Whirlwind

  “Yes, Duncan,” she had said meekly, as a good woman does—from time to time.

  “You’re not bloody forgiven at all.”

  “Yes, Duncan.”

  “And don’t yes Duncan me!” He drove on for a while, then he said gruffly, “I’d rather have you safe in Al Shargaz but I’m glad you’re here.”

  She said nothing, wisely. Just smiled. And put her hand on his knee. Both of them at peace now.

  It was another foul drive, with many detours, more shootings, and more bodies and dogs and angry crowds, and garbage, the streets not cleaned for months now, the joubs long since clogged. Night came swiftly and the cold increased. Odd cars and some army trucks screamed by, careless of road safety, packed with men. “Are you tired, Duncan. Would you like me to drive?”

  “No, I’m fine, thanks,” he said, feeling very tired, and very glad when at length they turned into their street, dark and ominous like all the rest, the only light coming from their penthouse office. He would have preferred to leave the car on the street but he was sure by the time he came back the gasoline would have been siphoned out even though there was a lock on the tank—if the car itself was even still there. He drove into their garage, locked the car, locked the garage, and they climbed the stairs.

  Charlie Pettikin met them on the landing, his face pasty. “Hi, Mac. Thank God y—” Then he saw Genny and he stopped. “Oh, Genny! What, what happened? Didn’t the 125 get in?”

  “She came in,” McIver said. “What the hell’s happened, Charlie?”

  Pettikin closed the office door after them, glanced at Genny who said wearily, “All right. I’m going to the loo.”

  Christ Almighty, she thought, it’s all so bloody stupid—will they never learn? Duncan’ll tell me as soon as we’re alone so I’ll hear it anyway and I’d much rather have it from the source. Tiredly she plodded for the door.

  “No, Gen,” McIver said and she stopped, startled. “You chose to stay so…” He shrugged. She noticed something different in him and did not know if it was good or if it was bad. “Let’s have it, Charlie.”

  “Rudi came in on the HF less than half an hour ago,” Pettikin said in a rush. “HBC’s been shot down, blown out of the skies, no survivors b—”

  Both Genny and McIver went white, “Oh, my God!” She groped for a chair.

  “I don’t understand what’s going on,” Pettikin said helplessly. “It’s all crazy, like a dream, but Tom Lochart hasn’t been clobbered, he’s at Bandar Delam with Rudi. H—”

  McIver came back to life. “Tom’s safe?” he burst out. “He got out?”

  “You don’t get out of a chopper if she was ‘blown out of the skies.’ Nothing makes any sense unless it’s a cover-up. Tom was flying spares, no passengers, but this officer said she was full of people, and Rudi said, ‘Tell Mr. McIver that Captain Lochart’s back off leave.’ I even talked to him!”

  McIver gaped at him. “You talked to him? He’s safe? You’re sure? Off what leave, for God’s sake?”

  “I don’t know but I did talk to him. He came on the blower.”

  “Wait a minute, Charlie. How’d Rudi reach us? Is he at Kowiss?”

  “No, he said he was calling from Abadan Air Traffic Control.”

  McIver muttered an obscenity, so relieved about Lochart and at the same time appalled about Valik and his family. Full of people? Should’ve been only four! There were fifty questions he wanted answered at once and knew there was no way out of the trap that he and Tom were in. He had told no one of Lochart’s real mission or his own dilemma authorizing it, other than Gavallan. “Let’s have it from the beginning, Charlie, exactly.” McIver glanced at Genny who was frozen. “You all right, Gen?”

  “Yes, yes, I—I’ll make a cuppa.” Her voice seemed very small to both of them and she went over to the kitchenette.

  Shakily Pettikin sat on the edge of the desk. “As exactly as I can remember, Rudi said, ‘I’ve got an officer from the Iranian Air Force here and have to know officially…’ Then this other voice came over the loudspeaker. ‘This is Major Qazani, Air Force Intelligence! I require answer at once. Is HBC an S-G 212 or isn’t it?’ To give myself time I said, ‘Hang on a minute I’ll get the file.’ I waited, hoping for a lead from Rudi but there wasn’t one so I figured it was all right. ‘Yes, EP-HBC’s one of our 212s.’ At once Rudi blew his stack and cursed as I’ve never heard him before and said something like, ‘By God, that’s terrible because HBC tried to escape into Iraq and the Iranian Air Force rightly shot the ship down, blew her and all aboard to the hell she deserved—who the hell was flying her and who the hell was aboard?’”

  Pettikin wiped away a dribble of sweat. “I think I swore myself, fell apart a bit, can’t remember exactly, Mac, then said something like, ‘That’s terrible! Hold on—I’ll get the flight book,’ hoping like hell my voice sounded more or less okay. I got it and saw Nogger’s name crossed off, with ‘reported sick’ alongside, then Tom Lochart’s, and your signature authorizing the charter.” He looked up at McIver helplessly. “Clearly Rudi didn’t want me to say Tom so I just said, ‘According to our flight book she’s not checked out to anyone…’”

  McIver went red. “But if you s—”

  “It was the best I could do at the time, for God’s sake. I said, ‘She’s not checked out to anyone.’ Rudi began cursing again but I thought his voice sounded different now, more relieved, ‘What the hell’re you talking about?’ he said.

  ‘“I’m just telling you, Captain Lutz, according to the records here, HBC’s still hangared at Doshan Tappeh. If she’s gone she must’ve been hijacked,’ I said, hoping my voice sounded convincing. Mac, I was groping and I still don’t understand what the problem is. Then this other voice said, ‘This matter will be taken up through channels at once. I require your flight clearance book at once.’ I told him okay, where should I send it. That threw him a little because of course there’s no way we can get it to him at once. Eventually he said to keep our records safely and we’d get instructions later. Then Tom came on and said something like:

  “‘Captain Pettikin, please give my apologies to Mr. McIver that I’m late off leave but I was trapped by a snowfall in a village just south of Kermanshah. Soon as I can I’ll head for home.’” Pettikin exhaled, glanced at Genny then back at McIver. “That’s it. That’s all. What do you think?”

  “About Tom? I don’t know.” McIver went over to the window heavily and both Pettikin and Genny saw the weight on him. Snow was on the sill and the wind had picked up a little. Sporadic gunfire sounded from the distance, rifle and automatic, but none of them noticed it.

  “Genny?”

  “I—it doesn’t make any, any sense, Charlie, any sense at all about Tommy.” Weakly she poured the boiling water into the teapot, the cups already laid out, glad to have had something to do with her hands, feeling helpless and wanting to cry, wanting to shout at the injustice of everything, knowing that Tom and Duncan were trapped—her Duncan had signed the flight plan—knowing she could not mention anything about Annoush or the children or Valik—if they were aboard, they must be aboard, but then who was flying if it wasn’t Tommy? “The hijack…well, obviously Tommy’s on the clearance here and so is Duncan. The authorities in Tehran still have the clearance. The clearance has Duncan’s name on it so a hijack isn’t…it doesn’t make much sense.”

  “I can see that now but at the time the story sounded good.” Pettikin felt awful. He picked up the clearance book. “Mac, how about if we lose this, get rid of it?”

  “Tehran Control’s still got the original, Charlie. Tom refueled, there’ll be a record.”

  “In normal times, sure. Now? With all this mess going on?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Maybe we could retrieve the original?”

  “Come on, for God’s sake, not a hope till hell freezes.”

  Genny started pouring the tea into the three cups. The silence tightened. In misery Pettikin said, “I still don’t see how if Tom started of
f from Doshan Tappeh and then…unless she was hijacked en route, or when he was refueling.” Irritably he ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s got to be a hijack. Where did he refuel? Kowiss? Maybe they could help?”

  McIver did not answer, just stared out at the night. Pettikin waited, then leafed through the clearance book, found the right duplicate, and looked at the back. “Isfahan?” he said surprised. “Why Isfahan?”

  Again McIver did not answer.

  Genny added condensed milk to the tea and gave one cup to Pettikin. “I think you did very well, Charlie,” she said, not knowing what else to say. Then she took the other cup to McIver.

  “Thanks, Gen.”

  She saw the tears and her own tears spilled. He put an arm around her, thinking about Annoush and the Christmas party he and Genny had given for all the kids of their friends, such a short time ago—little Setarem and Jalal, the stars of all the games, such wonderful kids, now cinders or meat for scavengers.

  “It’s good about Tommy, dear, isn’t it?” she said through her own tears, Pettikin forgotten. Embarrassed, Pettikin went out and shut the door behind him and neither of them noticed his going. “It’s good about Tommy,” she said again. “That’s one good thing.”

  “Yes, Gen, that’s one good thing.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Wait. We wait and see. We hope to God they didn’t buy it but…somehow I know they were aboard.” Tenderly he brushed away her tears. “But come Sunday, Gen, when the 125 goes you’re on it,” he told her gently. “I promise only until we sort this all out—but this time you must go.”

  She nodded. He drank the tea. It tasted very good. He smiled down at her. “You make a damn good cuppa, Gen,” he said, but that did not take away her fear or her misery—or her fury at all the killing and uselessness and tragedy and the blatant usurping of their livelihood, or the age that it was putting on her husband. The worry’s killing him. It’s killing him, she thought with growing rage. Then all at once the answer came to her.

  She looked around to make sure Pettikin wasn’t there. “Duncan,” she whispered, “if you don’t want those bastards to steal our future, why don’t we leave and take everything with us?”

  “Eh?”

  “Planes, spares, and personnel.”

  “We can’t do that, Gen, I’ve already told you fifty times.”

  “Oh, yes, we can if we want to and if we have a plan.” She said it with such utter confidence it swept him. “There’s Andy to help. Andy can make the plan, we can’t. You can carry it out, he can’t. They don’t want us here, so be it, we’ll leave—but with our planes and our spares and our self-respect. We’ll have to be very secretive but we can do it. We can do it. I know we can.”

  BOOK TWO

  SATURDAY

  February 17

  AT KOWISS: 6:38 A.M. The mullah Hussain was sitting cross-legged on the thin mattress checking the action of the AK47. With a practiced movement he snapped the new magazine into place. “Good,” he said.

  “Will there be more fighting today?” his wife asked. She was across the room, standing beside a wood-burning stove that was heating a pan of water for the first coffee of the day. Her black chador rustled as she moved, masking that she was heavy with child again.

  “As God wants.”

  She echoed him, trying to hide her fear, afraid of what would become of them when her husband had obtained the martyrdom he sought so relentlessly, wanting in her most secret heart to scream from the minarets that it was too much to bear that God required such sacrifice of her and their children. Seven years of marriage and three live children and four dead children and the deep poverty of all those years—so great a contrast to her previous life with her own family who had owned a butcher’s stall in the bazaar, always enough to eat and laughter and going out without chador, picnics, and even going to the cinema—had etched lines on her once attractive face. As God wants but it’s not fair, not fair! We’ll starve—who will want to support the family of a dead mullah?

  Their eldest son, Ali, a little boy of six, squatted beside the door of this one-room hut that was beside the mosque, attentively following his father’s every movement—his two little brothers, three and two years old, asleep on their straw mattress on the dirt floor, wrapped in an old army blanket. They were curled up like kittens. In the room was a rough wooden table and two benches, a few pots and pans, the big mattress and a small one on old carpets. An oil lamp for light. The joub outside was for washing and for waste. No decorations on the whitewashed, dried-mud walls. A tap for water that sometimes worked. Flies and insects. And in a niche, facing Mecca, the place of honor, the well-used Koran.

  It was just after dawn, the day chill and overcast, and Hussain had already called for morning prayer in the mosque and had wiped the dirt off the gun and oiled it carefully, cleaned the barrel of spent cordite, and refilled the magazine. Now it’s as good as ever, he thought contentedly, ready to do more of God’s work and there’s plenty of use for such a gun—the AK47 so much better than the M14, simpler, more rugged, and just as accurate at close quarters. Stupid Americans, stupid as ever to make an infantry gun that was complex and accurate at a thousand yards when most fighting was done at nearer to three hundred and you could drag the AK47 in the mud all day and it would still do what it was supposed to do: kill. Death to all enemies of God!

  Already there had been clashes between Green Bands and the Marxist-Islamics and other leftists in Kowiss, and more at Gach Saran, a nearby oil refinery town to the northwest. Yesterday, after dark, he had led Green Bands against one of the secret Tudeh safe houses—the meeting betrayed by one of the members in return for the hope of mercy. There would be none. The battle was sudden, short, and bloody. Eleven men killed, he hoped some of the leaders. So far the Tudeh had not yet come out into the open in strength, but a mass demonstration had been called by them for tomorrow afternoon in support of the Tudeh demonstration in Tehran even though Khomeini had expressly warned against it. The confrontation was already planned. Both sides knew it. Many will die, he thought grimly. Death to all enemies of Islam!

  “Here,” she said, giving him the hot, sweet black coffee nectar, the one luxury he allowed himself except on Fridays—Holy Days—and other special days and all the Holy Month of Ramadan when he gave up coffee gladly.

  “Thank you, Fatima,” he said politely. When he had been appointed mullah here, his father and mother had found her for him and his mentor, Ayatollah Isfahani, had told him to marry so he had obeyed.

  He drank the coffee, enjoying it very much, and gave her back the little cup. Marriage had not distracted him from his path, though from time to time he enjoyed sleeping against her, her buttocks large and warm in the chill of winter, sometimes turning her, joining, and then sleeping again, but never really at peace. I will only be at peace in Paradise, only then, he thought, his excitement growing, so soon now. God be thanked that I was named after Imam Hussain, Lord of the Martyrs, Imam Ali’s second son, he of the Great Martyrdom, thirteen centuries ago at the Battle of Karbala.

  We will never forget him, he thought, his ecstasy growing, reliving the pain of Ashura, the tenth day of Muharram—only a few weeks ago—the anniversary of that martyrdom, the Shi’as’ most holy day of mourning. His back still bore the weals. That day he had been in Qom again, as last year and the year before that, taking part in the Ashura processions, the cleansing processions, with tens of thousands of other Iranians—whipping themselves to remind themselves of the divine martyrdom, scourging themselves with whips and chains, mortifying themselves with hooks.

  It had taken him many weeks to recover, to be able to stand without pain. As God wants, he told himself proudly. Pain is nothing, this world is nothing, I stood against Peshadi at the air base and took over the air base and subdued it and brought him to Isfahan in bonds as I had been ordered. And now, today, first I will go again to the base to investigate the foreigners and curb them and this Sunni Zataki who thinks he’s Genghis Khan, and
this afternoon again I will lead the Faithful against the atheist Tudeh, doing God’s work in obedience to the Imam who obeys only God. I pray that today I will gain admittance to Paradise, “there to recline on couches lined with brocade, and the fruit of the two gardens shall be within easy reach,” the so familiar words of the Koran etched on his brain.

  “We’ve no food,” his wife said, interrupting his thought pattern.

  “There will be food at the mosque today,” he said, and his son Ali became even more attentive—momentarily distracted from scratching the fly sores and other insect bites. “From now on you and the children will not be hungry. We will be giving out daily meals of horisht and rice to the needy as we have done throughout history.” He smiled at Ali, reached over, and tousled his head. “God knows we are among the needy.” Since Khomeini had returned, the mosques had begun again this ancient role of giving daily meals of plain but nourishing food, the food donated as part of Zakat—the voluntary alms tax that all Muslims were subject to—or bought with money from Zakat that was now again the sole prerogative of the mosques. Hussain heaped more curses on the Shah who had canceled the yearly subsidy to mullahs and mosques two years ago, causing them such poverty and anguish.

  “Join the people waiting at the mosque,” he told her. “When they are all fed, take enough for you and the children. Daily you will do this.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank God.”

  “I do, oh, yes I do.”

  He pulled on his boots and shouldered the gun.

  “Can I come with you, Father?” Ali asked in his thin, piping voice. “I want to do God’s work too.”

  “Of course, come along.”

  She closed the door after them and sat down on a bench, her stomach rumbling from hunger, feeling sick and weak, too tired to wave the flies away that settled on her face. She was eight months with child. The midwife had told her that this time would be harder than before because the baby was in a wrong position. She began to weep, remembering the tearing, screaming agony of the last birth and the one before and all of them. “Don’t worry,” the old midwife had said, complacently, “you’re in the Hands of God. A little fresh camel dung spread on your stomach will take the pains away. It’s a woman’s duty to bear children and you’re young.”