In a Persian Alley

At 45, ruggedly handsome Brigadier General Mahmoud Afshartous was Iran's top cop. He played no politics, and he enforced the law impartially, an attitude so exceptional in Iran that it seemed somehow vindictive. Four months ago Mohammed Mossadegh, his great-uncle by marriage, appointed Mahmoud chief of the National Police. He was reportedly slated to head up the army too, as soon as Mossadegh pried it loose from the Shah. Mahmoud was going places.

One evening last week, the usually precise Mahmoud arrived at his office two hours late. He riffled through his mail until he found one letter, which he read and reread several times. At 9 p.m., his other mail still unread, Mahmoud buckled on his pistol, took his briefcase, and told his driver to drop him off at Khaneghah Avenue. He left his briefcase and revolver be hind in the Buick, set off along Khaneghah Avenue, an alleylike street honeycombed with apartments. He paused for a moment in a grocery, inquired of a boy there the address of a Hossain somebody (the boy could not remember the rest of the name), walked out and vanished.

The Company of Women. At 1 a.m. Premier Mossadegh was roused from bed with the news of the disappearance; within a few minutes 500 cops rushed into the area where Afshartous was last seen.

Khaneghah Avenue was a strange alley for Iran's top cop to venture into unprotected. Some of Mossadegh's bitterest enemies made their headquarters there, including the Retired Officers' Association and the Fascist-like Sumka Party. But it is also home to several notorious easy women, and Tough Cop Afshartous had a reputation for philandering.

At first the search concentrated on the women. The principal pro-Mossadegh daily, Bakhtar-e-Emruz, hinted broadly: "It is known that the general did not go out of his way to avoid the company of women." The police picked up Tamara, a faded femme fatale, Teheran's top belly dancer two decades ago, along with another dancer named Helene and a tall, hard Rumanian barmaid called Nelly. But they knew nothing, and were released. Then the cops went looking for--but could not find--General Fazlollah Zahedi, head of the Retired Officers' Association and an avowed anti-Mossadegh plotter. The government offered 500,000 rials (about $15,000) for information, and promised amnesty to anyone producing Afshartous.

Looking for Hossain. Patiently cops plodded from door to door, looking up all the neighborhood Hossains, a job comparable to checking all the Joes on Chicago's South Side. When they came to the home of Politician Hossain Khatibi, once a prominent supporter of Mossadegh and now loudly in opposition, they were bothered by the heavy smell of perfume mixed with another, hard-to-place odor. Under questioning, the servants cracked: the other smell, which the perfume was intended to hide, was chloroform.

Gradually the whole story came out. Mahmoud Afshartous had gone to Khatibi's home that fateful night, lured by an offer to act as mediator between Mossadegh and his antagonists. Waiting plotters grabbed him, he struggled, was finally subdued and chloroformed. The plotters hauled Afshartous off into the mountains near Teheran, tortured him, finally garroted him to death. This week the cops found the corpse, roped around the neck, hands and feet, in a shallow grave beside a road outside Teheran. They arrested Khatibi and several brigadier generals, associates of the missing General Zahedi.

Mossadegh ordered Afshartous' flag-draped coffin borne through the streets of Teheran on a caisson; and proclaimed a day of national mourning. The day of Afshartous' burial marked the second anniversary of Mossadegh's taking power.

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