“Yes, Highness,” Hashemi had said. “How would you advise us to take him?”
“Choke the road both sides of the turnoff with a couple of old, heavily laden farm trucks… firewood or crates of fish… the road’s narrow and twisting and potholed and heavy with traffic, so an ambush should be easy. But… but be careful, there’re always Tudeh cars to run interference for him, he’s a wise man and fearless… there’s a poison capsule in his lapel.” “Which one?”
“I don’t know … I don’t know. He will land near sunset. You can’t miss the turnoff, it’s the only one….”
Abdollah Khan sighed, lost in his thoughts. Many times he had been picked up by the same helicopter to go to the dacha at Tbilisi. Many good times there, the food lavish, the women young and accommodating, full-lipped and hungry to please - then, if he was lucky, Vertinskya, the hellcat, for further entertainment.
He saw Ahmed watching him. “I hope Petr escapes the trap. Yes, it would be good for him to… to have her.” Tiredness swamped him. “I’ll sleep now. Send my guard back and after I’ve eaten tonight, assemble my ‘devoted’ family here and we will do as you suggest.” His smile was cynical. “It’s wise to have no illusions.”
“Yes, Highness.” Ahmed got to his feet. The Khan envied him his lithe and powerful body.
“Wait, there was something… something else.” The Khan thought a moment, the process strangely tiring. “Ah, yes, where’s Redhead of the Knife?”
“With Cimtarga, up near the border, Highness. Cimtarga said they might be away for a few days. They left Tuesday night.”
“Tuesday? What’s today?”
“Saturday, Highness,” Ahmed replied, hiding his concern.
“Ah, yes, Saturday.” Another wave of tiredness. His face felt strange and he lifted his hand to rub it but found the effort too much. “Ahmed, find out where he is. If anything happens… if I have another attack and I’m… well, see that… that I’m taken to Tehran, to the International Hospital, at once. At once. Understand?”
“Yes, Highness.”
“Find out where he is and… and for the next few days keep him close by… overrule Cimtarga. Keep He of the Knife close by.”
“Yes, Highness.”
When the guard came back into the room, the Khan closed his eyes and felt himself sinking into the depths. “There is no other God but God…” he muttered, very afraid.
NEAR THE NORTH BORDER, EAST OF JULFA: 6:05 P.M. It was near sunset and Erikki’s 212 was under a crude, hastily constructed lean-to, the roof already a foot deep in snow from the storm last night, and he knew much more exposure in subzero weather would ruin her. “Can’t you give me blankets or straw or something to keep her warm?” he had asked Sheik Bayazid the moment they had arrived back from Rezaiyeh with the body of the old woman, the chieftain, two days ago. “The chopper needs warmth.”
“We do not have enough for the living.”
“If she freezes she won’t work,” he had said, fretting that the Sheik would not allow him to leave at once for Tabriz, barely sixty miles away - worried sick about Azadeh and wondering what had happened to Ross and Gueng. “If she won’t work, how are we going to get out of these mountains?” Grudgingly, the Sheik had ordered his people to construct the lean-to and had given him some goat-and sheepskins that he had used where he thought they would do the most good. Just after dawn yesterday he had tried to leave. To his total dismay Bayazid had told him that he and the 212 were to be ransomed.
“You can be patient, Captain, and free to walk our village with a calm guard, to tinker with your airplane,” Bayazid had said curtly, “or you can be impatient and angry and you will be bound up and tethered as a wild beast. I seek no trouble, Captain, want none, or argument. We seek ransom from Abdollah Khan.”
“But I’ve told you he hates me and won’t help me to be rans - ”
“If he says no, we seek ransom elsewhere. From your company in Tehran, or your government - perhaps your Soviet employers. Meanwhile, you stay here as guest, eating as we eat, sleeping as we sleep, sharing equally. Or bound and tethered and hungry. Either way you stay until ransom is paid.” “But that might take months an - ”
“Insha’Allah!”
All day yesterday and half the night Erikki had tried to think of a way out of the trap. They had taken his grenade but left him his knife. But his guards were watchful and constant. In these deep snows, it would be almost impossible for him in flying boots and without winter gear to get down to the valley below, and even then he was in hostile country. Tabriz was barely thirty minutes away by 212, but by foot?
“More snow tonight, Captain.”
Erikki looked around. Bayazid was a pace away and he had not heard him approach. “Yes, and a few more days in this weather and my bird, my airplane, won’t fly - the battery’ll be dead and most of the instruments wrecked. I have to start her up to charge the battery and warm her pots, have to. Who’s going to ransom a wrecked 212 out of these hills?” Bayazid thought a moment. “For how long must engines turn?”
“Ten minutes a day - absolute minimum.”
“All right. Just after full dark, each day you may do it, but first you ask me. We help you drag her - why is it ‘she,’ not an ‘it’ or a ‘he’?” Erikki frowned. “I don’t know. Ships are always ‘she’ - this is a ship of the sky.” He shrugged.
“Very well. We help you drag her into open and you start her up and while her engines running there will be five guns within five feet, should you be tempted.”
Erikki laughed. “Then I won’t be tempted.”
“Good.” Bayazid smiled. He was a handsome man though his teeth were bad. “When do you send word to the Khan?”
“It’s already gone. In these snows it takes a day to get down to road, even on horseback, but not long to reach Tabriz. If the Khan replies favorably, at once, perhaps we hear tomorrow, perhaps the day after, depending on the snows.”
“Perhaps never. How long will you wait?”
“Are all people from the Far North so impatient?”
Erikki’s chin jutted. “The ancient gods were very impatient when they were held against their will - they passed it on to us. It’s bad to be held against your will, very bad.”
“We are a poor people, at war. We must take what the One God gives us. To be ransomed is an ancient custom.” He smiled thinly. “We learned from Saladin to be chivalrous with our captives, unlike many Christians. Christians are not known for their chivalry. We are treat - ” His ears were sharper than Erikki’s and so were his eyes. “There, down in the valley!” Now Erikki heard the engine also. It took him a moment to pick out the low-flying camouflaged helicopter approaching from the north. “A Kajychokiv 16. Close-support Soviet army gunship … what’s she doing?”
“Heading for Julfa.” The Sheik spat on the ground. “Those sons of dogs come and go as they please.”
“Do many sneak in now?”
“Not many - but one is too many.”
NEAR THE JULFA TURNOFF: 6:15 P.M. The winding side road through the forest was snow heavy and not plowed. A few cart and truck tracks and those made by the old four-wheel drive Chevy that was parked under some pines near the open space, a few yards off the main road. Through their binoculars Armstrong and Hashemi could see two men in warm coats and gloves sitting in the front seat, the windows open, listening intently.
“He hasn’t much time,” Armstrong muttered.