but died before he got ten yards. Now all other guns were on the ground. And all who stood stayed motionless. Then the door of Nitchak Khan’s house opened and his wife came out with the leveled carbine, a young man following, also with a carbine. She was fierce in her pride; ten years younger than her husband, the jingling of her earrings and chains and the swish of her long tan and red robes the only sound in the square.
Nitchak Khan’s narrow eyes in his high-cheekboned face narrowed even more, and the deep lines at the comers crinkled. But he said nothing to her, just looked at the eight Green Bands who remained. Mercilessly. They stared back at him, then one of them grabbed for his gun, and she shot him in the stomach and he screamed, writhing on the snow. She left him to howl for a moment. A second shot and the screaming stopped. Now there were seven. Nitchak Khan smiled silently. Now, out of the houses and huts, the grown men and women of the village came into the square. All were armed. He turned his attention back to the seven. “Get in the truck, lie down, and put your hands behind you.” Sullenly the men obeyed. He ordered four of the villagers to guard them, then he turned to the young man who had come out of his house. “There’s one more at the airfield, my son. Take someone with you and deal with him. Bring his body back but cover your faces with scarves so the Infidels won’t recognize you.”
“As God wants.” The young man pointed at the schoolhouse. The door was still open, but no sign of Scot. “The Infidel,” he said softly. “He’s not of our village.” Then he went off quickly.
The village waited. Nitchak Khan scratched his beard thoughtfully. Then his eyes went to Nasiri who cowered beside the schoolhouse stairs. Nasiri’s face drained. “I - I saw - I saw nothing, nothing, Nitchak Khan,” he croaked, and got up and stepped around the bodies. “I’ve always - for the two years I’ve been here I’ve always done everything I could for the village. I - I saw nothing,” he said louder, abjectly, then his terror crested and he took to his heels out of the square. And died. A dozen had fired at him. “It’s true the only witness to these men’s evil should be God.”
Nitchak Khan sighed. He had liked Nasiri. But he was not one of their people. His wife came up beside him and he smiled at her. She took out a cigarette and gave it to him and lit it for him, then put the cigarettes and matches back in her pocket. He puffed thoughtfully. Some dogs barked among the houses and a child cried, quickly to be hushed.
“There will be a small avalanche to break the road where it was swept away before, to keep all others out until the thaw,” he said at length. “We will put the bodies into the truck, and pour gasoline over it and them and let it fall off the road into the Ravine of the Broken Camels. It seems that the komiteh decided we could govern ourselves as always and that we should be left in peace as always, then they went away and took Nasiri’s body with them. They shot Nasiri here in the square, as all saw, when he tried to escape justice. Unfortunately they had an accident going back. It is a very dangerous road as all know. Probably they took Nasiri’s body to prove they had done their duty and cleansed our mountains of a known Shah supporter and shot him as he tried to escape. Certainly he was a Shah supporter when the Shah had power and before the Shah ran away.” The villagers nodded agreeably and waited. All wanted to know the answer to the final question: what about the last witness? What about the Infidel still in the schoolhouse? Nitchak Khan scratched his beard. It always helped him to make difficult decisions.
“More Green Bands will come soon, drawn by the magnet of the flying machines, made by foreigners and flown by foreigners for the benefit of foreigners because of the oil that is gathered from our earth for the benefit of enemy Tehranis and enemy tax collectors and more foreigners. If there were no wells there would be no foreigners, therefore there would be no Green Bands. The land is rich in oil elsewhere, easy to gather elsewhere. Ours is not. Our few wells are not important and the eleven bases difficult of access and dangerous - did they not have to explode the mountaintop to save one from avalanche only a few days ago?”
There was general agreement. He puffed the cigarette leisurely. The people watched him confidently - he was kalandar, their chief who had ruled wisely for eighteen years in good times and bad. “If there were no flying machines there could be no wells. So if these foreigners departed,” he continued in the same gruff, unhurried voice, “I doubt if other strangers would venture here to repair and reopen the eleven bases, for surely the bases would quickly fall into disrepair, perhaps even be looted by bandits and damaged. So we would be left in peace. Without our benevolence no one can operate in our mountains. We Kash’kai seek to live in peace - we will be free and ruled by our own ways and own customs. Therefore the foreigners must go, of their own free will. And go quickly. So must the wells. And everything foreign.” Carefully he stubbed his cigarette into the snow. “Let us begin: Burn the school.”
He was obeyed at once. A little gasoline and the tinder dry wood soon made it into a conflagration. Everyone waited. But the Infidel did not appear, nor when they searched the rubble did they find any remains.
Chapter 32
NEAR TABRIZ: 11:49 A.M. Erikki Yokkonen was climbing the 206 through the high pass that led at length to the city, Nogger Lane beside him with Azadeh in the back. She wore a bulky flight jacket over her ski clothes, but in the carryall beside her was a chador: “Just for safety,” she had said. On her head was a third headset that Erikki had rigged for her.
“Tabriz One, do you read?” he said again. They waited. Still no answer and well within range. “Could be abandoned, could be a trap, like with Charlie.” “Best take a jolly good look before we land,” Nogger said uneasily, his eyes scanning the sky and the land.
The sky was clear. It was well below freezing, the mountains heavy with snow. They had refueled without incident at an IranOil depot just outside Bandar-e Pahlavi by arrangement with Tehran ATC. “Khomeini’s got everything by the short and curlies, with ATC helpful and the airport opened up again,” Erikki had said, trying to shove away the depression that sat heavily on all of them.
Azadeh was still badly shaken by the news of Emir Paknouri’s execution for “crimes against Islam” and by the even more terrible news about Sharazad’s father. “That’s murder,” she had burst out, horrified, when she had heard. “What crimes could he commit, he who has supported Khomeini and mullahs for generations?”
None of them had had any answer. The family had been told to collect the body and now were in deep and abject mourning, Sharazad demented with grief - the house closed even to Azadeh and Erikki. Azadeh had not wanted to leave Tehran but a second message had arrived from her father to Erikki, repeating the first: “Captain, I require my daughter in Tabriz urgently.” And now they were almost home.
Once it was home, Erikki thought. Now I’m not so sure.
Near Qazvin he had flown over the place where his Range Rover had run out of gas and Pettikin and Rakoczy had rescued Azadeh and him from the mob. The Range Rover was no longer mere. Then over the miserable village where the roadblock had been, and he had escaped to crush the fat-faced mujhadin who had stolen their papers. Madness to come back, he thought. “Mac’s right,” Azadeh had pleaded with him. “Go to Al Shargaz. Let Nogger fly me to Tabriz and fly me back to get on the next shuttle. I’ll join you in Al Shargaz whatever my father says.”
“I’ll take you home and bring you back,” he had said. “Finish.” They had taken off from Doshan Tappeh just after dawn. The base was almost empty, with many buildings and hangars now burned-out shells, wrecked Iranian Air Force airplanes, trucks, and one fire-gutted tank with the Immortals emblem on its side. No one cleaning up the mess. No guards. Scavengers taking away anything burnable - still hardly any fuel oil for sale, or food, but many daily and nightly clashes between Green Bands and leftists.
The S-G hangar and repair shop were hardly damaged. Many bullet holes in the walls but nothing had been looted yet and it was operating, more or less, with a few mechanics and office staff about their normal work. Some back salary from the money McIver had squeezed from Valik and the other partners had been the magnet. He had given some cash to Erikki to pay the staff at Tabriz One: “Start praying, Erikki! Today I’ve an appointment at the Ministry to iron out our finances and the money we’re owed,” he had told them just before they took off, “and to renew all our out-of-date licenses. Talbot at the embassy fixed it for me - he thinks there’s a better than good chance Bazargan and Khomeini can get control now and disarm the leftists. We’ve just got to keep our bottle, keep our cool.” Easy for him, Erikki thought.
Now they crested the pass. He banked and came down fast. “There’s the base!” Both pilots concentrated. The wind sock was the only thing that moved. No transport parked anywhere. No smoke from any of the cabins. “There should be smoke.” He circled tightly at seven hundred feet. No one came out to greet them. “I’ll take a closer look.”
They whirled in quickly and out again. Still nothing moved so they went back up to a thousand feet. Erikki thought a moment. “Azadeh, I could set her down in the forecourt of the palace or just outside the walls.” At once Azadeh shook her head. “No, Erikki, you know how nervous his guards are and how, how sensitive he is about
