between now and then!”
“Right you are, JeanLuc,” Pettikin said, sitting in the window seat beside him, watching the airport receding. “Mac was in good humor. Haven’t seen him that happy for months and he was pissed off this morning. Curious how people can change.”
“Yes, curious. Me, I would be very pissed off indeed to have such a change of plan.” JeanLuc was getting himself comfortable and sat back, his mind on Sayada and their parting that had been significant and sweet sorrow. He glanced at Pettikin and saw the heavy frown. “What?”
“I suddenly wondered how Mac’s getting to Kowiss.”
“By chopper, of course. There’re two 206s and an Alouette left.” “Tom ferried the Alouette to Kowiss today, and there aren’t any pilots left.”
“So he is going by car, of course. Why?”
“You don’t think he’d be crazy enough to fly Kia himself, do you?” “Are you mad? Of course not, he’s not that cr - ” JeanLuc’s eyebrows soared. “Merde, he’s that crazy.”
AT INNER INTELLIGENCE HQ: 6:30 P.M. Hashemi Fazir stood at the window of his vast office, looking out over the roofs of the city and the minarets, huge mosque domes among the modern tall high-rise hotels and buildings, the last of the muezzins’ sunset calls dying away. A few more city lights on than usual. Distant gunfire. “Sons of dogs,” he muttered, then, without turning added sharply, “That’s all she said?”
“Yes, Excellency. ‘In a few days.’ She said she was ‘fairly sure’ the Frenchman did not know exactly when they were leaving.”
“She should have made sure. Careless. Careless agents are dangerous. Only 212s, eh?”
“Yes, she was sure about that. I agree she’s careless and should be punished.”
Hashemi heard the malicious pleasure in the voice but did not let it disturb his good humor, just let his mind wander, deciding what to do about Sayada Bertolin and her information. He was very pleased with himself. Today had been excellent. One of his secret associates had been appointed number two to Abrim Pahmudi in SAVAMA. At noon a telex from Tabriz had confirmed the death of Abdollah Khan. Immediately he had telexed back to arrange a private appointment tomorrow with Hakim Khan and requisitioned one of SAVAMA’s light, twin-engined airplanes. Talbot’s assist into hell had gone perfectly, and he had found no traces of the men responsible - a Group Four team - when he had inspected the bomb area, for, of course, he had been instantly summoned. Those nearby had seen no one park the car: “One moment there was God’s peace, the next Satan’s rage.”
An hour ago Abrim Pahmudi had called personally, ostensibly to congratulate him. But he had avoided the trap and had carefully denied the explosion had anything to do with him - better not to draw attention to the similarity with the first car bomb that blew General Janan to pieces, better to keep Pahmudi guessing and off guard and under pressure. He had hid his laughter and said gravely, “As God wants, Excellency, but clearly this was another cursed leftist terrorist attack. Talbot wasn’t the target though his convenient demise certainly eliminates that problem. Sorry to tell you but the attack was again against the favored of the Imam.” Blaming terrorists and claiming the attack was against the ayatollahs and mullahs who frequented the restaurant would frighten them and it nicely led the trail away from Talbot and so would avoid possible British retaliation - certainly from Robert Armstrong if he ever found out - and so squashed several scorpions with one stone.
Hashemi turned and looked at the sharp-faced man, Suliman al Wiali, the Group Four team leader who had planted today’s car bomb - the same man who had caught Sayada Bertolin in Teymour’s bedroom. “In a few minutes I’m leaving for Tabriz. I’ll be back tomorrow or the next day. A tall Englishman, Robert Armstrong, will be with me. Assign one of your men to follow him, make sure the man knows where Armstrong lives, then have him finish him off somewhere in the streets, after dark. Don’t do it yourself.” “Yes, Excellency. When?”
Hashemi thought through his plan again and could find no flaw. “Holy Day.” “This is the same man you wanted the Sayada woman to fornicate with?” “Yes. But now I’ve changed my mind.” Robert’s no longer of any value, he thought. More than that, his time has come.
“Do you have any other work for her, Excellency?”
“No. We’ve broken the Teymour ring.”
“As God wants. May I make a suggestion?”
Hashemi studied him. Suliman was his most efficient, trustworthy, and deadly Group Four leader with a cover job as a minor agent for Inner Intelligence reporting directly to him. Suliman claimed that originally he came from the Shrift Mountains north of Beirut before his family was murdered and he was driven out by Christian militiamen, and Hashemi had inducted him five years ago after bribing him out of a Syrian prison where he had been condemned to death for murder and banditry on both sides of the borders, his sole defense: “I only killed Jews and Infidels as God ordered, so I do God’s work. I am an Avenger.”
“What suggestion?” he asked.
“She’s an ordinary PLO courier, not a very good one and in her present state dangerous and a possible threat - easy to be subverted by Jews or CIAs and used against us. Like good farmers we should plant seeds where we can to reap a future crop.” Suliman smiled. “You’re a wise farmer, Excellency. My suggestion is I tell her it’s time to go back to Beirut, that we, the two of us who caught her in her harlotry, now want her to work for us there. We let her overhear us talking privately-and we pretend to be part of a cell of Christian militiamen from southern Lebanon, acting under Israeli orders for their CIA masters.” The man laughed quietly, seeing his employer’s surprise. “And then?”
“What would turn a lukewarm, anti-Israeli, Palestinian Copt into a permanent, fanatic hellcat bent on vengeance?” Hashemi looked at him. “What?”
“Say some of these same ‘Christian militiamen, acting under Israeli orders for their CIA masters,’ maliciously, openly hurt her child, hurt him badly, the day before she arrived back, then vanished - wouldn’t that make her a fiendish enemy of our enemies?” Hashemi lit a cigarette to hide his disgust. “I agree only that her usefulness is over,” he said and saw a flash of irritation.
“What value has her child, and what future?” Suliman said scornfully. “With such a mother and living with Christian relatives he will remain Christian and go to hell.”
“Israel is our ally. Stay out of Middle Eastern affairs or they will eat you up. It’s forbidden!”
“If you say it is forbidden it is forbidden, Master.” Suliman bowed and nodded agreement. “On the head of my children.”
“Good. You did very well today. Thank you.” He went to the safe and took a bundle of used dollars off the stacks there. He saw Suliman’s face light up. “Here’s a bonus for you and your men.”
“Thank you, thank you, Excellency, God protect you! The man Armstrong may be considered dead.” Very gratefully, Suliman bowed again and left. Now that he was alone Hashemi unlocked a drawer and poured himself a whisky. A thousand dollars is a fortune to Suliman and his three men, but a wise investment, he thought contentedly. Oh, yes. Glad I decided about Robert. Robert knows too much, suspects too much - wasn’t it he who named my teams ? “Group Four teams must be used for good and not evil, Hashemi,” he had said in that know-all voice of his. “I just caution you, their power could be heady and backfire on you. Remember the Old Man of the Mountains. Eh?” Hashemi had laughed to cover his shock that Armstrong had read his most secret heart. “What have al-Sabbah and his assassins to do with me? We’re living in the twentieth century and I’m not a religious fanatic. More important, Robert, I don’t have a Castle Alamut!”
“There’s still hashish - and better.”
“I don’t want addicts or assassins, just men I can trust.” Assassin was derived from hashshashin, they who take hashish. Legend told that in the eleventh century at Alamut - Hasan ibn al-Sabbah’s impregnable fortress in the mountains near Qazvin - he had had secret gardens made just like the Gardens of Paradise described in the Koran, where wine and honey flowed from fountains and beautiful, compliant maidens lay. Here hashish-drugged devotees would be secretly introduced and given a foretaste of the promised, eternal, and erotic bliss that awaited them in Paradise after death. Then, in a day or two or three, the “Blessed One” would be brought “back to earth,” to be guaranteed quick passage back - in return for absolute obedience to his will.
From Alamut, Hasan ibn al-Sabbah’s fanatical band of simpleminded, hashish-taking zealots - the Assassins - terrorized Persia, soon to reach into most of the Middle East. This continued for almost two centuries. Until 1256. Then a grandson of Genghiz Khan, Hulugu Khan, came down into Persia and set his hordes against Alamut, tore it stone by stone from its mountain peaks, and stamped the Assassins into the dust.
Hashemi’s lips were in a thin line. Ah, Robert, how did you pierce the veil to see my secret plan: to modernize al-Sabbah’s idea, so easy to do now that the Shah has gone and the land’s in ferment. So easy with
