Gus’s waiter friend says Anwar and his old lady want to get out of here and off to the good ol’ U.S. of A.”

“Do you have to read our cables?” said Gus.

“Can’t resist. You guys write so well. ’Sides, you’re gettin’ air force stuff we never got.”

Frank’s meetings with the
homafaran
also intrigued Troy. “Working at Dowshan Tappeh you get to meet a few, but they’re pretty stand-offish. They don’t even mix much with the pilots or other Iranian Air Force types. You may have something.”

“We’ll see,” said Frank. Bad enough I’ve got Rocky, he thought. Now Troy thinks we’re poaching on his turf. For a moment at least, he wanted to forget his problems, to enjoy his small triumph with the newspaper. He wanted the Shah. He wanted Lermontov. He didn’t want to fight with his own people.

He realized there was nothing more he could do but wait for the Shah to summon him to a meeting. Wait, and pray, for Lermontov to resurface. See what he could do for Anwar. Follow Gus’s advice to keep on gathering all the intelligence he could and trying, as best he could, to report it.

Gus and Troy, as they often did, had begun to talk about Vietnam. “I loved that country.” said Troy. “Damn shame we lost it.”

“It was never ours,” said Gus.

“Damn shame. Personally, I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if we lost this place tomorrow, except for the oil.” He thought a moment, studying the map over Rushmore’s desk. “And maybe the rugs.” Frank labored at the typewriter, then heard Troy, breaking out of a reverie, say, “Sunset and syndrome. Ever since Vietnam. It’s what? Five years ago we pulled out? Shit. Ever since then we’ve been afraid to balls-out fight another war. Sunset for our side. We lost the country, but we’ll live with the syndrome forever. Otherwise, we could be flying in advisers here and maybe even some combats to help the Shah wipe out these reds and ragheads.”

“I’d drink to that,” said Gus. “If we had something to drink.”

“Never on the job,” said Troy. “At least not anymore.”

I could use a drink, thought Frank, but not now. He preferred his vodka straight, without politics, but he knew he lived and worked among people with strong and patriotic political ideals. For the most part, he shared those ideals, but he was grateful that most of the men and women he’d worked with overseas had been brighter, more dedicated, and distinctly more liberal than he had anticipated his colleagues would be.

Even now, for all his problems with Rocky, he felt lucky. Everything else had gone well. Their unseen servants again had packed their refrigerator with virtually all the items on the list they had left, including fresh spinach and locally cultured yogurt. They found the laundry they had left washed, ironed, and neatly folded on the kitchen table along with an envelope with their change and a note listing the requested items that turned out to be unavailable. The care and feeding of spies. He wished he had it so good at home.