She toyed with the watch she wore on her lapel. “From time to time his wrists seemed to bother him and when I stroked them he became calm again. In the night he spoke a tongue I have never heard before. I speak English, a little French, and many dialects of Arabic, many. But this tongue I have never heard before. He spoke it in a lilting way, mixed with wanderings and ‘azadeh,’ sometimes words like…” She searched her memory. “Like ‘regiment’ and ‘edelweiss’ and ‘highlands’ or ‘high land,’ and sometimes, ah, yes, words like ‘gueng’ and ‘tens’ng,’ sometimes a name like ‘Roses’ or ‘Rose mountain’ - perhaps it was not a name but just a place but it seemed to sadden him.” Her old eyes were rheumy. “I’ve seen much of death, Effendi, very much, always different, always the same. But his passing was peaceful and his going over the threshold without hurt. The last moment was just a great sigh - I think he went to Paradise, if Christians go to Paradise, and found his Azadeh…”
Chapter 65
TABRIZ - AT THE KHAN’S PALACE: 3:40 P.M. Azadeh walked slowly along the corridor toward the Great Room where she was meeting her brother, her back still troubling her from the grenade explosion yesterday. God in heaven, was it only yesterday that the tribesmen and Erikki almost killed us? she thought. It seems more like a thousand days, and a light-year since Father died.
It was another lifetime. Nothing good in that lifetime except Mother and Erikki and Hakim, Erikki and… and Johnny. A lifetime of hatreds and killings and terrors and madness, madness living like pariahs, Hakim and I, surrounded by evil, madness at the Qazvin roadblock and that vile, fat-faced mujhadin squashed against the car, oozing like a swatted fly, madness of our rescue by Charlie and the KGB man - what was his name, ah yes, Rakoczy - Rakoczy almost killing all of us, madness at Abu Mard that has changed my life forever, madness at the base where we’d had so many fine times, Erikki and I, but where Johnny killed so many so fast and so cruelly. She had told Erikki everything last night - almost everything. “At the base he… he became a killing animal. I don’t remember much, just flashes, giving him the grenade in the village, watching him rush the base… grenades and machine guns, one of the men wearing a kookri, then Johnny holding up his severed head and howling like a banshee… I know now the kookri was Gueng’s. Johnny told me in Tehran.”
“Don’t say any more now. Leave it until tomorrow, leave the rest until tomorrow, my darling. Go to sleep, you’re safe now.”
“No. I’m afraid to sleep, even now in your arms, even with all the glorious news about Hakim, when I sleep I’m back in the village, back at Abu Mard and the mullah’s there, cursed of God, the kalandar’s there and butcher’s got his carving knife.”
“There’s no more village or mullah, I’ve been there. No more kalandar, nor butcher. Ahmed told me about the village, part of what had happened there.” “You went to the village?”
“Yes, this afternoon, when you were resting. I took a car and went there. It’s a heap of burned rubble. Just as well,” Erikki had said ominously. In the corridor Azadeh stopped a moment and held on to the wall until the fit of trembling passed. So much death and killing and horror. Yesterday when she had come out onto the steps of the palace and had seen Erikki in the cockpit, blood streaming down his face and into his stubbled beard, more dripping from his sleeve, Ahmed crumpled beside him, she had died and then, seeing him get out and stand tall and walk to her, her own legs useless, and catch her up into his arms, she had come to life again, all her terrors had poured out with her tears. “Oh, Erikki, oh, Erikki, I’ve been so afraid, so afraid…”
He had carried her into the Great Room and the doctor was there with Hakim, Robert Armstrong and Colonel Hashemi Fazir. A bullet had torn away part of Erikki’s left ear, another had scored his forearm. The doctor had cauterized the wounds and bound them up, injecting him with antitetanus serum and penicillin, more afraid of infection than of loss of blood: “Insha’ Allah, but there’s not much I can do, Captain, you’re strong, your pulse is good, a plastic surgeon can make your ear look better, your hearing’s not touched, praised be to God! Just beware of infection…”
“What happened, Erikki?” Hakim had asked.
“I flew them north into the mountains and Ahmed was careless - it wasn’t his fault, he got airsick - and before we knew what was happening Bayazid had a gun to his head, another tribesman had one to mine and Bayazid said, ‘Fly to the village, then you can leave.’
“‘You swore a holy oath you wouldn’t harm me!’ I said.
‘“I swore I wouldn’t harm you and I won’t, but my oath was mine, not of my men,’ Bayazid said, and the man with a gun to my head laughed and shouted, ‘Obey our Sheik or by God you will be so filled with pain you will beg for death.’”
“I should have thought of that,” Hakim said with a curse. “I should have bound them all with the oath. I should have thought of that.” “It wouldn’t have made any difference. Anyway it was all my fault; I’d brought them here and almost ruined everything. I can’t tell you how sorry I am but it was the only way to get back and I thought I’d find Abdollah Khan, I never thought that matyeryebyets Bayazid would use a grenade.” “We’re not hurt, through God’s will, Azadeh and I. How could you know Abdollah Khan was dead, or that half your ransom was paid? Go on with what happened,” Hakim had said and Azadeh noticed a strangeness under the voice. Hakim’s changed, she thought. I can’t understand what’s in his mind like I used to. Before he became Khan, really Khan, I could but not now. He’s still my darling brother but a stranger. So much has changed, so fast. I’ve changed. So has Erikki, my God how much! Johnny hasn’t changed….
In the Great Room, Erikki had continued: “Flying them away was the only way to get them out of the palace without further trouble or killing. If Bayazid hadn’t insisted, I would have offered - no other way’d’ve been safe for you and Azadeh. I had to gamble that somehow they’d obey the oath. But whatever happened, it was them or me, I knew it and so did they, for of course I was the only one who knew who they were and where they lived and a Khan’s vengeance is serious. Whatever I did, drop them off halfway or go to the village, they’d never let me go. How could they - it was the village or me and their One God would vote for their village along with them, whatever they’d agreed or sworn!” “That’s a question only God could answer.” “My gods, the ancient gods, don’t like to be used as an excuse, and they don’t like this swearing in their name. They disapprove of it greatly, in fact they forbid it.” Azadeh heard the bitterness and touched him gently. He had held her hand. “I’m fine now, Azadeh.”
“What happened next, Erikki?” Hakim asked. “I told Bayazid there wasn’t enough gasoline and tried to reason with him and he just said, ‘As God wants,’ stuck the gun into Ahmed’s shoulder and pulled the trigger. ‘Go to the village! The next bullet goes into his stomach.’ Ahmed passed out and Bayazid reached over him for the Sten gun that had slipped to the floor of the cockpit, half under the seat, but he couldn’t quite get it. I was strapped in, so was Ahmed, they weren’t, so I shifted her around the skies in ways I didn’t think a chopper could stand, then let her drop out and made a landing. It was a bad one; I thought I’d broken a skid but later I found it was only bent. As soon as we’d stopped I used the Sten and my knife and killed those who were conscious and hostile, disarmed the unconscious ones, and dumped them out of the cabin. Then, after a time, I came back.” “Just like that,” Armstrong had said. “Fourteen men.” “Five, and Bayazid. The others…” Azadeh had her arm on his shoulder and she felt the shrug and the following tremor. “I left them.”