Whirlwind

  “You cannot leave,” Hakim said impatiently, but she did not hear him. Her mind had leaped to Ross and Gueng and the previous escape, and how difficult those two had found it even though they were trained saboteurs and fighters. Poor Gueng. A chill went through her. The road north’s as difficult as the one south, so easy to ambush us, so easy to put up roadblocks. Not so far in miles to Khoi, and past Khoi to the frontier, but a million miles in time and with my bad back… I doubt if I could walk even one of them.

  “Never mind,” she muttered. “We’ll get there all right. With the Help of God we’ll escape.”

  Hakim flared, “By God and the Prophet, what about your oath, Azadeh?”

  Her face was very pale now and she held on to her fingers to stop the tremble. “Please forgive me, Hakim, I’ve told you. And if I’m prevented from leaving with Erikki now, or if Erikki won’t take me with him, I’ll escape somehow, I will, I swear it.” She glanced at Erikki. “If Mac and all the others have fled, you could be used as a hostage.”

  “I know. I have to get out as fast as I can. But you have to stay. You can’t give up your religion just because of the two years, much as I loathe leaving you.”

  “Would Tom Lochart leave Sharazad for two years?”

  “That’s not the point,” Erikki said carefully. “You’re not Sharazad, you’re the sister of a Khan and you swore to stay.”

  “That’s between me and God. Tommy wouldn’t leave Sharazad,” Azadeh said stubbornly, “Sharazad wouldn’t leave her Tommy, she lov—”

  “I must know your plan,” Hakim interrupted coldly.

  “Sorry, I trust no one in this.”

  The Khan’s eyes narrowed to slits, and it took all of his will not to call the guard. “So there’s an impasse. Azadeh, pour me some coffee, please.” At once she obeyed. He looked at the huge man who stood with his back to the fire. “Isn’t there?”

  “Please solve it, Hakim Khan,” Erikki said. “I know you to be a wise man and I would do you no harm, or Azadeh harm.”

  Hakim accepted the coffee and thanked her, watched the fire, weighing and sifting, needing to know what Erikki had in his mind, wanting an end to all this and Erikki gone and Azadeh here and as she always was before, wise and gentle and loving and obedient—and Muslim. But he knew her too well to be sure she would not do as she threatened, and he loved her too much to allow her to carry out the threat.

  “Perhaps this would satisfy you, Erikki: I swear by God I will assist you, providing your plan does not negate my sister’s oath, does not force her to apostasize, does not put her in spiritual danger or political danger…” He thought a moment, “…does not harm her or harm me—and has a chance of success.”

  Azadeh bridled angrily. “That’s no help, how can Erikki possib—”

  “Azadeh!” Erikki said curtly. “Where are your manners? Keep quiet. The Khan was talking to me, not you. It’s my plan he wants to know, not yours.”

  “Sorry, please excuse me,” she said at once, meaning it. “Yes, you’re right. I apologize to both of you, please excuse me.”

  “When we were married, you swore to obey me. Does that still apply?” he asked harshly, furious that she had almost ruined his plan, for he had seen Hakim’s eyes cross with rage and he needed him calm, not agitated.

  “Yes, Erikki,” she told him immediately, still shocked by what Hakim had said, for that closed every path except the one she had chosen—and that choice petrified her. “Yes, without reservation, provided you don’t leave me.”

  “Without reservation—yes or no?”

  Pictures of Erikki flashed through her mind, his gentleness and love and laughter and all the good things, along with the brooding violence that had never touched her but would touch anyone who threatened her or stood in his way, Abdollah, Johnny, even Hakim—particularly Hakim.

  Without reservation, yes, she wanted to say, except against Hakim, except if you leave me. His eyes were boring into her. For the first time she was afraid of him. She muttered, “Yes, without any reservation. I beg you not to leave me.”

  Erikki turned his attention to Hakim: “I accept what you said, thank you.” He sat down again. Azadeh hesitated, then knelt beside him, resting her arm on his knees, wanting the contact, hoping it would help to push away her fear and anger with herself for losing her temper. I must be going mad, she thought. God help me…

  “I accept the rules you’ve set, Hakim Khan,” Erikki was saying quietly. “Even so I’m still not going to tell you my pl—Wait, wait, wait! You swore you’d help if I didn’t put you at risk, and I won’t. Instead,” he said carefully, “instead I’ll give you a hypothetical approach to a plan that might satisfy all your conditions.” Unconsciously his hand began stroking her hair and her neck. She felt the tension leaving her. Erikki watched Hakim, both men ready to explode. “All right so far?”

  “Go on.”

  “Say hypothetically my chopper was in perfect shape, that I’d been pretending I couldn’t start her properly to throw everyone off, and to get everyone used to the idea of the engines starting and stopping, say I’d lied about the fuel and there was enough for an hour’s flight, easily enough to get to the border an—”

  “Is there?” Hakim said involuntarily, the idea opening a new avenue.

  “For the sake of this hypothetical story, yes.” Erikki felt Azadeh’s grip tighten on his knee but pretended not to notice. “Say in a minute or two, before we all went to bed, I told you I wanted to try to start her again. Say I did just that, the engines caught and held enough to warm her and then died, no one’d worry—the Will of God. Everyone’d think the madman won’t leave well alone, why doesn’t he quit and let us sleep in peace? Then say I started her, pushed on all power and pulled her into the sky. Hypothetically I could be away in seconds—provided the guards didn’t fire on me, and provided there were no hostiles, Green Bands, or police with guns on the gate or outside the walls.”

  The breath escaped from Hakim’s lips. Azadeh shifted a little. The silk of her dress rustled. “I pray that such a make-believe could come to pass,” she said.

  Hakim said, “It would be a thousand times better than a car, ten thousand times better. You could fly all the way by night?”

  “I could, providing I had a map. Most pilots who’ve spent time in an area keep a good map in their heads—of course, this is all make-believe.”

  “Yes, yes it is. Well, then, so far so good with your make-believe plan. You could escape this way, if you could neutralize the hostiles in the forecourt. Now, hypothetically, what about my sister?”

  “My wife isn’t in on any escape, real or hypothetical. Azadeh has no choice: she must stay of her own accord and wait the two years.” Erikki saw Hakim’s astonishment and felt Azadeh’s instant rebellion under his fingers. But he did not allow his fingers to cease their rhythm on her hair and neck, soothing her, coaxing her, and he continued smoothly, “She is committed to stay in obedience to her oath. She cannot leave. No one who loves her, most of all me, would allow her to give up Islam because of two years. In fact, Azadeh, make-believe or not, it is forbidden. Understand?”

  “I hear what you say, husband,” she said through her teeth, so angry she could hardly speak and cursing herself for falling into his trap.

  “You are bound by your oath for two years, then you can leave freely. It’s ordered!”

  She looked up at him, and said darkly, “Perhaps after two years I might not wish to leave.”

  Erikki rested his great hand on her shoulder, his fingers lightly around her neck. “Then, woman, I shall come back and drag you out by your hair.” He said it so quietly with such venom that it froze her. In a moment she dropped her eyes and looked at the fire, still leaning against his legs. He kept his hand on her shoulder. She made no move to remove it. But he knew she was seething, hating him. Still, he knew it was necessary to say what he had said.

  “Please excuse me a moment,” she said, her voice like ice.

  The two men watched h
er leave.

  When they were alone Hakim said, “Will she obey?”

  “No,” Erikki said. “Not unless you lock her up and even then… No. Her mind’s made up.”

  “I will never, never allow her to break her oath and renounce Islam, you must understand that, even…even if I have to kill her.”

  Erikki looked at him. “If you harm her, you’re a dead man—if I’m alive.”

  AT THE NORTHERN SLUMS OF TABRIZ CITY: 10:36 P.M. In the darkness the first wave of Green Bands rushed the door in the high wall, blew the locks off, and went into the inner patio with guns blazing. Hashemi and Robert Armstrong were across the square in the comparative safety of a parked truck. Other men lurked in the alley to cut off any retreat.

  “Now!” Hashemi said into his walkie-talkie. At once the enemy side of the square was bathed in light from searchlights mounted on camouflaged trucks. Men were fleeing out of other doors but police and Green Bands opened up and the battle began. “Come on, Robert,” Hashemi said and led a careful rush closer.

  Informers had whispered that tonight there would be a high-level meeting of Islamic-Marxist leaders here and that this building was connected to others on either side by a rabbit warren of secret doors and passages. With Hakim Khan’s assistance Hashemi had precipitated this first of a series of raids to deactivate extensive leftist opposition to the government, to seize the leaders and make a public example of them—for his own purposes.

  The first group of Green Bands had cleared the ground floor and were charging up the stairs, careless of their safety. The defenders, now that they were over their surprise, fought back with equal ferocity, well armed and well trained.

  Outside in the square there was a lull, no more defenders wishing to run the gauntlet or to join those pinned down helplessly among the cars, some already on fire. The alley behind the building was ominously quiet, police and Green Bands blocking both ends, well entrenched behind their vehicles. “Why do we wait here like stinking, cowardly Iraqis,” one of the Green Bands said truculently. “Why don’t we carry the battle to them?”

  “You wait because that’s what the colonel ordered,” the sergeant of police said, “you wait because we can kill all the dogs safely and th—”

  “I’m not subject to any dog colonel, only to God! God is greattttttttt!” With that the youth cocked his rifle and rushed out of ambush toward the back door of the target building. Others followed him. The sergeant cursed them and ordered them back but his words were buried by the fusillade that came down on the youths from small windows high in the walls and slaughtered them.

  Hashemi and others had heard the firing in the alley and presumed that a breakout had been attempted, “The dogs can’t escape that way, Robert,” Hashemi shouted gleefully, “they’re trapped!” From where he was he could see that the attack on the main tenement was held up. He clicked on the sender: “Second wave into the HQ building.” Immediately a mullah and another bunch of youths shrieked their battle cry and rushed across the square—Robert Armstrong appalled that Hashemi would order them out like that, floodlit, such easy targets. “Don’t interfere, Robert! By God, I’m tired of you interfering,” Hashemi had said coldly when he had made some suggestions on how to contain the raid before the attack had started. “Keep your advice to yourself, this is internal, nothing to do with you!”

  “But, Hashemi, not all the buildings are hostile or Marxist, there’re bound to be families, perhaps hundreds of innocen—”

  “Keep quiet or, by God, I’ll consider it treason!”

  “Then I’ll stay behind. I’ll go back and watch the palace.”

  “I’ve said you’ll come on the raid! You think you British’re the only ones who can handle a few revolutionaries? You’ll stay beside me where I can see you—but first give me your gun!”

  “But, Hashem—”

  “Your gun! By the Prophet, I don’t trust you anymore. Your gun!”

  So he had given it to him and then Hashemi had come out of his rage and had seemed to relax and laughed the encounter off. But he had not returned the gun and Armstrong felt naked in the night, afraid that somehow he had been betrayed. He glanced at him, saw again that strangeness in Fazir’s eyes and the way his mouth was working, a little saliva at the corners.

  A burst of heavy firing pulled his attention back to the tenement. The automatic fire was coming from the upper windows against the new attack. Many youths were cut down but some got inside, the mullah among them, to reinforce those fighters still alive. Together they pulled away the bodies blocking the stairs, and fought their way up onto the next floor.

  In the square Hashemi was now ducked down behind a car, consumed with excitement and his sense of power. “More men into the HQ building!”

  Never before had he been in control of a battle or even part of one. All his previous work had been secret, undercover, just a few men involved on each operation—even with his Group Four assassins all he had ever done was to give orders in safety and wait in safety, far from the action. Except the once that he had personally detonated the car bomb that had obliterated his SAVAMA enemy, General Janan. By God and the Prophet, his mind was shouting, this is what I was born for: battle and war!

  “General assault!” he shouted into the walkie-talkie and then stood up and bellowed as loud as he could, “General assault!”

  Men charged out of the night. Grenades over walls into patios and into windows indiscriminately. Explosions and billowing smoke, more firing, rifle and automatic and more explosions and then a giant explosion in the leftist headquarters as an ammunition and gasoline cache detonated, blowing off the top story and most of the façade. The wave of heat tore at Hashemi’s clothes, knocked Armstrong down, and Mzytryk who had been watching through binoculars from the safety of an upstairs window on the other side of the square saw them clearly in the floodlight and decided the time was perfect.

  “Now!” he said in Russian.

  The sharpshooter beside him was already centered on the target through his telescopic sight, the rifle barrel resting on the window ledge. At once he flattened his index finger above the trigger guard, felt Mzytryk’s finger on the trigger, and began the countdown as ordered: “Three…two…one…fire!” Mzytryk squeezed the trigger. Both men saw the dumdum bullet go into Hashemi’s lower back, slam him spread-eagled against the car in front, then sprawling into the dirt.

  “Good,” Mzytryk muttered grimly, regretting only that his own eyes and hands were not good enough to deal with his son’s murderers by himself.

  “Three…two…one…” The gunsight wavered. Both of them cursed, for they had seen Armstrong whirl around, look in their direction for an instant, then hurl himself through a gap in the cars and disappear behind one of them.

  “He’s near the front wheel. He can’t escape. Be patient—fire when you can!” Mzytryk hurried out of the room to the stairwell and shouted in Turkish to the men waiting below, “Go!” then rushed back again. As he came through the doorway, he saw the sharpshooter fire. “Got him,” the man said with an obscenity. Mzytryk trained his binoculars but could not see Armstrong. “Where is he?”

  “Behind the black car—he stuck his head around the front wheel for a second and I got him.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “No, Comrade General. I was very careful, just as you ordered.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, Comrade General, I got him in the shoulder, perhaps the chest.”

  The headquarters building burning furiously now, firing from the adjoining tenements sporadic, just pockets of resistance, attackers heavily outnumbering defenders, all of them whipped into a frenzy of brutality. Barbarians, Mzytryk thought contemptuously, then looked back at the sprawled body of Hashemi twitching and jerking and twitching again, half in and half out of the joub. Don’t die too quickly, matyeryebyets. “Can you see him, the Englishman?”

  “No, Comrade General, but I’ve both sides covered.”

  Then Mzytryk saw the broke
n-down ambulance arriving and men with Red Cross armbands fan out with stretchers to begin picking up the wounded, the battle mostly over now. I’m glad I came tonight, he thought, his rage not yet assuaged. He had decided to direct the retaliation personally the moment Hakim Khan’s message had arrived yesterday. The barely disguised “summons”—together with Pahmudi’s secret report of the manner of his son’s death at the hands of Hashemi and Armstrong—had sent him into a paroxysm of rage.

  Simple to arrange a helicopter and set down just outside Tabriz last night, simple to arrange a counterattack to ambush the two murderers. Simple to plan his vengeance that would cement relations with Pahmudi by removing his enemy Hashemi Fazir for him and at the same time save both his mujhadin and Tudeh much future trouble. And Armstrong, the elusive MI6 agent, another long-overdue elimination—curse that fornicator for appearing like a ghost after all these years.

  “Comrade General!”

  “Yes, I see them.” Mzytryk watched the Red Cross men put Hashemi on a stretcher and carry him off toward the ambulance. Others went behind the car. The crossed lines of the telescopic sight followed them. Mzytryk’s excitement soared. The sharpshooter waited patiently. When the men reappeared, they were half carrying, half dragging Armstrong between them. “I knew I’d hit the bastard,” the sharpshooter said.

  AT THE PALACE: 11:04 P.M. Silently the phosphorescent, red night-flying lights of the massed instrument panel came to life. Erikki’s finger pressed Engine Start. The jets caught, coughed, caught, hesitated as he eased the circuit breakers carefully in and out. Then he shoved them home. The engines began a true warm-up.

  Floodlights at half power were on in the forecourt. Azadeh and Hakim Khan, heavy-coated against the night cold, stood just clear of the turning blades, watching him. At the front gate a hundred yards or so away two guards and Hashemi’s two police also watched but idly. Their cigarettes glowed. The two policemen shouldered their Kalashnikovs and strolled nearer.