Pettikin’s throat felt tight at his sudden reprieve - apparent reprieve, he thought suspiciously. “I need fuel. All our fuel’s been stolen, there’s no fuel in our dump.”
“Your aircraft has been refueled. I supervised it myself.” “You know about choppers?” Pettikin was wondering why the man appeared so nervous.
“A little.”
“Sorry, but I, er, I don’t know your name.”
“Smith. Mr. Smith.” Fedor Rakoczy smiled. “You will leave now, please. At once.”
Pettikin found his flying boots and pulled them on. The other men watched him silently. He noted they were carrying Soviet machine pistols. On the table by the door was his overnight bag. Beside it were his documents. Passport, visa, work permit, and Iranian CAA-issued flying license. Trying to keep the astonishment off his face, he made sure they were all there and stuck them in his pocket. When he went for the refrigerator, one of the men stood in his way and motioned him away. “I’m hungry,” Pettikin said, still very suspicious.
“There’s something to eat in your plane. Follow me, please.” Outside, the air smelled very good to him, the day crisp and fine with a clean, very blue sky. To the west more snow clouds were building. Eastward, the way over the pass was clear. All around him the forest sparkled, the light refracted by the snow. In front of the hangar was the 206, windshield cleaned, all windows cleaned. Nothing had been touched inside though his map case was now in a side pocket, not beside his seat where he normally left it. Very carefully he began a preflight check.
“Please to hurry,” Rakoczy said.
“Of course.” Pettikin made a great show of hurrying but he didn’t, missing nothing in his inspection, all his senses tuned to find a subtle sabotage, or even a crude one. Gas checked out, oil, everything. He could see and feel their growing nervousness. There was still no one else on the base. In the hangar he could see the 212 with its engine parts still neatly spread out. The spares that he had brought had been put on a bench nearby. “Now you are ready.” Rakoczy said it as an order. “Get in, you will refuel at Bandar-e Pahlavi as before.” He turned to the others, embraced both of them hastily, and got into the right seat. “Start up and leave at once. I am coming to Tehran with you.” He gripped his machine gun with his knees, buckled himself in, locked the door neatly, then lifted the headset from its hook behind him and put it on, clearly accustomed to the inside of a cockpit.
Pettikin noticed that the other two had taken up defensive positions facing the road. He pressed the Engine Start. Soon the whine and the familiarity - and the fact that “Smith” was aboard and therefore sabotage unlikely - made him light-headed. “Here we go,” he said into the boom mike and took off in a scudding rush, banked sweetly, and climbed for the pass.
“Good,” Rakoczy said, “very good. You fly very well.” Casually he put the gun across his knees, muzzle pointing at Pettikin. “Please don’t fly too well.”
“Put the safety catch on - or I won’t fly at all.”
Rakoczy hesitated. He clicked it in place. “I agree it is dangerous while flying.”
At six hundred feet Pettikin leveled off, then abruptly went into a steep bank and came back toward the field.
“What’re you doing?”
“Just want to get my bearings.” He was relying on the fact that though “Smith” clearly knew his way around a cockpit, he couldn’t fly a 206 or he would have taken her. His eyes were searching below for a clue to the man’s nervousness and his haste to leave. The field seemed the same. Near the junction of the narrow base road with the main road that went northwest to Tabriz were two trucks. Both headed for the base. From this height he could easily see they were army trucks.
“I’m going to land to see what they want,” he said.
“If you do,” Rakoczy said without fear, “it will cost you much pain and permanent mutilation. Please go to Tehran - but first to Bandar-e Pahlavi.”
“What’s your real name?”
“Smith.”
Pettikin left it at that, circled once, then followed the Tehran road southeast, heading for the pass and biding his time - confident now that somewhere en route his time would come.
Chapter 15
AT TEHRAN: 8:30 A.M. Tom Lochart eased his old Citroen through the debris of the night’s battles, heading for Galeg Morghi. The morning was sour and freezing and he was already late though he had started out just after dawn. He had passed many bodies and wailing mourners, many burned-out wrecks of cars and trucks, some still smoldering - flotsam from the night’s riots. Knots of armed or semiarmed civilians still manned balconies or barricades and he had had to make a dozen diversions. Many men wore the Khomeini green armband now. All Green Bands were armed. The streets were ominously empty of traffic. From time to time police trucks screamed past, a few cars and trucks, but they paid no attention to him except to sound their horns, cursing him out of the way. He cursed them back, almost not caring if he ever reached the airport that would be a perfect solution to his dilemma. Only the thought of Valik’s wife and their two children in SAVAK hands forced him onward.
How could such a wonderful woman as Annoush, who had been so kind to him since he came into the family, have married such a bastard? And how could the two wonderful kids who adored Sharazad and called him Excellency Uncle…
He swerved to avoid a car that charged out of a side street on the wrong side of the road. The car did not stop and he cursed it, and Tehran and Iran and Valik and said, “Insha’Allah,” out loud but it did not help him. Overhead was a dirty, snow-filled overcast that he did not like at all, and he had hated to leave the warmth of his bed and Sharazad. Just before dawn the alarm had startled them awake.
“I thought you weren’t going, my darling. I thought you said you were leaving tomorrow.”
“I’ve got a sudden charter, at least I think I have. That’s what Valik came about. I’ve got to see Mac first, but if I go I’ll be away for a few days. Go back to sleep, my darling.” He had shaved, dressed hurriedly, had a quick cup of coffee, and left. Outside it was still dark with just a sullen wisp of dawn, the air acrid and smoke heavy. In the distance was the inevitable, sporadic gunfire. Suddenly he was filled with foreboding. McIver lived only a few blocks away. Lochart was surprised to find him fully dressed. “Hello, Tom. Come on in. The clearance came through at midnight, delivered by hand. Valik’s got power - I never believed we’d get it. Coffee?” “Thanks. Did he see you last night?”
“Yes.” McIver led the way into the kitchen. Coffee was perking nicely. No sign of Genny, Paula, or Nogger Lane. He poured for Lochart. “Valik told me he’d seen you and that you’d agreed to go.”
Lochart grunted. “I said I’d go after you approved it and after I’d seen you - if we got the clearance. Where’s Nogger?”
“Back in his flat. I canceled him last night. He’s still pretty shook from being involved in that riot.”
“I can imagine. What happened to the girl? Paula?” “She’s in the spare room, her Alitalia flight’s still grounded, but she’ll probably be off today. George Talbot of the embassy dropped by last night and said he heard the airport’s been cleared of revolutionaries and today, with any luck, there’ll be a few flights in and out.”
Lochart nodded thoughtfully. “Then maybe Bakhtiar will win after all.” “Let’s hope, eh? The BBC this morning said Doshan Tappeh’s still in Khomeini hands and the Immortals are just ringing it, sitting on their tails.” Lochart shuddered at the thought of Sharazad there. She had promised not to go again. “Did Talbot say anything about a coup?”
“Only that the rumor is that Carter’s opposed to it - if I was Iranian, and a general, I wouldn’t hesitate. Talbot agreed, said the coup’ll happen in the next three days, it’ll have to, the revs are getting too many guns.” Lochart could almost see Sharazad chanting with the thousands, young Captain Karim Peshadi declaring for Khomeini and three Immortals deserting. “Don’t know what I’d do, Mac, if I was one of them.”