MASTER SET 1ST PASS REVISED

Prologue

p h i l a d e l p h i a , 2 012

ax’s Radar Affair, the handwriting across the file said. I recognized
M my mother’s cursive—as well as her flair for drama. The story con-
tained in this file had all the markings of a classical affair. Secret meetings.
Unaccounted-for hours. Divided loyalties. For thirty years, the file had lain
dormant at the bottom of this box—which had followed us Copelands
from Iran to Pennsylvania, through four suburban homes, to the dusty
corner of the library where it now resided. In a strange way, I believe it was
my father’s will that I found the file. Last week, a land prospector called
with news of mineral rights that once belonged to my dad. “They’re yours
if you can prove ownership,” she told my mother, who promptly dispatched
me to the study to locate my father’s will. I was buried deep in the wilder-
ness of boxed diplomas, old address books, photos, tax files, and receipts,
when from the bottom of a box of relics, the past coughed up a different
nugget.
“Open it,” my mother said. Into our laps spilled several documents. The
first was a newspaper clipping dated November 27, 1979.

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CIA Agent Smuggling Radar

Equipment Caught
TEHRAN—The Revolutionary Guards here arrested a CIA
agent who was trying to smuggle eight console radar ma-
chines to the United States. Max Copeland, whose nation-
ality was not identified yet, had booked eight boxes of radar
equipment belonging to the Iranian Air Force at Mehrabad
customs destined for the United States . . .

A succession of other documents fell from the file, their pages delicate and
crisped by time. There was a formal rebuttal written by my father disputing
the charges. An affidavit from secretary of state Cyrus Vance. A packing
list. A long letter from my mother to Iranian president Banisadr—a review
of which brought tears to her eyes.
“You know, of course, your father was a CIA agent,” she suddenly vol-
unteered.
It was not the first time I’d heard her say this. I suppose a review of
salient facts did suggest a career in intelligence: low-profile jobs in defense
and high-tech industries. Broad knowledge of Iran. And he was caught up
in an international incident that somehow never got any play beyond those
couple paragraphs in the Tehran Times. But a CIA agent? I remember him
as an academic whose greatest hours were spent in the company of books.
A hunter. A mindful adventurer who could never quite get enough of
mountain ranges, seascapes, and the oddities of different cultures. It irked
me, hearing her call Dad a spy.
“Tell me about Dad’s arrest,” I said.
1S “Why must we talk about the past when you know it gives me a head-
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ache?” she replied—never mind that the past was all around us, splayed out
in an accordion of yellowed documents. “Anyway, haven’t you heard this
story enough times?”
I knew the tale well enough, but somehow it had never sat right. My
father was too sincere to traffic in government secrets. His love for Iran was
genuine. But ever since the CIA had organized a revolution in 1953, Irani-
ans have come to distrust the motivations of Americans. Just a couple of
years ago three American hikers had been accused of espionage after “inad-
vertently” crossing into Iran. It was of course a perfectly ridiculous claim—
every bit as absurd as their choice of destination—but it prompted my
mother into her latest act of volunteer diplomacy. She drew up a letter to
Hillary Clinton offering personally to negotiate their freedom.
“I sacrificed much more for your father, a real-life spy, so why shouldn’t
I defend these innocents?” she said.
It didn’t cross her mind that at eighty, she might no longer have the con-
nections needed to pull it off. But even today, you cannot underestimate her.
Sadly, she did not hear back from Secretary of State Clinton. Or maybe
she never got around to mailing the letter. But that afternoon for the gazil-
lionth time, she recounted the events leading to my father’s capture and
resulting trial.
Through the years, with each retelling, I felt a deeper regret that I didn’t
know my father better. All children have unresolved questions about their
parents, of course, but this was no trifling matter. Was he a spy? Then it
struck me: I had a file on my father. If he was a CIA agent, they’d have a
file on him too.
That week, in a bid to put the past to rest once and for all—for myself
and my mother and sister—I filed a Freedom of Information Act request
with the CIA. Passed into law by President Clinton, the act allows previ-
ously classified documents that were more than twenty-five years old to be
released. If my father were a CIA agent, his file would certainly meet these
guidelines. A dead agent doesn’t worry about his cover being blown, right? 1S
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I also filed inquiries with the FBI, the Department of Defense and the
State Department, and President Carter. A flurry of letters flew out into
the world, each a bid to open my father’s long-dormant past. I held out
hope that someone, somewhere knew something—and, like the file I’d un-
earthed, that thing would fall gracefully into place.
Which just shows you how much I know about the world of intelligence.
While waiting for responses to come in, I began writing this book. My
mother’s story is easy to tell for she is an ardent, often glittering story-
teller. My father’s was trickier—the dead tell no tales. He was a notoriously
private man. The story of his capture, imprisonment, and trial I pieced to-
gether from journals, notes, memories, and shards of conversation I recall
from quieter moments. But much of his interior life and motivations had
been shrouded from me.
While writing, a curious thing happened. At times I heard his voice in
my head, which was lovely and disconcerting. I began to feel closer to him.
I have an American father and an Iranian mother. I have the blood of
the Great Satan and the Axis of Evil in my veins. The year 1979 launched
the Iranian revolution and Islamic fundamentalism on an unready world,
and in revisiting that year and its dramatic events, I saw how the fracture
between the two countries was written into my parents’ marriage—and
played itself out in microcosm while Iran and America did battle. Our
story was a prism. While all eyes were on the hostages, our crisis played out
in jail, in court, across international borders—and in private.
Was my dad a spy? Were the charges leveled against him true? Were my
father alive today, he’d have pushed up his glasses and said in a voice that
left little room for discussion, “Cyrus, I don’t want to talk about it.” But we
Copelands had an adventure, a tale that goes back three decades to the
fault lines between Iran and America. And it needs to be told.

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pa r t 1

A Hu n t i n g
E x pe d i t i o n

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Intentional Blank

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Shahin

t e h r a n , 19 7 9

n America, a peanut farmer rules the free world. Here a king is deposed
I from his peacock throne, ending twenty-five hundred years of monar-
chy. God have mercy, the revolution has arrived.
It’s been months since the Shah left—leaving the country in the hands
of bearded hooligans and a rotating roster of ministers, most of whom last
barely longer than a carton of milk. The prisons have been emptied and
refilled. Each day brings more prohibitions: ties, perfume, nail polish,
makeup. And more executions: generals, SAVAK agents, Communists,
drug offenders, Kurds, Bahais, intellectuals, political dissidents and hold-
overs from the prior regime, their names written on their foreheads for
identification—their blood running from Evin’s prison grounds.
Welcome to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
For the record, her name is Shahin Maleki Copeland. She is an inveter-
ate royalist and always will be. Did the Shah not launch a White Revolu-
tion that gave women the vote, peasants the land they’d farmed, illiterates
an education, industrial workers the right to profits, Iran’s forests protec-
tion, and the farthest villages access to public healthcare? But you don’t
hear about any of that, for bloodless revolutions rarely make headlines.
Better a red revolution to take Iran back a century. 1S
Not only does she disavow herself of all this; Shahin notes with pleasure 1R
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how the Islamic Republic was certified on April 1, when the gullible are
taken for a good laugh. Her countrymen marched, fought, died, ransacked,
burned, stared down the barrels of guns—and now celebrated. The revolu-
tion has succeeded! Become martyrs in the path of righteousness! It’s as if they’d
read the Che Guevara handbook on revolution, mixed it with fundamen-
talist Islam, and were now drunk on their unmixable principles. “Brother”
and “sister,” they called each other.
It was the best of times followed by the worst of times.
Mornings as she passes the newsstand, Shahin glances at the headlines
and pictures of executed men. She wonders if it bothers her compatriots
that blood flows freely and vengefully, or that Tehran’s walls are defaced
with ugly slogans calling for death. Death is all around them. By daylight
and moonlight, men patrol the streets like hounds in search of Commu-
nist, royalist, traitor, and dissident—carting them off to destinations un-
known. As SAVAK had done. Stories of abduction are whispered over tea:
Gereftanesh. A single word, shorthand for capture and probable death:
“They got him.”
November 25, 1979. Today, as she sets the table, Shahin realizes Max
still has not arrived. Usually he is home by seven, whistling in the stair-
well. It’s nine p.m. Kebabs and rice are on the table, losing steam. “Where is
Dad?” the kids want to know.
“He went hunting,” Shahin says, the facility of her lie surprising her.
“Hunting?” Katayoun asks.
“Hunting. Yes. Your father decided—spontaneously—to take a trip up
north,” Shahin says, expanding the lie and giving it room to breathe.
“Now eat.”
In truth she has no idea where Max might be.
Her thoughts turn to the American embassy. A couple of weeks ago,
some ruffians seized the embassy for the second time. Shahin remembers
that day; the gods had set the mood perfectly. A misty gloom hung over
1S Tehran. A light rain fell. In the late afternoon, her sister Mahin had called
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with news of the takeover. Shahin turned on the TV to see a gleeful mob
parading its blindfolded Americans, chanting death to Carter, death to
imperialism. By now death was so invoked, so ingrained in the language
that she thought she was immune to it. But this? She felt embarrassed that
Iran’s new face to the world was a horde of bloodthirsty hoodlums with no
international etiquette.
Doubtless they’d been elated to discover the pile of documents, three
CIA agents, and a cache of weapons—all of which confirmed their worst
suspicions about America. Finally the revolution had found a unifying
event. And hundreds of thousands took to the streets in jubilant agreement.
“This is not an occupation. We have thrown out the occupiers!” Ayatol-
lah Khomeini proclaimed.
It does not take a Nobel laureate to appreciate that of all the times in
Iran’s history this was the most inauspicious, the absolute worst, for Max to
go missing. But over dinner Shahin feels a strange calm descend. After the
kids retire to their rooms to finish homework, she remains anchored at
the table watching the hours tick by.
Come midnight, Max is still missing.
Where, she wonders, does one search for a missing American husband?
She’s been married to Max for twenty-plus years, mostly good, but ever
since the revolution had ignited she’s sensed a growing rift. The night of
the embassy takeover they’d argued fiercely. Where was the sense of inter-
national decency, Max wanted to know. The goddamn moral outrage?
Where was the recognition that America had been riding roughshod over
Iran for years, Shahin demanded. She’d not take any criticism of Iran, not
now, not from an American, not when Carter had sold out her beloved
Shah for a barrel of oil. The argument had ended the way most did, with
Max seething and silent. That was a week ago. Now he was gone.
The following morning, she stops at Laleh hospital, a couple of blocks
from home. The overwhelming nausea she’s already feeling has nothing to
do with the antiseptic smells wafting in the corridors. 1S
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“Have you admitted a Dr. Copeland? A tall American man.”

“Does he work here?” the admitting clerk asks.
“Oh—no, he’s not that kind of doctor. He’s a Ph.D. And my husband.”
“I see,” the clerk says with a hint of derision. Unshaved, he barely looks
at her. Yesterday people like him had washed her windows, clipped her
hedges, and shined her shoes. “We have no record of him here.”
“Thank you,” she replies, the words like vinegar on her tongue.
For the next fifteen hours, this scene plays like a recurring nightmare:
Surly, uninterested clerks who’ve forgotten their humble beginnings brush-
ing her off. (Bad enough her husband is missing, Shahin’s life has become a
scene from a Marxist play.) The response is always the same. At the hospi-
tal, the police station, the prison, the morgue: We have no record of him.
Shahin crisscrosses Tehran knowing that with every passing hour her
chances of finding Max diminish.
One hour bleeds into the next.
One prayer gives way to a hundred.
At eleven p.m. she returns home husbandless. She has not eaten—a
missing husband is a wonderful appetite suppressant—and collapses onto
the sofa. “Will you rub my legs?” she asks Katayoun.
That night, Shahin prays formally for the first time in years. On a rug.
Facing Mecca. This was the Islamic Republic, but the mullahs weren’t the
only ones with a line to God. Midprayer, she stops short and in the way a
piece of the puzzle eventually comes forward, she remembers Max’s driver.
Surely he would know Max’s last whereabouts. She doesn’t bother excusing
herself from God, but gathers her skirt and leaves. An hour later, she stands
in the alley outside Javad’s house, and when he doesn’t answer his buzzer,
Shahin yells: “JAVAD!” He comes downstairs, looking like he’s seen a
ghost—which Shahin attributes to the surprise of seeing her at midnight
minus makeup. In this dark alley on the other side of Tehran’s tracks, the
two of them are briefly stunned by the improbability of this rendezvous.
1S Shahin pulls him into the shadows. “Dr. Copeland is missing—do you
1R know where my husband is?”
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“Sincere apologies, khanoum,* nah.”

“Where did you take him yesterday?”
“To the warehouse. I returned after lunch, but he wasn’t there. I as-
sumed he’d gotten a cab.”
That sounded right. Max was in charge of closing out the affairs of
Westinghouse’s employees—selling their belongings to the public, return-
ing to the warehouse after each sale to record the proceeds. But something
is wrong. This time Javad won’t look at her, so Shahin takes a step toward
him and in a move that surprises her, a desperate and conceivably widowed
woman, she puts her hand to his throat and pushes Javad against the wall.
“Tell me where my husband is. I have a gun in my purse and will
shoot you.”
A year ago, Shahin had been a woman of decorum—gliding through
Iran’s upper echelons and hobnobbing with university presidents and four-
star generals. She had an American husband. Two children. They took
yearly vacations to the European capitals. Educated at Georgetown, she
prided herself on speaking five languages and having been the youngest
woman to leave Iran, unchaperoned, at age seventeen to study abroad. In a
year, all vestiges of her privileged life have disintegrated—leaving Shahin
with the one unassailable trait she’s always possessed. Practicality. To date,
Shahin has never choked anyone, certainly never the help. But if violence
is what it takes to shake down a lowly driver at this midnight hour, by
Allah she will do it.
“Please, khanoum, let me go! I know nothing!”
She tightens her grip and Javad’s veins start pulsing—then popping. She
can smell the onions from dinner on his breath, which arrives in pungent,
staccato bursts.
“Do you want your children to grow up fatherless? Harf bezan,
beechareh!Ӡ

*
Honorific title for a woman.
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†
“Talk, you scalawag!” 1R
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Javad gasps and a tiny web of spittle lands on her hands. A thin crescent
of blood appears where her thumbnail has pierced his neck. It pearls, then
meanders down Shahin’s thumb.
“Grrftssshh.”
“What?”
She releases her hold on him, and like the miserable stoolie he is, Javad
pants forth a torrent of apologies. “Gereftanesh,* khanoum . . . We were out-
side the warehouse and two revolutionary guards took him away . . . They
had guns . . . Tell anyone and we’ll come for you too, they said. Khanoum,
I have a family! Debts! Imagine the trouble they would unleash on my poor
head . . .” By now, Javad had recovered from his near strangulation and was
beating himself on the head like a professional mourner. “My wife is up-
stairs right now, hiding with shattered nerves. Vaaaay. I’m sorry I didn’t tell
you, but I have a family! Debts! What is going to happen, khanoum? God
help us, we are without hope!”
There it was; the well-worn phrase that ricocheted throughout Iran had
landed with a thud. Gereftanesh. Frankly, she is relieved to hear someone has
Max, but relief gives way to new questions: Why is he being held? What
has Max done?
Naturally, she dismisses Javad. Once you choke someone, you can never
be sure of their loyalties.

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1R *
“They got him.”
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