Whirlwind

  “Tuesday? What’s today?”

  “Saturday, Highness,” Ahmed replied, hiding his concern.

  “Ah, yes, Saturday.” Another wave of tiredness. His face felt strange and he lifted his hand to rub it but found the effort too much. “Ahmed, find out where he is. If anything happens…if I have another attack and I’m…well, see that…that I’m taken to Tehran, to the International Hospital, at once. At once. Understand?”

  “Yes, Highness.”

  “Find out where he is and…and for the next few days keep him close by…overrule Cimtarga. Keep He of the Knife close by.”

  “Yes, Highness.”

  When the guard came back into the room, the Khan closed his eyes and felt himself sinking into the depths. “There is no other God but God…” he muttered, very afraid.

  NEAR THE NORTH BORDER, EAST OF JULFA: 6:05 P.M. It was near sunset and Erikki’s 212 was under a crude, hastily constructed lean-to, the roof already a foot deep in snow from the storm last night, and he knew much more exposure in subzero weather would ruin her. “Can’t you give me blankets or straw or something to keep her warm?” he had asked Sheik Bayazid the moment they had arrived back from Rezaiyeh with the body of the old woman, the chieftain, two days ago. “The chopper needs warmth.”

  “We do not have enough for the living.”

  “If she freezes she won’t work,” he had said, fretting that the Sheik would not allow him to leave at once for Tabriz, barely sixty miles away—worried sick about Azadeh and wondering what had happened to Ross and Gueng. “If she won’t work, how are we going to get out of these mountains?”

  Grudgingly, the Sheik had ordered his people to construct the lean-to and had given him some goat- and sheepskins that he had used where he thought they would do the most good. Just after dawn yesterday he had tried to leave. To his total dismay Bayazid had told him that he and the 212 were to be ransomed.

  “You can be patient, Captain, and free to walk our village with a calm guard, to tinker with your airplane,” Bayazid had said curtly, “or you can be impatient and angry and you will be bound up and tethered as a wild beast. I seek no trouble, Captain, want none, or argument. We seek ransom from Abdollah Khan.”

  “But I’ve told you he hates me and won’t help me to be rans—”

  “If he says no, we seek ransom elsewhere. From your company in Tehran, or your government—perhaps your Soviet employers. Meanwhile, you stay here as guest, eating as we eat, sleeping as we sleep, sharing equally. Or bound and tethered and hungry. Either way you stay until ransom is paid.”

  “But that might take months an—”

  “Insha’Allah!”

  All day yesterday and half the night Erikki had tried to think of a way out of the trap. They had taken his grenade but left him his knife. But his guards were watchful and constant. In these deep snows, it would be almost impossible for him in flying boots and without winter gear to get down to the valley below, and even then he was in hostile country. Tabriz was barely thirty minutes away by 212, but by foot?

  “More snow tonight, Captain.”

  Erikki looked around. Bayazid was a pace away and he had not heard him approach. “Yes, and a few more days in this weather and my bird, my airplane, won’t fly—the battery’ll be dead and most of the instruments wrecked. I have to start her up to charge the battery and warm her pots, have to. Who’s going to ransom a wrecked 212 out of these hills?”

  Bayazid thought a moment. “For how long must engines turn?”

  “Ten minutes a day—absolute minimum.”

  “All right. Just after full dark, each day you may do it, but first you ask me. We help you drag her—why is it ‘she,’ not an ‘it’ or a ‘he’?”

  Erikki frowned. “I don’t know. Ships are always ‘she’—this is a ship of the sky.” He shrugged.

  “Very well. We help you drag her into open and you start her up and while her engines running there will be five guns within five feet, should you be tempted.”

  Erikki laughed. “Then I won’t be tempted.”

  “Good.” Bayazid smiled. He was a handsome man though his teeth were bad.

  “When do you send word to the Khan?”

  “It’s already gone. In these snows it takes a day to get down to road, even on horseback, but not long to reach Tabriz. If the Khan replies favorably, at once, perhaps we hear tomorrow, perhaps the day after, depending on the snows.”

  “Perhaps never. How long will you wait?”

  “Are all people from the Far North so impatient?”

  Erikki’s chin jutted. “The ancient gods were very impatient when they were held against their will—they passed it on to us. It’s bad to be held against your will, very bad.”

  “We are a poor people, at war. We must take what the One God gives us. To be ransomed is an ancient custom.” He smiled thinly. “We learned from Saladin to be chivalrous with our captives, unlike many Christians. Christians are not known for their chivalry. We are treat—” His ears were sharper than Erikki’s and so were his eyes. “There, down in the valley!”

  Now Erikki heard the engine also. It took him a moment to pick out the low-flying camouflaged helicopter approaching from the north. “A Kajychokiv 16. Close-support Soviet army gunship…what’s she doing?”

  “Heading for Julfa.” The Sheik spat on the ground. “Those sons of dogs come and go as they please.”

  “Do many sneak in now?”

  “Not many—but one is too many.”

  NEAR THE JULFA TURNOFF: 6:15 P.M. The winding side road through the forest was snow heavy and not plowed. A few cart and truck tracks and those made by the old four-wheel-drive Chevy that was parked under some pines near the open space, a few yards off the main road. Through their binoculars Armstrong and Hashemi could see two men in warm coats and gloves sitting in the front seat, the windows open, listening intently.

  “He hasn’t much time,” Armstrong muttered.

  “Perhaps he’s not coming after all.” They had been watching for half an hour from a slight rise among the trees overlooking the landing area. Their car and the rest of Hashemi’s men were parked discreetly on the main road below and behind them. It was very quiet, little wind. Some birds went overhead, cawing plaintively.

  “Hallelujah!” Armstrong whispered, his excitement picking up. One man had opened the side door and got out. Now he was looking into the northern sky. The driver started the engine. Then, over it, they heard the incoming chopper, saw her slip over the rise and fall into the valley, hugging the treetops, her piston engine throttled back nicely. She made a perfect landing in a billowing cloud of snow. They could see the pilot and another man beside him. The passenger, a small man, got out and went to meet the other. Armstrong cursed.

  “You recognize him, Robert?”

  “No. That’s not Suslev—Petr Oleg Mzytryk. I’m certain.” Armstrong was bitterly disappointed.

  “Facial surgery?”

  “No, nothing like that. He was a big bugger, heavyset, tall as I am.” They watched as he met the other, then handed over something.

  “Was that a letter? What did he give him, Robert?”

  “Looked like a package, could be a letter.” Armstrong muttered another curse, concentrating on their lips.

  “What’re they saying?” Hashemi knew Armstrong could lip-read.

  “I don’t know—it’s not Farsi, or English.”

  Hashemi swore and refocused his already perfectly focused binoculars. “It looked like a letter to me.” The man spoke a few more words then went back to the chopper. At once the pilot put on power and swirled away. The other man then trudged back to the Chevy.

  “Now what?” Hashemi said exasperated.

  Armstrong watched the man walking toward the car, “Two options: intercept the car as planned and find out what ‘it’ is, providing we could neutralize those two bastards before they destroyed ‘it’—but that’d blow that we know the arrival point for Mister Big—or just tail them, presuming it’s a messa
ge for the Khan giving a new date.” He was over his disappointment that Mzytryk had avoided the trap. You must have the luck in our game, he reminded himself. Never mind, next time we’ll get him and he’ll lead us to our traitor, to the fourth and fifth and sixth man and I’ll piss on their graves and Suslev’s—or whatever Petr Oleg Mzytryk calls himself—if the luck’s with me. “We needn’t even tail them—he’ll go straight to the Khan.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s a vital pivot in Azerbaijan, either for the Soviets or against them, so they’d want to find out firsthand just how bad his heart is—and who he’s chosen as regent till the babe comes of age, or more likely is levitated. Doesn’t the power go with the title, along with the lands and the wealth?”

  “And the secret, numbered Swiss bank accounts—all the more reason to come at once.”

  “Yes, but don’t forget something serious might have happened in Tbilisi to make for the delay—Soviets’re just as pissed off and anxious as we are about Iran.”

  They saw the man climb back into the Chevy and begin talking volubly. The driver let in the clutch and turned back for the main road. “Let’s get back to our car.”

  The way back down the rise was fairly easy going, traffic heavy on the Julfa-Tabriz road below, a few headlights already on and no way for their prey to escape the ambush if they decided to stage it. “Hashemi, another possibility’s that Mzytryk could have found out in the nick that he’s been betrayed by his son, and he’s sent a warning to the Khan whose cover would also have been blown. Don’t forget we still haven’t found out what happened to Rakoczy since your late departed friend General Janan let him go.”

  “That dog’d never do it on his own,” Hashemi said with a twisted smile, remembering his vast joy when he had touched the transmit button and had seen the resultant car bomb explosion obliterate that enemy, along with his house, his future, and his past. “That would be ordered by Abrim Pahmudi.”

  “Why?”

  Hashemi veiled his eyes and glanced at Armstrong but read no hidden guile therein. You know too many secrets, Robert, know about the Rakoczy tapes, and worst of all about my Group Four and that I assisted Janan into hell—where the Khan will soon join him, as Talbot’s due to in a couple of days, and you, my old friend, at my leisure. Should I tell you Pahmudi has ordered Talbot punished for his crimes against Iran? Should I tell you I’m happy to oblige? For years I’ve wanted Talbot removed but’ve never dared to go against him alone. Now Pahmudi is to blame, may God burn him, and another irritant will be out of my way. Ah, yes, and Pahmudi himself this coming week—but you, Robert, you’re the chosen assassin for that, probably to perish. Pahmudi’s not worth one of my real assassins.

  He chortled to himself, trudging down the hill, not feeling the cold, not worried about Mzytryk’s nonappearance. I’ve more important worries, he was thinking. At all costs I’ve got to protect my Group Four assassins—my guarantee for an earthly paradise with power over even Khomeini himself.

  “Pahmudi’s the only one who could have ordered Rakoczy’s release,” he said. “Soon I’ll find out why and where he is. He’s either in the Soviet embassy, a Soviet safe house, or in a SAVAMA interrogation dungeon.”

  “Or safely out of the country by now.”

  “Then he’s safely dead—the KGB don’t tolerate traitors.” Hashemi smiled sardonically. “What’s your bet?”

  For a moment Armstrong did not answer, thrown by the question that was unusual for Hashemi who disapproved of gambling, as he did. Now. The last time he had bet was in Hong Kong in ’63 with bribe money that had been put into his desk drawer when he was a superintendent, CID. Forty thousand Hong Kong dollars—about seven thousand U.S. then. Against all his principles, he had taken the heung yau, the Fragrant Grease as it was called there, out of the drawer and, at the races that afternoon, had bet it all on the nose of a horse called Pilot Fish, all in one insane attempt to recoup his gambling losses—horses and the stock market.

  This was the first bribe money he had ever taken in eighteen years in the force though it was always readily available in abundance. That afternoon he had won heavily and had replaced the money before the police sergeant giver had noticed it had been touched—with more than enough left over for his debts. Even so he had been disgusted with himself and appalled at his stupidity. He had never bet again, nor touched heung yau again though the opportunity was always there. “You’re a bloody fool, Robert,” some of his peers would say, “no harm in a little dolly money for retirement.”

  Retirement? What retirement? Christ, twenty years a copper in Hong Kong on the straight and narrow, eleven years here, equally so, helping these bloodthirsty twits, and it’s all up the bloody spout. Thank God I’ve only me to worry about, no wife now or kids or close relations, just me. Still, if I get bloody Suslev who’ll lead me to one of our high-up murdering bloody traitors, it’ll all have been worth it.

  “Like you, I’m not a betting men, Hashemi, but if I was…” He stopped and offered his packet of cigarettes and they lit up gratefully. The smoke mixed with the cold air and showed clear in the falling light. “If I was, I’d say it was odds-on that Rakoczy was your Pahmudi’s pishkesh to some Soviet VIP, just to play it safe.”

  Hashemi laughed. “You’re becoming more Iranian every day. I’ll have to be more careful.” They were almost to the car now and his assistant got out to open the rear door for him. “We’ll go straight to the Khan, Robert.”

  “What about the Chevy?”

  “We’ll leave others to tail it, I want to get to the Khan first.” The colonel’s face darkened. “Just to make sure that traitor’s more on our side than theirs.”

  AT KOWISS AIR BASE: 6:35 P.M. Starke stared at Gavallan in total shock. “Whirlwind in six days?”

  “’Fraid so, Duke.” Gavallan unzipped his parka and put his hat on the hall stand. “Wanted to tell you myself—sorry, but there it is.” The two men were in Starke’s bungalow, and he had stationed Freddy Ayre outside to make sure they were not overheard. “I heard this morning all our birds are going to be grounded, pending nationalization. We’ve six safe days to plan and execute Whirlwind—if we do it. That makes it next Friday. On Saturday we’re on borrowed time.”

  “Jesus.” Absently Starke unzipped his flight jacket and clomped over to the sideboard, his flying boots leaving a little trail of snow and water droplets on the carpet. At the back of the bottom drawer was his last bottle of beer. He nipped the top off, poured half into a glass and gave it to Gavallan. “Health,” he said, drinking from the bottle, and sat on the sofa.

  “Health.”

  “Who’s in, Andy?”

  “Scrag. Don’t know yet about the rest of his lads but I’ll know tomorrow. Mac’s come up with a schedule and an overall three-phase plan that’s full of holes but possible. Let’s say it’s possible. What about you and your lads?”

  “What’s Mac’s plan?”

  Gavallan told him.

  “You’re right, Andy. It’s full of holes.”

  “If you were to do a bunk, how’d you plan it from here—you’ve got the longest distances and the most difficulty.”

  Starke went over to the flight map on the wall and pointed at a line that went from Kowiss to a cross a few miles out in the Gulf, indicating a rig. “This rig’s called Flotsam, one of our regulars,” he said, and Gavallan noticed how tight his voice had become. “It takes us about twenty minutes to reach the coast and another ten to get to the rig. I’d cache fuel on the shore near that bearing. I think it could be done without causing too much suspicion; it’s just sand dunes and no huts within miles and a lot of us used to picnic there. An ‘emergency’ landing to safety-check flotation gear before going out to sea shouldn’t get radar too itchy though they get worse every day. We’d have to cache two forty-gallon drums per chopper to get us across the Gulf and we’d have to refuel in flight by hand.”

  It was almost dusk. Windows looked out on the runway and beyond it to the air force base. T
he 125, with priority clearance onward to Al Shargaz, was parked on the apron, waiting for the fuel truck to arrive. Officious, nervous Green Bands surrounded her. Refueling was not really necessary but Gavallan had told John Hogg to request it anyway to give him more time with Starke. The other two passengers, Arberry and Dibble, being sent on leave after their escape from Tabriz—and crammed between a full load of crates of spares hastily packed and marked in English and Farsi: FOR IMMEDIATE REPAIR AND RETURN TO TEHRAN—were not allowed to land, even to stretch their legs. Nor the pilots, except to ground-check and to supervise the fueling when the truck arrived.

  “You’d head for Kuwait?” Gavallan asked, breaking the silence.

  “Sure. Kuwait’d be our best bet, Andy. We’d have to refuel in Kuwait, then work our way down the coast to Al Shargaz. If it was up to me I guess I’d park more fuel against an emergency.” Starke pinpointed a tiny speck of an island off Saudi. “Here’d be good—best to stay offshore Saudi, no telling what they’d do.” Queasily he stared at all the distances. “The island’s called Jellet, the Toad, which’s what it looks like. No huts, no nothing, but great fishing. Manuela and I went out there once or twice when I was stationed at Bahrain. I’d park fuel there.”

  He took off his flight cap and wiped the droplets off his forehead then put his cap back on again, his face more etched and tired than usual, all flights more harassed than usual, canceled then reordered, and canceled again, Esvandiary more foul than usual, everyone edgy and irritable, no mail or contact with home for weeks, most of his people, including himself, overdue leave and replacement. Then there’s the added problems of the incoming Zagros Three personnel and airplanes and what to do with old Effer Jordon’s body when it arrives tomorrow. That had been Starke’s first question when he had met Gavallan at the 125 steps.

  “I’ve got that in hand, Duke,” Gavallan had said heavily, the wind ten knots and chill. “I’ve got ATC’s permission for the 125 to come back tomorrow afternoon to pick up the coffin. I’ll ship it back to England on the first available flight. Terrible. I’ll see his wife as soon as I get back and do what I can.”