“No correct exit permit, no exit. He stays!”
Roberts went white. “But Tehran passed me and I’ve got to be in Lon - ” Zataki grabbed him by the parka and jerked him out of line to send him sprawling. Enraged, Roberts scrambled to his feet. “By God, I’m cleared an - ” He stopped. One of the Green Bands had a rifle in his chest, another was behind him, both now ready to pull the triggers.
Starke said, “Wait by the jeep, Roberts. Goddamnit, wait by the jeep!” One of the Green Bands roughly shoved the mechanic toward it as Starke tried to cover his own worry. Jon Tyrer and Manuela did not have up-to- date exit papers either.
“No exit permits, no exit!” Zataki repeated venomously and took the next man’s papers.
Genny, next in line, was very frightened, hating Zataki and the violence and the smell of the fear surrounding her, sorry for Roberts who needed to be back in England as one of his children was very ill, polio suspected, and no mail or phones and the telex sporadic. She watched Zataki slowly going through the pilot’s papers next to her. Rotten bastard! she thought. I’ve got to get on that plane, got to. Oh, how I wish we were all leaving. Poor Duncan, he simply won’t look after himself, won’t bother to eat properly and he’s bound to get his ulcers back. “My exit permit’s not current,” she said trying to sound timid, and let some tears glisten her eyes. “Nor mine,” Manuela said in a small voice.
Zataki looked at them. He hesitated. “Women are not responsible, men are responsible. You two women may leave. This time. Go aboard.” “Can Mr. Roberts come too?” Genny asked, pointing to the mechanic, “He’s rea - ”
“Get aboard!” Zataki shouted in one of his sudden, maniacal rages, blood in his face. The two women fled up the stairs, everyone else in momentary panic, and even his own Green Bands shifted nervously.
“Excellency, you were right,” Starke said in Farsi, forcing himself to be outwardly calm. “Women should not argue.” He waited and everyone waited, hardly breathing, the dark eyes boring into him. But he kept his gaze level. Zataki nodded and, sullenly, continued examining the papers in his hand. Yesterday Zataki had come back from Isfahan and Esvandiary had authorized a flight for tomorrow afternoon to carry him back to Bandar Delam again. The sooner the better, Starke thought grimly. And yet he felt sorry for Zataki. Last night he found him leaning against a helicopter, his hands pressed to his temples, in great pain. “What is it, Agha?”
“My head. I - it’s my head.”
He had persuaded him to see Dr. Nutt and taken him privately to the doctor’s bungalow.
“Just give me aspirin, or codeine, Doctor, whatever you have,” Zataki had said.
“Perhaps you’d let me examine you and th - ”
“No examine!” Zataki had shouted. “I know what’s wrong with me. SAVAK is wrong with me, prison is wrong with me…” And later, when the codeine had taken away some of the pain, Zataki had told Starke that about a year and a half ago he had been arrested, accused of anti-Shah propaganda. At the time he was working as a journalist for one of the Abadan newspapers. He had been jailed for eight months and then, just after the Abadan fire, released. He had not told Starke what they had done to him. “As God wants, pilot,” he had said bitterly. “But since that day, I bless God every day for one more day of life to stamp out more SAVAKs and Shah men, his lackey police and lackey soldiers and any and all who assisted his evil - once I supported him, didn’t he pay for my education, here and in England? But he was to blame for SAVAK! He was to blame! That part of my vengeance is just for me - I still haven’t started on my revenge for my wife and sons murdered in the Abadan fire.”
Starke had held his peace. The how or why or who of the arson that had caused almost five hundred deaths had never come to light. He watched Zataki work slowly and laboriously down the line of would-be passengers - how many more with incomplete or not current papers Starke did not know, everyone tense, a brooding pall over them. Soon it would be Tyrer’s turn and Tyrer must go. Doc Nutt had said to be safe Tyrer should be examined at Al Shargaz or Dubai as soon as possible where there were marvelous hospital facilities. “I’m sure he’s all right, but it’s best for him to rest his eyes for the time being. And listen, Duke, for the love of God, keep out of Zataki’s way and warn the others to do the same. He’s ripe to explode and God only knows what’ll happen then.” “What’s the matter with him?”
“Medically, I don’t know. Psychologically he’s dangerous, very dangerous. I’d say manic-depressive, certainly paranoiac, probably caused directly by his prison experiences. Did he tell you what they did to him?” “No. No, he didn’t.”
“If it was up to me, I’d recommend he be under sedatives and absolutely nowhere near firearms.”
Great, Starke thought helplessly, how the hell do I get that organized? At least Genny and Manuela’re aboard and soon they’ll be in Al Shargaz which’s a paradise comp - A warning shout distracted him. Beyond the 125, coming from behind the main tower exit was the mullah Hussain with more Green Bands and they looked very hostile.
At once Zataki forgot the passengers, unslipped his machine gun, and, carrying it loosely in one hand, moved between Hussain and the airplane. Two of his men moved alongside him, and the others moved nearer the airplane into defensive positions, covering him.
“Stone the bloody crows,” someone muttered, “what’s up now?” “Get ready to duck,” Ayre said.
“Cap’n,” Roberts whispered brokenly, “I’ve got to get on that plane, I’ve got to, my little girl’s sicker than anything, can you do something with that bastard?”
“I’ll try.”
Zataki was watching Hussain, hating him. Two days ago he had gone to Isfahan, invited there to consult with their secret komiteh. All eleven members had been ayatollahs and mullahs, and there, for the first time, he had found the real face of the revolution he had fought so hard to achieve and suffered so much for. “Heretics will be stamped into oblivion. We’ll have only Revolutionary Courts. Justice will be quick and final with no appeal….” The mullahs were so sure of themselves, so sure of their divine right to rule and administer justice as they alone interpreted the Koran and Sharia. Carefully Zataki had kept his horror and his thoughts to himself, but he knew that he was again betrayed.
“What do you want, mullah?” he said, the word a curse word. “First I want you to understand that you have no power here - what you do in Abadan is up to the ayatollahs of Abadan - but here you have no power on this base, over these men, or this airplane.” Surrounding Hussain were a dozen armed, hard-faced youths, all Green Bands.
“No power, eh?” Contemptuously Zataki turned his back and shouted in English, “The airplane will take off at once! All passengers get aboard!” Angrily he motioned at the pilot, waving 493 him away, then faced Hussain again. “Well? What’s second,” he said as, behind him, the passengers hurried to obey and because the Green Bands were concentrating on Zataki and Hussain, Starke ordered Roberts to get aboard, then motioned to Ayre to help cover the escape of the mechanic. Together they helped Tyrer out of the jeep.
Zataki toyed with his gun, all his attention on Hussain. “Well? What’s second?” he asked again.
Hussain was nonplussed, his men equally aware of the guns trained on them. The jets came to life. He saw the passengers hurrying aboard, Starke and Ayre helping a man with bandages over his eyes up the steps, then the two pilots beside the jeep again, the jet engines building, and the instant the last man was inside, the steps came up and the airplane taxied away. “Well, Agha, what’s next?”
“Next… next the komiteh of Kowiss orders you and your men to leave Kowiss.”
Scornfully Zataki shouted to his men above die roar of the engines, his feet planted in the concrete, ready to fight if need be and die if need be, the superheated air from the fans passing him as the airplane moved toward the runway. “You hear, we are ordered to leave by the komiteh of Kowiss!” His men began laughing, and one of Hussain’s Green Bands, a beardless teenager on the far edge of the group, raised his carbine and died, at once, almost cut in half by the accurate burst of gunfire from Zataki’s men that neatly culled him. The silence was broken only by the distant jets. Momentarily Hussain was bewildered by the suddenness and by the pool of blood that flowed out onto the concrete.
“As God wants,” Zataki said. “What do you want, mullah?” It was then that Zataki noticed the petrified little boy peering out at him, hiding behind the mullah’s robes, clutching them for protection, looking so much like his own son, his eldest, that for a moment he was taken back to the happy days before the fire when all seemed right and there was some form of a future - the Shah’s White Revolution wonderful, the land reforms, curbing the mullahs, universal education, and other things - the good days when I was a father but never again. Never. The electrodes and pincers destroyed that possibility.
A violent stab of pain in his loins soared into his head at the remembrance and he wanted to scream. But he
