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Conspiracy at Desert One
A novel

By Bernace Charles
The Iranian

Chapter Seventeen

Late December, 1979
Istanbul

In Istanbul, Laleh was out early. Three weeks had passed and the Iranians were still holding the Americans hostage in Tehran. Throughout the week, Laleh toured much of the city. Though she missed seeing Roya, Laleh knew she would stay with the assignment. She would stick it out even if it meant that Fred send her to Tehran. She could play the role of a photojournalist and travel to cover the revolution. With her command of Farsi, possibly the Iranians would believe her. She had last been in Tehran three years past following her parents' deaths. At that time, a law firm transferred property to her. The home in Darband sat empty. A property management service oversaw the care of the home. The service placed a man there to live in the apartment to the home's front. Fred had recommended the arrangement when there for the funeral. It had been Fred's first and only trip to Tehran

***

At noon, Laleh entered Istanbul's Spice Bazaar. She wasn't meeting Mastafa Liddle until the next day. As she took multiple photographs of spice vendors and inhaled the conflux of scents, she thought of the meeting with the boy. She also harbored concerns about the whole scenario of any rescue-effort and she wrote them in coded words on a postcard sent the prior day. She sealed the postcard in an envelope to her mother with her mother forwarding the card to a Post Office Box in Reston.

The past evening Laleh had watched a government operated television station showing news footage of the streets around the American Embassy in Tehran. The streets she remembered as a child now filled with those chanting their slogan of "Death to America." Now, as she made her way through the heavy aromas, Laleh knew that within the Spice Bazaar, a person could inhale the very scent of what drew Europeans to the Middle East. Too many came to destroy and bitter feelings spilled over into great clashes where East met West. Little had changed through the years. The same problems existed today; the West didn't understand the East; the East failed to understand the West. Laleh thought of childhood years in Tehran as a Catholic. Her mother converted after marrying her father. She thought of how religion brought its variety to life and yet life continued to face off in dark conflict. There were too many times when it all didn't make sense.

***

An hour later Laleh returned to her hotel room. She placed her camera, case, and notebook on a Victorian dresser and lay across the bed to stare at the ceiling. Thinking back, she remembered the day she first met Fred Southgate. It was when she first worked for the agency. >>> Go to Chapter Eighteen

* Back to "Conspiracy at Desert One" main index

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