The Disciple

After the shah was routed in 1979, Ahmadinejad joined the Intelligence Unit of the IRGC, which Khomeini put together to defeat his political enemies following the collapse of the shah’s secret police service, the SAVAK. This Irani an version of Hitler’s Brownshirts operated with no constraints on their methods. Ahmadinejad was right in the middle of it. He was in Khomeini’s i

There were a couple of photos in the file of Iranians mobbing the U.S. embassy. A figure in each had been circled and labeled as “possible.” I whipped out the magnifying glass that all good agency employees keep in their desk and studied the faces within the circles.

Even after I had enlarged the circles as much as possible before they dissolved into individual pixels, I decided that I would have to take the experts’ word for it.

I put the glass back in my desk and continued reading.

In the years following the revolution, during Khomeini’s consolidation of power, Ahmadinejad was involved in the interrogation, torture and execution of enemies of the regime at the Evin prison, where he was known by the pseudonym of “Golpa,” among others. The interrogators tried to stay masked and change their noms de guerre regularly so that their victims wouldn’t know what they had told to whom. The prodemocracy political movement Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, supplied many of the victims.

For his loyalty and ruthlessness, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became a senior commander in the Qods (Jerusalem) Force of the IRGC. The report I was reading said he had been a key figure in the formation of the Qods, a terrorist special forces unit that had been linked to assassinations in the Middle East and Europe. Ahmadinejad personally carried weapons across international borders to assassinate political foes, among them the Kurdish leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party in Iran. On occasion this young Iranian Stalin reported directly to and got his orders from the Ayatollah Khomeini, who had sole and complete control of the Qods.

I didn’t read the whole file. I sca

An unintended consequence of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was to give Khomeini and the Iranian mullahs a golden opportunity to exploit the chaos in post-Saddam Iraq in furtherance of their goal of installing an Islamic regime there and making it a satellite state. Saddam Hussein had a lot of faults, but he knew who his real enemies were.

In the 1990s Ahmadinejad went into academia. Part-time, anyway. He was a zealot still trying to purify the universities, and founded Ansar-e Hezbollah (Followers of the Party of God), the members of which wore black clothes and hoods, sort of a Muslim Ku Klux Klan, and attacked student gatherings and demonstrations, beating up students and other opponents of the regime with chains, clubs, truncheons and knives. They could talk the talk, but when the chips were down, they were thugs.

In 2003 Ahmadinejad surfaced as mayor of Tehran, where he earned the nickname of the “Ira ni an Taliban.” In 2005, this social progressive launched his campaign for the presidency of the country. Since he had the backing of Khomeini’s successor, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the election was rigged, he won handily.

I perused a few of his campaign speeches, in which he often waxed eloquent on the glory of martyrdom. “If we want to resolve today’s social problems,” he said, “we must return to the culture of martyrs.” Now there is a prescription for social peace.

The election of 2009 was a farce. Three hours after the polls closed in a country three times larger than France, one without a single voting machine, Ahmadinejad was declared the wi

When I had had all I could stand, I logged off and turned off the computer.

Just my luck. Jake Grafton was pointing me toward the biggest, most vicious shark in the sea. He hadn’t told me yet what he wanted me to do in Iran, and I could hardly wait.

I surveyed my comfy little office, which I got to visit so seldom anymore. Why couldn’t I be in charge of something like… building passes?

I went downstairs to the Starbucks concessionaire for a Caffé Mocha, bought an extra one for Grafton’s assistant, Robin, then strolled toward Grafton’s office.

“Oh, thank you, Tommy,” Robin said with a huge grin when I presented her drink.

I smiled back. After all, she might be the last normal person I’d get to smile at on planet Earth.

With that happy thought ripping through my head, I went in to see Jake Grafton, who was back from his meeting.

Grafton got right to it. “What do you think about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?”

“A raghead Stalin.”

“That isn’t a politically correct remark.”

I shrugged. “There are a lot of assholes in this world. He seems to be in a special, small elite group at the very tip top of the heap.”

“There are a couple of guys already in Iran that you’ll work with. They are illegals. You’ll be attached to the American Interests Section of the Swiss embassy and will be watched. Carefully watched.”

I could feel the earth spi

“What’s the mission?”

“I don’t know just yet. Settle in, become a good, low-level career diplomat, and I’ll call you when we need you. You are going to be our ace in the hole.”

“More like a deuce,” I muttered. I confess, I knew he had something in mind for me or he wouldn’t have made these elaborate plans for my future. Trying to get a hint, I said, “One of these days you’ll call and tell me to steal Ahmadinejad’s underwear, while he’s wearing it.”

Grafton didn’t smile or look a

The weeping of the chador-clad woman seated in front of Frank’s window brought me out of my reverie. She was a grandmother, she said, and her sons and their wives and grandchildren lived in the States. She wanted to join them, if only for a visit. Of course, she would never return to Iran, would be swallowed up in the churning sea of Middle Eastern immigrants in New York and never be heard from again.

“The mullahs are finished in Iran,” Abdullaziz Nasr Qomi said. “Everyone hates them. They are rich, we are poor. All the oil money goes to the government and the mullahs, and none of it reaches us. The mullahs are living very well, though…” He continued, giving me his view of the world in which he lived.

Frank was concentrating on the weeping woman. He looked as if he were ready to go through the little gate and put his arms around her shoulders. He was murmuring comforting words.

He was very fluent in Farsi, could do all the dialects so well he could fool the natives. I certainly couldn’t. Frank was in his forties, a career case officer, and no doubt a damn good one. Only fluent speakers could read body language, the subtle hints given by intonation and hesitations, appreciate the choice of words, understand what was meant but not being said. Fluent speakers do better at sorting truth from lies. If only the Company had more guys and gals like Frank Caldwell!