“instead I’ll give you a hypothetical approach to a plan that might satisfy all your conditions.” Unconsciously his hand began stroking her hair and her neck. She felt the tension leaving her. Erikki watched Hakim, both men ready to explode. “All right so far?”
“Go on.”
“Say hypothetically my chopper was in perfect shape, that I’d been pretending I couldn’t start her properly to throw everyone off, and to get everyone used to the idea of the engines starting and stopping, say I’d lied about the fuel and there was enough for an hour’s flight, easily enough to get to the border an - ”
“Is there?” Hakim said involuntarily, the idea opening a new avenue. “For the sake of this hypothetical story, yes.” Erikki felt Azadeh’s grip tighten on his knee but pretended not to notice. “Say in a minute or two, before we all went to bed, I told you I wanted to try to start her again. Say I did just that, the engines caught and held enough to warm her and then died, no one’d worry - the Will of God. Everyone’d think the madman won’t leave well alone, why doesn’t he quit and let us sleep in peace? Then say I started her, pushed on all power and pulled her into the sky. Hypothetically I could be away in seconds - provided the guards didn’t fire on me, and provided there were no hostiles, Green Bands, or police with guns on the gate or outside the walls.”
The breath escaped from Hakim’s lips. Azadeh shifted a little. The silk of her dress rustled. “I pray that such a make-believe could come to pass,” she said.
Hakim said, “It would be a thousand times better than a car, ten thousand times better. You could fly all the way by night?”
“I could, providing I had a map. Most pilots who’ve spent time in an area keep a good map in their heads - of course, this is all make-believe.” “Yes, yes it is. Well, then, so far so good with your make-believe plan. You could escape this way, if you could neutralize the hostiles in the forecourt. Now, hypothetically, what about my sister?”
“My wife isn’t in on any escape, real or hypothetical. Azadeh has no choice: she must stay of her own accord and wait the two years.” Erikki saw Hakim’s astonishment and felt Azadeh’s instant rebellion under his fingers. But he did not allow his fingers to cease their rhythm on her hair and neck, soothing her, coaxing her, and he continued smoothly, “She is committed to stay in obedience to her oath. She cannot leave. No one who loves her, most of all me, would allow her to give up Islam because of two years. In fact, Azadeh, make-believe or not, it is forbidden. Understand?” “I hear what you say, husband,” she said through her teeth, so angry she could hardly speak and cursing herself for falling into his trap. “You are bound by your oath for two years, then you can leave freely. It’s ordered!”
She loooked up at him, and said darkly, “Perhaps after two years I might not wish to leave.”
Erikki rested his great hand on her shoulder, his fingers lightly around her neck. “Then, woman, I shall come back and drag you out by your hair.” He said it so quietly with such venom that it froze her. In a moment she dropped her eyes and looked at the fire, still leaning against his legs. He kept his hand on her shoulder. She made no move to remove it. But he knew she was seething, hating him. Still, he knew it was necessary to say what he had said.
“Please excuse me a moment,” she said, her voice like ice. The two men watched her leave.
When they were alone Hakim said, “Will she obey?”
“No,” Erikki said. “Not unless you lock her up and even then … No. Her mind’s made up.”
“I will never, never allow her to break her oath and renounce Islam, you must understand that, even… even if I have to kill her.” Erikki looked at him. “If you harm her, you’re a dead man - if I’m alive.”
AT THE NORTHERN SLUMS OF TABRIZ CITY: 10:36 P.M. In the darkness the first wave of Green Bands rushed the door in the high wall, blew the locks off, and went into the inner patio with guns blazing. Hashemi and Robert Armstrong were across the square in the comparative safety of a parked truck. Other men lurked in the alley to cut off any retreat. “Now!” Hashemi said into his walkie-talkie. At once the enemy side of the square was bathed in light from searchlights mounted on camouflaged trucks. Men were fleeing out of other doors but police and Green Bands opened up and the battle began. “Come on, Robert,” Hashemi said and led a careful rush closer.
Informers had whispered that tonight there would be a high-level meeting of Islamic-Marxist leaders here and that this building was connected to others on either side by a rabbit warren of secret doors and passages. With Hakim Khan’s assistance Hashemi had precipitated this first of a series of raids to deactivate extensive leftist opposition to the government, to seize the leaders and make a public example of them - for his own purposes. The first group of Green Bands had cleared the ground floor and were charging up the stairs, careless of their safety. The defenders, now that they were over their surprise, fought back with equal ferocity, well armed and well trained.
Outside in the square there was a lull, no more defenders wishing to run the gauntlet or to join those pinned down helplessly among the cars, some already on fire. The alley behind the building was ominously quiet, police and Green Bands blocking both ends, well entrenched behind their vehicles. “Why do we wait here like stinking, cowardly Iraqis,” one of the Green Bands said truculently. “Why don’t we carry the battle to them?” “You wait because that’s what the colonel ordered,” the sergeant of police said, “you wait because we can kill all the dogs safely and th - ” “I’m not subject to any dog colonel, only to God! God is greattttttttt!” With that the youth cocked his rifle and rushed out of ambush toward the back door of the target building. Others followed him. The sergeant cursed them and ordered them back but his words were buried by the fusillade that came down on the youths from small windows high in the walls and slaughtered them.
Hashemi and others had heard the firing in the alley and presumed that a breakout had been attempted. “The dogs can’t escape that way, Robert,” Hashemi shouted gleefully, “they’re trapped!” From where he was he could see that the attack on the main tenement was held up. He clicked on the sender. “Second wave into the HQ building.” Immediately a mullah and another bunch of youths shrieked their battle cry and rushed across the square - Robert Armstrong appalled that Hashemi would order them out like that, floodlit, such easy targets. “Don’t interfere, Robert! By God, I’m tired of you interfering,” Hashemi had said coldly when he had made some suggestions on how to contain the raid before the attack had started. “Keep your advice to yourself, this is internal, nothing to do with you!”
“But, Hashemi, not all the buildings are hostile or Marxist, there’re bound to be families, perhaps hundreds of innocen - ”
“Keep quiet or, by God, I’ll consider it treason!”
“Then I’ll stay behind. I’ll go back and watch the palace.” “I’ve said you’ll come on the raid! You think you British’re the only ones who can handle a few revolutionaries? You’ll stay beside me where I can see you - but first give me your gun!”
“But, Hashem - ”
“Your gun! By the Prophet, I don’t trust you anymore. Your gun!”
So he had given it to him and then Hashemi had come out of his rage and had seemed to relax and laughed the encounter off. But he had not returned the gun and Armstrong felt naked in the night, afraid that somehow he had been betrayed. He glanced at him, saw again that strangeness in Fazir’s eyes and the way his mouth was working, a little saliva at the comers. A burst of heavy firing pulled his attention back to the tenement. The automatic fire was coming from the upper windows against the new attack. Many youths were cut down but some got inside, the mullah among them, to reinforce those fighters still alive. Together they pulled away the bodies blocking the stairs, and fought their way up onto the next floor. In the square Hashemi was now ducked down behind a car, consumed with excitement and his sense of power. “More men into the HQ building!”
Never before had he been in control of a battle or even part of one. All his previous work had been secret, undercover, just a few men involved on each operation - even with his Group Four assassins all he had ever done was to give orders in safety and wait in safety, far from the action. Except the once that he had personally detonated the car bomb that had obliterated his SAVAMA enemy, General Janan. By God and the Prophet, his mind was shouting, this is what I was born for: battle and war!
“General assault!” he shouted into the walkie-talkie and then stood up and bellowed as loud as he could, “General assault!”
Men charged out of the night. Grenades over walls into patios and into windows indiscriminately. Explosions and billowing smoke, more firing, rifle and automatic and more explosions and then a giant explosion in the leftist headquarters as an ammunition and gasoline cache detonated, blowing off the top story and most of the facade. The wave of heat tore at Hashemi’s clothes, knocked Armstrong down, and Mzytryk who had been watching through binoculars from the safety of an upstairs window on the other side of the square saw them clearly in the
