“Scrag!”
He glanced around. One look at Willi Neuchtreiter’s face was enough. “Wot’s up?”
“I just found out Masoud’s given all our passports to the gendarmes - every last one!”
Vossi and Scragger gaped at him. Vossi said, “What the hell he do that for?” Scragger was more vulgar.
“It was Tuesday, Scrag, when the others left on the boat. Of course a gendarme was there to see them off, count them aboard, and that’s when he asked Masoud for our passports. So Masoud gave them to him. If it’d been me I’d’ve done the same.”
“Wot the hell did he want them for?”
Willi said patiently, “To re-sign our residence permits in Khomeini’s name, Scrag, he wanted us to be legal - you’ve asked them enough times, haven’t you?” Scragger cursed for a full minute and never used the same word twice. “For crissake, Scrag, we gotta get ‘em back,” Vossi said shakily, “we gotta get ‘em back, or Whirlwind’s blown.”
“I know that, sport.” Blankly Scragger was sifting possibilities. Willi said, “Maybe we could get new ones in Al Shargaz or Dubai - say we’d lost ‘em.”
“For crissake, Willi,” Vossi exploded. “For crissake, they’d put us in the slammer so fast we wouldn’t know which way was up! Remember Masterson?” One of their mechanics, a couple of years ago, had forgotten to renew his Al Shargaz permit and had tried to bluff his way through Immigration. Even though the visa was only four days out of date and his passport otherwise valid, Immigration had at once marched him into jail where he languished very uncomfortably for six weeks, then to be let out but banished forever: “Dammit,” the resident British official had said, “you’re bloody lucky to get off so lightly. You knew the law. We’ve pointed it out until we’re blue in the face… .”
“Goddamned if I’ll leave without mine,” Vossi said. “I can’t. Mine’s loaded with goddamn visas for all the Gulf states, Nigeria, the UK and hell and gone - it’d take me months to get new ones, months, if ever… and what about Al Shargaz, huh? That’s one mighty fine place but without a goddamn passport and their valid visa, into the slammer!”
“Too right, Ed. Bloody hell and tomorrow’s Holy Day when everything’s shut tighter’n a gnat’s arse. Willi, you remember who the gendarme was? Was he one of the regulars - or a Green Band?”
After a moment Willi said, “He wasn’t a Green Band, Scrag, he was a regular. The old one, the one with gray hair.”
“Qeshemi? The sergeant?”
“Yes, Scrag. Yes, it was him.”
Scragger cursed again. “If old Qeshemi says we’ve got to wait till Saturday, or Saturday week, that’s it.” In this area, gendarmes still operated as they had always done, as part of the military, without Green Band harassment, except that now they had taken off their Shah badges and wore armbands with Khomeini’s name scrawled on them.
“Don’t wait supper for me.” Scragger stomped off into the twilight.
AT THE LENGEH POLICE STATION: 7:32 P.M. The corporal gendarme yawned and shook his head politely, speaking Farsi to the base radio operator, Ali Pash, whom Scragger had brought with him to interpret. Scragger waited patiently, too used to Iranian ways to interrupt them. They had already been at it for half an hour.
“Oh, you wanted to ask about the foreigners’ passports? The passports are in the safe, where they should be,” the gendarme was saying. “Passports are valuable and we have them locked up.”
“Perfectly correct, Excellency, but the Captain of the Foreigners would like to have them back, please. He says he needs them for a crew change.” “Of course he may have them back. Are they not his property? Have not he and his men flown many mercy missions over the years for our people? Certainly, Excellency, as soon as the safe is opened.” “Please may it be opened now? The foreigner would appreciate your kindness very much.” Ali Pash was equally polite and leisurely, waiting for the gendarme to volunteer the information he sought. He was a good-looking Tehrani in his late twenties who had been trained at the U.S. Radio School at Isfahan and had been with IHC at Lengeh for three years. “It would certainly be a kindness.”
“Certainly, but he cannot have them back until the key reappears.” “Ah, may I dare ask where the key is, Excellency?”
The corporal gendarme waved his hand to the big, old-fashioned safe that dominated this outer office. “Look, Excellency, you can see for yourself, the key is not on its peg. More than likely the sergeant has it in his safekeeping.”
“How very wise and correct, Excellency. Probably His Excellency the sergeant is at home now?”
“His Excellency will be here in the morning.”
“On Holy Day? May I offer an opinion that we are fortunate our gendarmerie have such a high sense of duty to work so diligently? I imagine he would not be early.”
“The sergeant is the sergeant but the office opens at seven-thirty in the morning, though of course the police station is open day and night.” The gendarme stubbed out his cigarette. “Come in the morning.” “Ah, thank you, Excellency. Would you care for another cigarette while I explain to the captain?”
“Thank you, Excellency. It is rare to have a foreign one, thank you.” The cigarettes were American and highly appreciated but neither mentioned it. “May I offer you a light, Excellency?” Ali Pash lit his own too and told Scragger what had been said.
“Ask him if the sergeant’s at home now, Ali Pash.”
“I did, Captain. He said His Excellency will be here in the morning.” Ali Pash hid his weariness, too polite to tell Scragger he had realized in the first few seconds that this man knew nothing, would do nothing, and this whole conversation and visit was a total waste of time. And of course gendarmes would prefer not to be disturbed at night about so insignificant an affair. What does it matter? Have they ever lost a passport? Of course not! What crew change? “If I may advise you, Agha? In the morning.” Scragger sighed. “In the morning” could mean tomorrow or the following day. No point in probing further, he thought irritably. “Thank him for me and say I’ll be here bright and early in the morning.”
Ali Pash obeyed. As God wants, the gendarme thought wearily, hungry and worried that another week had gone by and still there was no pay, no pay for months now, and the bazaari moneylenders were pressing for their loans to be repaid, and my beloved family near starving. “Shab be khayr, Agha,” he said to Scragger. “Good night.”
“Shab be khayr, Agha.” Scragger waited, knowing their departure would be as politely long-winded as the interview.
Outside in the small road that was the main road of the port town, he felt better. Curious bystanders, all men, surrounded his battered old station wagon, the winged S-G symbol on the door. “Salaam,” he said breezily and a few greeted him back. Pilots from the base were popular, the base and the oil platforms a main source of very profitable work, their mercy missions in all weather well known, and Scragger easily recognizable: “That’s the chief of the pilots,” one old man whispered knowledgeably to his neighbor, “he’s the one who helped young Abdollah Turik into the hospital at Bandar Abbas that only the highborn get into normally. He even went to visit his village just outside Lengeh, even went to his funeral.”
“Turik?”
“Abdollah Turik, my sister’s son’s son! The young man who fell off the oil platform and was eaten by sharks.”
“Ah, yes, I remember, the young man some say was murdered by leftists.” “Not so loud, not so loud, you never know who’s listening. Peace be with you, pilot, greetings, pilot!”
Scragger waved to them cheerily and drove off.
“But the base is the other way, Captain. Where do we go?” Ali Pash asked. “To visit the sergeant, of course.” Scragger whistled through his teeth, disregarding Ali Pash’s obvious disapproval.