Escape Page 7

  ‘It’s true, admit it!’ Abdollah Khan snarled, his face twisted with rage. One hand went to the ornamental knife at his belt, and at once the guard unslung his machine pistol and covered Erikki. ‘By Allah, you call me a liar in my own house?’ he bellowed.

  Erikki said through his teeth, ‘I only remind you, Highness, by your Allah, what we agreed!’ The dark bloodshot eyes stared at him. He stared back, ready to go for his own knife and kill or be killed, the danger between them very great.

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s also true,’ the Khan muttered, and the fit of rage passed as quickly as it had erupted. He looked at the guard, angrily waved him away. ‘Get out!’

  Now the room was very still. Erikki knew there were other guards nearby and spyholes in the walls. He felt the sweat on his forehead and the touch of his pukoh knife in the centre of his back.

  Abdollah Khan knew the knife was there and that Erikki would use it without hesitation. But the Khan had given him perpetual permission to be armed with it in his presence. Two years ago Erikki had saved his life.

  That was the day Erikki was petitioning him for permission to marry Azadeh and was imperiously turned down: ‘No, by Allah, I want no Infidels in my family. Leave my house! For the last time!’ Erikki had got up from the carpet, sick at heart. At that moment there had been a scuffle outside the door, then shots, the door had burst open and two men, assassins armed with machine guns, had rushed in, others fighting a gun battle in the corridor. The Khan’s bodyguard had killed one, but the other sprayed him with bullets then turned his gun on Abdollah Khan who sat on the carpet in shock. Before the assassin could pull the trigger a second time, he died, Erikki’s knife in his throat. At the same moment Erikki lunged for him, ripped the gun out of his hands and the knife out of his throat as another assassin rushed into the room firing. Erikki had smashed the machine gun into the man’s face, killing him, almost tearing off his head with the strength of his blow, then charged into the corridor berserk. Three attackers and two of the bodyguards were dead or dying. The last of the attackers took to their heels but Erikki cut them both down and raced onward. And only when he had found Azadeh and saw that she was safe did the bloodlust go out of his head and he become calm again.

  Erikki remembered how he had left her and had gone back to the same Great Room. Abdollah Khan still sat on the carpets. ‘Who were those men?’

  ‘Assassins—enemies, like the guards who let them in,’ Abdollah Khan had said malevolently. ‘It was the Will of God you were here to save my life, the Will of God that I am alive. You may marry Azadeh, yes, but because I do not like you, we will both swear before God and your—whatever you worship—not to discuss religion or politics, either of your world or mine, then perhaps I will not have to have you killed.’

  And now the same cold black eyes were staring at him. Abdollah Khan clapped his hands. Instantly the door opened and a servant appeared. ‘Bring coffee!’ The man hurried away. ‘I will drop the subject of your world and go to another we can discuss: my daughter, Azadeh.’

  Erikki became even more on guard, not sure of the extent of her father’s control over her, or his own rights as her husband while he was in Azerbaijan—very much the old man’s fief. If Abdollah Khan really ordered Azadeh back to this house and to divorce him, would she? I think yes, I’m afraid yes—she certainly will never hear a word against him. She even defended his paranoic hatred of America by explaining what had caused it.

  ‘He was ordered there, to university, by his father,’ she had told him. ‘He had a terrible time in America, Erikki, learning the language and trying to get a degree in economics which his father demanded before he was allowed home. My father hated the other students who sneered at him because he couldn’t play their games, because he was heavier than they which in Iran is a sign of wealth but not in America, and was slow at learning. But most of all because of the hazing that he was forced to endure, forced, Erikki—to eat unclean things like pork that are against our religion, to drink beer and wine and spirits that are against our religion, to do unmentionable things and be called unmentionable names. I would be angry too if it had been me. Please be patient with him. Don’t Soviets make a blood film come over your eyes and heart for what they did to your father and mother and country? Be patient with him, I beg you. Hasn’t he agreed to our marriage? Be patient with him.’

  I’ve been very patient, Erikki thought, more patient than with any man, wishing the interview was over. ‘What about my wife, Highness?’ It was custom to call him that and Erikki did so from time to time out of politeness.

  Abdollah Khan smiled a thin smile at him. ‘Naturally my daughter’s future interests me. What is your plan when you go to Tehran?’

  ‘I have no plan. I just think it is wise to get her out of Tabriz for a few days. Rakoczy said they “require” my services. When the KGB say that in Iran or Finland or even America, you’d better clear the decks and prepare for trouble. If they kidnapped her, I would be putty in their hands.’

  ‘They could kidnap her in Tehran much more easily than here, if that is their scheme—you forget this is Azerbaijan’—his lips twisted with contempt—‘not Bakhtiar country.’

  Erikki felt helpless under the scrutiny. ‘I only know that’s what I think is best for her. I said I would guard her with my life, and I will. Until the political future of Iran is settled—by you and other Iranians—I think it’s the wise thing to do.’

  ‘In that case, go,’ her father had said with a suddenness that had almost frightened him. ‘Should you need help send me the code words. . .’ He thought a moment. Then his smile became sardonic: ‘Send me the sentence: “All men are created equal.” That’s another truth, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know, Highness,’ he had said carefully. ‘If it is or if it isn’t, it’s surely the Will of God.’

  Abdollah had laughed abruptly and got up and left him alone in the Great Room and Erikki had felt a chill on his soul, deeply unsettled by the man whose thoughts he could never read.

  ‘Are you cold, Erikki?’ Azadeh asked.

  ‘Oh. No, no, not at all,’ he said, coming out of his reverie, the sound of the engine good as they climbed up the mountain road towards the pass. Now they were just below the crest. There had been little traffic either way. Around the corner they came into sunshine and topped the rise; at once Erikki changed down smoothly and picked up speed as they began the long descent, the road—built at the order of Reza Shah, like the railway—a wonder of engineering with cuts and embankments and bridges and steep parts with no railings on the precipice side, the surface slippery, snowbanked. He changed down again, driving fast but prudently, very glad they had not driven by night. ‘May I have some more coffee?’

  Happily she gave it to him. ‘I’ll be glad to see Tehran. There’s lots of shopping to be done, Sharazad’s there, and I have a list of things for my sisters and some face cream for Stepmother. . .’

  He hardly listened to her, his mind on Rakoczy, Tehran, McIver and the next step.

  The road twisted and curled in its descent. He slowed and drove more cautiously, some traffic behind him. In the lead was a passenger car, typically overloaded, and the driver drove too close, too fast, and with his finger permanently on the horn even when it was clearly impossible to move out of the way. Erikki closed his ears to the impatience that he had never become used to, or to the reckless way Iranians drove, even Azadeh. He rounded the next blind corner, the gradient steepening, and there on the straight, not far ahead, was a heavily laden truck grinding upward with a car overtaking on the wrong side. He braked, hugging the mountainside. At that moment the car behind him accelerated, swerved around him, horn blaring, overtaking blindly, and hurtled down the wrong side of the curving road. The two cars smashed into each other and both careened over the precipice to fall five hundred feet and burst into flames. Erikki swung closer into the side and stopped. The oncoming truck did not stop, just lumbere
d past and continued up the hill as though nothing had happened—so did the other traffic.

  He stood at the edge and looked down into the valley. Burning remains of the cars were spread over the mountainside down six or seven hundred feet, no possibility of survivors, and no chance to get down there without serious climbing gear. When he came back to the car he shook his head unhappily.

  ‘Insha’Allah, my darling,’ Azadeh said calmly. ‘It was the Will of God.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t, it was blatant stupidity.’

  ‘Of course you’re right, Beloved, it certainly was blatant stupidity,’ she said at once in her most calming voice, seeing his anger though not understanding it as she did not understand much that went on in the head of this strange man who was her husband. ‘You’re perfectly right, Erikki. It was blatant stupidity but the Will of God that those drivers’ stupidity caused their deaths and the deaths of those who travelled with them. It was the Will of God or the road would have been clear. You were quite right.’

  ‘Was I?’ he said wearily.

  ‘Oh, yes, of course, Erikki. You were perfectly right.’

  They went on. The villages that lay beside the road or straddled it were poor or very poor with narrow dirt streets, crude huts and houses, high walls, a few drab mosques, street stores, goats and sheep and chickens, and flies not yet the plague they would become in summer. Always refuse in the streets and in the joub—the ditches—and the inevitable scavenging packs of scabrous despised dogs that frequently were rabid. But snow made the landscape and the mountains picturesque, and the day continued to be good though cold with blue skies and cumulus building.

  Inside the Range Rover it was warm and comfortable. Azadeh wore padded, modern ski gear and a cashmere sweater underneath, matching blue, and short boots. Now she took off her jacket and her neat woollen ski cap, and her full-flowing, naturally wavy dark hair fell to her shoulders. Near noon they stopped for a picnic lunch beside a mountain stream. In the early afternoon they drove through orchards of apple, pear and cherry trees, now bleak and leafless and naked in the landscape, then came to the outskirts of Qazvin, a town of perhaps a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants and many mosques.

  ‘How many mosques are there in all Iran, Azadeh?’ he asked.

  ‘Once I was told twenty thousand,’ she answered sleepily, opening her eyes and peering ahead. ‘Ah, Qazvin! You’ve made good time, Erikki.’ A yawn swamped her and she settled more comfortably and went back into half sleep. ‘There’re twenty thousand mosques and fifty thousand mullahs, so they say. At this rate we’ll be in Tehran in a couple of hours. . .’

  He smiled as her words petered out. He was feeling more secure now, glad that the back of the journey had been broken. The other side of Qazvin the road was good all the way to Tehran. In Tehran, Abdollah Khan owned many houses and apartments, most of them rented to foreigners. A few he kept for himself and his family, and he had said to Erikki that, this time, because of the troubles, they could stay in an apartment not far from McIver.

  ‘Thanks, thanks very much,’ Erikki had said and later Azadeh had said, ‘I wonder why he was so kind. It’s. . . it’s not like him. He hates you and hates me, whatever I try to do to please him.’

  ‘He doesn’t hate you, Azadeh.’

  ‘I apologise for disagreeing with you, but he does. I tell you again, my darling, it was my eldest sister, Najoud, who really poisoned him against me, and against my brother. She and her rotten husband. Don’t forget my mother was Father’s second wife and almost half Najoud’s mother’s age and twice as pretty and though my mother died when I was seven, Najoud still keeps up the poison—of course not to our face, she’s much more clever than that. Erikki, you can never know how subtle and secretive and powerful Iranian ladies can be, or how vengeful behind their oh so sweet exterior. Najoud’s worse than the snake in the Garden of Eden! She’s the cause of all the enmity.’ Her lovely blue-green eyes filled with tears. ‘When I was little, my father truly loved us, my brother Hakim and me, and we were his favourites. He spent more time with us in our house than in the palace. Then, when Mother died, we went to live in the palace but none of my half brothers and sisters really liked us. When we went into the palace, everything changed, Erikki. It was Najoud.’

  ‘Azadeh, you tear yourself apart with this hatred—you suffer, not her. Forget her. She’s got no power over you now and I tell you again: you’ve no proof.’

  ‘I don’t need proof. I know. And I’ll never forget.’

  Erikki had left it there. There was no point in arguing, no point in rehashing what had been the source of much violence and many tears. Better it’s in the open than buried, better to let her rave from time to time.

  Ahead now the road left the fields and entered Qazvin, a city like most every other Iranian city, noisy, cramped, dirty, polluted and traffic-jammed. Beside the road were the joub that skirted most roads in Iran. Here the ditches were three feet deep, in parts concreted, with slush and ice and a little water trickling down them. Trees grew out of them, townsfolk washed their clothes in them, sometimes used them as a source of drinking water, or as a sewer. Beyond the ditches the walls began. Walls that hid houses or gardens, big or small, rich or eyesores. Usually the town and city houses were two floors, drab and boxlike, some brick, adobe, some plastered, and almost all of them hidden. Most had dirt floors, a few had running water, electricity, and some sanitation.

  Traffic built up with startling suddenness. Bicycles, motorcycles, buses, lorries, cars of all sizes and makes and ages from ancient to very old, almost all dented and patched, some highly decorated with different coloured paints and small lights to suit the owners’ fancy. Erikki had driven this way many times over the last few years and he knew the bottlenecks that could happen. But there was no other way, no detour around the city though one had been planned for years. He smiled scornfully, trying to shut his ears to the noise, and thought, There’ll never be a detour, the Qazvinis couldn’t stand the quiet. Qazvinis and Rashtians—people from Rasht on the Caspian—were the butts of many Iranian jokes.

  He skirted a burned-out wreck, then put in a cassette of Beethoven and turned the volume up to soothe the noise away. But it didn’t help much.

  This traffic’s worse than usual! Where are the police?’ Azadeh said, wide awake now. ‘Are you thirsty?’

  ‘No, no thanks.’ He glanced across at her, the sweater and tumbling hair enhancing her. He grinned. ‘But I’m hungry—hungry for you!’

  She laughed and took his arm. ‘I’m not hungry—just ravenous!’

  ‘Good.’ They were content together.

  As usual the road surface was bad. Here and there it was torn up—partially because of wear, partially because of never-ending repairs and road works though these rarely were signposted or had safety barriers. He skirted a deep hole then eased past another wreck that had been shoved carelessly into the side. As he did so a crumpled truck came from the other direction, its horn blaring angrily. It was brightly decorated, the bumpers tied up with wire, the cab open and glassless, a piece of cloth the tank cap. On the flatbed was brushwood, piled high, with three passengers hanging on precariously. The driver was huddled up and wrapped in a ragged sheepskin coat. Two other men were beside him. As Erikki passed he was surprised to see them glaring at him. A few yards further on a battered, overladen bus lumbered towards him. With great care he went closer to the joub, hugging the side to give the bus room, his wheels on the rim, and stopped. Again he saw the driver and all the passengers stare at him as they passed, women in their chadors, young men, bearded and clothed heavily against the cold. One of them shook his fist at him. Another shouted a curse.

  We’ve never had any trouble before, Erikki thought uneasily. Everywhere he looked were the same angry glances. From the street and from the vehicles. He had to go very slowly because of the swarms of rogue motorcycles, bicycles, among the cars, buses and trucks in single lanes t
hat fought for space—obedient to no traffic laws other than those which pleased the individual—and now a flock of sheep poured out of a side street to clutter the road, the motorists screaming abuse at the herdsmen, the herdsmen screaming abuse back and everyone angry and impatient, horns blaring.

  ‘Damned traffic! Stupid sheep!’ Azadeh said impatiently, wide awake now. ‘Sound your horn, Erikki!’

  ‘Be patient, go back to sleep. There’s no way I can overtake anyone,’ he shouted over the tumult, conscious of the unfriendliness that surrounded them. ‘Be patient!’

  Another three hundred yards took half an hour, other traffic coming from both sides to join the stream that got slower and slower. Street vendors and pedestrians and refuse. Now he was inching along behind a bus that took up most of the roadway, almost scraping cars the other side, most times with one wheel half over the lip of the joub. Motorcyclists shoved past carelessly, banging the sides of the Range Rover and other vehicles, cursing each other and everyone else, pushing and kicking the sheep out of the way, stampeding them. From behind, a small car nudged him, then the driver jammed his hand on his horn in a paroxysm of rage that sent a sudden shaft of anger into Erikki’s head. Close your ears, he ordered himself. Be calm! There’s nothing you can do! Be calm!

  But he found it increasingly difficult. After half an hour the sheep turned off into an alley, and traffic picked up a little. Then around the next corner the whole roadway was dug up and an unmarked ten-foot ditch—some six feet deep and half filled with water—barred the way. A group of insolent workmen squatted nearby, hurling back abuse. And obscene gestures.

  It was impossible to go forward or back, so all traffic had to detour into a narrow side street, the bus ahead not making the turn, having to stop and reverse to more screams of rage and more tumult, and when Erikki backed to give it room, a battered blue car behind him swerved around him on the opposite side of the road into the small opening ahead and forced the oncoming car to brake suddenly and skid. One of its wheels sank into the joub and the whole car tipped dangerously. Now traffic was totally snarled.