woman, the chieftain, two days ago. “The chopper needs warmth.”
“We do not have enough for the living.”
“If she freezes she won’t work,” he had said, fretting that the Sheik would not allow him to leave at once for Tabriz, barely sixty miles away - worried sick about Azadeh and wondering what had happened to Ross and Gueng. “If she won’t work, how are we going to get out of these mountains?” Grudgingly, the Sheik had ordered his people to construct the lean-to and had given him some goat-and sheepskins that he had used where he thought they would do the most good. Just after dawn yesterday he had tried to leave. To his total dismay Bayazid had told him that he and the 212 were to be ransomed.
“You can be patient, Captain, and free to walk our village with a calm guard, to tinker with your airplane,” Bayazid had said curtly, “or you can be impatient and angry and you will be bound up and tethered as a wild beast. I seek no trouble, Captain, want none, or argument. We seek ransom from Abdollah Khan.”
“But I’ve told you he hates me and won’t help me to be rans - ”
“If he says no, we seek ransom elsewhere. From your company in Tehran, or your government - perhaps your Soviet employers. Meanwhile, you stay here as guest, eating as we eat, sleeping as we sleep, sharing equally. Or bound and tethered and hungry. Either way you stay until ransom is paid.” “But that might take months an - ”
“Insha’Allah!”
All day yesterday and half the night Erikki had tried to think of a way out of the trap. They had taken his grenade but left him his knife. But his guards were watchful and constant. In these deep snows, it would be almost impossible for him in flying boots and without winter gear to get down to the valley below, and even then he was in hostile country. Tabriz was barely thirty minutes away by 212, but by foot?
“More snow tonight, Captain.”
Erikki looked around. Bayazid was a pace away and he had not heard him approach. “Yes, and a few more days in this weather and my bird, my airplane, won’t fly - the battery’ll be dead and most of the instruments wrecked. I have to start her up to charge the battery and warm her pots, have to. Who’s going to ransom a wrecked 212 out of these hills?” Bayazid thought a moment. “For how long must engines turn?”
“Ten minutes a day - absolute minimum.”
“All right. Just after full dark, each day you may do it, but first you ask me. We help you drag her - why is it ‘she,’ not an ‘it’ or a ‘he’?” Erikki frowned. “I don’t know. Ships are always ‘she’ - this is a ship of the sky.” He shrugged.
“Very well. We help you drag her into open and you start her up and while her engines running there will be five guns within five feet, should you be tempted.”
Erikki laughed. “Then I won’t be tempted.”
“Good.” Bayazid smiled. He was a handsome man though his teeth were bad. “When do you send word to the Khan?”
“It’s already gone. In these snows it takes a day to get down to road, even on horseback, but not long to reach Tabriz. If the Khan replies favorably, at once, perhaps we hear tomorrow, perhaps the day after, depending on the snows.”
“Perhaps never. How long will you wait?”
“Are all people from the Far North so impatient?”
Erikki’s chin jutted. “The ancient gods were very impatient when they were held against their will - they passed it on to us. It’s bad to be held against your will, very bad.”
“We are a poor people, at war. We must take what the One God gives us. To be ransomed is an ancient custom.” He smiled thinly. “We learned from Saladin to be chivalrous with our captives, unlike many Christians. Christians are not known for their chivalry. We are treat - ” His ears were sharper than Erikki’s and so were his eyes. “There, down in the valley!” Now Erikki heard the engine also. It took him a moment to pick out the low-flying camouflaged helicopter approaching from the north. “A Kajychokiv 16. Close-support Soviet army gunship … what’s she doing?”
“Heading for Julfa.” The Sheik spat on the ground. “Those sons of dogs come and go as they please.”
“Do many sneak in now?”
“Not many - but one is too many.”
NEAR THE JULFA TURNOFF: 6:15 P.M. The winding side road through the forest was snow heavy and not plowed. A few cart and truck tracks and those made by the old four-wheel drive Chevy that was parked under some pines near the open space, a few yards off the main road. Through their binoculars Armstrong and Hashemi could see two men in warm coats and gloves sitting in the front seat, the windows open, listening intently.
“He hasn’t much time,” Armstrong muttered.
“Perhaps he’s not coming after all.” They had been watching for half an hour from a slight rise among the trees overlooking the landing area. Their car and the rest of Hashemi’s men were parked discreetly on the main road below and behind them. It was very quiet, little wind. Some birds went overhead, cawing plaintively.
“Hallelujah!” Armstrong whispered, his excitement picking up. One man had opened the side door and got out. Now he was looking into the northern sky. The driver started the engine. Then, over it, they heard the incoming chopper, saw her slip over the rise and fall into the valley, hugging the treetops, her piston en-gine throttled back nicely. She made a perfect landing in a billowing cloud of snow. They could see the pilot and another man beside him. The passenger, a small man, got out and went to meet the other. Armstrong cursed. “You recognize him, Robert?”
“No. That’s not Suslev - Petr Oleg Mzytryk. I’m certain.” Armstrong was bitterly disappointed. “Facial surgery?”
“No, nothing like that. He was a big bugger, heavyset, tall as I am.” They watched as he met the other, then handed over something.
“Was that a letter? What did he give him, Robert?” “Looked like a package, could be a letter.” Armstrong muttered another curse, concentrating on their lips.
“What’re they saying?” Hashemi knew Armstrong could lip-read. “I don’t know - it’s not Farsi, or English.” Hashemi swore and refocused his already perfectly focused binoculars. “It looked like a letter to me.” The man spoke a few more words then went back to the chopper. At once the pilot put on power and swirled away. The other man then trudged back to the Chevy. “Now what?” Hashemi said exasperated. Armstrong watched the man walking toward the car. “Two options: intercept the car as planned and find out what ‘it’ is, providing we could neutralize those two bastards before they destroyed ‘it’ - but that’d blow that we know the arrival point for Mister Big - or just tail them, presuming it’s a message for the Khan giving a new date.” He was over his disappointment that Mzytryk had avoided the trap. You must have the luck in our game, he reminded himself. Never mind, next time we’ll get him and he’ll lead us to our traitor, to the fourth and fifth and sixth man and I’ll piss on their graves and Suslev’s - or whatever Petr Oleg Mzytryk calls himself - if the luck’s with me. “We needn’t even tail them - he’ll go straight to the Khan.” “Why?”
“Because he’s a vital pivot in Azerbaijan, either for the Soviets or against them, so they’d want to find out firsthand just how bad his heart is - and who he’s chosen as regent till the babe conies of age, or more likely is levitated. Doesn’t the power go with the title, along with the lands and the wealth?”
“And the secret, numbered Swiss bank accounts - all the more reason to come at once.”
“Yes, but don’t forget something serious might have happened in Tbilisi to make for the delay - Soviets’re just as pissed off and anxious as we are about Iran.”
They saw the man climb back into the Chevy and begin talking volubly. The driver let in the clutch and turned back for the main road. “Let’s get back to our car.”
The way back down the rise was fairly easy going, traffic heavy on the Julfa-Tabriz road below, a few headlights already on and no way for their prey to escape the ambush if they decided to stage it. “Hashemi, another possibility’s that Mzytryk could have found out in the nick that he’s been betrayed by his son, and he’s sent“‘a warning to the Khan whose cover would also have been blown. Don’t forget we still haven’t found out what happened to Rakoczy since your late departed friend General Janan let him go.” “That dog’d never do it on his own,” Hashemi said with a twisted smile, remembering his vast joy when he had touched the transmit button and had seen the resultant car bomb explosion obliterate that enemy, along with his house, his future, and his past. “That would be ordered by Abrim Pahmudi.” “Why?”
Hashemi veiled his eyes and glanced at Armstrong but read no hidden guile therein. You know too many secrets, Robert, know about the Rakoczy tapes, and worst of all about my Group Four and that I assisted Janan into
