AT THE AIR BASE: 10:20 A.M. Starke was in the S-G tower watching the 125 come in with full flaps to touch down and turn on full reverse thrust. Zataki and Esvandiary were also there with two Green Bands - Zataki cleanshaven now.
“Turn right at the end of the runway, Echo Tango Lima Lima,” Sergeant Wazari, the young USAF-trained air traffic controller said throatily. He had on rough civilian clothes in place of his neat uniform. His face was badly bruised, nose mashed, three teeth missing, and his ears swollen from the public beating Zataki had given him. Now he could not breathe through the nose. “Park in front of main base tower.”
“Roger.” Johnny Hogg’s voice came back over the loudspeaker. “I repeat we are cleared to pick up three passengers, to deliver urgently required spares, with immediate turnaround and departure for Al Shargaz. Please confirm.”
Wazari turned to Zataki, his fear open. “Excellency, please excuse me but what should I say?”
“You say nothing, vermin.” Zataki picked up his stubby machine gun. To Starke he said, “Tell your pilot to park, to stop his engines, then to put everyone in the aircraft onto the tarmac. The aircraft will be searched and if cleared by me, it may go onward, and if it is not cleared it will not go onward. You come with me, and you too,” he added to Esvandiary. He went out. Starke did as he was ordered and turned to follow, but for a second he and the young sergeant were alone. Wazari caught him by the arm and whispered pathetically, “For the love of God, help me get aboard her, Captain, I’ll do anything, anything…”
“I can’t - it’s impossible,” Starke said, sorry for him. Two days ago Zataki had paraded everyone and beaten the man senseless for “crimes against the revolution,” brought him around, made him eat filth, and beat him senseless again. Only Manuela and the very sick had been allowed to stay away. “Impossible!”
“Please… I beg you, Zataki’s mad, he’ll k - ” Wazari turned away in panic as a Green Band reappeared in the doorway. Starke walked past him, down the stairs, and out onto the tarmac, masking his disquiet. Freddy Ayre was at the wheel of a waiting jeep. Manuela was in it, along with one of his British pilots, and Jon Tyrer, a bandage around his eyes. Manuela wore loose pants, long coat, and her hair was tied up under a pilot’s hat. “Follow us, Freddy,” Starke said and got in beside Zataki in the back of the waiting car. Esvandiary let out the clutch and sped off to intercept the 125 that now was turning off the main runway, an accompanying swarm of trucks of Green Bands and two motorcyclists weaving around dangerously. “Crazy!” Starke muttered.
Zataki laughed, his teeth white. “Enthusiasts, pilot, not crazy.” “As God wants.”
Zataki glanced at him, no longer bantering: “You speak our language, you’ve read the Koran, and you know our ways. It is time you said the Shahada before two witnesses and became Muslim. I would be honored to be a witness.” “I, too,” Esvandiary said at once, also wanting to help save a soul though not for the same reasons: IranOil would need expert pilots to get full production going while replacement Iranians were trained and a Muslim Starke could be one. “I too would be honored to be a witness.”
“Thank you,” Starke told them in Farsi. Over the years the thought had occurred to him. Once, when Iran was calm and all he had to do was fly as many missions as he could and look after his men and laugh with Manuela and the children - was that only half a year ago? - he had said to her, “You know, Manuela, there’s so much in Islam that’s great.”
“Were you thinkin’ of four wives, darlin’?” she had said sweetly and instantly he was on guard.
“C’me on, Manuela, I was being serious. There’s a lot in Islam.” “For men, not for women. Doesn’t the Koran say: ‘And the Faithful’ - all men by the way - ‘will lie on silken couches and there will be the houris whom neither man nor djinn hath touched’ - Conroe, honey, I never could work that out, why should they be perpetual virgins? Does that do somethin’ for a man? And do women get the same deal, youth and as many horny young men as they want?”
“Would you listen, for crissake! I meant that if you lived in the desert, the deep Saudi or Sahara desert - remember the time we were in Kuwait and we went out, just you and me, we went out into the desert, the stars as big as oysters and the quiet so vast, the night so clean and limitless, us insignificant, you remember how touched we were by the Infinite? Remember how I said, I can understand how, if you were a nomad and born into a tent, you could be possessed by Islam?”
“And remember, darlin’, how I said we weren’t born in no goddamn tent.” He smiled, remembering how he had caught her and kissed her under the stars and they had taken each other, their fill of each other, under the stars. Later he had said, “I meant the pure teaching of Mohammed, I meant how with so much space, so terrifying in its vastness, that you need a safe haven and that Islam could be such a haven, maybe the only one, his original teaching, not narrow, twisted interpretations of fanatics.”
“Why, sure, darlin’,” she had said in her most honeyed voice, “but we don’t live in no desert, never will, and you’re Conroe ‘Duke’ Starke, helicopter pilot, and the very moment you start afiguring on those four wives I’m off, me and the kids, and even Texas won’t be big enough to escape the roasting you’ll get from Manuela Rosita Santa de Cuellar Perez, honey sugar baby lamb. …”
He saw Zataki staring at him and inhaled the raw smell of gasoline and snow and winter. “Perhaps I will one day,” he told Zataki and Esvandiary. “Perhaps I will - but in God’s time, not mine.”
“May God hurry the time. You’re wasted as an Infidel.”
But now all of Starke’s concentration was on the 125 that was coming into its parking slot, and on Manuela who must leave today. Difficult for her, goddamn difficult, but she has to go.
This morning, early, McIver in Tehran had told Starke by HF they had permission for the 125 to stop off at Kowiss, provided it was also approved in Kowiss, that she would be bringing spares, and there’d be space for three passengers outbound. At length Major Changiz and Esvandiary had agreed but only after Starke had irritably told them in front of Zataki, “You know our crew changes are long overdue. One of our 212’s waiting for spares, and two of the 206s are ready for their fifteen-hundred-hour checks. If I can’t have fresh crews and spares, I can’t operate, and you’ll be responsible for not obeying Ayatollah Khomeini - not me.”
The car stopped beside the 125, the engines whining down. The door was not yet open and he could see John Hogg peering out of the cockpit window. Trucks and guns ringed her, excitable Green Bands milling around.
Zataki tried to make himself heard, then, exasperated, fired a burst into the air. “Get away from the airplane,” he ordered. “By God and the Prophet only my men will search it! Get away!” Sullenly the other Green Bands moved back a little. “Pilot, tell him to open the door quickly, and get everyone out quickly before I change my agreement!”
Starke gave the thumbs-up to Hogg. In a moment the door was opened by the second pilot. The steps came down. At once Zataki leaped up them and stood at the top, machine gun ready. “Excellency you don’t need that,” Starke told him. “Everybody out, quick as you can, okay?”
There were eight passengers - four of them pilots, three mechanics, and Genny McIver. “My God, Genny! I didn’t expect to see you.”
“Hello, Duke. Duncan thought it best and… well, never mind. Is Manuela going to co - ” She saw her and went over to her. They embraced and Starke noticed the age on Genny.
He followed Zataki into the empty, low-ceilinged aircraft. Extra seats had been lashed in. At the back, near the toilet, were several crates. “Spares and the spare engine you needed,” Johnny Hogg called out from the pilot’s seat, handing him the manifest. “Hello, Duke!”