Card Sharks

name.'

'Are you an ace?' Damsel asked, eyeing his biceps.

'No. I was told that you would make me one.'

She got a little vee between her brows. I took it he did not light her Bunsen. Well, they could hash it out themselves. I got busy getting my grumbling troops in motion loading our traps in the truck.

The neighborhood Komiteh was trying to do its Ayatollah proud. They had a clapped-out little Paykan sedan pulled across the street, and fires going in oil drums either side of it — for dramatic effect no doubt, but also for warmth; Tehran is high desert, nestled right up against the Elburz Mountains. It gets cold at night in April.

'What do I do, boss?' Darius asked out the Chevy's open widow. He had an edge of nerves to his voice.

'Drive right up,' I said. 'I'll Handle it.'

Tehran had that dark hunkered-down look of a city in a war zone. According to our intelligence that was mainly beause the zanies had purged the people who knew how to run the power grid, but occasionally you heard a pop or a little rainsquall ripple of gunfire, off in the distance. Periodically you got the boom of something bigger, bouncing around along the boxy modern buildings and blue mosque domes.

We'd gotten into central Tehran by freeway, getting waved through a couple of Pasdaran checkpoints without a pause. Now we were working our way down on the Embassy from the north. The Embassy itself was in a fairly non-residential district, but unfortunately we had to pass through a few neighborhoods on the way. That meant exposing ourselves to the mercies of officious Soviet-style block committees.

Or exposing them to ours; that was the kind of role we'd picked to play.

As the truck's brakes squealed us to a stop I gave my crew the once-over. Chung was wound tight as a bull- fiddle, just vibrating. Damsel sat right up next to him, her highly Occidental hair and face obscured by the folds of a kaffiyeh, her highly female figure muffled by bulky paramilitary drag. During the day she'd been showing more and more attention to the sergeant, which had caused Billy and Ackroyd to throw out their chests and strut around her even more.

Right now Ackroyd was flexing the forefinger of his right hand as if to warm it up. His 'gun,' he called it; it was the crutch he needed to make his projecting-teleport trick work. His real gun was propped against the side of the truck, getting its furniture all banged up. He had no interest in firearms, claiming that his ace gave him all the firepower he needed. I had not managed to pound into his head that the piece was necessary to sustain our appearance.

He wasn't a stupid man, Jay wasn't. Not by any means. He just didn't see anything past his preconceptions. I wouldn't think that would be a big help as an investigator, but military analysis types are the same way. Go figure.

I couldn't see Ray's mouth for his headdress, but his eyes smiled at me, mean and green. He cracked his knuckles. I gave him a little nod. Yeah, boy, we might need to see how much of a Wolverine you are.

The Librarian was hastily tucking his copy of Hardy under his fanny. He still had that idiot composure. No worries about him breaking here, anyway.

Lady Black was in the front seat with Darius, huddled under a black chador head- covering that went quite naturally with the rest of her getup; she looked like every other woman in Iran who didn't want to get her face slashed by the fundamentalists. The veil was a major help. There was no way we could explain wandering the streets of Tehran with a black woman. She must have been sweltering, but she didn't complain once the whole trip.

I jumped out of the pickup bed, ostentatiously readjusted the Tokagypt in my belt, and swaggered forward with my finest terrorist bravado. Which was fine indeed, since by that time in my long, bad life I was a pretty experienced terrorist.

There were a half dozen of them in their baggy Western-castoff style clothes, a couple of wizened old codgers, couple middle-aged men with important bellies, an adolescent with a cocked eye and an eight-year-old with a mock Kalashnikov carved out of wood. A cheap portable radio was scratching out Vivaldi, of all things. The allegro non molto from Concerto Number Four, 'Winter,' from The Four Seasons. Western classical music was the only music the mullahs would let the government radio play.

One of the middle-agers drew his gut up into himself and said, 'You must show papers.'

''Papers?'' I repeated in atrociously-accented Farsi — which, fortuitously, was the only kind of Farsi I spoke. 'Papers? What kind of nonsense is this? Papers? We are strugglers in your Revolution, you mutes who cannot speak the language of the Prophet!'

He blinked at me. I got right in front of him — today we'd call it in his face. 'Speaking of papers, you pustulent dog, can you read your Q'ran in the True Tongue?'

His fleshy lips worked. He swallowed visibly. Gotcha. Pious Muslims are supposed to be able to read the Book in Arabic. Persians are notoriously lax about this.

'You filth!' I screamed, not omitting to give him a spray of spittle. 'Just as I suspected! You are not Muslims at all! You're filthy Jew spies! I wouldn't be surprised if you were jokers, too! Pull up your shirt, so that we may gaze upon the abomination of your deformities!'

He actually started to do that. Then he stopped himself. 'Please, jenabe agha, honored lord, we are good Muslims, we did not realize — '

'Then get out of our path, you pigs, you twisted menstrual rags!'

The teenybopper popped the clutch trying to get the Paykan out of our way and knocked over one of the oil drums. Flaming junk went everywhere, igniting the hem of one old codger's robe. He started hopping around and squalling. I was rather hoping to see him go up, but the others knocked him to the ground and were beating out the flames when we pulled around the corner and out of sight.

''Abomination of your deformities?'' Darius said out the driver's window. 'Your command of our language is truly … formidable, Major.'

I grinned at him and got my headcloth back in front of my face. Tanned as I was, I was still a little pale to pass for an Arab indefinitely.

'That's all it took?' Ackroyd said. 'You just yelled at them? Jesus, we never had to bother with all this ace-commando crap. We could have just sent half a dozen New York cabbies. They'd knock this town on its kiester.'

'That's why we're going in disguised as Palestinians,' I said.

'But the Palestinians observe the Treaty of Jerusalem,' the Librarian whispered. 'What are we doing here with all these guns?'

'The Palestinian government observes the Treaty,' I said, 'mostly.'

'Lot of the Palestinians don't much care for that, Harvey,' Billy Ray said. 'They still wanna push Israel into the sea. So they turn into evil, wicked, mean and nasty terrorists.'

I nodded. Ray was not just a humming bundle of muscle and fury after all. 'We're radicals, terrorists, here as allies of the Nur, who's a great buddy to the Ayatollah. We're an arrogant lot of bullies; we have a modus vivendi with Pasdaran. Anybody else who gets in our way, we shoot — and the Palos will do that.'

'You mean you treated those boys back there with grandmotherly kindness?' Chung asked, black eyes glittering. He was the only one of us not wearing a kaffiyeh.

I nodded. He gave a too-shrill yip of laughter.

Damsel huddled closer to him. 'I'm scared,' she said.

Ackroyd caught Billy Ray's eye. He rolled his. Ray gave him a tight grin and a tighter nod. I was glad my face-cloth hid my own expression.

Chung glanced back. 'I wonder what they made of me.'

'Probably took you for a local. That was the plan, anyway. You and Darius are the only ones who'll pass.'