ProloguePhiladelphia, 2012

Maxs Radar Affair, the handwriting across the file said. I recognized my mothers cursiveas well as her flair for drama. The story contained 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 boxwhich 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 fathers will that I found the file. Last week, a land prospector called with news of mineral rights that once belonged to my dad. Theyre yours if you can prove ownership, she told my mother, who promptly dispatched me to the study to locate my fathers will. I was buried deep in the wilderness 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.

CIA Agent Smuggling RadarEquipment CaughtNovember 27, 1979TEHRANThe Revolutionary Guards here arrested a CIA agent who was trying to smuggle eight console radar machines to the United States. Max Copeland, whose nationality 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 Banisadra review of which brought tears to her eyes. You know, of course, your father was a CIA agent, she said. It was not the first time Id 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 remembered 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 Dads arrest, I said.Why must we talk about the past when you know it gives me a headache? she repliednever mind that the past was all around us, splayed out in an accordion of yellowed documents. Anyway, havent 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, Iranians have come to distrust the motivations of Americans. Just a couple of years ago, three American hikers had been accused of espionage after inadvertently crossing into Iran. It was of course a perfectly ridiculous claimevery bit as absurd as their choice of destinationbut 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 shouldnt I defend these innocents? she said.It didnt cross her mind that at eighty, she might no longer have the connections 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 gazillionth time, she recounted the events leading to my fathers capture andresulting trial.Through the years, with each retelling, I felt a deeper regret that I didnt 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 had been a CIA agent, theyd have a file on him, too.That week, in a bid to put the past to rest once and for allfor myself and my mother and sisterI filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA. Passed into law by President Clinton, the act allows previously 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 doesnt worry about his cover being blown, right? I also filed inquiries with the FBI, the Department of Defense, the State Department, and President Carter. A flurry of letters flew out into the world, each a bid to open my fathers long-dormant past. I held out hope that someone, somewhere knew somethingand, like the file Id unearthed, 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 mothers story is easy to tell for she is an ardent, often glittering storyteller. My fathers was trickierthe dead tell no tales. He was a notoriously private man. The story of his capture, imprisonment, and trial I pieced together 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 marriageand 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 bordersand in private.Was my dad a spy? Were the charges leveled against him true? Were my father alive today, hed have pushed up his glasses and said in a voice that left little room for discussion, Cyrus, I dont 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.

Part I - A Hunting ExpeditionShahinTehran, 1979In America, a peanut farmer rules the free world. Here a king is deposed from his peacock throne, ending twenty-five hundred years of monarchy. God have mercy, the revolution has arrived. Its been months since the Shah leftleaving 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 holdovers from the prior regime, their names written on their foreheads for identificationtheir blood running from Evins prison grounds.Welcome to the Islamic Republic of Iran.For the record, her name is Shahin Maleki Copeland. She is an inveterate royalist and always will be. Did the Shah not launch a White Revolution that gave women the vote, peasants the land theyd farmed, illiterates an education, industrial workers the right to profits, Irans forests protection, and the farthest villages access to public healthcare? But you dont hear about any of that, for bloodless revolutions rarely make headlines. Better a red revolution to take Iran back a century.Not only does she disavow herself of all this, Shahin notes with pleasure 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 gunsand now celebrated. The revolution has succeeded! Become martyrs in the path of righteousness! Its as if theyd read the Che Guevara handbook on revolution, mixed it with fundamentalist 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 photographs of executed men. She wonders if it bothers her compatriots that blood flows freely and vengefully, or that Tehrans 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 ofCommunist, royalist, traitor, and dissidentcarting them off to destinations unknown. 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 stairwell. Its 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 decidedspontaneouslyto 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 Tehran. A light rain fell. In the late afternoon, her sister Mahin had called 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 Irans new face to the world was a horde of bloodthirsty hoodlums with no international etiquette.Doubtless theyd been elated to discover the pile of documents, CIA agents, and a cache of weaponsall 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! Ayatollah Khomeini proclaimed.It does not take a Nobel laureate to appreciate that of all the times in Irans 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? Shed been married to Max for twenty-plus years, mostly good, but ever since the revolution had ignited shed sensed a growing rift. The night of the embassy takeover theyd argued fiercely. Where was the sense of international 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. Shed 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, withMax 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 shes already feeling has nothing to do with the antiseptic smells wafting in the corridors. Have you admitted a Dr. Copeland? A tall American man.Does he work here? the admitting clerk asks.Ohno, hes not that kind of doctor. Hes 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 whove forgotten their humble beginnings brushing her off. (Bad enough her husband is missing, Shahins life has become a scene from a Marxist play.) The response is always the same. At the hospital, 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 eatena missing husband is a wonderful appetite suppressantand 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 werent 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 Maxs driver. Surely he would know Maxs last whereabouts. She doesnt bother excusing herself from God, but gathers her skirt and leaves. An hour later, she stands in the alley outside Javads house, and when he doesnt answer his buzzer, Shahin yells: JAVAD! He comes downstairs, looking like hes seen a ghostwhich Shahin attributes to the surprise of seeing her at midnight minus makeup. In this dark alley on the other side of Tehrans tracks, the two of them are briefly stunned by the improbability of this rendezvous. Shahin pulls him into the shadows. Dr. Copeland is missingdo you know where my husband is? Sincere apologies, khanoum,[footnoteRef:1] nah. [1: Honorific title for a woman.]

Where did you take him yesterday?To the warehouse. I returned after lunch, but he wasnt there. I assumed hed gotten a cab.That sounded right. Max was in charge of closing out the affairs of Westinghouses employeesselling their belongings to the public, returning to the warehouse after each sale to record the proceeds. But something is wrong. Javad wont 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 decorumgliding through Irans 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 disintegratedleaving Shahin with the one unassailable trait shes 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 Javads veins start pulsingthen 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![footnoteRef:2] [2: Talk, you scalawag! ]

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 Shahins thumb.Grrftssshh.What?She releases her hold on him, and like the miserable stoolie he is, Javad pants forth a torrent of apologies. Gereftanesh,[footnoteRef:3] khanoum . . . We were outside the warehouse and two Revolutionary Guards took him away had guns . . . Tell anyone and well come for you too, they Khanoum, I have a family! Debts! Imagine the trouble they would unleash on my poor head . . . By now, Javad has recovered from his near strangulation and is beating himself on the head like a professional mourner. My wife is upstairs right now, hiding with shattered nerves. Vaaaay. Im sorry I didnt tell you, but I have a family! Debts! What is going to happen, khanoum? God [3: They got him.]

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.