“Hello, Andy, what’s new?”
“Just reporting in, Genny. Not to worry about Mac and the others—no telling how long they had to wait at the RV.”
“I’m fine, Andy. Don’t worry about me. What about the others?”
“Rudi, Pop Kelly, and Sandor are en route from Bahrain—they refueled at Abu Dhabi and we’re in contact with them—John Hogg’s our relay station—their ETA here’s in twenty minutes. Scrag’s fine, Ed and Willi no problem, Duke’s sleeping and Manuela’s here. She wants to say hello…” A moment and then Manuela’s voice: “Hi, darlin’, how are ya, and don’t say great!”
Genny smiled halfheartedly. “Great. Is Duke all right?”
“Sleepin’ like a baby, not that babies sleep quiet all the time. Just wanted you to know we’re sweating it out too. I’ll pass you back to Andy.”
A pause, then: “Hello, Genny. Johnny Hogg’ll be in your area about now and he’ll be listening too. We’ll keep in touch. Can I speak to Charlie again, please.”
“Of course, but what about Marc Dubois and Fowler?”
A pause. “Nothing yet. We’re hoping they’ve been picked up—Rudi, Sandor, and Pop backtracked and searched as long as they could. No wreckage, there’re lots of ships in those waters and platforms. We’re sweating them out.”
“Now tell me what Charlie’s supposed to know but I’m not.” She scowled into the dead silence on the phone, then heard Gavallan sigh.
“You’re one for the book, Genny. All right. I asked Charlie if any telex had arrived from Iran yet, like the one we got here, in Dubai and Bahrain. I’m trying to pull all the strings I can through Newbury and our Kuwaiti embassy in case of a foul-up, though Newbury says not to expect much, Kuwait being so close to Iran and not wanting to offend Khomeini and petrified he’ll send or allow a few export fundamentalists to stir up the Kuwaiti Shi’as. I told Charlie that I’m trying to get word to Ross’s parents in Nepal and to his regiment. That’s the lot.” In a more kindly voice, “I didn’t want to upset you more than necessary. Okay?”
“Yes, thanks. Yes, I’m… I’m fine. Thanks, Andy.” She passed the phone back and looked at her glass. Beads of moisture had formed. Some were trickling. Like the tears on my cheeks, she thought and got up. “Back in a sec.”
Sadly Pettikin watched her go. He listened to Gavallan’s final instructions. “Yes, yes, of course,” he said. “Don’t worry, Andy, I’ll take care of… I’ll take care of Ross, and I’ll call the very moment we have them on the screen. Bloody awful about Dubois and Fowler, we’ll just have to think good thoughts and hope. Great about the others. ’Bye.”
Finding Ross had shattered him. The moment he had got Gavallan’s call this morning he had rushed to the hospital. Today being Friday, with minimum staff, there was just one receptionist on duty and he spoke only Arabic. The man smiled and shrugged and said, “Bokrah,”—tomorrow. But Pettikin had persisted and eventually the man had understood what he wanted, and had made a phone call. At length a male nurse arrived and beckoned him. They went along corridors and then through a door and there was Ross naked on a slab.
It was the suddenness, the totality of nakedness, of seeming defilement, and the obliteration of any shred of dignity that had torn Pettikin apart, not the fact of death. This man who had been so fine in life had been left like a carcass. On another slab were sheets. He took one and covered him and that seemed to make it better.
It had taken Pettikin more than an hour to find the ward where Ross had been, to track down an English-speaking nurse and to find his doctor.
“So very sorry, so very sorry, sir,” the doctor, a Lebanese, had said in halting English. “The young man arrived yesterday in a coma. He had a fractured skull and we suspected brain damage; it was from a terrorist bomb we were told. Both eardrums were broken and he had a number of minor cuts and bruises. We X-rayed him, of course, but apart from binding his skull there was little we could do but wait. He had no internal damage or hemorrhage. He died this morning with the dawn. The dawn was beautiful today, wasn’t it? I signed the death certificate—would you like a copy? We’ve given one to the English embassy—together with his effects.”
“Did he…did he recover consciousness before he died?”
“I do not know. He was in intensive care and his nurse…let me see.” Laboriously the doctor had consulted his lists and found her name. “Sivin Tahollah. Ah, yes. Because he was English we assigned her to him.”
She was an old woman, part of the flotsam of the Middle East, knowing no forebears, part of many nations. Her face was ugly and pockmarked but she was not, her voice gentle and calming, her hands warm. “He was never conscious, Effendi,” she said in English, “not truly.”
“Did he say anything particularly, anything you could understand, anything at all?”
“Much that I understood, Effendi, and nothing.” The old woman thought a moment. “Most of what he said was just mind wanderings, the spirit fearing what should not be feared, wanting that which could not be had. He would murmur ‘azadeh’—azadeh means ‘born free’ in Farsi though it is also a woman’s name. Sometimes he would mutter a name like ‘Erri’ or ‘Ekki’ or ‘Kookri,’ and then again ‘azadeh.’ His spirit was at peace but not quite though he never wept like some do, or cry out, nearing the threshold.”
“Was there anything more—anything?”
She toyed with the watch she wore on her lapel. “From time to time his wrists seemed to bother him and when I stroked them he became calm again. In the night he spoke a tongue I have never heard before. I speak English, a little French, and many dialects of Arabic, many. But this tongue I have never heard before. He spoke it in a lilting way, mixed with wanderings and ‘azadeh,’ sometimes words like…” She searched her memory. “Like ‘regiment’ and ‘edelweiss’ and ‘highlands’ or ‘high land,’ and sometimes, ah, yes, words like ‘gueng’ and ‘tens’ng,’ sometimes a name like ‘Roses’ or ‘Rose mountain’—perhaps it was not a name but just a place but it seemed to sadden him.” Her old eyes were rheumy. “I’ve seen much of death, Effendi, very much, always different, always the same. But his passing was peaceful and his going over the threshold without hurt. The last moment was just a great sigh—I think he went to Paradise, if Christians go to Paradise, and found his Azadeh…”
TABRIZ—AT THE KHAN’S PALACE: 3:40 P.M. Azadeh walked slowly along the corridor toward the Great Room where she was meeting her brother, her back still troubling her from the grenade explosion yesterday. God in heaven, was it only yesterday that the tribesmen and Erikki almost killed us? she thought. It seems more like a thousand days, and a light-year since Father died.
It was another lifetime. Nothing good in that lifetime except Mother and Erikki and Hakim, Erikki and…and Johnny. A lifetime of hatreds and killings and terrors and madness, madness living like pariahs, Hakim and I, surrounded by evil, madness at the Qazvin roadblock and that vile, fat-faced mujhadin squashed against the car, oozing like a swatted fly, madness of our rescue by Charlie and the KGB man—what was his name, ah yes, Rakoczy—Rakoczy almost killing all of us, madness at Abu Mard that has changed my life forever, madness at the base where we’d had so many fine times, Erikki and I, but where Johnny killed so many so fast and so cruelly.
She had told Erikki everything last night—almost everything. “At the base he…he became a killing animal. I don’t remember much, just flashes, giving him the grenade in the village, watching him rush the base…grenades and machine guns, one of the men wearing a kookri, then Johnny holding up his severed head and howling like a banshee… I know now the kookri was Gueng’s. Johnny told me in Tehran.”
“Don’t say any more now. Leave it until tomorrow, leave the rest until tomorrow, my darling. Go to sleep, you’re safe now.”
“No. I’m afraid to sleep, even now in your arms, even with all the glorious news about Hakim, when I sleep I’m back in the village, back at Abu Mard and the mullah’s there, cursed of God, the kalandar’s there and butcher
’s got his carving knife.”
“There’s no more village or mullah, I’ve been there. No more kalandar, nor butcher. Ahmed told me about the village, part of what had happened there.”
“You went to the village?”
“Yes, this afternoon, when you were resting. I took a car and went there. It’s a heap of burned rubble. Just as well,” Erikki had said ominously.
In the corridor Azadeh stopped a moment and held on to the wall until the fit of trembling passed. So much death and killing and horror. Yesterday when she had come out onto the steps of the palace and had seen Erikki in the cockpit, blood streaming down his face and into his stubbled beard, more dripping from his sleeve, Ahmed crumpled beside him, she had died and then, seeing him get out and stand tall and walk to her, her own legs useless, and catch her up into his arms, she had come to life again, all her terrors had poured out with her tears. “Oh, Erikki, oh, Erikki, I’ve been so afraid, so afraid…”
He had carried her into the Great Room and the doctor was there with Hakim, Robert Armstrong and Colonel Hashemi Fazir. A bullet had torn away part of Erikki’s left ear, another had scored his forearm. The doctor had cauterized the wounds and bound them up, injecting him with antitetanus serum and penicillin, more afraid of infection than of loss of blood: “Insha’Allah, but there’s not much I can do, Captain, you’re strong, your pulse is good, a plastic surgeon can make your ear look better, your hearing’s not touched, praised be to God! Just beware of infection…”
“What happened, Erikki?” Hakim had asked.
“I flew them north into the mountains and Ahmed was careless—it wasn’t his fault, he got airsick—and before we knew what was happening Bayazid had a gun to his head, another tribesman had one to mine and Bayazid said, ‘Fly to the village, then you can leave.’
‘“You swore a holy oath you wouldn’t harm me!’ I said.
“‘I swore I wouldn’t harm you and I won’t, but my oath was mine, not of my men,’ Bayazid said, and the man with a gun to my head laughed and shouted, ‘Obey our Sheik or by God you will be so filled with pain you will beg for death.’”
“I should have thought of that,” Hakim said with a curse. “I should have bound them all with the oath. I should have thought of that.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference. Anyway it was all my fault; I’d brought them here and almost ruined everything. I can’t tell you how sorry I am but it was the only way to get back and I thought I’d find Abdollah Khan, I never thought that matyeryebyets Bayazid would use a grenade.”
“We’re not hurt, through God’s will, Azadeh and I. How could you know Abdollah Khan was dead, or that half your ransom was paid? Go on with what happened,” Hakim had said and Azadeh noticed a strangeness under the voice. Hakim’s changed, she thought. I can’t understand what’s in his mind like I used to. Before he became Khan, really Khan, I could but not now. He’s still my darling brother but a stranger. So much has changed, so fast. I’ve changed. So has Erikki, my God how much! Johnny hasn’t changed…
In the Great Room, Erikki had continued: “Flying them away was the only way to get them out of the palace without further trouble or killing. If Bayazid hadn’t insisted, I would have offered—no other way’d’ve been safe for you and Azadeh. I had to gamble that somehow they’d obey the oath. But whatever happened, it was them or me, I knew it and so did they, for of course I was the only one who knew who they were and where they lived and a Khan’s vengeance is serious. Whatever I did, drop them off halfway or go to the village, they’d never let me go. How could they—it was the village or me and their One God would vote for their village along with them, whatever they’d agreed or sworn!”
“That’s a question only God could answer.”
“My gods, the ancient gods, don’t like to be used as an excuse, and they don’t like this swearing in their name. They disapprove of it greatly, in fact they forbid it.” Azadeh heard the bitterness and touched him gently. He had held her hand. “I’m fine now, Azadeh.”
“What happened next, Erikki?” Hakim asked.
“I told Bayazid there wasn’t enough gasoline and tried to reason with him and he just said, ‘As God wants,’ stuck the gun into Ahmed’s shoulder and pulled the trigger. ‘Go to the village! The next bullet goes into his stomach.’ Ahmed passed out and Bayazid reached over him for the Sten gun that had slipped to the floor of the cockpit, half under the seat, but he couldn’t quite get it. I was strapped in, so was Ahmed, they weren’t, so I shifted her around the skies in ways I didn’t think a chopper could stand, then let her drop out and made a landing. It was a bad one; I thought I’d broken a skid but later I found it was only bent. As soon as we’d stopped I used the Sten and my knife and killed those who were conscious and hostile, disarmed the unconscious ones, and dumped them out of the cabin. Then, after a time, I came back.”
“Just like that,” Armstrong had said. “Fourteen men.”
“Five, and Bayazid. The others…” Azadeh had her arm on his shoulder and she felt the shrug and the following tremor. “I left them.”
“Where?” Hashemi Fazir had said. “Could you describe where, Captain?” Erikki had done so, accurately, and the colonel had sent men to find them.
Erikki put his good hand into his pocket and brought out the ransom jewels and gave them to Hakim Khan. “Now I think I would like to talk to my wife, if it pleases you. I’ll tell you the rest later.” Then she and he had gone to their own rooms and he said nothing more, just held her gently in his great embrace. Her presence soothed away his anguish. Soon to sleep. She slept barely at all, at once back in the village to tear herself in panic from its suffocating grasp. She had stayed quiet for a time in his arms, then moved to a chair and half dozed, content to be with him. He had slept dreamlessly until it was dark, then awoke.
“First a bath and then a shave and then some vodka and then we will talk,” he had said, “I’ve never seen you more beautiful nor loved you more and I’m sorry, sorry I was jealous—no, Azadeh, don’t say anything yet. Then I want to know everything.”
In the dawn she had finished telling all there was to tell—as much as she would ever tell—and he his story. He had hidden nothing, not his jealousy, or the killing rage and the joy of battle or the tears he had shed on the mountainside, seeing the savagery of the mayhem he had dealt to the tribesmen, “They…they did treat me fairly in their village…and ransom is an ancient custom. If it hadn’t been for Abdollah murdering their messenger…that might have made the difference, perhaps, perhaps not. But that doesn’t forgive the killings. I feel I’m a monster, you married a madman, Azadeh. I’m dangerous.”
“No, no, you’re not, of course you’re not.”
“By all my gods, I’ve killed twenty or more men in half that number of days and yet I’ve never killed before except those assassins, those men who charged in here to murder your father before we were married. Outside of Iran I’ve never killed anyone, never hurt anyone—I’ve had plenty of fights with or without pukoh but never serious. Never. If that kalandar and the village had existed, I would have burned him and them without a second thought. I can understand your Johnny at the base; I thank all gods for bringing him to us to protect you and curse him for taking away my peace though I know I’m in his immortal debt. I can’t deal with the killings and I can’t deal with him. I can’t, I can’t, not yet.”
“It doesn’t matter, not now, Erikki. Now we’ve time. Now we’re safe, you’re safe and I’m safe and Hakim’s safe, we’re safe, my darling. Look at the dawn, isn’t it beautiful? Look, Erikki, it’s a new day now, so beautiful, a new life. We’re safe, Erikki.”
IN THE GREAT ROOM: 3:45 P.M. Hakim Khan was alone except for Hashemi Fazir. Half an hour ago Hashemi had arrived unbidden. He had apologized for the intrusion, handing him a telex. “I thought you’d better see this at once, Highness.”
The telex read: “URGENT. To Colonel Fazir, Inner Intelligence, Tabriz: Arrest Erikki Yokkonen, husband of Her Highness, Azadeh G
orgon, for crimes committed against the State, for complicity in air piracy, hijacking, and high treason. Put him in chains and send him at once to my Headquarters here. Director, SAVAMA, Tehran.”
Hakim Khan dismissed his guards. “I don’t understand, Colonel. Please explain.”
“The moment I’d decoded it, I phoned for further details, Highness. It seems last year S-G Helicopters sold a number of helicopters to IHC an—”
“I don’t understand.”
“Sorry, to Iran Helicopter Company, an Iranian company, Captain Yokkonen’s present employer. Among them were—are—ten 212s including his. Today the other nine, valued at perhaps $9 million, were stolen and illegally flown out of Iran by IHC pilots—SAVAMA presumes to one of the Gulf states.”
Hakim Khan said coldly, “Even if they have, this doesn’t affect Erikki. He’s done nothing wrong.”
“We don’t know that for certain, Highness. SAVAMA says perhaps he knew of the conspiracy—it certainly had to have been planned for some time because three bases are involved—Lengeh, Bandar Delam, and Kowiss—as well as their Tehran Head Office. SAVAMA are very, very agitated because it’s also been reported that vast quantities of valuable Iranian spares have been whisked away. No mo—”
“Reported by whom?”
“The IHC managing director, Siamaki. Even more serious, all IHC foreign personnel, pilots and mechanics and office staff, have vanished as well. Everyone, so of course it was a conspiracy. It seems that yesterday there were perhaps twenty of them all over Iran, last week forty, today none. There are no S-G, or more correctly IHC foreigners left in all Iran. Except Captain Yokkonen.”
At once the implication of Erikki’s importance leaped into Hakim’s mind and he cursed himself for allowing his face to give him away when Hashemi said blithely, “Ah, yes, of course you see it too! SAVAMA told me that even if the captain is innocent of complicity in the conspiracy, he’s the essential means to persuade the ringleaders and criminals, Gavallan and McIver—and certainly the British government which must have been party to the treason—to return our airplanes, our spares, to pay an indemnity of very serious proportions, to return to Iran and stand trial for crimes against Islam.”