42: Chapter 42 Two Letters

Reza folded the letter from Paris back up, placed it under a paperweight, and turned to pick up the second one.

The second envelope was much more ordinary, bearing a standard postmark from Tehran. The sender was listed as a merchant dealing in grain in Khuzestan Province—a name Reza recognized. It was a covert line Karimi had planted in Tehran.

Unfolding it, he found only a thin sheet of paper inside, with a line of scrawled Persian:

"General Shapour has been dismissed. The General Staff Headquarters is meeting tonight to discuss Khuzestan. People are asking what exactly Prince Reza is hiding."

There was no signature.

Reza placed the two letters side by side on the desk and stared at them for nearly two minutes.

General Shapour—Chief of Staff of the Iranian Army—was one of the few "professional soldiers" in the entire Iranian military. He was neither entirely pro-American nor a lackey of the royal family, always priding himself on "maintaining military independence."

Before coming to Khuzestan, Reza had privately contacted him once, and his assessment was: he had principles but lacked courage; he was a man who could hold onto what existed, not one who could forge a new era.

Yet, it was precisely such a man who had been dismissed at this critical juncture.

Reza hardly needed to guess who would replace him; it would undoubtedly be a direct loyalist of the Pahlavi royal family, the kind of trash who only knew how to stand at attention and salute during parades, and bow and scrape before American military advisors.

What did this mean?

It meant that the Pahlavi King was tightening his control over the military. Feeling pressure from all sides, he had begun to entrust his final confidence only to loyalties that could be bought with bloodline and money.

This was the instinctive, and most fatal, move of an empire on the eve of collapse. He was casting aside those who could still help him fight, replacing them with a batch of people who would only protect his personal safety.

Reza picked up a pen and wrote two lines in his notebook:

"Shapour, can be won over. Timing: the sooner the better."

"Ayatollah Khomeini pragmatists, probe, but do not rush."

He closed the notebook and called Hassan in.

"Two things," Reza said directly. "First, contact Karimi and have him find out where General Shapour is now—whether he has returned home to retire or is under house arrest. If it's the former, arrange a meeting. The location should not be in Tehran; preferably a private setting in Mashhad or Isfahan. I need to see him within a month."

"And the second thing?"

Reza pushed the letter from Paris across the desk.

Hassan picked it up, read it through, and frowned. "Your Highness, is this someone from Ayatollah Khomeini's side?"

"It's one of the pragmatists around him," Reza said. "Ayatollah Khomeini himself has no interest in me; our paths are fundamentally different. But his circle isn't monolithic. Some believe in theocracy, others just want to overthrow Pahlavi. The two overlap, but they aren't the same thing."

"How should we respond?"

"Do not respond for now," Reza said, "but let them know we received it. Have Karimi send back three words through that channel in Paris: 'Waiting.'"

"Only three words?"

"That's enough. For smart people, three words are worth more than three thousand." Reza stood up and paced slowly in the study. "Our greatest risk right now isn't Saddam Hussein or the Americans; it's exposing our hand too early. The leaflets from the Majnoon operation have already created the phantom image of a 'Royal Guard Special Forces Detachment.' Tehran has started to get suspicious, and Saddam Hussein has begun to re-evaluate the threat level of Khuzestan. This is good, but it has also brought side effects."

"What side effects?"

"Everyone has started watching me." Reza stopped and looked back at Hassan. "So, moving forward, the Cyrus Workshop must lower its profile. As for Fatima, have her move all externally visible production into deep underground facilities. Keep only one genuine water pump assembly workshop on the surface. The products should be shipped out regularly and distributed to several irrigation cooperatives within Khuzestan Province. These are real water pumps, so no one will be able to find any issues."

Hassan nodded and turned to leave.

"One more thing." Reza's voice lowered. "That Reza Bahrami, has he made any moves recently?"

"Last week he went to the Ahvaz market and lingered in front of a spice stall for seventeen minutes," Hassan said. "Our people followed him the whole time. That stall owner is a sub-contact of 'The Blacksmith.' Reza didn't hand over anything at the time, just bought a bag of cumin, but they made eye contact."

"He's waiting," Reza said in a low voice. "After discovering those false intelligence reports, he's actually afraid to speak rashly. He's afraid of misjudging, so he's waiting for more evidence to verify."

"Then what now? Give him something real?"

Reza thought for a moment and shook his head.

"Give him a chance to leave," Reza said. "Have Fatima officially dismiss him on the grounds of 'downsizing the team.' Pay his wages in full and give him a severance package—not too much, not too little, just enough for him to go back to his hometown in Ahvaz and live a quiet life. If he leaves the workshop, that line will automatically be cut. SAVAK will think the intelligence source has dried up and will go looking for the next point of infiltration, and we will have saved ourselves a hot potato."

"What if he continues to report to SAVAK with the previous fake intelligence?"

"Then let him report it," Reza said dismissively. "A worker who has already resigned, providing intelligence that a 'water pump factory is in normal production'—what value does that have for SAVAK? None. They will only classify this person's file as a 'low-value informant' and contact them later if there are new developments."

Hassan paused at the door, a faint look in his eyes—something like awe, or perhaps something else that was hard to define.

"Your Highness," he said, "sometimes I feel that being with you is a very safe thing."

Reza looked at him and was silent for a few seconds.

"No," he said. "Being with me is a very dangerous thing. But the direction of the danger can be anticipated; that is the only difference."

Hassan left.

The study quieted down again.

Reza sat back down at the desk, picked up both letters, brought them close to the oil lamp, and set them on fire.

He watched the paper curl, blacken, and turn to ash in the flames, then used his fingers to finely crush the pile of ash and flicked it into the night outside the window.

With no physical evidence remaining, this was the most basic political hygiene habit he had learned from his past life. In that era of information explosion, leaving behind writing meant leaving behind leverage; in 1978, where even a tape recorder was a luxury, a single letter could likewise kill.

He mentally reorganized the two threads of the day.