Garo handed Tehlirian a new photograph. “This is Bedri Bey. He was head of the police in Constantinople who rounded up our brothers in April 1915. He supervised the tortures, the killing of Zohrab. He escaped with the rest of them in November 1918.” Soghomon knew Bedri Bey because he was an associate of his first victim, Megerdichian. “Also Doctor Shakir and Djemal Azmi. These men are in communication with one another, we are fairly sure of it. Naji Bey, Said Halim Pasha, the Grand Vizier before Talat… they are all preparing to return, only waiting for the right moment to re-enter Turkey. You know who Azmi is, right?” Yes, Tehlirian had heard of Azmi’s crimes. This was the governor of Trebizond who had executed hundreds of young Armenian men serving in the labor battalions. In addition, Azmi had emptied his vilayet of its Armenian civilians, sending them out into the Black Sea on fishing boats to be drowned. Tehlirian quietly murmured, “Yes, I know.”

Garo continued, “Azmi ended up in Baku where he continued his massacres.” Tehlirian felt the familiar floating sensation about to overwhelm him as he concentrated on Garo’s words. He must not faint at this important moment. Soghomon was prepared to do anything for this man whose face reminded him of his uncles in Serbia. Whatever was asked of him. He refused to squander this opportunity.

It was after midnight when the two finally finished. Garo left the restaurant and did not return. Hamo walked Tehlirian back to the offices of Hairenik, where a room with a bed had been prepared. He was alone for the first time in weeks. In the dark, Tehlirian closed his eyes but could not find sleep. He tried to conjure his beloved Anahid, but instead the photographs of the villainous Turks crowded his mind. “The monstrous faces jumped up and down before my eyes,” he recalled.¹⁸

Tehlirian returned to Europe on a steamship to Le Havre. There he boarded a train and went directly to Paris, where he was handed a fresh passport, issued on November 18, 1920, by the Persian consulate. This new paperwork would identify him as a subject of Persia rather than of the Ottoman Empire. Once he reached Germany, it would be important for the young Armenian to mask his nationality as thoroughly as possible. Turkish agents would be on the lookout for Armenian spies and killers.

From Paris, Tehlirian traveled to Geneva, where he visited the editorial offices of Troshag (The Flag), the official newspaper of the ARF. These were the offices that doubled as ARF headquarters, the same headquarters Armen Garo had visited as a student. Here Tehlirian met with the editor, “Mr. Anton,” who explained to Tehlirian that “our representative” (Shahan Natali), who had passed through a few days earlier, was certain that Talat was in Berlin.¹⁹ Anton arranged for Tehlirian to obtain a Swiss student visa, which would allow him to enter Germany without any difficulty. He urged Tehlirian to get to Berlin as soon as possible so that he could sign up as an engineering student before the schools closed registration for the next period. Tehlirian left Geneva on December 3 and arrived in Berlin the same day. The agents in Geneva reported back to Boston that “Simon Tavitian,” the code name Tehlirian had been given, had moved on to Berlin.²⁰

CHAPTER SIX The Hunt

I am the son of peasants and I know what is happening in the villages. That is why I wanted to take revenge, and I regret nothing.

—Gavrilo Princip

Assassination has had a very long tradition in the Ottoman Empire. The murderous competition between heirs for the royal throne was key to the sultanic succession. Should a prince ascend to the throne, all of his brothers and male cousins, regardless of age, were smothered or garroted to ensure that royal competition would not endanger the dynasty itself. Murder was an essential ingredient to the successful management of the state.

Murder wasn’t always preemptive. Sultans were routinely dispatched by rivals. In the most famous case of sultanicide, the mother of Sultan Ibrahim, Valida Sultana Kiusem, ordered her son to be murdered and replaced by his eight-year-old brother in order to maintain her own control over the empire. On the eve of World War I, the CUP secured its shaky hold on power by gunning down the minister of war and then, six months later, the new Grand Vizier.

The term “assassin” dates back almost a thousand years, rooted in medieval Islamic power struggles. It refers to the followers of Hassan-i Sabbah, a rebellious eleventh-century Ismaili Shi’a who vengefully sent out his followers to murder his enemies. Holed up in a remote and impregnable castle in the mountains of northern Persia, Hassan would extort protection money from potential targets, terrorizing rulers hundreds of miles from his base.

The psychological impact of terror was an essential ingredient in Hassan’s modus operandi. His assassins always killed with daggers, forcing a bloody face-to-face confrontation. Ironically, Hassan’s first successful assassination was that of the Grand Vizier of the Seljuk Turks, Nizam al-Mulk. Nineteen hundred years later, Soghomon Tehlirian would follow in the footsteps of the first assassins when he murdered one of the last of a long line of powerful Ottoman Grand Viziers, Talat Pasha.

On December 3, 1920, the very day when Tehlirian arrived in Berlin to begin hunting for Talat, General Mustapha Kemal’s Grand National Assembly of Turkey signed the Treaty of Alexandropol with the tiny Democratic Republic of Armenia. With the stroke of a pen, Armenia formally recognized the new Kemalist Republic of Turkey (something the Allies were not willing to do just yet). This paradoxical treaty, an act of desperation on the part of the Armenians, was meant to mollify the Turkish forces that were on the brink of finishing off the fledgling nation. This recognition of the new Turkish state outraged those Armenians who had fought for the homeland vilayets, and some, like General Antranig, refused to stop fighting. The dream of a “Wilsonian” Armenia was dead.

Kemal’s role in the destruction of the Armenians has never been completely explored. As Christopher J. Walker noted in his book on Armenia, “Mustafa Kemal was known personally to hate fanaticism and to despise religious extremism, and to be devoid of anti-minority sentiments that had characterized Turkish leaders in the past.”¹ But Kemal was also a pragmatist, a master of survival, and for that reason his government, and those governments that carried on his legacy, would continue to pursue and destroy Christians in Turkey, as well as Kurds.

The Treaty of Alexandropol kept Kemal’s forces at bay, but it did not stop the Russians. Concurrently with this futile maneuver of recognition, the Soviet Union completed its annexation of the Armenian state. From check to checkmate. Despite the treaty with the Turkish nationalists, it was only a matter of time before Kemal’s armies would invade Armenia. To fight on against the Turks without an alliance with the Soviet Union would mean total destruction of what little there remained of the Armenian people in the Caucasus. Thus, on virtually the same date as the signing of the Treaty of Alexandropol, the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic was born.

On that dark day for what was left of any independent Armenian state, Soghomon Tehlirian arrived in Berlin. A stranger to the city, unable to speak a word of German, he did not know one face in this vast and hectic cosmopolis. His tiny support network was ragtag and diffuse. In contrast, Talat and his comrades had surrounded themselves with a well-organized underground network of former police, spies, and diplomats as well as the full, if unacknowledged, support of the German government. Swiss and German bank accounts holding millions in gold would sustain the Ittihad exiles, while the Nemesis conspirators relied on an austere budget of thousands of dollars. While Talat’s cohorts enjoyed the freedom of unrestricted funds, Shahan Natali would have to argue for every penny spent, down to the smallest purchase.