Hitler's peace

North Team had parachuted into the remote foothills of the Alborz Mountains, northeast of Qazvin, where they had been met on the ground by Kashgai tribesmen, the backbone of the local resistance movement to the joint British and Soviet rule of Iran. The team had spent the first night in the countryside, hiding in a castle fortress that had once been the mountain hideaway of the Hashishiyun, an ancient Ismaili sect that was better known in the West as the Assassins. It seemed appropriate, Oster thought, more so when he considered that the business of the Kashgai, most of whom smoked hashish at all times of the day, was morphine. The Kashgai had seemed genuinely delighted with the weapons, the gold, and the golden pistols that North Team had brought with them from the Ukraine. Oster thought they were a fearsome, shifty lot, and on that first night, in the ruins of the fortress, he had half expected to wake up and find his throat being cut by one of these murderous-looking and intoxicated tribesmen. He had slept fitfully, with his hand holding a Mauser pistol underneath the knapsack he used as a pillow. It was hard to believe that these men, dressed like Ali Baba’s forty thieves, could have found any common cause with Nazi Germany.

Ebtehaj, huge and bearded, with the shoulders of a bear and smelling strongly of liniment, and forever feeding a string of prayer beads through his rope-thick fingers, told Oster how it was that the Kashgai were helping him and his troops. It was the day after their arrival, and after a two-hour hike through the hills the team had rendezvoused with the two trucks that would take them on the next stage of their journey, a drive of more than a hundred kilometers southwest into Teheran.

“It’s not that we’re for Germany,” he explained, “so much as that we’re against the British and the Russians. Germany has no history of interference in Persia. But for these two it is a game about who will control our oil. The British have been here since the last war. But they came in greater force in 1941, to protect Russia’s ass. They deposed the shah, sent him into exile, and made his son, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, their puppet. The German embassy was closed. All pro-German Persians were arrested and imprisoned without trial in Sultanabad, including the prime minister. But the real leader of the opposition, Habibullah Nobakht, managed to get away somehow, and now he makes war on truck convoys.

“You see, Captain, Persia is a most independent country. Yes, it is true, the country has been invaded many times. But the invader always came, looted, and then left. It was worth no one’s while to stay here. What would they stay for? Persia is a desert country. But that was before oil, of course, and before Russia realized she had a back door through which she might be supplied by the Americans. Which is how you find us now.

“The British and the Russians tell us that they will not interfere in Persia after the war, but they rule their respective zones like independent provinces in their empires. The Russians make us their cesspit, sending us all their Polish prisoners and their Jews. Never have so many people come to Persia. Maybe a quarter of a million people. And these Poles, they bring all sorts of diseases. All sorts of problems. Why send them here? If Poland is Russia’s ally then why not keep them in Russia? They are Slavs, not Persians. But no one listens.” The wrestler laughed. “All right, so we can fix that, yes? We will kill Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt, and maybe they will leave us alone. Then we will kill all the Poles. Only then will Persia be good for Persians.”

The trucks had brought North Team to Teheran’s bazaar, a city within a city, a labyrinth of streets and alleys. Each street specialized in selling a particular commodity, and the wrestler took them to the carpet street, where he had arranged for them to stay in a disused rug factory. Still full of rugs, it proved quite comfortable. Food was brought to them. Their first hot meal in Iran consisted of bread and a soupy stew called dizi, and tea was served from a samovar that made Oster’s Ukrainians feel entirely at home. This was just as well, for Ebtehaj told Oster that, in his opinion, it had been a mistake for Berlin to send Ukrainians on this mission. His Kashgai brothers were half inclined to think of them as Russians, and it took Oster some time to convince the wrestler that Ukrainians were not only different from Russians but that they also had more reason to hate the Russians than anyone.