Through the cabin window, he continued to watch the Rolls, big, immaculate, and possessed by so few on earth. By God and the Prophet, what riches, he thought, awed at this proof of the Khan’s position and power. What power to flaunt such a possession so fearlessly in the faces of the komitehs, and mine. Abdollah Khan won’t be easy to bend.
He knew that here in the airplane they were dangerously exposed - easy targets if Abdollah ordered his men to fire on them - but he had dismissed that possibility, certain that even Abdollah Khan would not dare such an open murder of three Infidels and one jet, and him. But just in case the Khan arranged an “accident,” two Group Four teams were already en route by road, one for Abdollah personally, the other for his family, to be stopped only by code word from him personally. He smiled. Once Robert Armstrong had told him that a Chinese punishment for an important person in olden days was “death - and all his generations.”
“I like that, Robert,” he had said. “That has style.”
He saw the front side door of the car open. Ahmed got out, carrying the submachine gun oddly, then walked to the back door and opened it for Abdollah.
“You win the first round, Hashemi,” Armstrong said and went forward as agreed. “All right, Captain. We’ll be as quick as we can.” Reluctantly the two pilots squeezed out of the little cockpit, pulled on their parkas, and hurried out into the cold and down the steps. They saluted the Khan politely. He motioned them into the back of the car, began to climb the gangway, Ahmed following him.
“Salaam, Highness, peace be upon you,” Hashemi said warmly, greeting him at the door, a concession that Abdollah noted at once.
“And upon you, Excellency Colonel.” They shook hands. Abdollah walked past him into the cabin, his eyes on Armstrong, and sat in the chair nearest the exit.
“Salaam, Highness,” Armstrong said. “Peace be upon you.”
“This is a colleague of mine,” Hashemi said, sitting opposite the Khan. “An Englishman, Robert Armstrong.”
“Ah, yes, the Excellency who speaks Farsi better than my Ahmed and is famous for his memory - and cruelty.” Behind him Ahmed had closed the heavy curtain over the outside door and stood with his back to the cockpit, on guard, gun ready but not impolitely so. “Eh?”
Armstrong smiled. “That was a pleasantry of the colonel, Highness.” “I don’t agree. Even in Tabriz we’ve heard of the Special Branch expert, twelve years in service of the Shah, and running dog of his running dogs,” Abdollah said scornfully in Farsi. The smile vanished from Armstrong’s face, and both he and Hashemi tensed at the blatant bad manners. “I’ve read your record.” He turned his black eyes on Hashemi, completely sure that his plan would work: Ahmed would kill them at his signal, booby-trap the airplane, send the pilots back aboard and into a hasty takeoff and fiery death - nothing to do with him, as God wants, and he, himself, after such a wonderful discussion where he had promised “complete support for the central government,” would be filled with sadness.
“So, Excellency,” he said, “we meet again. What can I do for you - I know your time is, unfortunately, short with us.”
“Perhaps, Highness, it is what I can do for you? Per - ”
“Come to the point, Colonel,” the Khan said harshly, now in English, totally sure of himself. “You and I know each other, we can dispense with flattery and compliments and get to the point. I’m busy. If you’d had the courtesy to come to my car, alone, I would have been more comfortable, we could have spoken in private, leisurely. Now come to the point!”
“I want to talk to you about your controller, Colonel General Petr Oleg Mzytryk,” Hashemi said as harshly, but suddenly petrified that he’d been trapped and that Abdollah was a secret Pahmudi supporter, “and about your long-term KGB connection through Mzytryk, code name Ali Khoy.” “Controller? What controller? Who’s this man?” Abdollah Khan heard himself say, but his head was shrieking, You can’t know that, impossible, not possible. And through the torrent of his own heartbeat he saw the colonel’s mouth open and say other things that made everything worse, much worse, and worst of all it tore his plan to shreds. If the colonel spoke such secrets so openly in front of this foreigner and Ahmed, the secrets would be recorded elsewhere in a safe place to be read by the Revolutionary Komiteh and his enemies in case of an “accident.”
“Your controller,” Hashemi slammed at him, seeing the change, and pressed home his advantage. “Petr Oleg, whose dacha is beside Lake Tzvenghid in the Place of Hidden Valley, east of Tbilisi, code name Ali Khoy, yours is Iv - ” “Wait,” Abdollah said throatily, his face livid - not even Ahmed knew that, must not know that. “I - I - give me some water.”
Armstrong began to get up but froze as Ahmed’s gun covered him. “Please sit, Excellency. I will get it. Fasten your belt, both of you.” “There’s no n - ”
“Do it,” Ahmed snarled and waved the gun, aghast at the Khan’s change in face and tactic, and quite prepared to put the other plan into operation himself. “Fasten them!”
They obeyed. Ahmed was near the water fountain and he filled a plastic cup and gave it to the Khan. Hashemi and Armstrong watched unbalanced. Neither had expected such an immediate capitulation from the Khan. The man seemed to have shrunk before their eyes, his pallor and breathing bad. The Khan finished the water and looked at Hashemi, his small eyes bloodshot behind his glasses. He took them off and polished them absently, trying to regain his strength. Everything seemed to be taking more time than normal. “Wait for me beside the car, Ahmed.”
Uneasily, Ahmed obeyed. Armstrong unsnapped his belt and closed the curtain again. For a moment the Khan felt better, the chill air that came in momentarily helping to clear his head. “Now, what do you want?” “Your code name’s Ivanovitch. You’ve been a KGB spy and helper since January 1944. In that time y - ”
“All lies. What do you want?”
“I want to meet Petr Oleg Mzytryk. I want to question him seriously. In secret.”
The Khan heard the words and considered them. If this son of a dog knew Petr’s code name and his own code name and about Hidden Valley and January ‘44 when he went secretly to Moscow to join the KGB, he would know other more punishable matters. That he himself was playing both sides for the good of his Azerbaijan would make little difference to the assassins of the Right or of the Left. “In return for what?”
“Freedom to maneuver in Azerbaijan - so long as you do what is good for Iran - and a firm working relationship with me. I will give you information that will put the Tudeh, the leftists, and the Kurds into your hands - and give you evidence how the Soviets are thwarting you. For example, you’re declared Section 16/a.”
The Khan gaped at him. His ears began roaring. “I don’t believe it!” “Immediate. Petr Oleg Mzytryk signed the order,” Hashemi said. “Pr… proof, I… I want proof,” he choked out.
“Entice him this side of the border, alive, and I’ll give you proof - at least he will.”
“You’re… you’re lying.”
“Haven’t you planned to go to Tbilisi today or tomorrow, at his invitation? You would never have returned. The story would be that supposedly you had fled Iran. You’d be denounced, your possessions confiscated and family disgraced - and fed to the mullahs.” Now that Hashemi knew he had Abdollah in his grasp, the only thing that worried him was the state of the man’s health. His head now had a slight twitch to it, the normally swarthy face was pallid with a strange reddishness around the eyes and temples, the vein in his forehead prominent. “You’d better not go north, and double your guards. I could barter Petr Oleg - even better I could allow you to rescue him and… well, there are many solutions if I had possession of him.” “What… what do you want with him?”