relieved about Lochart and at the same time appalled about Valik and his family. Full of people? Should’ve been only four! There were fifty questions he wanted answered at once and knew there was no way out of the trap that he and Tom were in. He had told no one of Lochart’s real mission or his own dilemma authorizing it, other than Gavallan. “Let’s have it from the beginning, Charlie, exactly.” McIver glanced at Genny who was frozen. “You all right, Gen?”
“Yes, yes. I - I’ll make a cuppa.” Her voice seemed very small to both of them and she went over to the kitchenette.
Shakily Pettikin sat on the edge of the desk. “As exactly as I can remember, Rudi said, ‘I’ve got an officer from the Iranian Air Force here and have to know officially…’ Then this other voice came over the loudspeaker. ‘This is Major Qazani, Air Force Intelligence! I require answer at once. Is HBC an S-G 212 or isn’t it?’ To give myself time I said, ‘Hang on a minute I’ll get the file.’ I waited, hoping for a lead from Rudi but there wasn’t one so I figured it was all right. ‘Yes, EP-HBC’s one of our 212s.’ At once Rudi blew his stack and cursed as I’ve never heard him before and said something like, ‘By God, that’s terrible because HBC tried to escape into Iraq and the Iranian Air Force rightly shot the ship down, blew her and all aboard to the hell she deserved - who the hell was flying her and who the hell was aboard?’”
Pettikin wiped away a dribble of sweat. “I think I swore myself, fell apart a bit, can’t remember exactly, Mac, then said something like, ‘That’s terrible! Hold on - I’ll get the flight book,’ hoping like hell my voice sounded more or less okay. I got it and saw Nogger’s name crossed off, with ‘reported sick’ alongside, then Tom Lochart’s, and your signature authorizing the charter.” He looked up at McIver helplessly, “Clearly Rudi didn’t want me to say Tom so I just said, ‘According to our flight book she’s not checked out to anyone McIver went red. “But if you s - ”
“It was the best I could do at the time, for God’s sake. I said, ‘She’s not checked out to anyone.’ Rudi began cursing again but I thought his voice sounded different now, more relieved. ‘What the hell’re you talking about?’ he said.
“ I’m just telling you, Captain Lutz, according to the records here, HBC’s still hangared at Doshan Tappeh. If she’s gone she must’ve been hijacked,’ I said, hoping my voice sounded convincing. Mac, I was groping and I still don’t understand what the problem is. Then this other voice said, ‘This matter will be taken up through channels at once. I require your flight clearance book at once.’ I told him okay, where should I send it. That threw him a little because of course there’s no way we can get it to him at once. Eventually he said to keep our records safely and we’d get instructions later. Then Tom came on and said something like: “‘Captain Pettikin, please give my apologies to Mr. McIver that I’m late off leave but I was trapped by a snowfall in a village just south of Kermanshah. Soon as I can I’ll head for home.’” Pettikin exhaled, glanced at Genny then back at McIver. “That’s it. That’s all. What do you think?” “About Tom? I don’t know.” McIver went over to the window heavily and both Pettikin and Genny saw the weight on him. Snow was on the sill and the wind had picked up a little. Sporadic gunfire sounded from the distance, rifle and automatic, but none of them noticed it.
“Genny?”
“I - it doesn’t make any, any sense, Charlie, any sense at all about Tommy.” Weakly she poured the boiling water into the teapot, the cups already laid out, glad to have had something to do with her hands, feeling helpless and wanting to cry, wanting to shout at the injustice of everything, knowing that Tom and Duncan were trapped - her Duncan had signed the flight plan - knowing she could not mention anything about Annoush or the children or Valik - if they were aboard, they must be aboard, but then who was flying if it wasn’t Tommy? “The hijack… well, obviously Tommy’s on the clearance here and so is Duncan. The authorities in Tehran still have the clearance. The clearance has Duncan’s name on it so a hijack isn’t… it doesn’t make much sense.”
“I can see that now but at the time the story sounded good.” Pettikin felt awful. He picked up the clearance book. “Mac, how about if we lose this, get rid of it?”
“Tehran Control’s still got the original, Charlie. Tom refueled, there’ll be a record.”
“In normal times, sure. Now? With all this mess going on?” “Perhaps.”
“Maybe we could retrieve the original?”
“Come on, for God’s sake, not a hope till hell freezes.”
Genny started pouring the tea into the three cups. The silence tightened. In misery Pettikin said, “I still don’t see how if Tom started off from Doshan Tappeh and then… unless she was hijacked en route, or when he was refueling.” Irritably he ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s got to be a hijack. Where did he refuel? Kowiss? Maybe they could help?” McIver did not answer, just stared out at the night. Pettikin waited, then leafed through the clearance book, found the right duplicate, and looked at the back. “Isfahan?” he said surprised. “Why Isfahan?”
Again McIver did not answer.
Genny added condensed milk to the tea and gave one cup to Pettikin. “I think you did very well, Charlie,” she said, not knowing what else to say. Then she took the other cup to McIver.
“Thanks, Gen.”
She saw the tears and her own tears spilled. He put an arm around her, thinking about Annoush and the Christmas patty he and Genny had given for all the kids of their friends, such a short time ago - little Setarem and Jalal, the stars of all the games, such wonderful kids, now cinders or meat for scavengers.
“It’s good about Tommy, dear, isn’t it?” she said through her own tears, Pettikin forgotten. Embarrassed, Pettikin went out and shut the door behind him and neither of them noticed his going. “It’s good about Tommy,” she said again. “That’s one good thing.”
“Yes, Gen, that’s one good thing.”
“What can we do?”
“Wait. We wait and see. We hope to God they didn’t buy it but… somehow I know they were aboard.” Tenderly he brushed away her tears. “But come Sunday, Gen, when the 125 goes you’re on it,” he told her gently. “I promise only until we sort this all out - but this time you must go.” She nodded. He drank the tea. It tasted very good. He smiled down at her. “You make a damn good cuppa, Gen,” he said, but that did not take away her fear or her misery - or her fury at all the killing and uselessness and tragedy and the blatant usurping of their livelihood, or the age that it was putting on her husband. The worry’s killing him. It’s killing him, she thought with growing rage. Then all at once the answer came to her. She looked around to make sure Pettikin wasn’t there. “Dun-can,” she whispered, “if you don’t want those bastards to steal our future, why don’t we leave and take everything with us?”
“Eh?”
“Planes, spares, and personnel.”
“We can’t do that, Gen, I’ve already told you fifty times.” “Oh, yes, we can if we want to and if we have a plan.” She said it with such utter confidence it swept him. “There’s Andy to help. Andy can make the plan, we can’t. You can carry it out, he can’t. They don’t want us here, so be it, we’ll leave - but with our planes and our spares and our self-respect. We’ll have to be very secretive but we can do it. We can do it. I know we can.”
BOOK TWO
Saturday - February 17
Chapter 30
AT KOWISS: 6:38 A.M. The mullah Hussain was sitting cross-legged on the thin mattress checking the action of the AK47. With a practiced movement he snapped the new magazine into place. “Good,” he said.
“Will there be more fighting today?” his wife asked. She was across the room, standing beside a wood- burning stove that was heating a pan of water for the first coffee of the day. Her black chador rustled as she moved, masking that she was heavy with child again.
“As God wants.”
She echoed him, trying to hide her fear, afraid of what would become of them when her husband had obtained the martyrdom he sought so relentlessly, wanting in her most secret heart to scream from the minarets that it was too much to bear that God required such sacrifice of her and their children. Seven years of marriage and three live children and four dead children and the deep poverty of all those years - so great a contrast to her previous life with her own family who had owned a butcher’s stall in the bazaar, always enough to eat and laughter and going out without chador, picnics, and even going to the cinema - had etched lines on her once attractive face. As God wants but it’s not fair, not fair! We’ll starve - who will want to support the family of a dead mullah?
Their eldest son, Ali, a little boy of six, squatted beside the door of this one-room hut that was beside the mosque, attentively following his father’s every movement - his two little brothers, three and two years old, asleep on their straw mattress on the dirt floor, wrapped in an old army blanket. They were curled up like kittens. In the
