Ishmael and the other man jumped back up the stairs to the first landing, almost colliding with others who had rushed down. They gaped at the twitching body of Mzytryk, the flames now eating his boots. “What you do that for?” one of them said, aghast.
“My brother was martyred at the house, so was your cousin.” “As God wants, but, Ishmael, the comrade general? God protect us, he supplied us with money and arms and explosives - why kill him?” “Why not? Wasn’t the son of a dog an arrogant, ill-mannered Satanist? He wasn’t even a Person of the Book,” Ishmael said contemptuously. “Dozens more where they came from, thousands. They need us, we don’t need them. He deserved to die. Didn’t he come alone, tempting me?” He spat toward the body. “Important persons should have bodyguards.”
A shaft of flames reached for them. They retreated hastily. The fire caught the wooden stairs and was spreading rapidly. In the street they all piled into the truck, no longer an ambulance.
Ishmael looked back at the flames gutting the house and laughed uproariously. “Now that dog’s a burnt father! May all Infidels perish as quickly.”
IN THE PALACE FORECOURT: Erikki was leaning against the 212 when he saw the lights in the Khan’s quarters on the second floor go out. A careful check on the two drugged policemen fast asleep in the cabin reassured him. Quietly he slid the cabin door closed, eased his knife under his belt and picked up the Sten. With the skill of a night hunter he moved noiselessly toward the palace. The Khan’s guards on the gate did not notice him go - why should they bother to watch him? The Khan had given them clear orders to leave the pilot alone and not agitate him, that surely he would soon tire of playing with the machine. “If he takes a car, let him. If the police want trouble, that’s their problem.”
“Yes, Highness,” they had both told him, glad they were not responsible for He of the Knife.
Erikki slipped through the front door and along the dimly lit corridor to the stairs leading to the north wing, well away from the Khan’s area. Noiselessly up the stairs and along another corridor. He saw a shaft of light under the door of their suite. Without hesitation he went into the anteroom, closing the door silently after him. Across the room to their bedroom door and swung it open. To his shock, Mina, Azadeh’s maid, was there too. She was kneeling on the bed where she had been massaging Azadeh who was fast asleep.
“Oh, your pardon,” she stuttered, terrified of him like all the servants. “I didn’t hear Your Excellency. Her Highness asked… asked me to continue as long as I could with… with the massage, then to sleep here.” Erikki’s face was a mask, the oil streaks on his cheeks and on the taped bandage over his ear making him appear more dangerous. “Azadeh!” “Oh you won’t wake her, Excellency, she took a… she took two sleeping pills and asked me to apologize for her if you c - ”
“Dress her!” he hissed.
Mina blanched. “But, Excellency!” Her heart almost stopped as she saw a knife appear in his hand.
“Dress her quickly and if you make a sound I’ll gut you. Do it!” He saw her grab the dressing gown. “Not that, Mina! Warm clothes, ski clothes - by all the gods, it doesn’t matter which but be quick!” He watched her, positioning himself between her and the door so she couldn’t bolt. On the bedside table was the sheathed kookri. A twinge went through him and he tore his eyes away, and when he was sure Mina was obeying he took Azadeh’s purse from the dressing table. All her papers were in it, ID, passport, driver’s license, birth certificate, everything. Good, he thought, and blessed Aysha for the gift that Azadeh had told him about before dinner, and thanked his ancient gods for giving him the plan this morning. Ah, my darling, did you think I’d really leave you? Also in the purse was her soft silk jewelry bag which seemed heavier than normal. His eyes widened at the emeralds and diamonds and pearl necklaces and pendants that it now contained. The rest of Najoud’s, he thought, the same that Hakim had used to barter with the tribesmen and that I retrieved from Bayazid. In the mirror he saw Mina gaping at the wealth he held in his hand, Azadeh inert and almost dressed. “Hurry up!” he grated at her reflection.
AT THE AMBUSH ROADBLOCK BELOW THE PALACE: Both the sergeant of police and his driver in the car waiting beside the road were staring up at the palace four hundred yards away, the sergeant using binoculars. Just the dim lights on the outside of the vast gatehouse, no sign of any guards, or of his own two men. “Drive up there,” the sergeant said uneasily. “Something’s wrong, by God! They’re either asleep or dead. Go slowly and quietly.” He reached into the scabbard beside him and put a shell into the breech of the M16. The driver gunned the engine and eased out into the empty roadway.
AT THE MAIN GATE: Babak, the guard, was leaning against a pillar inside the massive iron gate that was closed and bolted. The other guard was curled up nearby on some sacking, fast asleep. Through the bars of the gate could be seen the snowbanked road that wound down to the city. Beyond the empty fountain in the forecourt, a hundred yards away, was the helicopter. The icy wind moved the blades slightly.
Babak yawned and stamped his feet against the cold, then began to relieve himself through the bars, absently waving the stream this way and that. Earlier when they had been dismissed by the Khan and had come back to their post, they had found that the two policemen had gone. “They’re off to scrounge some food, or to have a sleep,” he had said. “God curse all police.”
He yawned, looking forward to the dawn when he would be off duty for a few hours. Only the pilot’s car to usher through just before dawn, then relock the gate, and soon he would be in bed with a warm body. Automatically he scratched his genitals, feeling himself stir and harden. Idly he leaned back, playing with himself, his eyes checking that the gate’s heavy bolt was in place and the small side gate also locked. Then the edge of his eyes caught a movement. He centered it. The pilot was slinking out of a side door of the palace with a large bundle over his shoulder, his arm no longer in the sling and carrying a gun. Babak hastily buttoned up, slipped his rifle off his shoulder, moved farther out of view. Cautiously he kicked the other guard who awoke soundlessly. “Look,” he whispered, “I thought the pilot was still in the cabin of the helicopter.”
Wide-eyed, they watched Erikki keep to the shadows, then silently dart across the open space to the far side of the helicopter. “What’s he carrying? What’s the bundle?”
“It looked like a carpet, a rolled-up carpet,” the other whispered. Sound of the far cockpit door opening.
“But why? In all the Names of God, what’s he doing?”
There was barely enough light but their vision was good and hearing good. They heard an approaching car but were at once distracted by the sound of the far cabin door sliding open. They waited, hardly breathing, then saw him dump what appeared to be two similar bundles under the belly of the helicopter, then duck under the tail boom and reappear on their side. For a moment he stood there, looking toward them but not seeing them, then eased the cockpit door open, and got in with the gun, the carpet bundle now propped on the opposite seat.
Abruptly the jets began and both guards jumped. “God protect us, what do we do?”
Nervously Babak said, “Nothing. The Khan told us exactly: ‘Leave the pilot alone, whatever he does, he’s dangerous,’ that’s what he told us, didn’t he? ‘When the pilot takes the car near dawn let the pilot leave.’” Now he had to talk loudly over the rising scream. “We do nothing.”