Whirlwind

  “No, sir. Not for the present. We’ll look forward to seeing you and we’ll listen out as usual.”

  “HQ over and out.”

  Pettikin said, “That should do it, Mac, that’ll put a hornet up their arses.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. We can’t stop CASEVACs—apart from humanitarian reasons that makes us illegal and they can steal everything.” McIver finished his drink, glanced at his watch. “Come on, Tom, we won’t wait for Jean-Luc, let’s go and find Sharazad.”

  The traffic had lessened a little now but was still inching along, snow griming the windshield. The road was slippery and banked with dirty snow.

  “Turn right at the next corner,” Lochart said.

  “Okay, Tom.” They drove in silence again. McIver turned the corner. “Tom, did you sign for the fuel at Isfahan?”

  “No, no, I didn’t.”

  “Anyone interview you, ask for your name, that sort of thing? Green Bands? Anyone?”

  Lochart pulled his mind off Sharazad. “No, not that I remember. I was just ‘Captain’ and part of the scenery. Far as I remember I wasn’t introduced to anyone. Valik and…and Annoush and the kids, they went off for lunch as soon as we landed with the other general—Christ, I can’t even remember his name—ah, yes, Seladi, that was it. Everyone called me ‘Captain’—I was just a piece of the scenery. Matter of fact I stayed with the chopper at the hangar all the time we were there, watching the refueling and checking her out—they even brought me some food on a tray and I ate sitting in the cabin. I stayed there all the time until those goddamn Green Bands fell on me and dragged me off and locked me in the room. I had no warning, Mac. They just enveloped the base, they must’ve been helped lavishly from inside, had to be. The bastards that grabbed me were all hopped up, shouting I was CIA, American—they kept on about that, but they were more concerned about subduing the base than about me. Take the left fork, Mac. It’s not far now.”

  McIver drove on uneasily, the area very run down and passersby glaring at them, “Maybe we could get away with it—pretend HBC was hijacked from Doshan Tappeh by someone unknown. Maybe they won’t follow it up from Isfahan.”

  “Then why did they grab Duke Starke?”

  “Routine.” McIver sighed heavily. “I know it’s a long shot but it might work. Maybe the ‘American CIA’ will stick and that’s all. Grow a mustache, or beard, just in case.”

  Lochart shook his head. “That’s no help. I’m on the first clearance. We both are…that’s the kicker.”

  “When you took off from Doshan Tappeh, who saw you off?”

  Lochart thought a moment. “No one. I think it was Nogger who supervised the fueling the day before. Th—”

  “That’s right, I remember now, he was bitching, said I was giving him too much work with young Paula in town. Were there any Iranian staff, guards there? Did you pay anyone baksheesh?”

  “No, there was no one. But they could have me on their automatic recorders…” Lochart peered out of the side window. His excitement picked up and he pointed. “There’s the turning, not far now.”

  McIver steered into the narrow street, just room for two cars to pass. Snow banked the sides up to the high walls—doors and doorways either side. McIver had never been here before and was surprised that Bakravan, so rich, would live in an area so clearly poor. Was rich, he reminded himself with an involuntary shiver, and now very dead for “crimes against the state”—and what constitutes a crime against the state? Again he shivered.

  “There’s the door, there on the left.”

  They stopped beside the snowbank heavy with refuse. The nondescript doorway was cut into the high, mildewed wall. The door was iron-banded, the iron rusty. “Come on in, Mac.”

  “I’ll wait for a moment, then if all’s well I’ll leave. I’m pooped.” There’s only one solution, McIver thought, and he reached out and stopped Lochart. “Tom, we’ve permission to fly out three 212s. You take one. Tomorrow. The hell with Zagros, Jean-Luc can cope with that. I don’t know about Sharazad, if they’ll let her go or not, but you’d better get out, fast as you can. It’s the only thing to do, get out while you can. We’ll put her on the next 125 flight.”

  “And you, what about you, Mac?”

  “Me? Nothing to worry about. You get out—if they’ll let her go, take her too. Jean-Luc can handle Zagros—looks like we’ll have to close down there anyway. All right?”

  Lochart looked at him. “Let me think about that one, Mac. But thanks.” He got out. “I’ll be by just after dawn—don’t let Jean-Luc go without me. We can decide then, okay?”

  “Yes.” McIver watched his friend use the old-fashioned knocker. The sound was loud. Both men waited, Lochart nauseous with anxiety, preparing for the family surrounding him, the tears and the welcome and the questions, having to be polite when all he wanted was to take her off to their own rooms and hold her and feel safe and all the nightmare gone. Waiting in front of the door. Then knocking again, louder. Waiting. McIver switching off to save gasoline, the silence making the waiting worse. Snowflakes on the windshield building up. People passing like wraiths, everyone suspicious and hostile.

  Muffled footsteps approached and the grilled peephole opened a fraction. The eyes that peered at Lochart were cold and hard and he did not recognize the little part of the face he could see.

  “It’s me, Excellency Lochart,” he began in Farsi, trying to sound normal. “My wife, the Lady Sharazad is here.”

  The eyes peered closer to see if he was alone or accompanied, examining the car behind him and McIver in the driving seat. “Please wait, Agha.”

  The peephole closed. Again waiting, stamping his feet against the cold, waiting, then impatiently using the knocker again, wanting to smash the door down, knowing he couldn’t. More footsteps. The peephole opened again. Different eyes and face. “What’s your name, Agha?”

  Lochart wanted to shriek at the man but he did not. “My name is Agha Pilot Thomas Lochart, husband of Sharazad. Open the door. It is cold and I’m tired and I have come for my wife.”

  Silently the peephole closed. A moment of agonized waiting, then to his relief he heard the bolts being pulled back. The door swung open. The servant held an oil lamp on high. Beyond him was the high-walled courtyard, an exquisite fountain in the center, trees and plants winter-protected. On the far side was another door, iron-studded. This door was open and he saw her silhouetted against the lamplight; he rushed forward and she was in his arms, weeping and moaning.

  The door on the street slammed closed and the bolts shoved home. “Wait!” Lochart called out to the servant, remembering McIver. Then he heard the car start up and drive off.

  “What is it, Agha?” the servant asked.

  “Nothing,” he said and helped Sharazad into the house and into the warmth. When he saw her in the light, his happiness vanished and his stomach filled with ice. Her face was puffy and dirty, her hair limp and dirty, eyes sightless, her clothes were crumpled.

  “Jesus Christ…” he muttered but she paid no attention, just clung to him demented, moaning a mixture of Farsi and English, tears running down her cheeks. “Sharazad, it’s all right, all right now…” he said, trying to gentle her. But she just continued with her monotonous gibberish.

  “Sharazad, Sharazad, my darling. I’m back now…it’s all right…” He stopped. It was almost as though he hadn’t said anything and, suddenly, he was petrified that her mind had gone. He started to shake her gently but that had no effect either. Then he noticed the old servant standing by the staircase, waiting for orders. “Where’s—where’s Her Highness Bakravan?” he asked, Sharazad’s arms tight around his neck.

  “She’s in her rooms, Agha.”

  “Please tell her I’m here and…and that I’d like to see her.”

  “Oh, she’ll see no one now, Agha. No one. As God wants. She hasn’t seen anyone since the day.” Tears glistened in the old eyes. “Your Excellency has been away, perhaps you won’t know that His Ex—”

  ?
??I heard. Yes, I heard.”

  “Insha’Allah, Agha, Insha’Allah, but what crimes could the Master commit? Insha’Allah that he should be chosen, Insh—”

  “Insha’Allah. Please tell Her Highness… Sharazad, stop it! Come on, darling,” he said in English, her moans maddening him, “stop it!” Then in Farsi to the servant, “Please ask Her Highness to see me.”

  “Oh, yes, I’ll ask her, Agha, but Her Highness won’t open the door nor answer me nor see you but I’ll go at once and do your bidding.” He began to leave.

  “Wait, where is everyone?”

  “Who, Agha?”

  “The family? Where’s the rest of the family?”

  “Ah, the family. Her Highness is in her rooms, the Lady Sharazad is here.”

  Again Lochart felt his rage scourged by her moaning. “I mean where’s Excellency Meshang and his wife and children and my sisters-in-law and their husbands?”

  “Where else would they be but in their homes, Agha?”

  “Then tell Excellency Meshang I’m here,” he said. Meshang, the eldest son, and his family were the only ones semipermanently in residence here.

  “Certainly, Agha. As God wants. I’ll go to the bazaar myself.”

  “He’s at the bazaar?”

  The old man nodded. “Of course, Agha, tonight he is, he and his family. Now he is the Master and has to run the business. As God wants, Agha, he is head of the house of Bakravan now. I’ll go at once.”

  “No, send someone else.” The bazaar was close by and it would be no imposition. “Is there anyone… Sharazad, Sharazad, stop it!” he said roughly, but she did not seem to have heard him. “Is there hot water in the house?”

  “There should be, Agha. The furnace is very good but it’s not on.”

  “You’ve no fuel?”

  “Oh, there should be fuel, Agha. Would you like me to make sure?”

  “Yes, put the furnace on and bring us some food, and tea.”

  “Certainly, Agha. What is it His Excellency’s pleasure to have?”

  Lochart held on to his sanity with difficulty, her whimperings setting him even more on edge. “Anything—no, rice and horisht, chicken horisht,” he said, correcting himself, naming a common and easy dish. “Chicken horisht.”

  “If you wish it, Agha, but the cook prides himself on his chicken horisht and it will take him hours to make it to your satisfaction.” Politely the old man waited, eyes going from Lochart to the girl and back again.

  “Then…then, oh, for the love of God, just fruit. Fruit and tea, whatever fruit you have…” Lochart could stand it no longer and he lifted Sharazad into his arms and went up the staircase and along the corridors to the rooms they usually used in this three-story, flat-roofed house that was palatial, rich, and meandering. He opened the door and kicked it closed.

  “Sharazad, listen to me… Sharazad, listen! For Christsake listen!”

  But she just leaned against him, gibbering and moaning. He carried her into the stuffy inner room, windows tight shut and shutters closed, and forced her to sit on the unmade bed, then rushed into the bathroom that was modern—most of the plumbing modern—except the toilet.

  No hot water. The cold water ran and it did not seem too brackish. He found some towels and soaked one and went back again, his chest hurting, knowing he was out of his depth. She had not moved. He tried to wash her face but she resisted and began to blubber, making herself even more ugly. Saliva seeped out of the sides of her mouth.

  “Sharazad… Sharazad, my darling, for the love of God, my darling…” He lifted her and held her closer but nothing touched her. Only the moans remained constant, pushing him nearer and nearer his limit. “Get hold of yourself,” he said helplessly out loud, and got up, but her hands caught his clothes and tried to drag him back.

  “Oh, God give me strength…” He saw his hand smash her across the face. For a moment the moaning stopped, she stared at him incredulously, then her eyes went blank again, the gibberish started once more, and she clawed at his clothes. “God help me,” he said brokenly, then began to smack her face, harder and harder, open-handed, desperately trying to be hard but not too hard and then he shoved her face downward on the bed and belted her hard on the buttocks, hit her till his palm ached and hand ached and all at once he heard screams that were real screams and not gibberish: “Tommyyyy…stop oh please Tommy please stopppppp… Tommy, you’re hurting me what have I done? I swear I’ve not thought about anyone oh God Tommy please stopppp…”

  He stopped. Sweat was in his eyes, his clothes wringing, and he stumbled panting off the bed. She was writhing in pain, her buttocks scarlet and face scarlet, but her tears were real tears now and her eyes her own now and her brain her own.

  “Oh, Tommyyyyy, you hurt me, you hurt me,” she sobbed as a whipped child would sob. “Whyyyyy? Whyyyy? I swear I love you… I’ve never done anything…anything to…to hurt you and make you…make you hurt me…” Racked with pain and shame that she had enraged him, not understanding why but only that she must help him out of his rage, she crawled off the bed and fell at his feet, begging his forgiveness through her tears.

  Her tears stopped as her mind flooded with reality and she looked up at him. “Oh, Tommy,” she said brokenly, “Father’s dead…murdered…murdered by Green Bands…murdered…”

  “Yes…yes, my darling, I know, oh, I know… I’m so sorry…”

  He lifted her up and his tears mixed with hers and he held her tight and gave her of his strength and made her whole as she gave him of her strength and made him whole. Then they slept fitfully—waking sometimes, but sleeping again peacefully, gathering life, the flame of the oil lamp casting kind shadows. Just before midnight he awoke. Her eyes were watching him. Tentatively she moved to kiss him but a shaft of pain stopped her.

  “Oh, you all right?” His arms at once around her.

  “Oh, be careful…sorry, yes…it’s…” Painfully she tried to look at her back, then found she was in soiled clothes. She grimaced. “Ugh, these clothes, please excuse me, my darling…” She stood awkwardly and tore them off. Painfully she picked up the damp towel and cleaned her face and brushed her hair. Then, when she went closer to the light, he saw that one of her eyes was already slightly black and her buttocks badly bruised. “Please forgive me…what did I… I do to offend you?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” he said appalled, and told her how he had found her. She stared at him blankly. “But…you say that I… I don’t remember any of that only…only being…only being beaten.”

  “I’m so sorry but it was the only way I could… I’m so sorry.”

  “Oh, I’m not, not now, my darling.” Trying to recollect she came back and carefully lay on the bed on her stomach. “But for you… As God wants but if I was as you say…strange, and I remember nothing, nothing from the time I…” Her voice broke a little, then she continued, trying to be firm, “But for you, perhaps I would have been mad forever.” She squirmed closer and kissed him. “I love you, Beloved,” she said in Farsi.

  “I love you, Beloved,” he told her, possessed.

  After a moment she said in a strange voice, “Tommy, I think what sent me mad… I saw Father…saw him yesterday, the day before… I can’t remember…was that he looked so small dead, so tiny, dead, with all those holes in him, in his face and head—I never remembered him so small but they had made him small, they’d taken away his…”

  “Don’t,” he said, gently, seeing the tears brimming. “It’s Insha’Allah. Don’t think about it,”

  “Certainly, husband, if you say so,” she said at once, formally, in Farsi. “Of course it’s as God wants, yes, but it’s important for me to tell you, to remove the shame from me, you finding me like this… I would like to tell you one day.”

  “Then tell me now, Sharazad, and we can put it behind us forever,” he told her, equally formally. “Please tell me now.”

  “It was that they had made the biggest man in the world—after you—had made him insignificant. For n
o reason. He was always against the Shah when he could be and a great supporter of this mullah Khomeini.” She said it calmly and he heard the word “mullah” and not Ayatollah or Imam or farmandeh and a warning rushed through him. “They murdered my father for no reason without trial and outside the law and made him small, they took away everything that he had as a man, a father, as a beloved father. As God wants, I should say and I will try. But I cannot believe it is what God wants. It may be what Khomeini wants. I don’t know. We women will soon find out.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “In three days we women march in protest—all the women of Tehran.”

  “Against what?”

  “Against Khomeini and mullahs who are against women’s rights—when he sees us marching without chador he will not do what is wrong.”

  Lochart was half listening, remembering her a few days ago—was it only a few days ago that all this nightmare began?—Sharazad so content with herself and wearing chador, so happy to be just wife and not a modern like Azadeh. He saw her eyes and read her resolve and knew that she had committed herself. “I don’t want you to take part in this protest.”

  “Yes, of course, husband, but every woman in Tehran will march and I am sure you would not wish me shamed before the memory of my father—against the representatives of his murderers, would you?”

  “It’s a waste of time,” Lochart said, knowing he was going to lose but impelled onward. “I’m afraid, my love, a protest march of every woman in Iran or all Islam will not touch Khomeini a little bit. Women in his Islamic state will have nothing not granted in the Koran, nothing. Nor will anyone else. He’s inflexible—isn’t that his strength?”

  “Of course you are right—but we will march in protest and then God will open his eyes and make all clear to him. It’s as God wants, not as Khomeini wants—in Iran we have historic ways of dealing with such men.”

  His arms were around her. Marching is not the answer, he thought. Oh, Sharazad, there’s so much to decide, to say, to tell, now not the time. But there’s Zagros and a 212 to ferry out. But that leaves Mac alone to carry the ball, if there’s a ball to carry. What if I took him too? I couldn’t, unless by force. “Sharazad, I might have a ferry to do. To take a 212 to Nigeria. Would you come too?”