The Chameleon Conspiracy (30 page)

I was torn from the inside. The hint Hasan Lotfi had given me left me with no doubt. There was a major terrorist attack on
the United States that Hasan, as chief of intelligence of
the Revolutionary Guards, was planning, or at least knew about, and now he was using this information as a bargaining chip.
Could I trust Sammy to convey the message? What if he was an Iranian agent, and the messages were to be stopped, or worse,
altered? What if my assessment of Hasan was accurate, and now his arrest would frustrate a major intelligence achievement,
too big to even think of? I had to find a way to send the message. I even toyed with the idea of letting the Iranians intercept
my message. Fearing detection of their plan, or even being ambushed perpetrating it, they might abort the mission. The doubts
were tearing me from the inside. I was also worried about Erikka and hoped she made a safe departure.

Days went by, and I got used to my daily routine. Wake up at dawn, eat a small breakfast, boil hot water and wash up with
makeshift towels I was collecting from the factory’s floor, and throughout the day read books Sammy brought me. I tried to
exercise—pushups and crunches. At night I ventured outside to the yard to breathe fresh air. I grew a beard out of boredom.
I hooked up a loose wire I found on the factory floor to the radio to enhance reception. That helped me tune in to an English-language
radio broadcast from the Gulf States. But the news edition was short and general, except for Gulf-area local news. Still,
if a major terrorist attack had hit the U.S., they surely would have reported it in their newscasts. So I knew for now that
nothing major had unfolded yet.

But that didn’t help ease my anxiety about the situation. In fact, it heightened it. It made me feel useless sitting there
twiddling my thumbs in my little hole-in-the-ground hideout while the bad guys were probably putting their plot into action.
I needed to get the hell out of there, but I was effectively trapped for now.

It was also vital to hear the Tehran local news, and that I got only twice a week from Sammy, who brought me copies of the
Tehran Times
in English. I combed each copy to see if there was a mention of the manhunt for me. But I found nothing. I
marked the passing days on the wall with a pencil. Forty-eight days had passed. Sammy never gave me more details on the manhunt
and never got me copies of the wanted posters. That didn’t help increase my level of trust in him. I said nothing, though;
I was completely at his mercy.

I stirred awake. I glanced at my watch, but it was too dark to see the time. I turned on the light. It was three thirty a.m.
“Shit,” I muttered, and turned off the light. Then I heard the same slow screeching metal noise with another muffled sound
that woke me up.

The gate? I raised my head from my stinking, lumpy pillow. The noise was too distinct to ignore. I quietly left my bed, climbed
the steps to the factory floor, and peeked through the window. It was a crisp-cold and bright night. Other than the occasional
noise of a passing car, I heard nothing. The area of the factory yard leading to the metal exit gate was empty. The gate was
closed.
Solitude was driving me crazy,
I told myself. I was imagining things. I crawled back into my bed, which was still warm. I fell asleep.

But it didn’t last long. I woke up again, unable to ignore a different sound coming from the outside. I decided not to venture
to the factory floor again. I might have been going crazy in isolation, but the sounds I was hearing were definitely not a
figment of my imagination. They were muffled, but very real. Maybe it wasn’t the gate. I couldn’t tell whether the sounds
were coming from the yard, the factory main floor, or the neighboring houses. As always, I had to hope for the best, but prepare
for the worse. I held on to my gun. Other than keeping quiet, like a mouse in danger, there was nothing I could do. I
heard steps right above me. They were too obvious to ignore. I wasn’t imagining things. Somebody was walking on the factory
floor.

I clenched the gun, tiptoed to the kitchen to grab the sharpest knife I had, and hid behind the stairs. I tried to identify
the steps. Was it one person, or more? I held my breath. I heard “my” name called.

“Mr. Ian, where are you?”

I didn’t answer. It was definitely not Sammy. I never had middle-of-the-night visits from Sammy. Was there an emergency that
brought about the sudden visit? This person knew I was somewhere around here and knew my name. Should I venture out? I just
sat there with the wheels of my mind racing trying to figure out what to do next. I decided to wait. Eagles may soar, but
weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.

Padas¸’s men knew exactly where I was hiding. There was no need to call out my name. One of them could go directly to the
trapdoor and walk down the wooden stairs. I felt the adrenaline rush. This visit was not friendly. The trapdoor was the only
way out of my underground shit hole, and venturing out could be devastating. I unplugged the electric power cable feeding
the basement and just sat there looking up at the ceiling as if my eyes could see anything other than complete darkness. I
measured the location and sound of the steps. They were probably made by one person. I didn’t hear talk. Ten minutes later
the noises stopped, and a minute later I heard the gate screeching. This person left, or maybe wanted me to think he left.
I stayed put, and fell asleep sitting on the floor with my head leaning against the wall.

This time I woke up from the cold. The heat wasn’t working—my fault, having unplugged the power—and the temperature was
near freezing. I hooked up the power again and the basement slowly warmed up. I still didn’t feel like venturing out to peep
from the factory floor’s window. I vowed to stay in the basement the entire next day. Only during the following night did
I quietly climb out to the factory floor. I needed
fresh air, even if that air was the stale smell of an abandoned factory. To me it smelled like a field of roses. Under the
entry door I saw a handwritten note.

Mr. Ian, I was come to meet you, but you not here. I must to speak to you very important. I come again soon. Jamal

I put the note back exactly the way I’d found it. Who the hell was Jamal? Obviously he knew I was around, he knew my name,
but not my exact hiding place. His visit was out of the ordinary. Sammy came only at agreed-upon times, and never in the predawn
hours. Was it a trap or a genuine attempt to communicate with me? The reasons the visitor didn’t know exactly where I was
could be diverse, from simple forgetfulness to sloppy instructions from his supervisors.

This guy is definitely strumming on my nerves.

I didn’t want to think of the possibility that Sammy had been captured and his men had come to warn me, with only a general
knowledge where I was hiding. I decided to wait until Sammy’s next scheduled visit on the following day. I slipped back to
my hideout.

The next day, Sammy didn’t show up. I sat tensely, waiting. It was already two p.m., and he had been expected to show up at
twelve thirty. This time I wasn’t the wife in the jokes waiting for her husband to return from the bar with a fairy tale to
tell. I was really worried. Sammy had never missed any of our meetings. I had enough food for another two days, so that wasn’t
the immediate problem. But what if Sammy had been caught by the security police? What if he’d talked? As much as inaction
pained me, I decided to wait another day. To be on the safe side I rationed my food consumption and ate only one can of tuna,
one cucumber, and six crackers.

Another day passed. Two more days passed. Sammy hadn’t shown up. I was running out of food, and I didn’t know what
to think. Did his absence show he was an Iranian agent after all? Or maybe on the contrary, it showed he couldn’t come because
of these security services? Anything could have been true. My food supply would last only one more day.

I had one more option. Resignedly, I took out the white cloth and placed it on the machine facing the eastern window of the
factory, my distress sign for the neighbor I had never seen.

But that didn’t work either—there was no sign of the neighbor after twenty-four hours. The hollowness of hunger and fear
had begun to overtake me. Pessimism was a luxury I couldn’t allow myself. I had to leave that place. I had enough Iranian
currency to buy food. My overgrown hair and beard would make it difficult for anyone to identify me. For one single second
I also entertained the hope that the VEVAK had forgotten about me, but I wasn’t that naive. I decided not to use the front
metal gate, and went straight to the small door in the wall leading to the neighbor’s house. I waited until five thirty p.m.
It was already dark.

I tried the door, but found it locked. Damn it. I looked up at the ten feet of wall, took a deep breath, and climbed. It had
been years since boot camp or training, but the boredom of solitary confinement had driven me to exercise. I landed on my
feet on the other side of the wall. I looked around. I was in the yard of a three-story condominium. It was a dilapidated
building with chipping plaster and rusty railings. I quietly walked toward the street, and even the bark of a small dog didn’t
shake me from my path.

I took a deep breath and enjoyed the cool air. But I wasn’t as calm as I wanted to be. Alex, my Mossad Academy instructor,
had told us, “In clandestine intelligence work in hostile territory, what you don’t do is just as important as what you do.”

I walked slowly on the cracked, dirt-encrusted sidewalk, looking for somewhere to buy food. It was a drab area, one that hadn’t
seen fresh development in decades, a mix of small industry, garages, and a few residential buildings occupied by tenants with
no better place to go. There were only a few other people in the street, and nobody seemed to look at me.

Dan, you’re blending in,
I thought. A bearded man in a country of bearded men attracts no attention.

A few hundred yards down the road was a small grocery, with dusty shelves piled with food. I decided against purchasing a
large quantity of goods, fearing I’d attract attention. There was also the problem of crossing the high wall again. I selected
a few items, making sure they were all within my reach on the shelves so that I would not have to speak with the owner—I
couldn’t reveal that I didn’t speak Farsi. I paid and left. The owner said something, but my only option was to ignore him.
He gave me an odd look as I left the store.

As I approached the factory, I stopped. Two cars were parked right in front of the gate and three men were talking to a woman
in her fifties dressed in a black chador. She was waving her hands in excitement. My skin crawled: exactly the type of scenario
I had to avoid. I slowly turned back and made a left turn into one of the alleys.

At first I thought of dumping the plastic bags with the food supplies to make my movement easier, but I decided against it.
A man carrying groceries was commonplace and would help me seem like a local. I had no idea where I was or what I should do
next. I knew one thing for sure: I couldn’t go back to the factory. First the unknown visitor in the middle of the night,
then the note, and now this. And frankly I was tired of hiding. I was always more defiant than humble. Being meek went against
my nature and training. “In hostile circumstances, you don’t hide, you maneuver, reposition yourself, and fight if necessary,”
were the words of my Mossad Academy instructor.

I hailed a cab. “Bazaar,” I said, hoping it’d be enough. It was. Twenty minutes later we arrived at the bazaar. When I got
out of the cab, I dumped the shopping bags into a trash can. As I started walking up the street looking for a restaurant,
I saw a policeman looking at me suspiciously. With my overgrown hair and beard and clothes that, though clean, had not been
ironed for two months, little wonder he became suspicious. He approached me, sized me up, and said something in
Farsi. He wasn’t impressed with my ignorance and seized my hand.

“Tourist,” I said. “Tourist!”

He then repeated the word I could understand: “Passport.” My Ian Pour Laval passport was in my pocket, but I had no intention
of showing it to him. Such a move was likely to send me into the hands of VEVAK in no time, and I still had use for my fingernails.
A few people stopped to watch. My only prayer was that he would not try to frisk me. The gun was strapped to my calf and could
be located quickly. I decided to talk in English instead of using body language. An obvious mistake, because a bystander intervened.

“I speak little English, you American?”

“No,” I said. “I’m Canadian, and I don’t understand what he wants.” I broke the rule that a good time to keep your mouth shut
is when you’re in deep shit.

The bystander, a tall man in his early twenties clad in American-style jeans and a brown leather jacket, turned to the policeman
and said something in Farsi. The policeman responded brusquely. The man turned to me. “He want your passport.”

“Well, I don’t have it here with me, but if he waits here, I’ll go to my hotel to get it.”

The policeman may have been a low-level cop, but he wasn’t stupid. He shook his head. He told something to the bystander.

“He go to your hotel.”

I had to isolate myself from the crowd, which was getting bigger by the minute. I tried to think of a hotel’s name that would
be too far to walk to.

“Esteghlal Grand Hotel,” I said, remembering seeing that hotel when passing it on the Chamran Expressway.

“Very far,” said the bystander.

I raised my hands in frustration. “I can take a cab with the policeman. I’ll pay for the cab.” I was hoping that the bystander
would not join us. In these circumstances, three is a crowd.

A cab was idling nearby, and I wearily hailed it, getting in it. As the cab pulled away, I considered my next move. The language
barrier between me and the cop could serve my purpose. I slowly started looking in my pocket for a piece of paper and a pen,
hoping to “accidentally” dig it up with enough money to cloud the cop’s judgment, but still protecting my ass if he proved
to be the one of the few incorruptible Iranian cops and accused me of trying to bribe him. When I saw his widening eyes as
he looked at the wad of Iranian currency I’d “unintentionally” pulled out of my pocket, I knew I’d be OK.

“My wife is asleep at the hotel,” I said pointing at my finger where a wedding band should be, and then I made the universal
sleeping gesture, resting my head on my hands to one side. Maybe he’d agree to take the money and forget about the whole thing.
I slipped him the money wad. He just took it and held it in his hand. He told the cabdriver to stop. I jumped out. The cop
didn’t move. The cab drove away. Let the cop pay the $2 taxi fare. I’d left him with more than $25. I crossed the street and
entered into another road against traffic, in case the cop changed his mind. But there was no sign of him. I found a small
hotel two blocks away. I walked inside.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”
I asked, hoping the man at the reception desk didn’t speak German. He shook his head.

“Francais?”
No.

“English?”

He shook his head again. Good. That solved a lot of problems. I signaled with my hands that I needed a room. I paid in advance
in cash for a week. He was so happy to see my cash that he didn’t ask for any papers. And even if he had, I could always have
pretended I didn’t understand. I couldn’t show him my Canadian passport. My name was likely to be all over the place courtesy
of VEVAK—if indeed anyone was looking for me.

I went up to the modest and so-so-clean room to freshen up. Moments later I went out to the street, entered the first restaurant
I saw and ate my first cooked meal in months. I
entered an adjacent store and bought a few clothes and toiletries. After a hot shower and limited beard and hair trimming,
I was ready to plan my next move.

I needed to communicate with Sammy and get the hell out of there. I took every precaution I could. I’d learned not to mock
the crocodile before I finished swimming across the river.

Early in the chilly morning, as the neighborhood slowly awoke, I went to a nearby pay phone and dialed the number I’d received
from one of Padas¸’s men when I arrived. There was a busy signal followed by a recording that sounded like an announcement
that the number was no longer valid. I tried two more times and got the same recording. How come when I dial a wrong number
it’s never busy?