Whirlwind Read online

  “If you’re forced out, we’ll have to evacuate. You’ll have to ferry us to Shiraz. We’ve company HQ there; they can put us up or fly us out until we’re allowed back. Madonna, there would be eleven bases to close, double shifts.”

  “We could use both 212s, no sweat.”

  “Plenty of sweat, Tom.” Sera was very worried, “There’s no way to close down and get the men out in forty-eight hours. No way at all.”

  “Maybe it won’t be necessary. Let’s hope, huh?” Lochart got up.

  “If we have to evacuate, most of the crew’ll cheer—we haven’t had a replacement in weeks and they’re all overdue leave.” Sera got up and glanced out of the window. They could just see the afternoon sun glinting off the crest over Rig Bellissima. “You heard what a fine job Scot did, with Pietro?”

  “Yes. The lads call him Bomber Pietro now. Sorry about Mario Guineppa.”

  “Che sarà, sarà! Doctors’re all stronzi—he had a medical last month or so. It was perfect. Stronzo!” The Italian looked at him keenly. “What’s up, Tom?”

  “Nothing.”

  “How was Tehran?”

  “Not good.”

  “Did Scot tell you anything I don’t know?”

  “A reason for the komiteh’s order? No. No, he didn’t. Maybe I can get something out of Nitchak Khan.” Lochart shook hands and went off. Once he was airborne, he thought of the story Scot had told him, Jean-Luc, and Jesper about what happened in the village after the komiteh had sentenced Nitchak Khan to death:

  “The moment they marched Nitchak Khan out of the schoolhouse and I was alone, I slipped out the back window and sneaked into the forest as quietly as I could. A couple of minutes later I heard a lot of firing and rushed back to base as fast as possible—must admit I was scared fartless. It took me quite a time, bloody snow’s in ten-foot drifts in places. Not long after I got back old Nitchak Khan and the mullah and some of the villagers came up here—my God, I was so relieved! I thought for certain Nitchak and the mullah’d been shot and I guess they were just as relieved because they stared at me pop-eyed, thinking me dead too.”

  “Why?” Tom had asked.

  “Nitchak said that just before the komiteh left they fired the schoolhouse, supposedly with me still in it. He said they had ordered all foreigners out of the Zagros. Everyone—particularly us with our choppers, out by tomorrow night.”

  Lochart was watching the land below, the base not far off, the village nearby. The afternoon sun was sliding off it, going behind the mountains. There was plenty of daylight left but no longer the sun to warm them. Just before he had left with Jesper for Rig Rosa and no one was near, Scot had told him really what happened. “I saw it all, Tom. I didn’t run off when I said I did. I haven’t dared tell anyone but I was watching out of the schoolhouse window, frightened to bloody death, and saw it all. Everything happened so fast. My God, you should’ve seen old Nitchak’s wife with the rifle, talk about a tigress. And tough! She shot a Green Band in the belly, then left him to scream a bit and…banggg! stopped it. I’ll bet she was the one who shot the first bastard, the leader, whoever the hell he was. Never seen such a woman, never’d believe she could be like that.”

  “What about Nasiri?”

  “Nasiri never had a chance. He just ran off and they shot him. I’m sure they shot him just because he was a witness and not a villager. That got my wits working, and my legs, and I sneaked out of the window like I said, and when Nitchak came up here I pretended to believe his story. But I swear to God, Tom, all those komiteh bastards were dead before I left the village, so Nitchak must’ve ordered the schoolhouse burned.”

  “Nitchak Khan wouldn’t do that, not with you in it. Someone must’ve seen you sneak out.”

  “I hope to Christ you’re wrong because then I’m a living threat to the village—the only witness.”

  Lochart landed and walked down to the village. He went alone. Nitchak Khan and the mullah were waiting for him in the coffeehouse as arranged. And many villagers, no women. The coffeehouse was the meeting house, a one-room hut made from logs and mud wattle with a sloping roof and crude chimney, the rafters black from years of the wood fire’s smoke. Rough carpets to sit on.

  “Salaam, Kalandar, peace be upon you,” Lochart said, using the honorific title to imply that Nitchak Khan was also leader of the base.

  “Peace be upon you, Kalandar of the Flying Men,” the old man said politely. Lochart heard the slap and saw there was none of the friendliness of olden times within the eyes. “Please sit here in comfort. Your journey was beneficent?”

  “As God wants. I missed my home here in the Zagros, and my friends of the Zagros. You are blessed by God, Kalandar.” Lochart sat on the uncomfortable carpet and exchanged the interminable pleasantries, waiting for Nitchak Khan to allow him to come to the point. The room was claustrophobic and smelled rancid, the air heavy with body odors and goat smells and sheep smells. The other men watched silently.

  “What brings Your Excellency to our village?” Nitchak Khan said and a current of expectancy went through the closeness.

  “I was shocked to hear that strangers came to our village and had the impertinence to lay evil hands on you.”

  “As God wants.” Nitchak’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Strangers came to our village but they went away leaving our village as it has always been. Your camp, unfortunately, is not to be the same.”

  “But why, Kalandar? We have been good for the village and employ many of your peo—”

  “It is not for me to question our government or these komitehs of our government or our Commander of the People, the Ayatollah himself. The young flier saw and heard, so there is nothing more to be said.”

  Lochart perceived the trap. “The young flier heard and saw only what happened in the schoolhouse, Kalandar. I ask that we, as old but known guests…” he chose the word carefully, “that we be allowed time to seek a change in a ruling that appears to go against the interests of the Zagros.”

  “The Zagros extends a thousand miles and crosses Kash’kai lands into Bakhtiari and the lands of a hundred other tribes. Yazdek is Yazdek,” Nitchak rasped, then quoted from the Rubáiyát, “‘Resign your body to fate and put up with pain,/Because what the Pen has written for you,/It will not unwrite.’”

  “True, but did not Omar Khayyám also write: ‘The good and evil that are in man’s heart,/The joy and sorrow that are our fortune and destiny,/Do not impugn them to the wheel of heaven because, in the light of reason,/The wheel is a thousand times more helpless than you.’”

  A rustle went through the villagers. The old mullah nodded, pleased, and said nothing. Nitchak Khan’s eyes smiled though his mouth did not and Lochart knew the meeting would be better now. He blessed Sharazad who had opened his ears and eyes and senses to the Rubáiyát that, in Farsi, was beyond elegance.

  Everyone waited. Nitchak Khan scratched his beard, reached into his pocket, and found a pack of cigarettes. Lochart casually brought out the pishkesh, a gold-plated Dunhill lighter he had bought from Effer Jordon for just this purpose: “Effer, I’ll goddamn kill you if it doesn’t work first time!” He caressed the flint. The wick ignited and he breathed again. His hand was very steady as he leaned forward and held the light for the old man.

  Nitchak Khan hesitated, then puffed and took a deep drag of smoke. “Thank you.” His eyes narrowed as Lochart put the lighter on the carpet in front of him.

  “Perhaps you would accept this gift from all of us in our camp who are grateful for your guidance and protection. After all, didn’t you break down the gates and take possession of the base in the name of the People? Didn’t you win the toboggan race, beating the best of us, through the quality of your courage?”

  Another rustle in the room, everyone waited filled with delight as the contest stiffened, though all knew the Infidel had said only what was true. The silence grew, then the Khan reached over and picked up the lighter and looked at it closely. His gnarled thumb clicked up the lid as he had seen others
in the camp do. With hardly any motion it lit the very first time and everyone was as pleased as he was with the quality of the pishkesh.

  “What guidance does His Excellency need?”

  “Nothing in particular, not really, Excellency Kalandar,” Lochart said deprecatingly, continuing the game according to ancient custom.

  “But there must be something that might make His Excellency’s lot better?” The old man stubbed his cigarette into the earth.

  At length Lochart allowed himself to be persuaded. “Well, since Your Excellency has the magnanimity to ask, if Your Excellency would intercede for us with the komiteh to give us a little more time, I would be very grateful. Your Excellency, who knows these mountains like the inside of his own eating bowl, knows we cannot obey the orders of strangers who obviously don’t know we cannot clear the rigs of personnel, nor safeguard the rigs—the Zagros property of the illustrious Yazdek branch of the Kash’kai—nor take away our machines and spares by tomorrow sunset.”

  “True, strangers know nothing,” Nitchak Khan said agreeably. Yes, he thought, strangers know nothing and those sons of dogs who dared to try to implant their filthy strangers’ ways were quickly punished by God. “Perhaps the komiteh would grant an extra day.”

  “That would be more than I would dare ask. But, Kalandar, it would hardly be enough to show them how little they know about your Zagros. Perhaps they need to be taught a lesson. They should be told at least two weeks—after all, you are kalandar of Yazdek and of all eleven rigs and the whole Zagros knows of Nitchak Khan.”

  Nitchak Khan was very proud and so were the villagers, pleasantly swept along with the Infidel’s logic. He took out his cigarettes and his lighter. It lit the first time. “Two weeks,” he said and everyone was very satisfied, including Lochart. Then he added, to give himself time to consider if two weeks was too long, “I will send a messenger and ask for two weeks.”

  Lochart got up and thanked the Khan profusely. Two weeks would give McIver time. Outside, the air tasted like wine and he filled his lungs gratefully, pleased with the way he had handled the delicate negotiation. “Salaam, Nitchak Khan, peace be upon you.”

  “And upon you.”

  Across the square was the mosque, and beside it the ruined schoolhouse. The other side of the mosque was Nitchak Khan’s two-storied house and, at the door, his wife and two of his children with some other village women also colorfully dressed.

  “Why was the schoolhouse burned, Kalandar?”

  “One of the komiteh was heard to say, ‘Thus should perish everything foreign. Thus will perish the base and all that it contains—we need no foreigners here, want no foreigners here.’”

  Lochart was saddened. That’s what most of you believe, if not all of you, he thought. And yet lots of us try to be part of Iran, speak the language, want to be accepted but never will be. Then why do we stay, why do we try? Perhaps for the same reason Alexander the Great stayed, why he and ten thousand of his officers married Iranian women in one vast ceremony—because there’s a magic to them and to Iran that is indefinable, totally obsessive, that consumes as I am consumed.

  A burst of laughter came from the women surrounding Nitchak Khan’s wife at something she had said.

  “It’s better when wives are happy, eh? That’s God’s gift to men, eh?” the Khan said jovially, and Lochart nodded, thinking how fantastically lucky Nitchak Khan had been and what a gift of God his wife was—like Sharazad was to him and, thinking of her, once more the horror of last night welled up, his terror of almost losing her, her madness and unhappiness, then hitting her and seeing the bruises when all he wanted was her happiness in this world and the next, if there was a next.

  “And lucky for me, God made her such a fine shot, eh?”

  “Yes,” Lochart said before he could stop himself. His stomach heaved and he cursed himself for letting his attention wander. He saw the shrewd eyes watching him and added hastily, “Shot? Your wife’s a fine shot? Please excuse me, Excellency, I didn’t hear you clearly. You mean with a rifle?”

  The old man said nothing, just studied him, then nodded thoughtfully. Lochart kept his gaze steady and looked back across the square, wondering if it had been a deliberate trap. “I’ve heard that many Kash’kai women can use a rifle. It would seem that, er, that God has blessed you in many ways, Kalandar.”

  After a moment Nitchak Khan said, “I will send word to you tomorrow, how much time the komiteh agrees. Peace be upon you.”

  Going back to the base Lochart asked himself, Was it a trap I fell into? If the remark was involuntary, made from pride in her, then perhaps, perhaps we’re safe and Scot’s safe. In any event we’ve time—perhaps we have, but perhaps Scot hasn’t.

  The sun had gone from this part of the plateau and the temperature had quickly fallen below freezing again. The cold helped to clear his head but did not eliminate his anxiety or overcome his weariness.

  A week, two weeks, or a few days, you’ve not much time, he thought. In Tehran, McIver had told him about getting export licenses for three 212s to go to Al Shargaz “for repairs.” “Tom, I’ll send one of yours, one from here, and one from Kowiss—thence to Nigeria, but for God’s sake keep that part to yourself. Here’re the exit papers dated for Wednesday next. I think you should go yourself, and get out while you can. You get out and stay at Al Shargaz—there’re plenty of pilots there to take the 212 onwards.”

  Mac just doesn’t understand, he thought. He came up out of the trees and saw the base, Scot and Jean-Luc waiting for him beside a 212.

  I’ll send Scot on the ferry whatever happens, Lochart thought, and having made the decision, some of his concern left him. The main decision’s do we start the evacuation or not? To decide that, you have to decide how far to trust Nitchak Khan. Not very far at all.

  AT INNER INTELLIGENCE HQ: 6:42 P.M. It was barely twenty-three hours since Rakoczy had been captured, but he was already broken and babbling the third level—the truth. The first two levels were cover stories of partial truths rehearsed and rerehearsed by all career agents until they were deeply embedded into the subconscious in the hope that these partial truths would deflect questioners from probing deeper, or make them believe they already had all the truth. Unfortunately for Rakoczy, his interrogators were expert and anxious to probe ever deeper. Their problem was to keep the torment from killing him first. His problem was how to die quickly.

  When he had been caught yesterday evening, he had at once tried to get his teeth into the point of his collar where the poison vial was sewn—a trained reflex action. But his captors had forestalled him, held his head backward while they chloroformed him, then carefully stripped him, probed his mouth for a false tooth of poison and his anus for a capsule.

  He had expected beating and psychedelic drugs: “If they use those on you, Captain Mzytryk, you’re finished,” his teachers had said. “Nothing much to do but to try to die before giving secrets away. Better to die before they break you. Never forget we’ll avenge you. Our reach can span fifty years and we’ll get those who betrayed you.”

  But he had not expected the level of agony to which they had taken him so fast, or the unspeakable things they had done to him, electrodes inside him, in his nose mouth stomach rectum, on his testicles and eyeballs—with drug injections to put him to sleep, to wake him up, minutes only between sleep wake sleep wake, disoriented, upside down, inside out.

  “For Christ’s sake, Hashemi,” Robert Armstrong had said, sickened, long long ago in the beginning, “why don’t you just give him the truth drugs, you’ve got them, no need for all this shit.”

  Colonel Hashemi Fazir had shrugged. “A little cruelty is good for the soul. By Allah, you’ve seen the files, you’ve seen what the KGB’s done to some of our citizens who weren’t even spies.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “We need his information quickly, by God. We need to reach the third level you’re always harping about. I’ve no time for your twisted ethics, Robert. If you don’t wan
t to stay, leave.”

  Armstrong had stayed. He had muffled his ears against the screams, loathing the brutality. No need for that, not nowadays, he had said to himself, knowing he would have died long since.

  He watched the two men through the one-sided mirror as they worked Rakoczy over again in the small, well-equipped chamber, sorry for him in an oblique way—after all, Rakoczy was a professional like him, a brave man who had held out against them extraordinarily.

  Abruptly the screams stopped and Rakoczy was again inert. Hashemi spoke into the mike that fed into the earphones of the man below. “Is he dead? I told you stupid sons of dogs to be careful!”

  One of the two men was a doctor. The headset he wore cut out all sound except instructions from the interrogators. Irritably he lifted Rakoczy’s eyelids and peered at his eyes, then, with his stethoscope, listened to his heartbeat.

  “He’s alive, Colonel. He’s…there’s still a way to go yet.”

  “Give him five minutes, then wake him up. And don’t kill him until I say so.” Angrily, Hashemi clicked off the mike and cursed the man. “Don’t want him dead when we’re so close to cleaning him out.” He glanced at Armstrong, eyes glittering. “He’s the best we’ve ever had, ever, eh? By God, Robert, he’s a gold mine.”

  Rakoczy had babbled out his two covers long since and then his real name, KGB number, where he was educated, born, married, lived, his known superiors in Tbilisi, their involvement in Iran, the Tudeh, the mujhadin, how and where they supported the Kurdish independence movement, who his contacts were.

  “Who’s the top KGB Azerbaijani?”

  “I…no more please…pleasestoppppp it’s Abdollah Khan of Tabriz…him, only him of importance and he…he was…is to to to be the first President when Azer… Azerbaijan be…becomes independent but now he’s too big and inde…independent so…so now he’s a Section 16/a…”