“But the PLO have been our allies,” Farmad persisted, and Rakoczy was glad that he had found the flaw before some measure of power was passed over to this man.
“Allies who have become enemies have no value. Remember the aim.” “I agree with Comrade Dimitri,” another said, an edge to his voice, his eyes cold and very hard. “We don’t want PLO giving orders here. If you don’t want to take him out, Farmad, I will. All of them and all the Green Band dogs too!”
“The PLO’re not to be trusted,” Rakoczy said, continuing the same lesson, planting the same seeds. “Look how they vacillate and change positions even on their home ground, one moment saying they’re Marxist, the next Muslim, the next flirting with the archtraitor Sadat then attacking him. We have documents to prove it,” he added, the disinformation fitting in perfectly, “and documents that prove they plan to assassinate King Hussein, and take over Jordan and make a separate peace with Israel and America. They’ve had secret meetings with the CIA and Israel already. They’re not truly anti-Israel…”
Ah, Israel, he was thinking as he let his mouth continue the well-thought- out lesson, how important you are to Mother Russia, set there so nicely in the cauldron, a perpetual irritant guaranteed to enrage all Muslims forever, particularly the oh so oil rich sheikdoms, guaranteed to set all Muslims against all Christians, our prime enemy - your American, British, and French allies - meanwhile to curb their power and keep them and the West off-balance while we consume vital prizes - Iran this year, Afghanistan also, Nicaragua next year, then Panama and others, always to the same plan: possession of the Strait of Hormuz, Panama, Constantinople, and the treasure chest of South Africa. Ah, Israel, you’re a trump card for us to play in the world Monopoly game. But never to discard or sell! We’ll not forsake you! Oh, we’ll let you lose many battles but never the war, we’ll allow you to starve but not to die, we’ll permit your banking compatriots to finance us and therefore their own destruction, we’ll suffer you to bleed America to death, we’ll strengthen our enemies - but not too much - and assist you to be raped. But don’t worry, we’ll never let you disappear. Oh, no! Never. You’re far too valuable.
“PLOs are arrogant and full of themselves,” a tall student said darkly, “and never polite and never conscious of Iran’s importance in the world and know nothing of our ancient history.”
“True! They’re peasants and they’ve parasited themselves throughout the Middle East and our Gulf, taking the best jobs.” “Yes,” another agreed. “They’re worse than the Jews…” Rakoczy laughed to himself. He enjoyed his job very much, enjoyed working with university students - always a fertile field - enjoyed being a teacher. But that’s what I am, he thought contentedly, a professor of terrorism, of power and the seizing of power. Perhaps I’m more like a farmer: I plant the seed, nurture it, guard it, and harvest it, working all hours and all seasons as a farmer must. Some years are good and some bad but every year a little further forward, a little more experienced, a little wiser about the land, ever more patient - spring summer autumn winter - always the same farm, Iran, always with the same aim: at best for Iran to become Russian soil, at worst a Russian satellite to protect the sacred motherland of Russia. With our foot on the Strait of Hormuz…
Ah, he thought, an unearthly, consuming religious glow pervading him, if I could give Iran to Mother Russia my life will not have been lived in vain. The West deserves to lose, particularly the Americans. They’re such fools, so egocentric, but most of all so stupid. It’s inconceivable this Carter doesn’t see the value of Hormuz in general and Iran in particular and what a catastrophe to the West their loss will be. But there it is; for all practical purposes he’s given us Iran. Rakoczy remembered the shock wave of disbelief that had soared to the very top when their innermost contacts in Washington had whispered that Carter was going to forsake the Shah. Ah, what an ally Carter has been to us. If I believed in God I’d pray: God is Great, God is Great, protect our best ally, President Peanut, and let him win a second term! With him in for a second term we’ll own America and so rule the world! God is Great, God is… Abruptly he felt chilled. He had been pretending to be Muslim for so long that sometimes his cover overcame his real self, and he began to question and have doubts.
Am I still Igor Mzytryk, captain KGB, married to my darling Delaurah, my oh so beautiful Armenian, who’s waiting in Tbilisi for me to come home? Is she at home, she who oh so secretly believes in God - the God of the Christians that is the same as the God of the Muslims and of the Jews? God. God who has a thousand names. Is there a God?
There is no God, he told himself like a litany, and put that thought back into its compartment and concentrated on the riot to be.
Around them tension was growing nicely among the massed students, angry cries raging back and forth: “We didn’t spill our blood for mullahs to take all the power! Unite, brothers and sisters! Unite under the Tudeh banners…”
“Down with the Tudeh! Unite for the holy Islamic-Marxist cause, we mujhadin spilled our blood and we are the martyrs of Imam Ali, Lord of the Martyrs, and Lenin…”
“Down with the mullahs and Khomeini, archtraitor to Iran…” Vast cheers greeted this shout and others took it up, then gradually, again the dominating voice was: “Unite, brothers and sisters, unite to the real leaders of the revolution, the Tudeh, unite to protect th - ” Rakoczy watched the crowd critically. It was still in pieces, formless, not yet a mob that could be directed and used as a weapon. Some bystanders, Islamics, watched and listened with varying degrees of contempt or rage. The few moderates shook then-heads and walked away, leaving the stage to the vast majority who were deeply committed and anti-Khomeini. Around them the buildings were tall, and brick, the university built by Reza Shah in the thirties. Five years ago Rakoczy had spent a few terms here pretending to be an Azerbaijani though the Tudeh knew him as Dimitri Yazernov and that he had been sent - continuing a pattern - to organize university cells. Since its beginning the university was always a place of dissension, anti-Shah, although Mohammed Shah, more than any monarch in Persia’s history, had lavishly supported education. The Tehran students had been the vanguard of the rebellion, long before Khomeini had become the coalescing core.
Without Khomeini, we’d never’ve succeeded, he thought. Khomeini was the flame around which we could all cluster and unite to tip the Shah off the throne and the U.S. out. He’s not senile or a bigot as many say but a ruthless leader with a dangerously clear plan, a dangerously great charisma, and dangerously huge power among the Shi’ites - so now it’s time he joined the god that never was.
Rakoczy laughed suddenly. “What is it?” Farmad asked.
“I was just thinking what Khomeini and all the mullahs will say when they discover there’s no god and never was a god - there’s no heaven, no hell, no houris, and it’s all a myth.”
The others laughed too. One didn’t. Ibrahim Kyabi. There was no laughter left in him, just the wish for revenge. When he had gone home yesterday afternoon he had discovered his house in turmoil, his mother prostrate in tears, his brothers and sisters in anguish. The news had just arrived that his engineer father had been murdered by Islamic Guards outside his IranOil HQ at Ahwaz and that his body had been left to the vultures. “For what?” he had screamed.
“For - for crimes against Islam,” his uncle, Dewar Kyabi, who had brought home the terrible news, said through his own tears. “That’s what they told us - his murderers. They were from Abadan, fanatics, illiterates mostly, and they told us that he was an American quisling, that for years he had cooperated with the enemies of Islam, allowing and helping them to steal our oil, th - ”