His great fist bunched at the thought of Qazvin. At the Finnish embassy this morning there had been reports of Qazvin in a state of revolt, that Azerbaijan nationalists in Tabriz had rebelled again and fighting was going on against forces loyal to the Khomeini government and that the whole oil-rich and vastly strategic border province had again declared its independence of Tehran, independence it had fought for over the centuries, always aided and abetted by Russia, Iran’s permanent enemy and gobbler of her territory. Rakoczy and others like him must be swarming all over Azerbaijan.
“Of course the Soviets are after us,” Abdollah Gorgon Khan had said angrily, during the quarrel, just before he and Azadeh had left for Tehran. “Of course your Rakoczy and his men are here in strength. We walk the thinnest tightrope in the whole world because we’re their key to the Gulf and the key to Hormuz, the jugular of the West. If it hadn’t been for us Gorgons, our tribal connections, and some of our Kurdish allies, we’d be a Soviet province now - joined to the other half of Azerbaijan that the Soviets stole from us years ago, helped as always by the insidious British - oh, how I hate the British, even more than Americans who are just stupid and ill-mannered barbarians. It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“They’re not like that, not the ones I’ve met. And S-G’s treated me fairly.” “So far. But they’ll betray you - the British betray everyone who’s not British and even then they’ll betray them if it suits them.” “Insha’Allah.”
Abdollah Gorgon Khan had laughed without humor. “Insha’Allah! And Insha’Allah that in ‘46 the Soviet army retreated over the border and then we smashed their quislings, and stamped out their ‘Democratic Azerbaijan Republic’ and the ‘Kurdish People’s Republic.’ But I admire the Soviets, they play only to win and change the rules to suit themselves. The real winner of your world war was Stalin. He was the colossus. Didn’t he dominate everything at Potsdam, Yalta, and Tehran - didn’t he outmaneuver Churchill and Roosevelt? Didn’t Roosevelt even stay with him in Tehran in the Soviet embassy? How we Iranians laughed! The Great President gave Stalin the future when he had the power to stuff him behind his own borders. What a genius! Beside him your ally Hitler was a craven bungler! As God wills, eh?” “Finland sided with Hitler only to fight Stalin and get back our lands.” “But you lost, you chose the wrong side and lost. Even a fool could see Hitler would lose - how could Reza Shah have been so foolish? Ah, Captain, I never understood why Stalin let you Finns live. If I’d been him I would have laid waste Finland as a lesson - as he decimated a dozen other lands. Why did he let you all live? Because you stood up to him in your Winter War?” “I don’t know. Perhaps. I agree the Soviets will never give up.” “Never, Captain. But neither will we. We Azerbaijanis will always outmaneuver them and keep them at bay. As in 46.”
But then the West was strong, there was the Truman Doctrine toward the Soviets of hands off or else, Erikki thought grimly. And now? Now Carter’s at the helm? What helm?
Heavily, he leaned forward and refilled his glass, impatient to get back to Azadeh. It was cold in the apartment and he still wore his overcoat - the central heating was off and the windows drafty. But the room was large and pleasant and masculine with old easy chairs, the walls decorated with small but good Persian carpets and bronze. Books, magazines, and journals were scattered everywhere, on tables and chairs and bookshelves - Finnish, Russian, Iranian - a pair of girl’s shoes carelessly on one of the shelves. He sipped the vodka, loving the warmth it gave him, then looked out the window once more at the embassy. For a moment he wondered if it would be worth emigrating to the U.S. with Azadeh. “The bastions are falling,” he muttered out loud. “Iran no longer safe, Europe so vulnerable, Finland on the sword’s edge…”
His attention focused below. Now the traffic was totally blocked by swarms of youths collecting on both roads - the U.S. embassy complex was on the corner of Tahkt-e-Jamshid and the main road called Roosevelt. Used to be called Roosevelt, he reminded himself idly. What’s the road called now? Khomeini Street? Street of the Revolution?
The front door of the apartment opened. “Hey, Erikki,” the young Finn said with a grin. Christian Tollonen wore a Russian-style fur hat and fur-lined trench coat that he had bought in Leningrad on a drunken weekend with other university friends. “What’s new?”
“Four hours I’ve been waiting.”
“Three hours and twenty-two minutes and half a bottle of my best contraband Russian Moskava money can buy anywhere, and we agreed three or four hours.” Christian Tollonen was in his early thirties, a bachelor, fair and gray-eyed, deputy cultural attaché at the Finnish embassy. They had been friends since he came to Iran, some years ago. “Pour me one, by God, I need it - there’s another demonstration simmering, and I had a hell of a time getting through.” He kept his trench coat on and went to the window. The two sections of crowds had joined now, the people milling about in front of the embassy complex. All gates had been closed.
Uneasily Erikki noticed that there were no mullahs among the youths. They could hear shouting.
“Death to America, death to Carter,” Christian interpreted - he could speak fluent Farsi because his father too had been a diplomat here and he had spent five years of his youth at school in Tehran. “Just the usual shit, down with Carter and American imperialism.”
“No Allah-u-Akbar,” Erikki said. For a moment his mind took him back to the roadblock, and ice swept into his stomach. “No mullahs.”
“No. I didn’t see one anywhere around.” In the street the tempo picked up with different factions swirling around the iron gates. “Most of them are university students. They thought I was Russian and they told me there’d been a pitched battle at the university, leftists versus the Green Bands - with perhaps twenty or thirty killed or wounded and it was still going on.” While they watched, fifty or sixty youths began rattling the gates. “They’re spoiling for a fight.”
“And no police to stop them.” Erikki handed him the glass. “What would we do without vodka?”
Erikki laughed. “Drink brandy. Do you have everything?”
“No - but a start.” Christian sat in one of the armchairs near the low table opposite Erikki and opened his briefcase. “Here’s a copy of your marriage and birth certificates - thank God we had copies. New passports for both of you - I managed to get someone in Bazargan’s office to stamp yours with a temporary residence permit good for three months.”
“You’re a magician!”
“They promised they’d issue you a new Iranian pilot’s license but when they wouldn’t say. With your S-G ID and the photocopy of your British license they said you were legal enough. Now, Azadeh’s passport’s temporary.” He opened it and showed him the photograph. “It’s not standard - I took a Polaroid of the photo you gave me - but it’ll pass until we can get a proper one. Get her to sign it as soon as you see her. Has she been out of the country since you were married?”
“No, why?”
“If she travels out on a Finnish passport - well, I don’t know how it will affect her Iranian status. The authorities have always been touchy, particularly about their own nationals. Khomeini seems even more xenophobic so his regime’s bound to be tougher. It might look to them as though she’d renounced her nationality. I don’t think they’ll let her back.” A muted burst of shouting from the massed youths in the street diverted them for a moment. Hundreds were waving clenched fists and somewhere someone had a loudspeaker and was haranguing them. “The way I feel right now, as long as I can get her out, I don’t care,” Erikki said.