The doctor said to Bayazid in halting dialect, “Excellency, I need name and age and…” He searched for the word. “History, medical history.”
“Speak English.”
“Good, thank you, Agha. I’m Doctor Newbegg. I’m afraid she’s near the end, Agha, her pulse is almost zero. She’s old and I’d say she was hemorrhaging—bleeding—internally. Did she have a fall recently?”
“Speak slower, please. Fall? Yes, yes, two days ago.” Bayazid stopped at the sound of gunfire not far away, then went on: “Yes, two days ago. She slip in snows and fell against a rock, on her side against a rock.”
“I think she’s bleeding inside. I’ll do what we can but…sorry, I can’t promise good news.”
“Insha’Allah.”
“You’re Kurds?”
“Kurds.” More firing, closer now. They all looked off to where the sound came from. “Who?”
“I don’t know, just more of the same, I’m afraid,” the doctor said uneasily. “Green Bands against leftists, leftists against Green Bands, against Kurds—many factions—and all’re armed.” He rubbed his eyes. “I’ll do what I can for the old lady—perhaps you’d better come with me, Agha, you can give me the details as we go.” He hurried off.
“Doc, do you still have fuel here?” Erikki called after him.
The doctor stopped and looked at him blankly. “Fuel? Oh, chopper fuel? I don’t know. Gas tank’s in back.” He went up the stairs to the main entrance, his white coattail flapping.
“Captain,” Bayazid said, “you will wait till I return. Here.”
“But the fuel? I ca—”
“Wait here. Here.” Bayazid rushed after the doctor. Two of his men went with him. Two stayed with Erikki.
While Erikki waited, he checked everything. Tanks almost empty. From time to time cars and tracks arrived with wounded to be met by doctors and medics. Many eyed the chopper curiously but none approached. The guards made sure of that.
During the flight here Bayazid had said: “For centuries we Kurds try for independent. We a separate people, separate language, separate customs. Now perhaps six million Kurds in Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, over Soviet border, this side of Iraq, and Turkey.” He had almost spat the word. “For centuries we fight them all, together or singly. We hold the mountains. We are good fighters. Salah-al-din—he was Kurd. You know of him?” Salah-al-din—Saladin—was the chivalrous Muslim opponent of Richard the Lion-Hearted during the Crusades of the twelfth century, who made himself Sultan of Egypt and Syria and captured the Kingdom of Jerusalem in A.D. 1187 after smashing the allied might of the Crusaders.
“Yes, I know of him.”
“Today other Salah-al-dins among us. One day we recapture again all the holy places—after Khomeini, betrayer of Islam, is stamped into joub.”
Erikki had asked, “You ambushed Cimtarga and the others and wiped them out just for the CASEVAC?”
“Of course. They enemy. Yours and ours.” Bayazid had smiled his twisted smile. “Nothing happens in our mountains without us knowing. Our chieftain sick—you nearby. We see the Americans leave, see scavengers arrive, and you were recognized.”
“Oh? How?”
“Redhead of the Knife? The Infidel who kills assassins like lice, then given a Gorgon whelp as reward! CASEVAC pilot?” The dark, almost sloe eyes were amused. “Oh, yes, Captain, know you well. Many of us work timber as well as oil—a man must work. Even so, it’s good you not Soviet or Iranian.”
“After the CASEVAC will you and your men help me against Gorgon Khan?”
Bayazid had laughed. “Your blood feud is your blood feud, not ours. Abdollah Khan is for us, at moment. We not go against him. What you do is up to God.”
It was cold in the hospital forecourt, a slight wind increasing the chill factor. Erikki was walking up and down to keep his circulation going. I’ve got to get back to Tabriz. I’ve got to get back and then somehow I’ll take Azadeh and we’ll leave forever.
Firing nearby startled him and the guards. Outside the hospital gates, the traffic slowed, horns sounding irritably, then quickly snarled. People began running past. More firing and those trapped in their vehicles got out and took cover or fled. Inside the gates the expanse was wide, the 212 parked on the helipad to one side. Wild firing now, much closer. Some glass windows on the top floor of the hospital blew out. The two guards were hugging the snow behind the plane’s undercarriage, Erikki fuming that his airplane was so exposed and not knowing where to run or what to do, no time to take off, and not enough fuel to go anywhere. A few ricochets, and he ducked down as the small battle built outside the walls. Then it died as quickly as it had begun. People picked themselves up out of cover, horns began sounding, and soon the traffic was as normal and as spiteful as ever.
“Insha’Allah,” one of the tribesmen said, then cocked his rifle and came on guard. A small gasoline truck was approaching from behind the hospital, driven by a young Iranian with a broad smile. Erikki went to meet it.
“Hi, Cap,” the driver said happily, his accent heavily New York. “I’m to gas you up. Your fearless leader, Sheik Bayazid, fixed it.” He greeted the tribesmen in Turkish dialect. At once they relaxed and greeted him back. “Cap, we’ll fill her brimming. You got any temp tanks, or special tanks?”
“No. Just the regular. I’m Erikki Yokkonen.”
“Sure. Red the Knife.” The youth grinned. “You’re kinda a legend in these parts. I gassed you once, maybe a year ago.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m ‘Gasoline’ Ali—Ali Reza that is.”
They shook hands and, while they talked, the youth began the refuel. “You went to American school?” Erikki asked.
“Hell, no. I was sort of adopted by the hospital, years ago, long before this one was built, when I was a kid. In the old days the hospital worked out of one of the Golden Ghettos on the east side of town—you know, Cap, U.S. Personnel Only, an ExTex depot.” The youth smiled, screwed the tank cap back carefully, and started to fill the next. “The first doc who took me in was Abe Weiss. Great guy, just great. He put me on the payroll, taught me about soap and socks and spoons and toilets—hell, all sorts of gizmos un-Iranian for street rats like me, with no folks, no home, no name, and no nothing. He used to call me his hobby. He even gave me my name. Then, one day, he left.”
Erikki saw the pain in the youth’s eyes, quickly hidden. “He passed me on to Doc Templeton, and he did the same. At times it’s kinda hard to figure where I’m at. Kurd but not, Yank but not—Iranian but not, Jew but not, Muslim but not Muslim.” He shrugged. “Kinda mixed up, Cap. The world, everything. Huh?”
“Yes.” Erikki glanced toward the hospital. Bayazid was coming down the steps with his two fighters beside orderlies carrying a stretcher. The old woman was covered now, head to foot.
“We leave soon as fuel,” Bayazid said shortly.
“Sorry,” Erikki said.
“Insha’Allah.” They watched the orderlies put the stretcher into the cabin. Bayazid thanked them and they left. Soon the refuel was complete.
“Thanks, Mr. Reza.” Erikki stuck out his hand. “Thanks.”
The youth stared at him. “No one’s ever called me mister before, Cap, never.” He pummeled Erikki’s hand. “Thanks—any time you want gas, you got it.”
Bayazid climbed in beside Erikki, fastened his belt, and put on the headset, the engines building. “Now we go to village from whence we came.”
“What then?” Erikki asked.
“I consult new chieftain,” Bayazid said, but he was thinking, this man and the helicopter will bring a big ransom, perhaps from the Khan, perhaps from the Soviets, or even from his own people. My people need every rial we can get.
NEAR TABRIZ ONE—IN THE VILLAGE OF ABU MARD: 6:16 P.M. Azadeh picked up the bowl of rice and the bowl of horisht, thanked the headman’s wife, and walked across the dirty, refuse-fouled snow to the hut that was set a little apart. Her face was pinched, her cough not good. She knocked, then went through the low doorway. “Hello, Johnny. H
ow do you feel? Any better?”
“I’m fine,” he said. But he wasn’t.
The first night they had spent in a cave not far away, huddled together, shivering from the cold. “We can’t stay here, Azadeh,” he had said in the dawn. “We’ll freeze to death. We’ll have to try the base.” They had gone through the snows and watched from hiding. They saw the two mechanics and even Nogger Lane from time to time—and the 206—but all over the base were armed men. Dayati, the base manager, had moved into Azadeh and Erikki’s cabin—he, his wife and children. “Sons and daughters of dogs,” Azadeh hissed, seeing the wife wearing a pair of her boots. “Perhaps we could sneak into the mechanics’ huts. They’ll hide us.”
“They’re escorted everywhere; I’ll bet they’ve even guards at night. But who are the guards, Green Bands, the Khan’s men, or who?”
“I don’t recognize any of them, Johnny.”
“They’re after us,” he said, feeling very low, the death of Gueng preying on him. Both Gueng and Tenzing had been with him since the beginning. And there was Rosemont. And now Azadeh. “Another night in the open and you’ll have had it, we’ll have had it.”
“Our village, Johnny. Abu Mard. It’s been in our family for more than a century. They’re loyal, I know they are. We’d be safe there for a day or two.”
“With a price on my head? And you? They’d send word to your father.”
“I’d ask them not to. I’d say Soviets were trying to kidnap me and you were helping me. That’s true. I’d say that we need to hide until my husband comes back—he’s always been very popular, Johnny, his CASEVACs saved many lives over the years.”
He looked at her, a dozen reasons against. “The village’s on the road, almost right on the road an—”
“Yes, of course you’re quite right and we’ll do whatever you say, but it sprawls away into the forest. We could hide there—no one’d expect that.”
He saw her tiredness. “How do you feel? How strong do you feel?”
“Not strong, but fine.”
“We could hike out, go down the road a few miles—we’d have to skirt the roadblock, it’s a lot less dangerous than the village. Eh?”
“I’d… I’d rather not. I could try.” She hesitated, then said, “I’d rather not, not today. You go on. I’ll wait. Erikki may come back today.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“I don’t know. You go on.”
He looked back at the base. A nest of vipers. Suicide to go there. From where they were on a rise, he could see as far as the main road. Men still manned the roadblock—he presumed Green Bands and police—a line of traffic backed up and waiting to leave the area. No one’ll give us a ride now, he thought, not unless it’s for the reward. “You go to the village. I’ll wait in the forest.”
“Without you they’ll just return me to my father—I know them, Johnny.”
“Perhaps they’ll betray you anyway.”
“As God wants. But we could get some food and warmth, perhaps even a night’s rest. In the dawn we could sneak away. Perhaps we could get a car or truck from them—the kalandar has an old Ford.” She stifled a sneeze. Armed men were not far away. More than likely there were patrols out in the forest—coming here they had had to detour to avoid one. The village’s madness, he thought. To get around the roadblock’ll take hours in daylight, and by night—we can’t stay outside another night.
“Let’s go to the village,” he said.
So they had gone yesterday and Mostafa, the kalandar, had listened to her story and kept his eyes away from Ross. News of their arrival had gone from mouth to mouth and in moments all the village knew and this news was added to the other, about the reward for the saboteur and kidnapper of the Khan’s daughter. The kalandar had given Ross a one-room hut with dirt floor and old mildewed carpets. The hut was well away from the road, on the far edge of the village, and he noticed the steel-hard eyes and matted hair and stubbled beard—his carbine and kookri and ammunition-heavy knapsack. Azadeh he invited into his home. It was a two-room hovel. No electricity or running water. The joub was the toilet.
At dusk last night, hot food and a bottle of water had been brought to Ross by an old woman.
“Thank you,” he said, his head aching and the fever already with him. “Where is Her Highness?” The woman shrugged. She was heavily lined, pock-marked, with brown stubs of teeth. “Please ask her to receive me.”
Later he was sent for. In the headman’s room, watched by the headman, his wife, some of his brood, and a few elders, he greeted Azadeh carefully—as a stranger might a highborn. She wore chador of course and knelt on carpets facing the door. Her face had a yellowish, unhealthy pallor, but he thought it might be from the light of the sputtering oil lamp. “Salaam, Highness, your health is good?”
“Salaam, Agha, yes, thank you, and yours?”
“There is a little fever I think.” He saw her eyes flick up from the carpet momentarily. “I have medicine. Do you need any?”
“No. No, thank you.”
With so many eyes and ears what he wanted to say was impossible. “Perhaps I may greet you tomorrow,” he said. “Peace be upon you, Highness.”
“And upon you.”
It had taken him a long time to sleep. And her. With the dawn the village awoke, fires were stoked, goats milked, vegetable horisht set to stew—little to nourish it but a morsel of chicken, in some huts a piece of goat or sheep, the meat old, tough, and rancid. Bowls of rice but never enough. Food twice a day in good times, morning and before last light. Azadeh had money and she paid for their food. This did not go unnoticed. She asked that a whole chicken be put into tonight’s horisht to be shared by the whole household, and she paid for it. This, too, did not go unnoticed.
Before last light she had said, “Now I will take food to him.”
“But, Highness, it’s not right for you to serve him,” the kalandar’s wife said. “I’ll carry the bowls. We can go together if you wish.”
“No, it’s better if I go alone beca—”
“God protect us, Highness. Alone? To a man not your husband? Oh no, that would be unseemly, that would be very unseemly. Come, I will take it.”
“Good, thank you. As God wants. Thank you. Last night he mentioned fever. It might be plague. I know how Infidels carry vile diseases that we are not used to. I only wished to save you probable agony. Thank you for sparing me.”
Last night everyone in the room had seen the sheen of sweat on the Infidel’s face. Everyone knew how vile Infidels were, most of them Satan worshipers and sorcerers. Almost everyone secretly believed that Azadeh had been bewitched, first by the Giant of the Knife, and now again by the saboteur. Silently the headman’s wife had handed Azadeh the bowls and she had walked across the snow.
Now she watched him in the semidarkness of the room that had as window a hole in the adobe wall, no glass, just sacking covering most of it. The air was heavy with the smell of urine and waste from the joub outside.
“Eat, eat while it’s hot. I can’t stay long.”
“You okay?” He had been lying under the single blanket, fully dressed, dozing, but now he sat cross-legged and alert. The fever had abated somewhat with the help of drugs from his survival kit but his stomach was upset. “You don’t look so good.”
She smiled. “Neither do you. I’m fine. Eat.”
He was very hungry. The soup was thin but he knew that was better for his stomach. Another spasm started building but he held on and it went away. “You think we could sneak off?” he said between mouthfuls, trying to eat slowly.
“You could, I can’t.”
While he had been dozing all day gathering his strength, he had tried to make a plan. Once he had started to walk out of the village. A hundred eyes were on him, everyone watching. He went to the edge of the village then came back. But he had seen the old truck. “What about the truck?”
“I asked the headman. He said it was out of order. Whether he was lying or not I don’t know.”
“We can’t stay here much longer. A patrol’s bound to come here. Or your father will hear about us or be told. Our only hope is to run.”
“Or to hijack the 206 with Nogger.”
He looked at her. “With all those men there?”
“One of the children told me that they went back to Tabriz today.”
“You’re sure?”
“Not sure, Johnny.” A wave of anxiety went over her. “But there’s no reason for the child to lie. I, I used to teach here before I was married—I was the only teacher they had ever had and I know they liked me. The child said there’s only one or two left there.” Another chill swirled up and made her weak. So many lies, so many problems the last few weeks, she thought. Is it only weeks? So much terror since Rakoczy and the mullah burst in on Erikki and me after our sauna. Everything so hopeless now. Erikki, where are you? she wanted to scream, where are you?
He finished the soup and the rice and picked at the last grain, weighing the odds, trying to plan. She was kneeling opposite him and she saw his matted hair and filth, his exhaustion and gravity. “Poor Johnny,” she murmured and touched him. “I haven’t brought you much luck, have I?”
“Don’t be silly. Not your fault—none of this is.” He shook his head. “None of it. Listen, this’s what we’ll do: we’ll stay here tonight, tomorrow after first light we’ll walk out. We’ll try the base—if that doesn’t work then we’ll hike out. You try to get the headman to help us by keeping his mouth shut, his wife too. The rest of the villagers should behave if he orders it, at least to give us a start. Promise them a big reward when things are normal again, and here…” He reached into his pack into the secret place, found the gold rupees, ten of them. “Give him five, keep the other five for emergency.”