One of the middle-agers drew his gut up into himself and said, "You must show papers."
"'Papers?'" I repeated in atrociously-accented Farsi — which, fortuitously, was the only kind of Farsi I spoke. "Papers? What kind of nonsense is this? Papers? We are strugglers in your Revolution, you mutes who cannot speak the language of the Prophet!"
He blinked at me. I got right in front of him — today we'd call it in his face. "Speaking of papers, you pustulent dog, can you read your Q'ran in the True Tongue?"
His fleshy lips worked. He swallowed visibly. Gotcha. Pious Muslims are supposed to be able to read the Book in Arabic. Persians are notoriously lax about this.
"You filth!" I screamed, not omitting to give him a spray of spittle. "Just as I suspected! You are not Muslims at all! You're filthy Jew spies! I wouldn't be surprised if you were jokers, too! Pull up your shirt, so that we may gaze upon the abomination of your deformities!"
He actually started to do that. Then he stopped himself. "Please, jenabe agha, honored lord, we are good Muslims, we did not realize — "
"Then get out of our path, you pigs, you twisted menstrual rags!"
The teenybopper popped the clutch trying to get the Paykan out of our way and knocked over one of the oil drums. Flaming junk went everywhere, igniting the hem of one old codger's robe. He started hopping around and squalling. I was rather hoping to see him go up, but the others knocked him to the ground and were beating out the flames when we pulled around the corner and out of sight.
"'Abomination of your deformities?'" Darius said out the driver's window. "Your command of our language is truly … formidable, Major."
I grinned at him and got my headcloth back in front of my face. Tanned as I was, I was still a little pale to pass for an Arab indefinitely.
"That's all it took?" Ackroyd said. "You just yelled at them? Jesus, we never had to bother with all this ace-commando crap. We could have just sent half a dozen New York cabbies. They'd knock this town on its kiester."
"That's why we're going in disguised as Palestinians," I said.
"But the Palestinians observe the Treaty of Jerusalem," the Librarian whispered. "What are we doing here with all these guns?"
"The Palestinian government observes the Treaty," I said, "mostly."
"Lot of the Palestinians don't much care for that, Harvey," Billy Ray said. "They still wanna push Israel into the sea. So they turn into evil, wicked, mean and nasty terrorists."
I nodded. Ray was not just a humming bundle of muscle and fury after all. "We're radicals, terrorists, here as allies of the Nur, who's a great buddy to the Ayatollah. We're an arrogant lot of bullies; we have a modus vivendi with Pasdaran. Anybody else who gets in our way, we shoot — and the Palos will do that."
"You mean you treated those boys back there with grandmotherly kindness?" Chung asked, black eyes glittering. He was the only one of us not wearing a kaffiyeh.
I nodded. He gave a too-shrill yip of laughter.
Damsel huddled closer to him. "I'm scared," she said.
Ackroyd caught Billy Ray's eye. He rolled his. Ray gave him a tight grin and a tighter nod. I was glad my face-cloth hid my own expression.
Chung glanced back. "I wonder what they made of me."
"Probably took you for a local. That was the plan, anyway. You and Darius are the only ones who'll pass."
He worried his lower lip with his teeth. "I hope they don't think I'm Kirghiz. I hate it when people think I'm Kirghiz. Back in my unit, they called me 'the Flying Kirghiz.' I hate that."
"Paul," I said, "you're supposed to be Kirghiz. Or Turkmen, which is almost the same thing. They got both flavors in northwest Iran, along with Kypchak and Kazakh and Uzbek."
"Oh my," added Ackroyd.
"What damn difference does it make?" Ray growled.
"I'm Yunnan," Chung said, in a pleading key.
"What does that have to do with the price of pussy in Pakistan?" Ray asked.
"A lot," Chung said. "We're not Kirghiz."
"Paul, nobody knows what Kirghiz are," I said.
"A nomadic people of the Tienshan and Pamir highlands of Central Asia," Harvey whispered, "belonging to the Northwestern Group of Turkic-speakers. They were the last Turkish rulers of Mongolia, being driven out in AD 924. In the 13th century Jenghiz Khan forced them from the Yenisei steppe to their current habitat."
"Okay, so almost nobody knows what Kirghiz are."
"Paul, old buddy," Ray said with a nasty smile, "lighten up. Yum-yum or Curb-jizz, you're all towel-heads to me."
Chung's round brown face went pale. I could see the muscles knotting under his skin, feel the rage beating off him.
"Ray," I said quietly, "put a sock in it."
He showed me a defiant glower. I matched him, keeping my face emotionless. After a moment, he looked away.
Darius thumped his free fist on the top of the cab for attention. I craned forward to talk to him, glad for the interruption.
"Do you speak Arabic, Major?" he asked.
"No."
"What happens if we encounter real Palestinians?"
"Drive the other way," I said, "fast."
***
Crouching to peer over the five-foot parapet of the apartment roof we watched the woman, so muffled by her chador she resembled an ambulatory black sack, walk down Roosevelt Avenue with a bunch of oranges in a net bag. The two walking guards, their German G3 rifles slung over the backs of their woolly-pulley sweaters, spared her a single surly glance through the darkness and kept pounding their beat. The four boys flanking the gate never even looked her way.
"Jesus," Billy Ray said under his breath. "Doesn't she know there's a revolution on?"
"Life goes on, son," I said. "I've seen it before, a thousand times. No matter how tough things get — and the Tehranis have it pretty easy here, as far as emergency situations go — life goes on. Even if artillery is dropping a few blocks away, people still go to the store and cheat on their wives and goof off at their jobs. Kids still play."
"Gee, you make it sound so attractive," Ackroyd said. "Almost like having a real life."
"Only Americans think having things easy is a necessary condition of life," I said. "For most people it's a goal, not a sine qua non."
Billy Ray showed teeth to the Damsel. "Don't you love it when he talks dirty?"
She moved over so her flank was touching Chung, rested her arm on his hunched shoulder. He gave her a strained, slightly furtive look and concentrated back on the street.
Our building lay across the street from the northern part of the Embassy compound. In happier times it had been an upper-middle class apartment. Even though life does go on, the occupancy rate had dropped precipitiously since the street filled up with armed zealots. If they got to raising a fuss in the middle of the night, you didn't want to lean out the window and yell at them to shut up. I felt reasonably safe from chance detection up here.
Darius duckwalked over and grabbed the Damsel by the arm. "Hey," he said. "You're supposed to make me an ace. It was in the deal. Let's get to it, huh, baby?"
"What are you talking about?" She tried to pull away. "You're hurting me."