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On that Monday evening in Teheran,
one hundred men formed in a perfect ten by ten square.
They stood in the center of the Zinenen Temple, facing
a giant of a man, Haja Hassan. He was the leader of
their religious sect, a sect that believed Allah was
approached through the perfection of the body.
Haja slowly raised his
arms upward and let his black robe fall off, perfectly
developed biceps.. In front of Haja were two throwing
clubs, each weighed thirty pounds. He picked them up.
The audience, seated on stone benches in the temple,
cheered wildly as Haja began to throw them and cath
them. In the back row, one person was not cheering.
Ali Darius watched without emotion. His mind was elsewhere:
the final, and most dangerous move in the game, bringing
the Shah back. When Darius had returned from the airport
on Saturday, he had brought the Shah's Firman appointing
General Zahedi as Prime Minister to Schwatzkopf's command
center at the Park Hotel. Schwatzkopf had photocopies
made but ordered Darius to waited before distributing
them to his contacts until he finally received the coded
signal from Baghdad that the Shah was ready to return.
That signal had come this afternoon and Darius delivered
the royal decree to four newspapers Seterah Islam, Aram,
Asia Javanan and the French language, Journal de Teheran.
They would published them in the morning and all hell
would break out in Teheran. Haja began throwing the
clubs higher. The men in the formation, using smaller
clubs, followed his lead. The effect of hundreds of
clubs tumbling through the air was hypnotic. There was
complete silence in the temple. Haja then handed his
clubs to one of his followers, and counted out loud
the number of times he threw the clubs. Again, the crowd
cheered. Young apprentices now ran onto the floor and
tried their hand at throwing the lighter clubs. Haja
picked up, and threw, even larger clubs. The crowd rose
to their feet. Haja bowed. The Zinenen ceremony was
over. After the excited crowd filed out of the temple,
Darius made his way to Haja's private chamber. He found
him resting on the stone floor. "I've come, Haja Hassan,
because I need what you and you alone can provide men
made of steel, men who would die for their Shah" "I
have one hundred such dedicated men, Darius, but the
Shah is no longer here." Darius took from his pocket
an emerald-encrusted Koran that Gulbenkian had furnished.
He handed it to Haja. "The Shah wants you to have this."
"I couldn't accept such a valuable gift," Haja looked
at the emeralds on it, understanding that , despite
his perfunctory protest, he would accept it as a payment
for services to be rendered. "The Shah wants you to
have the word of God," Darius repeated. "He wants you
to know that if your men shout his name loud enough
tomorrow, he will return as your Shah and rid this country
of those who would usurp his throne." "When and where?"
Haja said. "Tomorrow. 8 AM. Majlis Square." Kim Roosevelt
sat in the open jeep as it cut in and out of the donkey
on a dusty road on the outskirts of Teheran. He had
just arrived from Baghdad the plane of the US Naval
attache, bringing with him $5 million in cash. The driver
turned the wheel sharply to the right as he began an
"S" turn, and hit the accelerator, then began twisting
the wheel to the left. The shadow of a cannon suddenly
cut across the road and. Jamming his foot on the brake,
he screeched to a stop just inches from a Sherman tank
that blocked the road. "Hello, Kim," General Zahedi
called from the turret of the Sherman tank. His forces
had met little resistence during the night. They now
controlled the Bagh-i-Shah barracks, the Merhabad airport,
the Teheran radio station, and the telephone exchange.
Roosevelt climbed up on top of the tank. He embraced
Zahedi and handed him the Firman. "Welcome to Teheran,
Prime Minister Zahedi. The Majlis await you." Majlis
Square was chaos that mourning. Groups with Mossadeq
pictures on placards were confronting other groups with
Zahedi's pictures on placards. Newspapers, with the
imperial Firman on the front page, were being freely
distributed by roving bands of boys. On top of one truck,
a loud-speaker blared ominous military music from Teheran's
only radio station, on top of another track, newsreel
cameraman aimed their cameras at policemen closing off
the gates to the parliament Suddenly, from one end
of the square, 101 powerfully-built men in black robes,
advanced towards the gate in a phalanx formation. A
crowd streamed behind them, growing larger every minute.
They chanted "Zindabad Shah," and menacingly swung throwing
clubs as the marched. They cut through the police line,
like a knife through butter, hurling to the ground anyone
who got in their way. The few guards who had not yet
either fled or joined the mob rushed up the steps to
shut the double doors leading into the Majlis. As they
tried to barricade it from inside, they could hear the
clubs pounding against the doors, and the doors began
to buckle. In his office, Mohammed Mossadeq sat hunched
over his chair in his blue pajamas and robe. The lights
through the window reflected off his bald head like
a nimbus in a medieval painting. He was signing one
decree after another, as fast as he could. They were
decrees of amnesty, decrees of land reform, decrees
of appointment, decrees of pension. He didn't need to
read them, for he knew they would never be carried out.
Meanwhile, his aide, Colonel Mensa, was desperately
trying to get through to Army headquarters. The phone
line was dead. He heard the rumble of tanks outside
and rushed to the window. When he looked out, he saw
General Zahedi, standing on the turret of the lead tank,
a sword in his hand, posing for the newsreel cameras.
Raven was flying over the Persian Gulf when he got the
message. The pilot of the Anglo- Iranian plane announced
in his Texan drawl over the intercom, "Sir, we just
received word from London. Mossadeq has been arrested.
Should we continue on to Abadan." "Most certainly,"
Raven replied over the intercom. He was not surprised
that the coup d'etat had succeeded. If it had not, his
mission to Abadan would have been aborted. He had been
dispatched to Abadan to negotiate a new arrangement
with the Iranian government. Kim Roosevelt had insisted
that the Shah be given a fig-leaf so that he could publically
claim that Iran was retaining control of its oil fields.
So a new international consortium would be set up in
which the Iranian Government, and, for window-dressing,
American oil companies, would participate, with Anglo-Iranian
(which would change its name to British Petroleum.)
To further the appearance of an independent entity,
the Iranian government would use chartered tankers,
at least initially, to move its share of the hundreds
of millions of barrels of oil that had built up in the
storage tanks in Abadan during the blockade. The Persian
Gulf below, except for a few Arab fishing boats, looked
serene. But Raven knew that soon it would be swarming
with hundreds of oil tankers, drawn, like bees to honey,
to Abadan. Up until just a few hours ago, he had assumed
that most of those chartered tankers would belong to
an anonymous Luxembourg syndicate, Satrap, and that
Statrap would make a profit of at least a hundred million
dollars by chartering these "independent" tankers to
the Iranian government. He himself was one of Satrap's
secret owners. His twenty percent share, he had reckoned,
would have given him a new lease of life. It would have
freed him both from his employer, the oil cartel, and
from his wife, Diane, whose money and family connection
he would no longer need. With the windfall, he would
buy have his own castle in Scotland, stage his own grouse
shoots on the moors and indulge in his own fantasies.
What he had not counted on Onassis' wily treachery.
It now appeared clear that Onassis had duped Satrap.
He had feigned a verbal agreement with Satrap to selling
his fleet so that Satrap would not buy tankers elsewhere,
and their prices up. He had then strung them up until
this morning. He realized that he had committed a cardinal
error in his deception. He had assumed that the person
he had planned to cheat was ignorant of his plans. As
a result, he concluded ruefully, the cheater had gotten
cheated. But how did Onassis find out? The plane began
its descent over Khoristan oil field. Raven could see
the tall steel derricks dotting the arid hills below.
He knew that each well in the field could produce a
half- million gallons of oil a day, enough fuel to move
a tank division across Europe. He thought wistfully
"That is true power." The next day, August 20th, all
of Teheran was alive with anticipation. Qashqai tribesmen
on their camels, Shi-ite mullahs in their mosques, pecan
hawkers in the streets, kilim merchants in the bazaars,
narghile-pipe smokers in the cafes, everyone in Teheran
knew that the Shah was returning at high noon. On every
lamppost hung an Iranian flag, on every corner Army
troops handed out photographs of the Shah; in every
square, cadets led the chant "'Zindabad Shah. The schools,
banks and stores were closed.
The crowd had thickened on Shalimar Boulevard until it
was impossible to see through it to the street. The great
mogul bell struck twelve. First came the motorcycles.
They were followed by flat-bed trucks from which young
school girls threw clouds of white roses on the Boulevard.
Then came the Shah's open Mercedes with the Imperial Guard
running along side. The Shah and Queen Soraya stood in
the limousine, waving to their frenzied subjects.
Following the procession
to the Palace was a Black Cadillac with curtained window.
In the back seat, Kim Roosevelt lit his cigar.
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