Insha’Allah!”
Ross pushed away through the few who had bothered to stop and walked up the hill, not fast, not slow, trying to get himself together, not daring to look back. Around the bend in the road, he quickened his pace, wondering if it was right to react so quickly - almost without thought. But the man would have sold her and sold them. Put him away, karma is karma. Another bend and still no Azadeh. His anxiety increased.
Here the road was twisting, the grade steep. He passed a few hovels half hidden in the forest edge. Mangy dogs were scavenging. The few that came near him he cursed away, rabies usually rampant among them. Another bend, sweat pouring off him, and there she was squatting beside the road, resting like any of a dozen other old crones. She saw him at the same moment, shook her head cautioning him, got up, and started off up the road again. He fell into place twenty yards behind her. Then there was firing below them. With everyone else, they stopped and looked back. They could see nothing. The roadblock was far behind, around many corners, half a mile or more away. In a moment the firing ceased. No one said anything, just began climbing more hurriedly.
The road was not good. They walked on for a mile or so, stepping aside for traffic. Occasionally a bus groaned past but always overloaded and none would stop. These days you could wait a day or two even at a correct stop before there was space. Trucks sometimes would stop. For payment. Later one chugged past him and as it came alongside Azadeh, it slowed to her pace. “Why walk when those who are tired can ride with the help of Cyrus the trucker - and God,” the driver called out, leering at her, nudging his companion, a dark-bearded man of his own age. They had been watching her for some time, watching the sway of her hips that not even a chador could hide. “Why should a flower of God walk when she could be warm in a truck or on a man’s carpet?”
She looked up at him and gave him a gutter curse and called back to Ross, “Husband, this leprous son of a dog dared to insult me and made lewd remarks against the laws of God…” Ross was already alongside her, and the driver found himself looking into the barrel of a gun. “Excellency … I was asking if… if you and she would… would like to ride,” the driver said in panic. “There’s room in the back… if his Excellency would honor my vehicle…”
The truck was half filled with scrap iron, but it would be better than walking. “On your head, driver, where do you go?”
“To Qazvin, Excellency, Qazvin. Would you honor us?”
The truck did not stop but it was easy for Ross to help her climb up over the tailgate. Together they ducked down out of the wind. Her legs were shaking and she was chilled and very nervous. He reached out and put his arms around her and held her.
“Oh, Johnny, if you hadn’t been there…”
“Don’t worry, don’t worry.” He gave her of his warmth. Qazvin. Qazvin? Isn’t that halfway to Tehran? Of course it is! We’ll stick with the truck until Qazvin, he told himself, gathering strength. Then we can get another ride, or find a bus, or steal a car, that’s what we’ll do.
“The turnoff to the base is two or three miles ahead,” she said, shivering in his arms. “To the right.”
Base? Ah, yes, the base. And Erikki. But more important, what about Gueng? What about Gueng? Get your mind working. What are you going to do? “What’s the… what’s the land like there, open and flat or a ravine or what?” he asked.
“It’s fairly flat. Our village is soon, Abu Mard. We pass our village, then shortly afterward, the land flattens into a kind of wooded plateau where our own road is. Then the main road climbs again up to the pass.” Ahead he could see the road curling away, occasionally coming into view as it wound precariously along the mountainside. “We’ll get off the other side of the village, before the flat, circle through the forest, and get to the base. That possible?”
“Yes. I know the country very well. I… I taught in the village school and used to take the children for… for walks. I know the paths.” Again she trembled.
“Keep down out of the wind. You’ll soon be warm.”
The old truck was laboring on the incline not much faster than walking but better than walking. He kept his arm around her and in time she stopped trembling. Over their tailgate, he noticed a car overtaking them fast, gears shrieking, followed by a mottled green semi. The driver of the car kept his hand on the horn. There was nowhere for their truck to pull over, so the car swung over to the wrong side of the road and charged ahead. Hope you bloody kill yourself, he thought, angered by the noise and the incredible stupidity. Idly he had noticed that it had been filled with armed men. So was the following semi, though all these men stood in the back, hanging onto metal stanchions, the tailgate down and banging wildly. As it roared past, he caught a glimpse of a body slumped under their feet. At first he thought it was the old man. But it wasn’t. It was Gueng. No mistaking the remains of the uniform. Or the kookri one of the men had stuck in his belt. “What is it, Johnny?”
He found himself beside her, not feeling her or anything, only that he had failed the second of his men. His eyes were filled with tears. “What is it, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing. It’s just the wind.” He brushed the tears away, then knelt and looked ahead. Curling away, the road disappeared and appeared again. So did the car and semi. He could see the village now. Beyond it the road climbed again, then flattened, just as she had said. The car and semi went through the village full tilt. In his pocket were his small but very powerful binoculars. Steadying himself against the rocking of the truck, he focused on the car. Once the car came up onto the flat it speeded up, then turned right onto the side road to the base and disappeared. When the semi reached the intersection it stopped, blocking most of the road outward bound. Half a dozen of the men jumped down, spread out across the road, and stood facing Tabriz. Then, the semi turned right and vanished after the car. Their truck slowed as the driver shifted noisily into bottom gear Just ahead was a short, steeper grade, a path nearby, no pedestrians on this section of road. “Where does that go, Azadeh?”
She got onto her knees and looked where he pointed. “Toward Abu Mard, our village,” she said. “It wanders this way and that but that’s where it ends.” “Get ready to jump out - there’s another roadblock ahead. At the right moment he slipped over the side, helped her down, and they scrambled into hiding. The truck did not stop nor the driver look around. Soon it was well away. Hand in hand, they fled into the trees.
Chapter 40
AT ZAGROS THREE: 4:05 P.M. Lochart leaned against the cockpit of the 212 waiting to go again to Rig Rosa with another load of pipe - sky cloudless, the mountains so clean and sharp he felt he could almost reach out and touch them. He was watching Rodrigues, his mechanic, who knelt in the snow and peered into a belly inspection panel. “It’s an afternoon for skiing or tobogganing, Rod, not grinding away.”
“It’s a day to get the hell outta here, Tom.”
“Maybe we won’t have to,” Lochart said. Since Sunday when he had had his confrontation with Nitchak Khan he had heard nothing more from him or anyone in the village. “Maybe the komiteh will change their minds or Mac‘11 get the order canceled. Crazy for us to be shoved out when they need all the oil they can get and Rosa’s new well’s a bonanza - Jesper Almqvist said he figured it’d pump eighteen thousand barrels a day when it was put on stream. That’s almost $360,000 a day, Rod.”
“Mullahs don’t give a shit for oil or anything but Allah, the Koran, or Paradise, you said it a million times.” Rodrigues wiped an oil streak away. “We should’ve all gone with Jesper to Shiraz - then out. We’re not wanted. Nasiri got his head blown off, right? For what? He was one nice guy. Never hurt no one. We’ve been told to get out - what the hell’re we waiting for?” “Maybe the komiteh changed its mind. We’ve eleven rigs to service.” “The rigs are down to minimums, crews all itchy to get the hell out and anyway they’ve had no replacements for weeks.” Rodrigues got up, knocked the snow off his knees, and began wiping the oil off his hands. “Crazy to stay where you’re not wanted. Young Scot’s acting mighty strange - so’re you, come to think of it.”
“Bull,” Lochart said. He had told no one what Scot said had really happened in the village square. His anxiety returned - for Scot, the base, Sharazad, HBC, and always back to Sharazad again.
“Bull nothing,” Rodrigues was saying, “you’ve been itchy as hell since you got back from Tehran. You wanna stay in Iran, Tom, okay, that’s different - you’re married to Iran. Me, I want out.”
Lochart took his mind off Sharazad. He saw the fear in his friend’s face. “What’s the problem, Rod?”
The heavyset man pulled his belt over the beginnings of his paunch, and closed his parka again. “I’m nervous as all hell about my false IDs, Tom. Shit, soon’s I open my mouth, they gotta know I’m not a Brit. All my permits’re outta date. So it’s the same with some of the other guys, but I’m the only American here, I gave a talk in the school on the States, and goddamn mullahs and Khomeini say I’m Satan - me a goddamn good Catholic for crissake! I’m not sleeping nights.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say so before? No need for you to stay, Rod. The 212’s due out tomorrow. How about going with Scot? Once you get to Al Shargaz you can transfer to Nigeria, Kenya, or where the hell ever.” For a
