Beside the Khan was a plate of halvah, small squares of the honey-rich Turkish delicacies that he adored, and he ate some of them, light dancing off his rings. “So,” he said harshly, “it seems you kill indiscriminately like a mad dog.”
Erikki’s eyes narrowed and he said nothing.
“Well?”
“If I kill it’s not like a mad dog. Whom am I supposed to have killed?” “One old man in a crowd outside Qazvin with a blow from your elbow, his chest crushed in. There are witnesses. Next, three men in a car and one outside it - he an important fighter for freedom. There are more witnesses. Farther down the road five dead and more wounded in the wake of the helicopter rescue. More witnesses.” Another silence. Azadeh had not moved though the blood had left her face. “Well?”
“If there are witnesses you will know also that we were peacefully trying to get to Tehran, we were unarmed, we were set upon by a mob and if it hadn’t been for Charlie Pettikin and Rakoczy, we’d probably be - ” Erikki stopped momentarily, noticing the sudden glance between the two strangers. Then, even more warily, he continued, “We’d probably be dead. We were unarmed - Rakoczy wasn’t - we were fired on first.”
Abdollah Khan had also noticed the change in the men beside him. Thoughtfully, he glanced back at Erikki. “Rakoczy? The same with the Islamic-Marxist mullah and men who attacked your base? The Soviet Muslim?” “Yes.” Erikki looked at the two strangers, hard-eyed. “The KGB agent, who claimed he came from Georgia, from Tbilisi.”
Abdollah Khan smiled thinly. “KGB? How do you know that?” “I’ve seen enough of them to know.” The two strangers stared back blandly; the older wore a friendly smile and Erikki was chilled by it. “This Rakoczy, how did he get into the helicopter?” the Khan said. “He captured Charlie Pettikin at my base last Sunday - Pettikin’s one of our pilots and he’d come to Tabriz to pick us up, Azadeh and me. I’d been asked by my embassy to check with them about my passport - that was the day most governments, mine too, had ordered nonessential expats out of Iran,” he said, the exaggeration easy. “On Monday, the day we left here, Rakoczy forced Pettikin to fly him to Tehran.” He told briefly what had happened. “But for him noticing the Finnish flag on the roof we’d be dead,” The man with Asiatic features laughed softly. “That would have been a great loss, Captain Yokkonen,” he said in Russian.
The older man with the Slavic eyes said, in faultless English, “This Rakoczy, where is he now?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere in Tehran. May I ask who you are?” Erikki was playing for time and expected no answer. He was trying to decide if Rakoczy was friend or enemy to these two, obviously Soviet, obviously KGB or GRU - the secret police of the armed forces.
“Please, what was his first name?” the older man asked pleasantly. “Fedor, like the Hungarian revolutionary.” Erikki saw no further reaction and could have gone on but was far too wise to volunteer anything to KGB or GRU. Azadeh was kneeling on the carpet, stiff-backed, motionless, her hands at rest in her lap, her
lips red against the whiteness of her face. Suddenly he was very afraid for her.
“You admit killing those men?” the Khan said and ate another sweetmeat. “I admit I killed men a year or so ago saving your life, Highness, an - ” “And yours!” Abdollah Khan said angrily. “The assassins would have killed you too - it was the Will of God we both lived.”
“I didn’t start that fight or seek it either.” Erikki tried to choose his words wisely, feeling unwise and unsafe and inadequate. “If I killed those others it was not of my choosing but only to protect your daughter and my wife. Our lives were in danger.”
“Ah, you consider it your right to kill any time you consider your life to be in danger?”
Erikki saw the flush in the Khan’s face, and the two Soviets watching him, and he thought of his own heritage and his grandfather’s stories of the olden days in the North Lands, when giants walked the earth and trolls and ghouls were not myth, long long ago when the earth was clean and evil was known as evil, and good as good, and evil could not wear the mask. “If Azadeh’s life is threatened - or mine - I will kill anyone,” he said evenly. The three men felt ice go through them. Azadeh was appalled at the threat, and the guards who spoke neither Russian nor English, shifted uneasily, feeling the violence.
The vein in the center of Abdollah Khan’s forehead knotted. “You will go with this man,” he said darkly. “You will go with this man and do his bidding.”
Erikki looked at the man with the Asiatic features. “What do you want with me?”
“Just your skills as a pilot, and the 212,” the man said, not unfriendly, speaking Russian.
“Sorry, the 212’s on a fifteen-hundred-hour check and I work for S-G and Iran-Timber.”
“The 212 is complete, already ground-tested by your mechanics, and Iran-Timber has released you to… to me.”
“To do what?”
“To fly,” the man said irritably. “Are you hard of hearing?” “No, but it seems you are.”
Air hissed out of the man’s mouth. The older man smiled strangely. Abdollah Khan turned on Azadeh, and she almost jumped with fright. “You will go to the Khanan and pay your respects!”
“Yes… yes… Father,” she stuttered and jumped up. Erikki moved half a step but the guards were ready, one had him covered and she said, near tears, “No, Erikki, it’s… I… I must go…” She fled before he could stop her.
The man with the Asiatic face broke the silence. “You’ve nothing to fear. We just need your skills.”
Erikki Yokkonen did not answer him, sure that he was at bay, that both he and Azadeh were at bay and lost, and knowing that if there were no guards here he would have attacked now, without hesitation, killed Abdollah Khan now and probably the other two. The three men knew it.
“Why did you send for my wife, Highness?” he said in the same quiet voice, knowing the answer now. “You sent two messages.”
Abdollah Khan said with a sneer, “She’s of no value to me, but she is to my friends: to bring you back and to make you behave. And by God and the Prophet, you will behave. You will do what this man wants.” One of the guards moved his snub-nosed machine gun a fraction and the noise he made echoed in the room. The Soviet with the Asiatic features got up. “First your knife. Please.”
“You can come and take it. If you wish it seriously.”
The man hesitated. Abruptly Abdollah Khan laughed. The laugh was cruel, and it edged all of them. “You will leave him his knife. That will make your life more interesting.” Then to Erikki, “It would be wise to be obedient and to behave.”
“It would be wise to let us go in peace.”
“Would you like to watch your copilot hung up by his thumbs now?” Erikki’s eyes flattened even more. The older Soviet leaned over to whisper to the Khan whose gaze never left Erikki. His hands played with his jeweled dagger. When the man had finished, he nodded. “Erikki, you will tell your copilot that he is to be obedient too while he is in Tabriz. We will send him to the base, but your small helicopter will remain here. For the moment.” He motioned the man with the Asiatic features to leave.
“My name is Cimtarga, Captain.” The man was not nearly as tall as Erikki but strongly built with wide shoulders. “First we g - ”
“Cimtarga’s the name of a mountain, east of Samarkand.