“Tell me about your agents in Kurdistan,” Sheikh-ol-eslam demanded.
Limbert smiled involuntarily.
“I can see you smiling at that,” Sheikh-ol-eslam said.
Limbert couldn’t help himself. It was like living in Wonderland. Limbert understood the reasoning behind the question about his “agents” in Kurdistan. There had been steady fighting in the northwestern part of Iran with Kurdish rebels. So of course Limbert, a high-ranking devil in the den of spies, would have “agents” there. When he smiled at the question, that became further evidence of its truth. It was groupthink, and it was unassailable.
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said.
“How do you communicate with your agents in Kurdistan?” Sheikh-ol-eslam asked.
“I don’t.”
“We know you communicate by radio.”
“I don’t know anything about radios.”
“Then how do you communicate?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
He asked Limbert when he had last seen one of the prominent Kurdish leaders, and the embassy political officer said he had never met the man.
“Look, I don’t know anything about Kurdistan,” Limbert told Sheikh-ol-eslam.
Sheikh-ol-eslam lectured Limbert in Farsi. They knew he had friends in Kurdistan and that he had visited there. These things were true and Limbert admitted them. But he had not been to Kurdistan in seven years, and certainly not since he had come to work at the embassy, and his friends had nothing to do with the disturbances there. But just the admission that he had friends there seemed the only part of what he said that Sheikh-ol-eslam heard. He had caught Limbert in a lie. If he had something to hide, he must be guilty.
“It’s just not true,” Limbert said.
“You know what we do with spies,” Sheikh-ol-eslam said. “We can shoot spies.”
“You can do anything you want to me.”
The fear of being executed that had gripped him during the first two days had receded. It was there, but it had become background noise, a constant. Sheikh-ol-eslam’s reminder was unnecessary and didn’t alarm Limbert at all. If he felt anything, it was curiosity. He was so bored during the day that a session like this was a welcome break. The whole situation grew more and more irritating. What ate at him was not simply being held captive, his lack of freedom, his inability to see or communicate with his family, or even the uncertainty. All these things were, of course, deeply troubling, but on another level Limbert felt professionally disappointed—in himself and in his colleagues.
How could they all have been so blind? Just weeks before this had all begun, Limbert had shepherded around Henry Precht, director of Iranian Affairs for the State Department, on his last visit. They had gone to see Ayatollah Montazari, the leader of Friday prayers, and the ayatollah had asked who else they were planning to see. Precht named some of the people on his itinerary, all of them old-line nationalists, and Montazari had suggested that he add to his calendar the weekly prayer meeting at the University of Tehran. Limbert later warned that they would be wading into an unfriendly ocean of Muslims, but Precht liked the idea. So they went, accompanied by a representative of the Foreign Ministry, parking several blocks away from the university and walking in with the crowds. Limbert was content with a spot well outside the large tentlike enclosure where the prayer meeting was held, where they could see and hear at a relatively safe distance, but the Foreign Ministry man insisted they go all the way in. “My job is to get you two into the Friday prayers,” he had said. They had some trouble getting past the armed guards at the front gate but were eventually let in after their minder somehow convinced the young guards that they were distinguished guests from the nation of Senegal! Never mind their white faces. Their escort warned them to avoid speaking English inside. When the meeting got revved up, the crowd began chanting slogans. Someone would step up to the microphone, scream something into it, and then everyone else would repeat it. Limbert and Precht felt compelled to shout along, so they found themselves chanting in Farsi the usual condemnations, including one that went, “Death to the Three Spreaders of Corruption, Sadat, Carter, and Begin!”
“Didn’t that last one say something about Carter?” Precht whispered.
“Henry, just chant and don’t ask questions,” Limbert told him.
Their ministry escort was throwing himself into the work, red-faced with effort, rhetorically raining down the wrath of Allah on America and Israel and all their works, and when they were done he turned to them, the two official representatives of the Great Satan, and asked sweetly, “Would you care to join me for lunch?”
Moments like that had lulled Limbert, had lulled them all, into thinking that the hatred and malevolence was just rhetoric, that polite officialdom was somehow going to continue to control this whirlwind.
When he learned that the provisional government had resigned, Limbert had a better sense of the power shift taking place. Here he was, at the center of an international storm, someone who had trained his whole life to study and report on circumstances like these, arguably one of the Americans best suited for doing so, and he was utterly powerless to do a thing. He could question no one and write no reports. So in an interrogation session like this he at least had a chance to converse and to get some insight into what these captors of his were thinking, and what they were trying to accomplish.
Already he discerned an important shift in emphasis from the first few days of the takeover. At first many of those who took part did so as a kind of lark, a demonstration of youthful idealism, naiveté, and defiance. Their goals had seemed primarily rhetorical, to protest U.S. policies and to demand the return of the shah—a demand no one really expected America to honor. Those orchestrating it were acting out an arrogant youthful fantasy, nothing more. Now, listening to Sheikh-ol-eslam’s detailed questions, he saw something new. The emphasis was now local, not global. They wanted information about Iranian officials that they could use against their political enemies. In the present atmosphere in Tehran, anyone could be smeared with suspicion of treason if it could be shown they had met with American “spies.” Careers could be derailed, enemies brought down. Whoever was running this thing now had a very practical agenda, one that was local and ruthless.
In this context, Limbert also saw the logic in putting him and at least some of the others on trial. If they were going to make the charges against local officials stick, it would help to spell out conclusively the plots emanating from the den of spies. He knew he was not a spy, but he also knew he had to be very careful about what he said. He saw how wording in the documents was being twisted to support all kinds of things. Anything he said could get him shot or hung.
Sheikh-ol-eslam pressed him again to name those he had met with. He was fishing. When Limbert mentioned a name, one of hundreds, Sheikh-ol-eslam quickly asked, “Why did you meet with this person?”
“It was my job,” said Limbert. He explained that his role at the embassy was to seek out Iranians, and listen and learn. “That’s what a diplomat does.”
Sheikh-ol-eslam mentioned that a train had been bombed recently in southern Iran.
“We think that the CIA did that, and you know who the people are who did it.”