Not able to contain his curiosity the younger policeman came under the blades that were circling slower and slower, up to the cockpit door. He leaned in to see better, fascinated by the banks of switches and dials that glowed in the darkness.
“By God, Corporal, have you ever seen so many dials and switches? You look as though you belong in that seat!”
“I wish I was a pilot,” the corporal said. “I th - ” He stopped, astonished, as his words were swallowed by a blinding red fog that sucked the breath out of his lungs and made the darkness complete.
Erikki had rammed the younger man’s head against the corporal’s, stunning both of them. Above him the rotors stopped. He looked around. No movement in the darkness, just a few lights on in the palace. No alien eyes or presence that he could sense.
Quickly he stowed their guns behind the pilot’s seat. It took only seconds to carry the two men to the cabin and lay them inside, force their mouths open, put in the sleeping pills that he had stolen from Azadeh’s cabinet, and gag them. A moment to collect his breath before he went forward and checked that all was ready for instant departure. Then he came back to the cabin. The two men had not moved. He leaned against the doorway ready to silence them again if need be. His throat was dry. Sweat beaded him. Waiting. Then he heard dogs and the sound of chain leashes. Quietly he readied the Sten gun. The wandering patrol of two armed guards and the Doberman pinschers passed around the palace but did not come near him. He watched the palace, his arm no longer in the sling.
IN THE NORTHERN SLUMS: The ramshackle, canvas-colored ambulance trundled through the potholed streets. In the back were two medics and three stretchers and Hashemi lay on one, howling, hemorrhaging, most of the front of his loins torn out.
“In the Name of God, give him morphine,” Armstrong gasped through his own pain. He was slumped on his stretcher, half propped against the swaying side, holding a surgical dressing tightly against the bullet hole in his upper chest, quite oblivious of the blood pumping from the wound in his back that was soaking the crude dressing one of the medics had stuffed through the rent in his trenchcoat. “Give him morphine. Hurry!” he told them again, cursing them in Farsi and English, hating them for their stupidity and rough handling - still in shock from the suddenness of the bullet and the attack that had come out of nowhere. Why why why?
“What can I do, Excellency?” came out of the darkness. “We have none of this morphine. It’s God’s will.” The man switched on a flashlight and almost blinded him, turned it onto Hashemi, then to the third stretcher. The youth there was already dead. Armstrong saw they had not bothered to close his eyes. Another burbling scream came from Hashemi.
“Put out the light, Ishmael,” the other medic said. “You want to get us shot?”
Idly, Ishmael obeyed. Once more in darkness, he lit a cigarette, coughed, and cleared his throat noisily, pulled the canvas side screen aside for a moment to get his bearings. “Only a few more minutes, with the Help of God.” He leaned down and shook Hashemi out of his unconscious peace into waking hell. “Only a few more minutes, Excellency Colonel. Don’t die yet,” he said helpfully. “Only a few more minutes and you’ll get proper treatment.” They all lurched as a wheel went into a pothole. Pain blazed through Armstrong. When he felt the ambulance stop, he almost wept with relief. Other men pulled away the canvas tail cover and scrambled in. Rough hands grabbed his feet and dragged him down onto the stretcher and bound him with the safety straps. Through the hell mist of pain he saw Hashemi’s stretcher being carried off info the night, then men lifted him carelessly, the pain was too much, and he fainted.
The stretcher bearers stepped over the joub and went through the doorway in the high wall, into the sleazy corridor and along it, down a flight of stairs, and into a large cellar that was lit with oil lamps. Mzytryk said, “Put him there!” He pointed to the second table. Hashemi was already on the first one, also strapped to his stretcher. Leisurely Mzytryk examined Armstrong’s wounds, then Hashemi’s, both men still unconscious. “Good,” he said. “Wait for me upstairs, Ishmael.”
Ishmael took off the grimy Red Cross armband and threw it into a corner with the others. “Many of our people were martyred in the building. I doubt if any escaped.”
“Then you were wise not to join the meeting.”
Ishmael clomped upstairs to rejoin his friends who were noisily congratulating themselves on their success in grabbing the enemy leader and his running dog, the foreigner. All were trusted, hard-core Islamic-Marxist fighters, not a medic among them.
Mzytryk waited until he was alone, then took a small penknife and probed Hashemi deeply. The bellowing scream pleased him. When it subsided he lifted the pail of icy water and dashed it into the colonel’s face. The eyes opened and the terror and pain therein pleased him even more. “You wanted to see me, Colonel? You murdered my son, Fedor. I’m General Petr Oleg Mzytryk.” He used the knife again. Hashemi’s face became grotesque as he howled, screaming and babbling incoherently, trying to fight out of his bonds. “This’s for my son… and this for my son… and this for my son…” Hashemi’s heart was strong, and he lasted minutes, begging for mercy, begging for death, the One God for death and for vengeance. He died badly. For a moment Mzytryk stood over him, his nostrils rebelling against the stench. But he did not need to force himself to remember what these two had done to his son to drag him down to the third level. Pahmudi’s report had been explicit. “Hashemi Fazir, you’re repaid, you shiteater,” he said and spat in his face. Then he turned and stopped. Armstrong was awake and watching him from the stretcher on the other side of the cellar. Cold blue eyes. Bloodless face. The lack of fear astonished him. I’ll soon change that, he thought, and took out the penknife. Then he noticed Armstrong’s right arm was out of the straps, but before he could do anything Armstrong had reached up for the lapel of his trenchcoat and now held the tip and the hidden cyanide capsule it contained near his mouth. “Don’t move!” Armstrong warned.
Mzytryk was too seasoned to consider rushing him, the distance too far. In his side pocket was an automatic but before he could get it out he was sure that Armstrong’s teeth would crush the capsule and three seconds left was not nearly enough time for vengeance. His only hope was that Armstrong’s pain would make him faint, or lose concentration. He leaned back against the other table and cursed him.
When the stretcher bearers had tightened Armstrong’s straps in the darkness of the ambulance, he had instinctively used his strength against the straps to give himself just enough space to pull out his arm - in case the pain became too much for him. Another capsule was secreted in his shirt collar. He had trembled through Hashemi’s dying, thanking God for the respite that had allowed him to drag his arm free, the effort terrible. But once he had touched the capsule, his terror had left him and with it, much of his pain. He had made peace with himself at the edge of death where life is so utterly sublime.
“We’re… we’re professionals,” he said. “We didn’t murder your… your son. He was alive when… when General Janan took him away for Pahmudi.” “Liar!” Mzytryk heard the weakness in the voice and knew he would not have to wait much longer. He readied.
“Read the official… official documents… SAVAMA must have made some… and those of your God-cursed KGB.”
“You think I’m such a fool you can set me against Pahmudi before you die?” “Read the reports, ask questions, you could get the truth. But you KGB bastards never like the truth. I tell you he was alive when SAVAMA took him.”
Mzytryk was put off balance. It wouldn’t be normal for a professional like Armstrong - near death, one way or another, to waste time suggesting such an investigation without being certain of the outcome. “Where are the tapes?” he said, watching him carefully, seeing the eyes beginning to flicker, great tiredness from loss of blood. Any second now. “Where are the tapes?”
“There weren’t any. Not… not from the third level.” Armstrong’s strength was ebbing. The pain had gone now - along with time. It took a bigger and bigger effort every second to concentrate. But the tapes must be protected, a copy already safely en route to London along with a special report. “Your son was brave and strong and gave away nothing to us. What… what Pahmudi hacked… hacked out of him I don’t know… Pahmudi’s thugs… it was them or your own scum. He was al… alive when your lot took him. Pahmudi told Hashemi.”
That’s possible, Mzytryk thought uneasily. Those motherless shiteaters in Tehran messed up Iran, misread the Shah for years, and befouled our work of generations. “I’ll find out. By my son’s head I’ll find out but that won’t help you - comrade!”
“One favor deserves … one deserves ano… another. You knocked off Roger, Roger Crosse, eh?”
Mzytryk laughed, happy to taunt him and exploit the waiting. “I arranged it, yes. And AMG, remember him? And Talbot, but I told Pahmudi to use this shiteater Fazir for that 16/a.” He watched the cold blue eyes narrow and
