“Excuse me a moment…”
They met at the gate, Green Bands watching curiously. “Tom! Wie geht’s? How are you? What the hell’re you doing here? Why didn’t you tell us you were coming? How’s Zagros and JeanLuc?” He was so happy he did not notice Lochart’s fatigue, or the state of his clothes - dusty, torn, and travel-stained.
“Lot to tell, Rudi,” Lochart said. “Lot to tell, but I’m bushed. I badly need some tea… and some sleep. Okay?”
“Of course.” Rudi beamed at him. “Of course. Come on, and I’ll open my last, secret bottle of whisky I even pretend to myself I haven’t got and we’ll h - ” All at once he noticed the state of his friend and his smile left him. “What the hell’s happened to you? You look like you’ve been dragged through a bush backward.” He saw Lochart glance imperceptibly at the guards who stood nearby, listening.
“Nothing, Rudi, nothing at all. First a wash, eh?” he said. “Sure - yes, of course. You, er, you can use my trailer.” Very perturbed he walked alongside Lochart, heading into the airport. He had never seen him so old and so slow. He looks shaken up, almost - almost as though he’s had an emergency and pranged badly…
Down by the hangar he saw Yemeni peering at them out of the office windows. Fowler Joines and the other mechanic had stopped work and were beginning to stroll over. Then, down at the far end of the encampment, he saw Hushang come out onto the step of his trailer and Rudi’s head seemed to explode. “Oh, Christ,” he gasped. “Not HBC?”
Lochart jerked to a stop, all color out of his face. “How the hell you know about her?”
“But he said HBC was plastered - blown out of the skies! How’d you get out? How?”
“Plastered?” Lochart was in shock. “Jesus, who - who said that?” Reflexes helped Rudi, and without being obvious he turned his back on Hushang. “The Iranian officer in the doorway - don’t look, for Christ’s sake - he flew the intercept, F14 - he blew her out of the sky!” He put a glassy smile on his face, grabbed Lochart by the arm, and again trying not to be obvious, steered him toward the nearest trailer. “You can bed down in Jon Tyrer’s place,” he said with forced joviality, and the moment he had closed the door behind them, he whispered in a rush, “Hushang said he shot down HBC near the Iraqi border at sunset yesterday! Totaled her. How’d you get out? Who was aboard? Quick, tell me what happened. Quick!”
“I - I didn’t fly the last leg, I wasn’t in her,” Lochart said, trying to get his mind working and also keeping his voice down, for the walls of the trailer were very thin. “They left me at Dez Dam. I backpac - ” “Dez Dam? What the hell you doing there? Who left you?”
Lochart hesitated. Everything was happening so fast. “I don’t know if I should… should say beca - ”
“For Christ’s sake, they’re onto HBC, we’ve got to do something fast. Who was flying her, who was aboard?”
“All Iranians evacuating Iran - all air force from Isfahan - General Seladi, eight colonels and majors from Isfahan - I don’t know their names - and General Valik, his wife and…” Lochart could hardly bring himself to say it, “and his two children.”
Rudi was appalled. He had heard about Annoush and the two kids and he had met Valik several times. “That’s terrible, terrible. What the hell’m I going to say?”
“What? About what?”
The words tumbled out, “Major Qazani and Hushang, they arrived barely half an hour ago - the major’s just gone but I’ve been ordered to find out if HBC’s S-G, where she was based, and who was aboard. I’ve been ordered to call Kowiss and find out and Hushang’s going to be listening in and he’s no fool, no fool, and he was sure he saw the S-G decal before he blew her to pieces. Kowiss‘11 have to say she was our bird, and they’ll call Tehran and that’s the end.”
Lochart sat on one of the built-in bunks. Numb. “I warned them - I warned them to wait for nightfall! What the hell am I going to do?” “Run for it. Maybe y - ” A knock on the door and they froze. “Skipper, it’s me, Fowler. I brought you some tea, thought Tom could use some.”
“Thanks, just a moment, Fowler,” he said, then dropped his voice. “Tom, what’s your story - do you have one?”
“Best I could do was I’m just coming back from a hiking holiday in Luristan, south of Kermanshah. I got caught in a village by a snowfall for about a week and eventually just hiked out.”
“That’s good. Where’s your base?”
Lochart shrugged. “Zagros.”
“Good. Anyone ask for your ID yet?”
“Yes. The ticket seller at Ahwaz and some Green Bands:”
“Scheisse!” Rudi bleakly opened the door.
Fowler Joines brought the tea tray in. “How you doing, Tom?” he said with his toothless beam.
“Good to see you, Fowler. Still cursing?”
“Not as bad as Effer Jordon. How is my old mate?”
Tiredness enveloped Lochart and he leaned back against the wall. Zagros and Effer Jordon, Rodrigues, JeanLuc, Scot Gavallan, and the others seemed so far away. “Still wearing his hat,” he said with a great effort, accepted the tea gratefully, and swallowed it. Hot, thick, heavy, with sweet condensed milk - the greatest pick- me-up in the world. What did Rudi say? Run for it? I can’t, he thought as sleep took him. Not without Sharazad… Rudi finished telling Fowler Lochart’s cover story. “Spread the word.” The mechanic blinked. “A hiking holiday? Tom Lochart? On his bleeding tod? With you know who in bleeding Tehran? Are you looped, Rudi, old cock?” Rudi looked at him.
“Just as you say, old sport.” Fowler turned to talk to Lochart but he was already asleep, his face sagged with exhaustion. “Cor! He’s…” His shrewd blue eyes, set deep in the gnarled face, looked back at Rudi. “I’ll spread the word like it was bleeding Genesis itself. “He left.
Just before the door closed Rudi caught a glimpse of Hushang waiting by the trailer and he was sorry he had left him alone so long. He glanced at Lochart. Poor old Tom. What the hell was he doing in Isfahan? God in heaven what a mess! What the hell do I do now? Carefully he took the cup out of Lochart’s hands, but the Canadian awoke startled.
For a moment Lochart did not know whether he was awake or in dream. His heart was pounding, he had a blinding headache, and he was back at the dam at the water’s edge, Rudi standing against the light just like Ali, Lochart not knowing whether to dive at him or risk the water, wanting to shout, Don’t shoot don’t shoot…
“Christ, I thought you were Ali,” he gasped. “Sorry, I’m all right now. No sweat.”
“Ali?”
“The pilot, HBC’s pilot, Ali Abbasi, he was going to kill me.” Half asleep Lochart told him what had happened. Then he noticed Rudi had gone chalky. “What’s the matter?”
Rudi jerked his thumb outside. “That’s his brother - Hushang Abbasi - he’s the one who totaled HBC….”
Chapter 29
TEHRAN: 4:17 P.M. Both men were staring anxiously at the telex machine in the S-G penthouse office. “Come on for God’s sake!” McIver muttered and glanced again at his watch. The 125 was due at five-thirty. “We’ll have to leave soon, Andy, you never know about traffic.”
Gavallan was rocking absently in a creaky old chair. “Yes, but Genny’s not here yet. Soon as she arrives we’ll leave. If worst comes to worst I can call Aberdeen from Al Shargaz.”
“If. Johnny Hogg makes it through Kish and Isfahan airspace, and the clearance holds in Tehran.”
“He’ll arrive this time, I’ve a good feeling our mullah Tehrani wants the new glasses. Hope to God Johnny’s got them for him ”
“So do I.”
This was the first day the komiteh had allowed any foreigners back into the building. Most of the morning had been spent cleaning up and restarting their generator that had, of course, run out of fuel. Almost at once the telex machine had chattered into life: “Urgent! Please confirm your telex is working and inform Mr. McIver I have an Avisyard telex for the boss. Is he still in Tehran?” The telex was from Elizabeth Chen in Aberdeen. “Avisyard” was a company code, used rarely, meaning a top classified message for McIver’s eyes only and to operate the machine himself. It took him four tries to get the Aberdeen callback.
“So long as we haven’t lost a bird,” Gavallan said with an inward prayer. “I was thinking that too.” McIver eased his shoulders. “Any idea what could merit an Avisyard?”
“No.” Gavallan hid his sadness, thinking about the real Avisyard, Castle Avisyard, where he had spent so
