Whirlwind

  Still in shock, the sergeant fell into step beside his commander who went forward toward the gate. Scattered in front of the gates were thirty or forty who had been trampled on. The mass of rioters had stopped a hundred yards away and was beginning to re-form. Some of the more zealous began to charge. Tension soared.

  “STOP! Everyone STAND STILL!”

  This time the commander was obeyed. At once. He could feel the sweat on his back, his heart pumping in his chest. He glanced briefly at the corpse impaled on the barbs, glad for him—hadn’t the youth been martyred with the Name of God on his lips, and wasn’t he therefore already in Paradise?—then spoke harshly into the mouthpiece. “You three…yes, you three, help the mullah. NOW!” Instantly, the men outside the fence he had pointed at rushed to do his bidding. He jerked an angry thumb at some soldiers. “You! Open the gate! You, take the body away!”

  Again he was obeyed instantly. Behind him, some groups of men began to move, and he roared, “I said, STAND STILL! THE NEXT MAN WHO MOVES WITHOUT MY ORDER’S A DEAD MAN!” Everyone froze. Everyone.

  Peshadi waited a moment, almost daring someone to move. No one did. Then he glanced back at Hussain whom he knew well. “Mullah,” Peshadi said quietly, “are you all right?” He was standing beside him now. The gate was open. A few yards away the three villagers waited, petrified.

  There was a monstrous ache in Hussain’s head and his ears hurt terribly. But he could hear and he could see and though his hands were bloody from the barbs, he knew he was undamaged and not yet the martyr he had expected and had prayed to be. “I demand…” he said weakly, “I demand this…this base in the name of Khomeini.”

  “You will come to my office at once,” the colonel interrupted, his voice and face grim. “So will you three, as witnesses. We will talk, mullah. I will listen and then you will listen.” He turned on the loudspeaker again and explained what was going to happen, his voice even grimmer, the words echoing, cutting the night apart. “He and I will talk. We will talk peacefully and then the mullah will return to the mosque and you will all go to your homes to pray. The gate will remain open. The gate will be guarded by my soldiers and my tanks, and, by God and the Prophet on whose Name be praised, if one of you sets foot inside the gate or comes over the fence uninvited, my soldiers will kill him. If twenty or more of you charge into my base I will lead my tanks into your villages and I will burn your villages with you in them! Long live the Shah!” He turned on his heel and strode off, the mullah and the three frightened villagers following slowly. No one else moved.

  And on the veranda of the officers’ mess, Captain Conroe Starke, leader of the S-G contingent, sighed. “Good sweet Jesus,” he muttered with vast admiration to no one in particular, “what cojones!”

  5:21 A.M. Starke stood at the window of the officers’ mess, watching Peshadi’s HQ building across the street. The mullah had not yet come out. Here in the main lounge of the officers’ mess it was very cold. Freddy Ayre hunched deeper into his easy chair, pulling his flight jacket closer around him, and looked up at the tall Texan who rocked gently on his heels. “What do you think?” he asked wearily, stifling a yawn.

  “I think it’ll be dawn in an hour odd, old buddy,” Starke said absently. He also wore a flight jacket and warm flying boots. The two pilots were in a corner window of the second-floor room overlooking most of the base. Scattered around the room were a dozen of the senior Iranian officers who had also been told to stand by. Most were asleep in easy chairs, bundled in their flight jackets or army greatcoats—heating throughout the base had been off for weeks to conserve fuel. A few weary orderlies, also in overcoats, were clearing up the last of the debris from the party that the mob had interrupted.

  “I feel wrung out. You?”

  “Not yet, but how come I always seem to draw duty on high days and holidays, Freddy?”

  “It’s the Fearless Leader’s privilege, old chum,” Ayre said. He was second-in-command of the S-G contingent, ex-RAF, a good-looking man of twenty-eight, with sloe-blue eyes, his accent Oxford English. “Sets a good example to the troops.”

  Starke glanced toward the open main gate. No change: it was still well guarded. Outside, half a thousand of the villagers still waited, huddled together for warmth. He went back to staring at the HQ building. No change there either. Lights were on in the upper floor where Peshadi had his offices. “I’d give a month’s pay to be kibitzing on that one, Freddy.”

  “What? What’s that mean?”

  “To be listening to Peshadi and the mullah.”

  “Oh!” Ayre looked across the street at the offices. “You know, I thought we’d had it when those miserable buggers started climbing the wire. Bloody hell! I was all set to hare off to old Nellie, crank her up, and say farewell to Kublai Khan and his Mongol hordes!” He chuckled to himself as he imagined himself running for his 212. “Of course,” he added dryly, “I’d have waited for you, Duke.” He used their nickname for Starke who was Texan like John Wayne and built like John Wayne and just as handsome.

  Starke laughed. “Thanks, old buddy. Come to think of it, if they’d bust in I’d’ve been ahead of you.” His blue eyes crinkled with the depth of his smile, his accent slight. Then he turned back to the window, hiding his concern. This was the base’s third confrontation with a mob, always led by the mullah, each more serious than the last. And now the first deliberate death. Now what? That death’ll lead to another and to another. If it hadn’t been for Colonel Peshadi someone else would have gone for the gate and been shot and now there’d be bodies all over. Oh, Peshadi would’ve won—this time. But soon he won’t, not unless he breaks the mullah. To break Hussain he’ll have to kill him—can’t jail him, the mob’ll bust a gut, and if he kills him, they’ll bust a gut, if he exiles him, they’ll bust a gut, so he’s onto a no-win play. What would I do?

  I don’t know.

  He looked around the room. The Iranian officers didn’t seem concerned. He knew most of them by sight, not one of them intimately. Though S-G had shared the base since it was built some eight years before, they had had little to do with the military or air force personnel. Since Starke had taken over as chief pilot last year, he had tried to expand S-G’s contacts with the rest of the base but without success. The Iranians preferred their own company.

  That’s okay too, he thought. It’s their country. But they’re tearing it apart and we’re in the middle and now Manuela’s here. He had been overjoyed to see his wife when she had arrived by helicopter five days ago—McIver not trusting her to the roads—though a little angry that she had talked her way onto a lone incoming BA flight that had slipped back into Tehran. “Damnit, Manuela, you’re in danger here!”

  “No more than in Tehran, Conroe darlin’. Insha’Allah,” she had said with a beam.

  “But how’d you talk Mac into letting you come down here?”

  “I just smiled at him, honey, and promised to go on the first available flight back to England. Meanwhile, darlin’, let’s go to bed.”

  He smiled to himself and let his mind drift. This was his third two-year tour in Iran and his eleventh year with S-G. Eleven good years, he thought. First Aberdeen and the North Sea, then Iran, Dubai, and Al Shargaz just across the Gulf, then Iran again where he’d planned to stay. The best years here, he thought. But not anymore. Iran’s changed since ’73 when the Shah quadrupled the price of oil—from $1 to $4 or thereabouts. It was like B.C. and A.D. for Iran. Before, they were friendly and helpful, good to live among and to work with. After? Increasingly arrogant, more and more puffed up by the Shah’s constant overriding message about the “inherent superiority of Iranians” because of their three thousand years of civilization and how within twenty years Iran would be a world leader as was her divine right—would be the fifth industrial power on earth, sole guardian of the crossroads between East and West, with the best army, the best navy, the best air force, with more tanks, helicopters, refrigerators, factories, telephones, roads, schools, banks, businesses than anyone else
here in the center of the world. And based on all of this, with the rest of the world listening attentively, Iran under his leadership would be the real arbiter of East and West, and real fountain of all wisdom—his wisdom.

  Starke sighed. He had come to understand the message, loud and clear over the years, but he blessed Manuela for agreeing to hurl themselves into the Iranian way of life, learning Farsi, going everywhere and seeing everything—new sights and tastes and smells, learning about Persian carpets and caviar, wines and legends and making friends—and not living their life out like many of the expat pilots and engineers who elected to leave their families at home, to work two months on and one off and sat on their bases on days off, saving money, and waiting for their leaves home—wherever home was.

  “Home’s here from now on,” she had said. “This’s where we’ll be, me and the kids,” she had added with the toss of her head he admired so much, and the darkness of her hair, the passion of her Spanish heritage.

  “What kids? We haven’t got any kids and we can’t afford them yet on what I make.”

  Starke smiled. That had been just after they were married, ten years ago. He had gone back to Texas to marry her as soon as his place with S-G was firmed. Now they had three children, two boys and a girl, and he could afford them all, just. Now? Now what’s going to happen? My job here’s threatened, most of our Iranian friends’ve gone, there’re empty shops where there was plenty—and fear where there’d only been laughter.

  Goddamn Khomeini and these goddamn mullahs, he thought. He’s certainly messed up a great way of life and a great place. I wish Manuela’d take the kids and leave London and fly home to Lubbock until Iran stabilizes. Lubbock was near the Panhandle of Texas where his father still ran the family ranch. Eight thousand acres, a few cattle, some horses, some farming, enough for the family to live comfortably. I wish she was there already, but then there’d be no mail for weeks and the phones’re sure to be out. Goddamn Khomeini for frightening her with his speeches—wonder what he’ll say to God and God’ll say to him when they meet, as they will.

  He stretched and sat back in the easy chair. He saw Ayre watching him, his eyes bleary. “You really hung one on.”

  “It was my day off, my two days in fact, and I hadn’t planned on the hordes. Actually I had intended to drink to oblivion, I miss my Better Half, bless her, and anyway Hogmanay’s important to us Scots an—”

  “Hogmanay was New Year’s Eve and today’s February tenth and you’re no more Scots than I am.”

  “Duke, I’ll have you know the Ayres are an ancient clan and I can play the bagpipes, old boy.” Ayre yawned mightily. “Christ, I’m tired.” He burrowed deeper into the chair, trying to settle himself more comfortably, then glanced out of the window. At once his tiredness dropped away. An Iranian officer was hurrying out of the HQ entrance, heading across the street toward them. It was Major Changiz, the base adjutant.

  When he came in, his face was taut. “All officers will report to the commandant at seven o’clock,” he said in Farsi. “All officers. There will be a full parade of all military and air force personnel at eight o’clock in the square. Anyone absent—anyone,” he added darkly, “except for medical reasons approved by me in advance—can expect immediate and severe punishment.” His eyes searched the room until he found Starke. “Please follow me, Captain.”

  Starke’s heart skipped a beat. “Why, Major?” he asked in Farsi.

  “The commandant wants you.”

  “What for?”

  The major shrugged and walked out.

  Starke said quietly to Ayre, “Better alert all our guys. And Manuela. Huh?”

  “Got it,” Ayre said, then muttered, “Christ.”

  As Starke walked across the street and up the stairs, he felt the eyes on him as a physical weight. Thank God I’m a civilian and work for a British company and not in the U.S. Army anymore, he thought fervently. “Goddamn,” he muttered, remembering his year’s stint in Vietnam in the very early days when there were no U.S. forces in Vietnam, “only a few advisers.” Shit! And that sonofabitching spit-and-polish meathead Captain Ritman who ordered all our base’s helicopters—in our jungle base a million miles from anywhere, for crissake—to be painted with bright red, white, and blue stars and stripes: “Yes, goddamnit, all over! Let the gooks know who we are and they’ll rush their asses all the way to goddamn Russia.” The Viet Cong could see us coming from fifty miles and I got peppered to hell and back and we lost three Hueys with full crews before the sonofabitch was posted to Saigon, promoted and posted. No wonder we lost the goddamn war.

  He went into the office building and up the stairs, past the three petrified villagers who had been banished to the outer office, into the camp commandant’s lair. “Morning, Colonel,” he said cautiously in English.

  “Morning, Captain Starke.” Peshadi switched to Farsi. “I’d like you to meet the mullah, Hussain Kowissi.”

  “Peace be upon you,” Starke said in Farsi, very conscious of the speckles of blood from the dead youth that still marred the man’s white turban and black robe.

  “Peace be upon you.”

  Starke put out his hand to shake hands as was correct custom. Just in time he noticed the coagulated rips in the man’s palms that the barbed wire had caused. He made his grip gentle. Even so he saw a shaft of pain go across the mullah’s face. “Sorry,” he said in English.

  The mullah just stared back and Starke felt the man’s hatred strongly.

  “You wanted me, Colonel?”

  “Yes. Please sit down.” Peshadi motioned at the empty chair opposite his desk. The office was Spartan, meticulously tidy. A photograph of the Shah and Farah, his wife, in court dress was the only wall decoration. The mullah sat with his back toward it. Starke took the chair facing the two men.

  Peshadi lit another cigarette and saw Hussain’s disapproving eyes drop to the cigarette, then glare into his face. He stared back. Smoking was forbidden in the Koran—according to some interpretation. They had argued this point for over an hour. Then he had said with finality, “Smoking is not forbidden in Iran, not yet. I am a soldier. I have sworn to obey orders. Ir—”

  “Even the illegal ord—”

  “I repeat: the orders of His Imperial Majesty, Shahinshah Mohammed Pahlavi or his representative, Prime Minister Bakhtiar, are still legal according to the law of Iran. Iran is not yet an Islamic state. Not yet. When it is I will obey the orders of whoever leads the Islamic state.”

  “You will obey the Imam Khomeini?”

  “If Ayatollah Khomeini becomes our legal ruler, of course.” The colonel had nodded agreeably, but he was thinking: before that day comes there’s going to be a lot of blood spilled. “And me, if I’m elected leader of this possible Islamic state, will you obey me?”

  Hussain had not smiled. “The leader of the Islamic state will be the Imam, the Whirlwind of God, and after him another ayatollah, then another.”

  And now the stony, uncompromising eyes still glared at him, and Peshadi wanted to smash the mullah into the ground and take his tanks and smash everyone else who would not obey the orders of the Shahinshah, their God-given ruler. Yes, he thought, our God-given leader who like his father stood against you mullahs and your grasp for power, who curbed your archaic dogmatism and brought Iran out of the Dark Ages into our rightful greatness, who single-handedly bulldozed OPEC to stand up to the enormous power of the foreign oil companies, who slung the Russians out of Azerbaijan after World War II and has kept even them at bay, licking his hands like lapdogs.

  By God and the Prophet, he told himself, enraged, staring back at Hussain, I cannot understand why fornicating mullahs don’t recognize the truth about that senile old man Khomeini who screams lies from his deathbed, won’t realize that the Soviets are sponsoring him, feeding him, protecting him, to stir them up to enflame the peasants to wreck Iran and make it a Soviet protectorate? We only need one single order: Stamp out rebellion forthwith!

  With that order, by God, within t
hree days I’d have Kowiss and a hundred miles around quiet, peaceful, and prosperous, mullahs happily in the mosques where they belong, the Faithful praying five times a day—within a month the armed forces’d have all Iran as it was last year and Khomeini solved permanently. Within minutes of the order I’d arrest him, publicly shave off half his beard, strip him naked, and trundle him through the streets in a dung cart. I’d let the people see him for what he is: a broken, beaten old man. Make him a loser and all the people would turn their faces and ears from him. Then accusers would come from the ayatollahs who adore life and love and power and land and talking, accusers would come from the mullahs and bazaaris and from the people and together they would snuff him out.

  So simple to deal with Khomeini or any mullah—by God if I’d been in charge I’d’ve dragged him from France months ago. He puffed his cigarette and very carefully kept his thoughts off his face and out of his eyes. “Well, mullah, Captain Starke is here.” Then he added, as though it was unimportant. “You can speak to him in Farsi or English, as you wish—he speaks Farsi as you speak English. Fluently.”

  The mullah turned on Starke. “So,” he said, his English American accented, “you are CIA.”

  “No,” Starke said, instantly on his guard. “You were at school in the States?”

  “I was a student there, yes,” Hussain said. Then, because of his pain and tiredness, his temper snapped. He switched to Farsi and his voice harshened. “Why did you learn Farsi if not to spy on us for the CIA—or your oil companies, eh?”

  “For my interest, just for my interest,” Starke replied politely in Farsi, his knowledge and accent good, “I’m a guest in your country, invited here by your government to work for your government in partnership with Iranians. It’s polite for guests to be aware of their hosts’ taboos and customs, to learn their language, particularly when they enjoy the country and hope to be guests for many years.” His voice edged. “And they’re not my companies.”