Tabriz was in chaos. Anger, revenge, religious fervor, and revolutionary zeal combined to unleash a nationwide spasm of bloodletting, a season of murder. Many associated with the former regime were hunted down and killed, policemen, bureaucrats, local and national leaders, civilian and military. In some cities the entire police force was executed. Nobody was even keeping track. The raid on the prison had been followed by an attack on the main military base and a general collapse of authority. The armory had been looted and the streets were full of excited amateur gunmen with a seemingly limitless supply of ammunition. It seemed as if everybody was fighting everybody. Metrinko heard by radio that the American embassy in Tehran was in danger of being overrun. Telephone service was up and down, but mostly down. Much of the fury at large was anti-American, but for a time it seemed to bypass the consulate, which looked empty. His guards and staff had melted away. Metrinko and his eight charges huddled down. It was too dangerous to go outdoors, even inside the compound. Next door, a SAVAK crew was cornered and fighting for its life. Once they counted more than seventy rounds fired in a minute. Metrinko had been able to arrange with the besieged staff in Tehran to have a team of Americans waiting for him and the students across the border in Turkey, but with the violence in the streets there was no safe way to move. They were stuck and for a time, it appeared, forgotten. Metrinko had put his charges to work helping him to destroy every letter, file, memo, note, and report in his office.
On Valentine’s Day, the embassy in Tehran was invaded. In Tabriz, Metrinko was in his office when he saw a group of armed men in Iranian air force uniforms come over the compound’s back wall. They opened fire on the consulate, shooting out the windows. He dropped to the floor behind the desk and made a quick phone call—the phone was working!—to an Iranian friend, Ali, who was part of an activist group allied with the revolution. The man’s mother-in-law picked up the phone. Metrinko told her who he was and what was happening before the armed invaders burst in, grabbed him, and tied his hands.
Metrinko and his charges were marched to one of the kangaroo courts that were in full swing throughout the city. This one was a former government building, the Youth Palace, which had been commandeered. There were several bodies dangling from a tree in the front yard. They were placed in a holding room with others awaiting their turn before the kangaroo court—Metrinko would later see some of those he waited with hanging with the others out front.
They were rescued by his friend Ali, who had gone immediately to the Youth Palace when he got the message from his mother-in-law, but he’d arrived there before Metrinko and the others had. No one at the palace knew what he was talking about. Ali had then set out on a dangerous search, braving heavy gunfire on the streets, going from one place to another until he finally ended up where he had started, and found his friend Metrinko and the eight others. Ali’s revolutionary credentials and bravado, combined with many shouted threats, succeeded in getting Metrinko released, but then the American consul refused to leave without his eight young companions. Finally, the self-appointed enforcers relented, and all nine of them were allowed to go. Ali took them all to his family home for dinner and then delivered them back to the consulate, where he left them under the protection of a group of revolutionary soldiers.
Still the saga continued. No sooner had Ali left than the soldiers guarding them turned on them, ordering the nine to sit on chairs in the living room, pointing guns at them. The guards spoke to each other in Turkish. They had heard Metrinko speaking with his friend in Farsi and never dreamed he was also fluent in Turkish. So the soldiers spoke freely over the course of the day, as higher-level revolutionary figures came and went from the consulate. The men were bored with the detail and began planning among themselves to shoot Metrinko and the students in the yard that night and claim the group had tried to escape. Metrinko didn’t bother to tell the students what he had learned; he figured they were better off not knowing. But when a higher-ranking official stopped by to check in on them that afternoon, Metrinko told him that he had some communications gear in a back bedroom he wanted to show him. When they retreated there, Metrinko hurriedly explained the guards’ plan.
“I can’t do anything about them now,” said the official. “They aren’t my men. Hold on, and I’ll try to get some help.”
Some time later the official returned with a new group of soldiers to replace the guards who had planned to kill them.
Over the next two days, whatever semblance of leadership that existed in Tabriz decided that it would be best to ship Metrinko and the others to Tehran, where, for the time being, a deal had been worked out to protect the U.S. embassy. Metrinko outfitted his charges with his wardrobe; he was five-ten and wide and the students were much taller and thinner. Ill-fitting clothes and all, they had made their comical arrival just as the bulk of the American mission was being evacuated. Buses were taking wives and children and unessential personnel to the airport in convoys. The American students all returned home safely. Metrinko had no intention of going home. Things were getting interesting. That was when he had agreed to stay on in Tehran as a political officer.
He had reason to remember all this in November as he sat listening to the guards laughing and joking freely with one another. But Metrinko’s fly-on-the-wall status was short-lived. A student shouted a question in Farsi at one of the other hostages, and the man, rattled and at a loss, said, “Ask Metrinko, he speaks Farsi.”
So that was that. In the chummy atmosphere that prevailed for the rest of that evening, Metrinko had sat with a young Iranian science student and translated an article from Time magazine for him. He had been a teacher in his years with the Peace Corps, and the role came naturally. Then he was escorted into another room and allowed to watch a TV program. He had tea and chatted amiably with several of the students. He found them quite intelligent and politically astute. They told him that they had cased the embassy by coming in to apply for visas, mapping out where all the buildings and offices were. They were very proud of themselves.
“It had to be done,” one of them told him. “We had to do something to show people that Americans would not be allowed to regain control of Iran.”
Metrinko told them the truth about himself, and they didn’t believe him. They demanded that he open his safe for them and he complied. Inside were a few papers, nothing important. He did not keep many files in his office. The most damaging thing, what he worried about, was his personal directory, full of names, addresses, and phone numbers, which he kept at his apartment. He figured it was only a matter of time before they found that. Any of his many friends listed there could be subjected to the dictates of this inquisition. In this first interrogation session he was relieved right away to see that the papers in his safe contained nothing even remotely compromising.