Escape Read online

  ‘That’s some pad,’ Nogger Lane said, awed.

  ‘It was built for my great-grandfather by Prince Zergeyev on orders of the Romanov tsars, Nogger, as a pishkesh,’ Azadeh said absently, watching the grounds below. ‘That was in 1890 when the tsars had already stolen our Caucasian provinces and once more were trying to split Azerbaijan from Iran and wanted the help of the Gorgon Khans. But our line has always been loyal to Iran though they have sought to maintain a balance.’ She was watching the palace below. People were coming out of the main house and some of the outhouses—servants and armed guards. ‘The mosque was built in 1907 to celebrate the signing of the new Russian-British accord on their partitioning of us, and spheres of infl—oh, look, Erikki, isn’t that Najoud and Fazulia and Zadi. . . and, oh, look, Erikki, isn’t that my brother Hakim—what’s Hakim doing there?’

  ‘Where? Oh, I see him. No, I don’t th—’

  ‘Perhaps. . . perhaps Abdollah Khan’s forgiven him,’ she said excitedly. ‘Oh wouldn’t that be wonderful!’

  Erikki peered at the people below. He had only met her brother once, at their wedding, but he had liked him very much. Abdollah Khan had released Hakim from banishment for this day only, then sent him back to Khvoy in the northern part of Azerbaijan near the Turkish border where he had extensive mining interests. ‘All Hakim has ever wanted was to go to Paris to study the piano,’ Azadeh had told him. ‘But my father wouldn’t listen to him, just cursed him and banished him for plotting. . .’

  ‘It’s not Hakim,’ Erikki said, his eyes much better than hers.

  ‘Oh!’ Azadeh squinted against the wind. ‘Oh.’ She was so disappointed. ‘Yes, yes, you’re right, Erikki.’

  ‘There’s Abdollah Khan!’ There was no mistaking the imposing, corpulent man with the long beard, coming out of the main door to stand on the steps, two armed guards behind him. With him were two other men. All were dressed in heavy overcoats against the cold. ‘Who’re they?’

  ‘Strangers,’ she said, trying to get over her disappointment. ‘They haven’t guns and there’s no mullah, so they’re not Green Bands.’

  ‘They’re Europeans,’ Nogger said. ‘You have any binoculars, Erikki?’

  ‘No.’ Erikki stopped circling and came down to five hundred feet and hovered, watching Abdollah Khan intently. He saw him point at the chopper and then talk with the other men, then go back to watching the chopper again. More of her sisters and family, some wearing chador, and servants had collected, bundled against the cold. Down another hundred feet. Erikki slipped off his dark glasses and headset and slid the side window back, gasped as the freezing air hit him, stuck his head out so they could see him clearly and waved. All eyes on the ground went to Abdollah Khan. After a pause the Khan waved back. Without pleasure.

  ‘Azadeh! Take your headset off and do what I did.’

  She obeyed at once. Some of her sisters waved back excitedly, chattering among themselves. Abdollah Khan did not acknowledge her, just waited. Matyeryebyets, Erikki thought, then leaned out of the cockpit and pointed at the wide space beyond the mosaic, frozen pool in the courtyard, obviously asking permission to land. Abdollah Khan nodded and pointed there, spoke briefly to his guards, then turned on his heel and went back into the house. The other men followed. One guard stayed. He walked down the steps towards the touchdown point, checking the action of his assault rifle.

  ‘Nothing like a friendly reception committee,’ Nogger muttered.

  ‘No need to worry, Nogger,’ Azadeh said with a nervous laugh. ‘I’ll get out first, Erikki, safer for me to be first.’

  They landed at once, Azadeh opened her door and went to greet her sisters and her stepmother, her father’s third wife and younger than her. His first wife, the Khananam, was of an age with him but now she was bedridden and never left her room. His second wife, Azadeh’s mother, had died many years ago.

  The guard intercepted Azadeh. Politely. Erikki breathed easier. It was too far away to hear what was said—in any event, neither he nor Nogger spoke Farsi or Turkish. The guard motioned at the chopper. She nodded then turned and beckoned them. Erikki and Nogger completed the shutdown, watching the guard who watched them seriously.

  ‘You hate guns as much as I do, Erikki?’ Nogger said.

  ‘More. But at least that man knows how to use one—it’s the amateurs that scare me.’ Erikki slipped out the circuit breakers and pocketed the ignition key.

  They went to join Azadeh and her sisters but the guard stood in the way. Azadeh called out, ‘He says we are to go to the Reception Room at once and wait there. Please follow me.’

  Nogger was last. One of the pretty sisters caught his eye and he smiled to himself and went up the stairs two at a time.

  The Reception Room was vast and cold and draughty and smelled of damp, with heavy Victorian furniture and many carpets and lounging cushions and old-fashioned water heaters. Azadeh tidied her hair at one of the mirrors. Her ski clothes were elegant and fashionable. Abdollah Khan had never required any of his wives or daughters or household to wear chador, did not approve of chador. Then why was Najoud wearing one today? she asked herself, her nervousness increasing. A servant brought tea. They waited half an hour, then another guard arrived and spoke to her. She took a deep breath. ‘Nogger, you’re to wait here,’ she said. ‘Erikki, you and I are to go with this guard.’

  Erikki followed her, tense but confident that the armed peace he had worked out with Abdollah Khan would hold. The touch of his pukoh knife reassured him. The guard opened a door at the end of the corridor and motioned them forward.

  Abdollah Khan was leaning against some cushions, reclining on a carpet facing the door, guards behind him, the room rich, Victorian and formal—and somehow decadent and soiled. The two men they had seen on the steps were seated cross-legged beside him. One was European, a big, well-preserved man in his late sixties with heavy shoulders and Slavic eyes set in a friendly face. The other was younger, in his thirties, his features Asiatic and the colour of his skin yellowish. Both wore heavy winter suits. Erikki’s caution soared and he waited beside the doorway as Azadeh went to her father, knelt in front of him, kissed his pudgy, jewelled hands, and blessed him. Impassively her father waved her to one side and kept his dark, dark eyes on Erikki who greeted him politely from the door but stayed near it. Hiding her shame and fear, Azadeh knelt again on the carpet, and faced him. Erikki saw both the strangers flick their eyes over her appreciatively, and his temperature went up a notch. The silence intensified.

  Beside the Khan was a plate of halvah, small squares of the honey-rich Turkish delicacies that he adored, and he ate some of them, light dancing off his rings. ‘So,’ he said harshly, ‘it seems you kill indiscriminately like a mad dog.’

  Erikki’s eyes narrowed and he said nothing.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘If I kill it’s not like a mad dog. Whom am I supposed to have killed?’

  ‘One old man in a crowd outside Qazvin with a blow from your elbow, his chest crushed in. There are witnesses. Next, three men in a car and one outside it—he an important fighter for freedom. There are more witnesses. Farther down the road five dead and more wounded in the wake of the helicopter rescue. More witnesses.’ Another silence. Azadeh had not moved though the blood had left her face. ‘Well?’

  ‘If there are any witnesses you will know also that we were peacefully trying to get to Tehran, we were unarmed, we were set upon by a mob and if it hadn’t been for Charlie Pettikin and Rakoczy, we’d probably be—’ Erikki stopped momentarily, noticing the sudden glance between the two strangers. Then, even more warily, he continued, ‘We’d probably be dead. We were unarmed—Rakoczy wasn’t—we were fired on first.’

  Abdollah Khan had also noticed the change in the men beside him. Thoughtfully, he glanced back at Erikki. ‘Rakoczy? The same with the Islamic-Marxist mullah and men who attacked your base? The Soviet Muslim?’

 
‘Yes.’ Erikki looked at the two strangers, hard-eyed. ‘The KGB agent, who claimed he came from Georgia, from Tbilisi.’

  Abdollah Khan smiled thinly. ‘KGB? How do you know that?’

  ‘I’ve seen enough of them to know.’ The two strangers stared back blandly; the older wore a friendly smile and Erikki was chilled by it.

  ‘This Rakoczy, how did he get into the helicopter?’ the Khan said.

  ‘He captured Charlie Pettikin at my base last Sunday—Pettikin’s one of our pilots and he’d come to Tabriz to pick us up, Azadeh and me. I’d been asked by my embassy to check with them about my passport—that was the day most governments, mine too, had ordered non-essential expats out of Iran,’ he said, the exaggeration easy. ‘On Monday, the day we left here, Rakoczy forced Pettikin to fly him to Tehran.’ He told briefly what had happened. ‘But for him noticing the Finnish flag on the roof we’d be dead.’

  The man with Asiatic features laughed softly. ‘That would have been a great loss, Captain Yokkonen,’ he said in Russian.

  The older man with the Slavic eyes said, in faultless English, ‘This Rakoczy, where is he now?’

  ‘I don’t know. Somewhere in Tehran. May I ask who you are?’ Erikki was playing for time and expected no answer. He was trying to decide if Rakoczy was friend or enemy to these two, obviously Soviet, obviously KGB or GRU—the secret police of the armed forces.

  ‘Please, what was his first name?’ the older man asked pleasantly.

  ‘Fedor, like the Hungarian revolutionary.’ Erikki saw no further reaction and could have gone on but was far too wise to volunteer anything to KGB or GRU. Azadeh was kneeling on the carpet, stiff-backed, motionless, her hands at rest in her lap, her lips red against the whiteness of her face. Suddenly he was very afraid for her.

  ‘You admit killing those men?’ the Khan said and ate another sweetmeat.

  ‘I admit I killed men a year or so ago saving your life, Highness, an—’

  ‘And yours!’ Abdollah Khan said angrily. ‘The assassins would have killed you too—it was the Will of God we both lived.’

  ‘I didn’t start that fight or seek it either.’ Erikki tried to choose his words wisely, feeling unwise and unsafe and inadequate. ‘If I killed those others it was not of my choosing but only to protect your daughter and my wife. Our lives were in danger.’

  ‘Ah, you consider it your right to kill at any time you consider your life to be in danger?’

  Erikki saw the flush in the Khan’s face, and the two Soviets watching him, and he thought of his own heritage and his grandfather’s stories of the olden days in the North Lands, when giants walked the earth and trolls and ghouls were not myth, long long ago when the earth was clean and evil was known as evil, and good as good, and evil could not wear the mask.

  ‘If Azadeh’s life is threatened—or mine—I will kill anyone,’ he said evenly. The three men felt ice go through them. Azadeh was appalled at the threat, and the guards, who spoke neither Russian nor English, shifted uneasily, feeling the violence.

  The vein in the centre of Abdollah’s Khan’s forehead knotted. ‘You will go with this man,’ he said darkly. ‘You will go with this man and do his bidding.’

  Erikki looked at the man with the Asiatic features. ‘What do you want with me?’

  ‘Just your skills as a pilot, and the 212,’ the man said, not unfriendly, speaking Russian.

  ‘Sorry, the 212’s on a fifteen-hundred-hours check and I work for S-G and Iran-Timber.’

  ‘The 212 is complete, already ground-tested by your mechanics, and Iran-Timber has released you to. . . to me.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘To fly,’ the man said irritably. ‘Are you hard of hearing?’

  ‘No, but it seems you are.’

  Air hissed out of the man’s mouth. The older man smiled strangely. Abdollah Khan turned on Azadeh, and she almost jumped with fright. ‘You will go to the Khananam and pay your respects!’

  ‘Yes. . . yes. . . Father,’ she stuttered and jumped up. Erikki moved half a step but the guards were ready, one had him covered and she said, near tears, ‘No, Erikki, it’s. . . I. . . must go. . .’ She fled before he could stop her.

  The man with the Asiatic face broke the silence. ‘You’ve nothing to fear. We just need your skills.’

  Erikki Yokkonen did not answer him, sure that he was at bay, that both he and Azadeh were at bay and lost, and knowing that if there were no guards here he would have attacked now, without hesitation, killed Abdollah Khan now and probably the other two. The three men knew it.

  ‘Why did you send for my wife, Highness?’ he said in the same quiet voice, knowing the answer now. ‘You sent two messages.’

  Abdollah Khan said with a sneer, ‘She’s of no value to me, but she is to my friends: to bring you back and to make you behave. And by God and the Prophet, you will behave. You will do what this man wants.’

  One of the guards moved his snub-nosed machine gun a fraction and the noise he made echoed in the room. The Soviet with the Asiatic features got up. ‘First your knife. Please.’

  ‘You can come and take it. If you wish it seriously.’

  The man hesitated. Abruptly Abdollah Khan laughed. The laugh was cruel, and it edged all of them. ‘You will leave him his knife. That will make your life more interesting.’ Then to Erikki, ‘It would be wise to be obedient and to behave.’

  ‘It would be wise to let us go in peace.’

  ‘Would you like to watch your co-pilot hung up by his thumbs now?’ Erikki’s eyes flattened even more. The older Soviet leaned over to whisper to the Khan whose gaze never left Erikki. His hands played with his jewelled dagger. When the man had finished, he nodded. ‘Erikki, you will tell your co-pilot that he is to be obedient too, while he is in Tabriz. We will send him to the base, but your small helicopter will remain here. For the moment.’ He motioned the man with the Asiatic features to leave.

  ‘My name is Cimtarga, Captain.’ The man was not nearly as tall as Erikki but strongly built with wide shoulders. ‘First we g—’

  ‘Cimtarga’s the name of a mountain, east of Samarkand. What’s your real name? And rank?’

  The man shrugged. ‘My ancestors rode with Timour Tamburlaine, the Mongol, he who enjoyed erecting mountains of skulls. First we go to your base. We will go by car.’ He walked past him and opened the door, but Erikki did not move, still looked at the Khan.

  ‘I will see my wife tonight.’

  ‘You will see her when—’ Abdollah Khan stopped as again the older man leaned forward and whispered. Again the Khan nodded. ‘Good. Yes, Captain, you will see her tonight, and every second night. Providing.’ He let the word hang. Erikki turned on his heel and walked out.

  As the door closed after them, tension left the room. The older man chuckled. ‘Highness, you were perfect, perfect as usual.’

  Abdollah Khan eased his left shoulder, the ache in the arthritic joint annoying him. ‘He’ll be obedient, Petr,’ he said, ‘but only as long as my disobedient and ungrateful daughter is within my reach.’

  ‘Daughters are always difficult,’ Petr Oleg Mzytryk answered. He came from north of the border, from Tbilisi—Tiflis.

  ‘Not so, Petr. The others obey and give me no trouble but this one—she infuriates me beyond words.’

  ‘Then send her away once the Finn has done what’s required. Send them both away.’ The Slavic eyes crinkled and he added lightly, ‘If I were thirty years younger and she was free I would petition to take her off your hands.’

  ‘If you’d asked before that madman appeared, you could have had her with my blessing,’ Abdollah Khan said sourly, though he had noted the underlying hope, hid his surprise, and put it aside for later consideration. ‘I regret giving her to him—I thought she’d drive him mad too—regret my oath before God to leave him alive—it was a moment of weakness.’


  ‘Perhaps not. It’s good to be magnanimous, occasionally. He did save your life.’

  ‘Insha’Allah! That was God’s doing—he was just an instrument.’

  ‘Of course,’ Mzytryk said soothingly. ‘Of course.’

  ‘That man’s a devil, an atheist devil who stinks of bloodlust. If it hadn’t been for my guards—you saw for yourself—we would be fighting for our lives.’

  ‘No, not so long as she’s in your power to be dealt with. . . improperly.’ Petr smiled strangely.

  ‘God willing, they’ll both be soon in hell,’ the Khan said, still infuriated that he had had to keep Erikki alive to assist Petr Oleg Mzytryk, when he could have given him to the leftist mujhadin and thus be rid of him for ever. The mullah Mahmud, one of the Tabriz leaders of the Islamic-Marxist mujhadin faction that had attacked the base, had come to him two days ago and told him what happened at the roadblock. ‘Here are their papers as proof,’ the mullah had said truculently, ‘both of the foreigner who must be CIA and of the lady, your daughter. The moment he returns to Tabriz we will stand him before our komiteh, sentence him, take him to Qazvin and put him to death.’

  ‘By the Prophet you won’t, not until I give you approval,’ he had said imperiously, taking their papers. ‘That mad dog foreigner is married to my daughter, is not CIA, is under my protection until I cancel it, and if you touch so much as one foul red hair or interfere with him or the base until I approve it, I’ll withdraw all my secret support and nothing will stop the Green Bands from stamping out the leftists of Tabriz! He’ll be given to you in my time, not yours.’ Sullenly the mullah had gone away and Abdollah had at once added Mahmud to his list of imperatives. When he had examined the papers carefully and found Azadeh’s passport and ID and other permits he had been delighted, for these gave him an added hold over her, and her husband.