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behind the scenes. In Tehran there was the provisional government, headed by Bazargan, which was managing things until a constitution was written. Writing the new constitution was the Assembly of Experts, made up of select members of the Revolutionary Command Council, but beyond all this there were further layers of power and connection, shadowy factions, plots, and maneuvers that no one could fully fathom. Taleghani was the most recent prominent victim of these treacherous, shifting waters. He had advocated keeping mosque and state separate, a concept now opposed by the imam. Because he was widely revered, his opinion was dangerous. His family insisted his murder had been arranged by the clergy, but nothing was certain. They were now reaching out to him. One of the sons, Mehdi, had said he was about to leave the country for a meeting with Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader. Metrinko was both surprised and a little pleased that Mehdi and his brother wanted to confer with him beforehand. A PLO connection would make an intriguing addition to his next report.
    So Metrinko paid little heed to the crowd he passed that morning. It was just the usual rabble, young men with beards, women in loose black manteaus, white-bearded old men with stained teeth, most of them carrying signs, chanting slogans both triumphant and hateful, shaking their fists in the air, burning American flags and giant dolls of President Carter and other Western leaders—the standard background noise. Metrinko didn’t underestimate what these mobs could do; he had been in Tabriz during the riots that followed the shah’s exit and he had seen the bodies dangling from trees. He had come close to a similar fate. But what he felt for the rabble was more contempt than fear. The way he saw it, they were nothing more than the tools of more powerful men.
    Entering the relatively calm green enclosure, he was met with the familiar scent of pine. He walked up the chancery’s rear steps and mounted the stairs to his office on the second floor, where he poured himself a cup of coffee, lit another cigarette, and waited for the call from the guards to tell him the Taleghani brothers had arrived. He had a full schedule that day. After meeting with the brothers, a University of Tehran official was coming by to pick up a passport. Metrinko then planned to lunch with friends from Tabriz, including the former mayor of that city. An old roommate from the Peace Corps was in town and they planned to meet for dinner. As he looked through the milky plastic over the sandbags in his window, he was startled to see some people scaling the walls out front, forty or so feet away.
    Picturing the job faced by the embassy guards, he watched amused as the protesters darted across the front yard.

We Only Wish to Set-in
    Kevin Hermening, who at nineteen was the youngest of the marines assigned to the embassy, woke up in the seven-story apartment building across Bijan Alley from the back wall of the embassy, where he lived with the other marines. Hermening had worked from afternoon to eleven o’clock the night before, so he was not assigned guard duty that morning. He got up at eight, late for him, and did his laundry in the apartment building basement. Then he decided to tackle some paperwork. One of his jobs was to account for the copious amounts of food and drink he and the other marines consumed, documenting the money collected for meals, and planning menus for the coming week. So instead of putting on one of his uniforms, he donned his “office clothes,” a powder blue suit with a vest, and strode across the empty alley, entered the compound, and walked toward the chancery.
    He was stopped at the front door by his boss, Al Golacinski, who had been trying in vain to raise on his walkie-talkie the Iranian police captain who was stationed at the motor pool just inside the front gate. Golacinski asked the marine to find him. When Hermening stepped back outside