Escape Read online

  ‘Put the safety catch on—or I won’t fly at all.’

  Rakoczy hesitated. He clicked it in place. ‘I agreed it is dangerous while flying.’

  At six hundred feet Pettikin levelled off, then abruptly went into a steep bank and came back towards 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.

  On the Outskirts of Tabriz: 9:30 A.M. The red Range Rover came out of the gates of the Khan’s palace and headed down the rise towards Tabriz and the road for Tehran. Erikki was driving, Azadeh beside him. It had been her cousin, Colonel Mazardi, the chief of police, who had persuaded Erikki not to drive to Tehran on Friday: ‘The road would be highly dangerous—it’s bad enough during the day,’ he said. ‘The insurgents won’t return now, you’re quite safe. Much better to go and see His Highness the Khan and ask his advice. That would be much wiser.’

  Azadeh had agreed. ‘Erikki, of course we will do whatever you want but I would really feel happier if we went home for the night and saw Father.’

  ‘My cousin’s right, Captain; of course you may do as you wish, but I swear by the Prophet, God keep His words safe for ever, that her Highness’s safety is just as important to me as to you. If you still feel so inclined, leave tomorrow. I can assure you there’s no danger here. I’ll post guards. If this so-called Rakoczy or any other foreigner or this mullah comes within half a mile of here or the Gorgon palace they’ll regret it.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Erikki, please,’ Azadeh said enthusiastically. ‘Of course, my darling, we’ll do whatever you like but it might be you would want to consult His Highness, my father, about what you plan to do.’

  Reluctantly Erikki had agreed. Arberry and the other mechanic Dibble had decided to go into Tabriz to the International Hotel and spend the weekend there. ‘Spares’re due Monday, Captain. Old Skinflint McIver knows our 212’s got to be working by Wednesday or he’ll have to send another one and he won’t like that. We’ll just sit tight and get the job done and get her airborne. Our apology for a base manager can come and fetch us. We’re British, we’ve nothing to worry about—no one’s going to touch us. And don’t forget we’re working for their guver’ment, whoever’s the bleeding guver’ment and we’ve no quarrel with any of these bleeding wo—these bleeders, begging your pardon. Now don’t you worry about us, you and the Missus. We’ll just sit tight and expect you back by Wednesday. Have a fun time in Tehran.’

  So Erikki had gone in convoy with Colonel Mazardi to the outskirts of Tabriz. The sprawling palace of the Gorgon Khans was set in mountain foothills, in acres of gardens and orchards behind high walls. When they arrived, the whole house awoke and congregated—stepmother, half sisters, nieces, nephews, servants, and children of servants, but not Abdollah Khan, her father. Azadeh was received with open arms and tears and happiness and more tears, and immediate plans were made for a luncheon feast the next day to celebrate their good fortune in having her home at long last—‘But, oh, how terrible! Bandits and a rogue mullah daring to come on your land? Hasn’t His Highness, our revered father, donated barrels of rials and hundreds of acres of land to various mosques in and around Tabriz!’

  Erikki was welcomed politely, and guardedly. All of them were afraid of him, the enormity of his size, his quickness with a knife, the violence of his temper, and could not understand his gentleness towards his friends and the vast love he radiated for Azadeh. She was the fifth of six half sisters, and an infant half brother. Her mother, dead now many years, had been Abdollah Khan’s second, concurrent wife. Her own adored blood brother, Hakim, a year older than she, had been banished by Abdollah Khan and was still in disgrace at Khvoy to the northwest—banished for crimes against the Khan that both Hakim and Azadeh swore he was not guilty of.

  ‘First a bath,’ her half sisters said gaily, ‘and you can tell us all that happened, every detail, every detail.’ Happily, they dragged Azadeh away. In the privacy of their bathhouse, warm and intimate and luxurious and completely outside the domain of all men, they chatted and gossiped until the dawn. ‘My Mahmud hasn’t made love to me for a week,’ Najoud, Azadeh’s eldest half sister, said with a toss of her head.

  ‘It has to be another woman, darling Najoud,’ someone said.

  ‘No, it’s not that. His erection is giving him trouble.’

  ‘Oh, you poor darling! Have you tried giving him oysters. . .’

  ‘Or tried using oil of roses on your breasts. . .’

  ‘Or rubbed him with extract of jacaranda, rhino horn, and musk. . .’

  ‘Jacaranda, musk with rhino horn? I haven’t heard of that one, Fazulia.’

  ‘It’s brand new from an ancient recipe from the time of Cyrus the Great. This is a secret but the Great King’s penis was quite small as a young man, but after he conquered the Medes, miraculously it became the envy of the host! It seems that he obtained a magic potion from the Medes that if rubbed on over a period of a month. . . their high priest gave it to Cyrus in return for his life, providing the Great King swore to keep the secret in his family alone. It’s come down from father to son over the centuries and now, dear sisters, the secret’s in Tabriz!’

  ‘Oh who, dearest darling Sister Fazulia, who? The Blessings of God be upon thee for ever, who? My rotten husband Abdullah, may his three remaining teeth fall out, he hasn’t had an erection for years. Who?’

  ‘Oh be quiet, Zadi, how can she talk if you talk! Go on, Fazulia.’

  ‘Yes, be quiet, Zadi, and bless your good fortune—my Hussan is erect morning, noon and night and so filled with desire for me he gives me no time to even wash my teeth!’

  ‘Well, the secret of the elixir was bought by the great-great-grandfather of the present owner at a huge cost, I was told for a fistful of diamonds. . .’

  ‘Eeeeeeeeee. . .’

  ‘. . . but now you can buy a small vial for fifty thousand rials!’

  ‘Oh, that’s too much! Where on earth can I get so much cash?’

  ‘As always you’ll find it in his pockets, and you can always bargain. Is anything too much for such a potion when we can’t have other men?’

  ‘If it works. . .’

  ‘Of course it works, oh, where do we buy it, dearest dearest Fazulia?’

  ‘In the bazaar, in the shop of Abu Bakra bin Hassan bin Saiidi. I know the way! We’ll go tomorrow. Before lunch. You will come with us, darling Azadeh!’

  ‘No thank you, dear sister.’

  Then there was lots of laughter and one of the young ones said, ‘Poor Azadeh doesn’t need jacaranda and muck—she needs the opposite!’

  ‘Jacaranda and musk, child, with rhino horn,’ Fazulia said.

  Azadeh laughed with them. They had all asked her, overtly or covertly, if her husband was equally proportioned and how did she, so skinny and so fragile, deal with it and bear his weight? ‘By magic,’ she had told the young ones, ‘easily,’ the serious ones, and ‘with unbelievable ecstasy as it must be in the Garden of Paradise,’ the jealous ones and those she hated and sec
retly wanted to taunt.

  Not everyone had approved of her marriage to this foreign giant. Many had tried to influence her father against him and against her. But she had won and she knew who her enemies were: her sex-mad half sister, Zadi, lying Cousin Fazulia with her nonsense exaggerations, and, most of all, the honeyed viper of the pack, eldest sister Najoud and her vile husband Mahmud, may God punish them for their evil ways. ‘Dearest Najoud, I’m so happy to be home, but now it’s time for sleep.’

  And so to bed. All of them. Some happily, some sadly, some angrily, some hating, some loving, some to their husbands and some alone. Husbands could have four wives, according to the Koran, at the same time, provided they treated each with equality in every way—Mohammed the Prophet, alone of all men, had been allowed as many wives as he wished. According to legend, the Prophet had had eleven wives in his lifetime though not all at the same time. Some died, some he divorced, and some outlived him. But all of them honoured him for ever.

  Erikki awoke as Azadeh slipped into bed beside him. ‘We should leave as early as possible, Azadeh, my darling.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, almost asleep now, the bed so comfortable, him so comfortable. ‘Yes, whenever you like, but please not until after lunch because dearest Stepmother will weep buckets. . ..’

  ‘Azadeh!’

  But she was asleep now. He sighed, also content, and went back to sleep.

  They did not leave on Sunday as planned—her father had said it was inconvenient as he wished to talk to Erikki first. At dawn today, Monday, after prayers that her father had led, and after breakfast—coffee and bread and honey and yoghurt and eggs—they had been allowed to leave and now swung off the mountainside road on to the main Tehran road and there ahead was the roadblock.

  ‘That’s weird,’ Erikki said. Colonel Mazardi had said he would meet them here but he was nowhere to be seen, nor was the roadblock manned.

  ‘Police!’ Azadeh said, with a yawn. ‘They’re never where you want them.’

  The road climbed up to the pass. The sky was blue and clear and the tops of the mountains already washed with sunlight. Down here in the valley, it was still dark and chill and damp, the road slippery, snow banked, but this did not worry him as the Range Rover had four-wheel drive and he carried chains. Later, when he came to the base turnoff he passed it by. He knew the base was empty, the 212 safe and waiting for repairs. Before leaving the palace he had tried unsuccessfully to contact his manager, Dayati. But that did not matter. He settled back in his seat, he had full tanks, and six spare five-gallon cans that he had got from Abdollah’s private pump.

  I can get to Tehran easily today, he thought. And back by Wednesday—if I come back. That bastard Rakoczy’s very bad news indeed.

  ‘Would you like some coffee, darling?’ Azadeh asked.

  ‘Thanks. See if you can find the BBC or the VOA on the shortwave.’ Gratefully he accepted the hot coffee from the Thermos, listening to the crackle of static and heterodyning and loud Soviet stations and little else. Iranian stations were still strikebound and closed down, except the ones worked by the military.

  Over the weekend friends, relations, tradesmen, servants had brought rumours and counter-rumours of everything from imminent Soviet invasion to imminent U.S. invasion, from successful military coups in the capital to abject submission of all the generals to Khomeini and Bakhtiar’s resignation.

  ‘Asinine!’ Abdollah Khan had said. He was a corpulent man in his sixties, bearded, with dark eyes and full mouth, bejewelled and richly dressed. ‘Why should Bakhtiar resign? He gains nothing so there’s no reason, yet.’

  ‘And if Khomeini wins?’ Erikki had asked.

  ‘It is the Will of God.’ The Khan was lounging on carpets in the Great Room, Erikki and Azadeh seated in front of him, his armed bodyguard standing behind him. ‘But Khomeini’s victory will be only temporary, if he achieves it. The armed forces will curb him and his mullahs, sooner or later. He’s an old man. Soon he will die, the sooner the better, for though he has done God’s Will and been the instrument to remove the Shah whose time had come, he’s narrow-sighted, as megalomaniacal as the Shah, if not more so. He will surely murder more Iranians than the Shah ever did.’

  ‘But isn’t he a man of God, pious and everything an ayatollah should be?’ Erikki asked warily, not knowing what to expect. ‘Why should Khomeini do that?’

  ‘It’s the habit of tyrants.’ The Khan laughed and took another of the halvah, the Turkish sweets he gorged on.

  ‘And the Shah? What will happen now?’ As much as Erikki disliked the Khan, he was glad for the opportunity to get his opinion. On him depended much of his and Azadeh’s life in Iran and he had no wish to leave.

  ‘As God wants. Mohammed Shah did incredibly well for Iran, like his father before him. But in the last few years he was totally curled up in himself and would listen to no one—not even the Shahbanu, Empress Farah, who was dedicated to him, and wise. If he had any sense he would abdicate at once in favour of his son Reza. The generals need a rallying point, they could train him until he’s ready to take power—don’t forget Iran’s been a monarchy for almost three thousand years, always an absolute ruler, some might say tyrant, with absolute power and removed only by death.’ He had smiled, his lips full and sensuous. ‘Of the Qajar shahs, our legitimate dynasty who ruled for a hundred and fifty years, only one, the last of the line, my cousin, died of natural causes. We are an Oriental people, not Western, who understand violence and torture. Life and death are not judged by your standards.’ His dark eyes had seemed to grow darker. ‘Perhaps it is the Will of God that the Qajars will return—under their rule Iran prospered.’

  That’s not what I heard, Erikki had thought. But he held his peace. It’s not up to me to judge what has been or what would be here.

  All Sunday the BBC and the VOA had been jammed which was not unusual. Radio Moscow was loud and clear as usual, and Radio Free Iran that broadcast from Tbilisi north of the border also loud and clear as usual. Their reports in Iranian and English told of total insurrection against ‘Bakhtiar’s illegal government of the ousted Shah and his American masters, headed by the warmonger and liar President Carter. Today Bakhtiar tried to curry favour with the masses by cancelling a total of thirteen billion dollars of usurious military contracts forced on the country by the deposed Shah: eight billion dollars in the USA, British Centurion tank contracts worth two point three billion, plus two French nuclear reactors, and one from Germany worth another two point seven billion. This news has sent Western leaders into panic and will undoubtedly send capitalist stock markets into a well-deserved crash. . .’

  ‘Excuse me for asking, Father, but will the West crash?’ Azadeh had asked.

  ‘Not this time,’ the Khan had said and Erikki saw his face grow colder. ‘Not unless the Soviets decide this is the time to renege on the eighty billion dollars they owe Western banks—and even some Oriental banks.’ He had laughed sardonically, playing with the string of pearls he wore around his neck. ‘Of course Oriental moneylenders are much cleverer; at least they’re not so greedy. They lend judiciously and require collaterals and believe no one and certainly not in the myth of “Christian charity”.’ It was common knowledge that the Gorgons owned enormous tracts of land in Azerbaijan, good oil land, a large part of Iran Timber, seafront property on the Caspian, much of the bazaar in Tabriz, and most of the merchant banks there.

  Erikki remembered the whispers he had heard about Abdollah Khan when he was trying to get permission to marry Azadeh, about his parsimony and ruthlessness in business: ‘A quick way to Paradise or hell is to owe Abdollah the Cruel one rial, to not pay, pleading poverty, and to stay in Azerbaijan.’

  ‘Father, please may I ask, cancellation of so many contracts will cause havoc, won’t it?’

  ‘No, you may not ask. You’ve asked enough questions for one day. A woman is supposed to hold her tongue and listen—now you can lea
ve.’

  At once she apologised for her error and left obediently. ‘Please excuse me.’

  Erikki got up to leave too, but the Khan stopped him: ‘I have not dismissed you yet. Sit down. Now, why should you fear one Soviet?’

  ‘I don’t—just the system. That man has to be KGB.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just kill him then?’

  ‘It would not have helped, it would have hurt. Us, the base, Iran Timber, Azadeh, perhaps even you. He was sent to me by others. He knows us—knows you.’ Erikki had watched the old man carefully.

  ‘I know lots of them. Russians, Soviet or Tsarist, have always coveted Azerbaijan, but have always been good customers of Azerbaijan—and helped us against the stinking British. I prefer them to British, I understand them.’ His smile thinned even more. ‘It would be easy to remove this Rakoczy.’

  ‘Good, then do it, please.’ Erikki had laughed full-throated. ‘And all of them as well. That would really be doing God’s work.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ the Khan said ill-temperedly. ‘That would be doing Satan’s work. Without the Soviets against them, the Americans and their dogs the British would dominate us and all the world. They’d certainly eat up Iran—under Mohammed Shah they nearly did. Without Soviet Russia, whatever her failings, there’d be no check on America’s foul policies, foul arrogance, foul manners, foul jeans, foul music, foul food and foul democracy, their disgusting attitudes to women, to law and order, their disgusting pornography, naive attitude to diplomacy, and their evil, yes, that’s the correct word, their evil antagonism to Islam.’

  The last thing Erikki wanted was another confrontation. In spite of his resolve, he felt his own rage gathering. ‘We had an agreem—’

  ‘It’s true, by God!’ the Khan shouted at him. ‘It’s true!’

  ‘It’s not, and we had an agreement before your God and my spirits that we’d not discuss politics—either of your world or mine.’