“But we weren’t told he would start his engines again, the Khan didn’t say that, or sneak out with bundles of carpets.”
“You’re right. As God wants, but you’re right.” Their nervousness increased. They had not forgotten the guards jailed and flogged by the old Khan for disobedience or failure, or those
banished by the new one. “The engines sound good now, don’t you think?” They both looked up as lights came on at the second floor, the Khan’s floor, then they jerked around as the police car came swirling to a stop outside the gate. The sergeant jumped out, a flashlight in his hand. “What’s going on, by God?” the sergeant shouted. “Open the gate, by God! Where’re my men?” Babak rushed for the side gate and pulled the bolt back. In the cockpit Erikki’s hands were moving as quickly as possible, the wound in his arm inhibiting him. The sweat ran down his face and mixed with a trickle of blood from his ear where the taped bandages had become displaced. His breath came in great pants from the long run from the north wing with Azadeh bundled in the carpet, drugged and helpless, and he was cursing the needles to rise quicker. He had seen the lights go on in Hakim’s apartments and now heads were peering out. Before he had left their suite he had carefully knocked Mina unconscious, hoping he had not hurt her, to protect her as well as himself so she would not sound an alarm or be accused of collusion, had wrapped Azadeh in the carpet and attached the kookri to his belt. “Come on,” he snarled at the needles, then glimpsed two men at the main gate in police uniforms. Suddenly the helicopter was bathed in a shaft of light from the flashlight and his stomach turned over. Without thinking, he grabbed his Sten, shoved the nose through the pilot’s window, and pulled the trigger, aiming high.
The four men scattered for cover as bullets ricocheted off the gate masonry. In his panic the sergeant dropped the flash, but not before all had seen the two crumpled, inert bodies of the corporal and the other policeman sprawled on the ground and presumed them dead. As the burst stopped, the sergeant scrambled for the side gate and his car and his Ml6.
“Fire, by God,” the driver policeman shouted. Whipped by the excitement, Babak squeezed the trigger, the shots going wild. Incautiously, the driver moved into the open to retrieve the flash. Another burst from the helicopter and he leaped backward. “Son of a burnt father…” The three of them cowered in safety. Another burst at the flashlight danced it, then smashed it. Erikki saw his escape plan in ruins, the 212 a helpless target on the ground. Time had run out for him. For a split second he considered closing down. The needles were far too low. Then he emptied the Sten at the gate with a howling battle cry, slammed the throttles forward, and let out another primeval scream that chilled those who heard it. The jets went to full power, shrieked under the strain as he put the stick forward and dragged her airborne a few inches and now, tail high, she lurched ahead, skids screeching on the forecourt as she bounced and rose and fell back and bounced again and now was airborne but lumbering badly. At the main gate the driver tore the gun from a guard and went to the pillar, peered around it to see the helicopter escaping, and pulled the trigger.
On the second floor of the palace Hakim was blearily leaning out of his bedroom window, grasped from drugged sleep by the noise. His bodyguard, Margol, was beside him. They saw the 212 almost collide with a small wooden outhouse, her skids ripping away part of the roof, then struggle onward in a drunken climb. Outside the walls was the police car, the sergeant silhouetted in the beam of its headlights. Hakim watched him aim and willed the bullets to miss.
Erikki heard bullets zinging off metal, prayed they had touched nothing vital, and banked dangerously away from the exposed outer wall toward some space where he could slip behind the safety of the palace. In the wild turn the bundled carpet containing Azadeh toppled over and tangled with the controls. For a moment he was lost, then he used his massive strength to shove her away. The wound in his forearm split open.
Now he swerved behind the north wing, the chopper still only a few feet high, and headed toward the other perimeter wall near the hut where Ross and Gueng had been hidden. A stray bullet punctured his door, hacked into the instrument panel, exploding glass.
When the helicopter had disappeared from Hakim’s view, he had hobbled across the huge bedroom, past the wood fire that blazed merrily, out into the corridor to the windows there. “Can you see him?” he asked, panting from the exertion.
“Yes, Highness,” Margol said, and pointed excitedly. “There!” The 212 was just a black shape against more blackness, then the perimeter floodlights came on and Hakim saw her stagger over the wall with only inches to spare and dip down behind it. A few seconds later she had reappeared, gaining speed and altitude. At that moment Aysha came running along the corridor, crying out hysterically, “Highness, Highness… Azadeh’s gone, she’s gone… that devil’s kidnapped her and Mina’s been knocked unconscious. …”
It was hard for Hakim to concentrate against the pills, his eyelids never so heavy. “What are you talking about?”
“Azadeh’s gone, your sister’s gone, he wrapped her in a carpet and he’s kidnapped her, taken her with him…” She stopped, afraid, seeing the look on Hakim’s face, ashen in this bleak light, eyes drooping - not knowing about the sleeping pills. “He’s kidnapped her!”
“But that… that’s not possible… not poss - ”
“Oh, but it is, she’s kidnapped and Mina’s unconscious!”
Hakim blinked at her, then stuttered, “Sound the alarm, Aysha! If she’s kidnapped… by God, sound… sound the alarm! I’ve taken sleeping pills and they… I’ll deal with that devil tomorrow, by God, I can’t, not now, but send someone… to the police… to the Green Bands… spread the alarm, there’s a Khan’s ransom on his head! Margol, help me back to my room.” Frightened servants and guards were collecting at the end of the corridor and Aysha ran tearfully back to them, telling them what had happened and what the Khan had ordered.
Hakim groped for his bed and lay back, exhausted. “Margol, tell the… tell guards to arrest those fools at the gate. How could they have let that happen?”
“They can’t have been vigilant, Highness.” Margol was sure they would be blamed - someone had to be blamed - even though he had been present when the Khan had told them not to interfere with the pilot. He gave the order and came back. “Are you all right, Highness?”
“Yes, thank you. Don’t leave the room… wake me at dawn. Keep the fire going and wake me at dawn.”
Gratefully Hakim let himself go into the sleep that beckoned so seductively, his back no longer paining him, his mind focused on Azadeh and on Erikki. When she had walked out of the small room and left him alone with Erikki, he had allowed his grief to show: “There’s no way out of the trap, Erikki. We’re trapped, all of us, you, Azadeh, and me. I still can’t believe she’d renounce Islam, at the same time I’m convinced she won’t obey me or you. I’ve no wish to hurt her but I’ve no alternative, her immortal soul is more important than her temporary life.”
“I could save her soul, Hakim. With your help.”
“How?” He had seen the tension in Erikki, his face tight, eyes strange. “Remove her need to destroy it.”
“How?”
“Say, hypothetically, this madman of a pilot was not Muslim but barbarian and so much in love with his wife that he goes a little more mad and instead of just escaping by himself, he suddenly knocks her out, kidnaps her, flies her out of her own country against her will, and refuses to allow her to return. In most countries a husband can … can take extreme measures to hold on to his wife, even to force her obedience and curb her. This way she won’t have broken her oath, she’ll never need to give up Islam, you’ll never need to harm her, and I’ll keep my woman.” “It’s a cheat,” Hakim had said bewildered. “It’s a cheat.” “It’s not, it’s make-believe, hypothetical, all of it, only make-believe, but hypothetically it fulfills the rules you swore to abide by, and no one’d ever believe the sister of the Gorgon Khan would willingly break her oath and renounce Islam over a barbarian. No one. Even now you don’t know for certain she would, do you?”