wondered what was behind them.
Armstrong was searching his memory. AMG? Ah, yes, Alan Medford Grant, bom 1905, dean of counterintelligence agents. In 1963, as Ian Dunross’s secret informant, he fingered a mole in the Noble House. And another in my Special Branch who turned out to be my best friend. “Liar! AMG was killed in a motorcycle accident in ‘63.”
“It was assisted. We’d had a 16/a out on that traitor for a year or more - and his Jap wife.” “He wasn’t married.”
“You bastards know nothing. Special Branch? Turd heads. She was Jap Intelligence. She had an accident in Sydney the same year.” Armstrong allowed himself a little smile. The AMG motorcycle “accident” had been organized by the KGB but had been re-staged by MI6. The death certificate was genuine, someone else’s, and Alan Medford Grant still operates successfully though with a different face and different cover that even I don’t know. But a wife? Japanese? Was that another smoke screen, or another secret? Wheels within wheels within…
The past beckoned Armstrong. With an effort he put his mind on what he truly wanted to know, to check if he was right or wrong, no time to waste anymore, none. “Who’s the fourth man - our arch traitor?”
The question hung in the cellar. Mzytryk was startled and then he smiled, for Armstrong had given him the key to have his revenge psychologically. He told him the name and saw the shock. And the name of the fifth man, even the sixth. “MI6’s riddled with our agents, not just moles, so’s MI5, most of your trade unions - Ted Everly’s one of ours, Broadhurst and Lord Grey - remember him from Hong Kong? - and not just Labour though they’re our best seeding ground. Names?” he said gloating, knowing he was safe. “Look in Who’s Who! High up in the banks, the City, in the Foreign Office - Henley’s another of ours and I’ve already had a copy of your report - up to Cabinet, perhaps even into Downing Street. We’ve half a thousand professionals of our own in Britain, not counting your own traitors.” His laugh was cruel. “And Smedley-Taylor?”
“Oh, yes, him too an - ” Abruptly Mzytryk’s gloating ceased, his guard slammed shut. “How do you know about him? If you know about him… Eh?” Armstrong was satisfied. Fedor Rakoczy had not lied. All those names on the tapes already gone, already safe, Henley never trusted, not even Talbot. He was content and sad, sorry that he would not be around to catch them himself. Someone will. AMG will.
His eyes fluttered, his hand slid away from his coat lapel. Instantly Mzytryk rushed the space, moving very fast for such a big man, and pinioned the arm between the table and his leg, ripped the lapel away, and now Armstrong was powerless and at his mercy. “Wake up, matyeryebyets!” he said exultantly, the penknife out. “How did you know about Smedley?” But Armstrong did not answer. Death had come quietly.
Mzytryk was enraged, his heart thundering. “Never mind, he’s gone, no need to waste time,” he muttered out loud. The mother-eating bastard went into hell knowing he was the tool of traitors, some of them. But how did he know about Smedley-Taylor? To hell with him, what if he told the truth about my son?
In the corner of the cellar was a can of kerosene. He began to slop it over the bodies, his rage dissipating. “Ishmael!” he called up the stairs. When he had finished with the kerosene he threw the can into the comer. Ishmael and another man came down into the cellar. “Are you ready to leave?” Mzytryk asked them.
“Yes, with the Help of God.”
“And with the help of ourselves too,” Mzytryk said lightly. He wiped his hands, tired but satisfied with the way the day and the night had gone. Now just a short ride to the outskirts of Tabriz to his helicopter. An hour - less - to the Tbilisi dacha and Vertinskya. In a few weeks the young puppy Hakim will arrive, with or without my pishkesh, Azadeh. If it’s without, it will be expensive for him. “Start the fire,” he said crisply, “and we’ll be going.”
“Here, Comrade General!” Cheerfully Ishmael threw him some matches. “It’s your privilege to finish that which you began.”
Mzytryk had caught the matches. “Good,” he said. The first did not light. Nor the second. The third did. He backed to the stairs and carefully threw it. Flames gushed to the ceiling and to the wooden rafters. Then Ishmael’s foot went into his back and sent him sprawling, headfirst, into the outskirts of the fire. In panic Mzytryk screamed and beat at the flames and he whirled and scuttled on his blackening hands and knees back toward the stairs, stopped a moment beating at his fur lapels, coughing and choking in the billowing black smoke and smell of burning flesh. Somehow he lurched to his feet. The first bullet smashed his kneecap, he howled and reeled backward into the fire, the second broke his other leg and hurled him down. Impotently he beat at the flames, his screams drowned by the gathering roar of the inferno. And he became a torch.
Ishmael and the other man jumped back up the stairs to the first landing, almost colliding with others who had rushed down. They gaped at the twitching body of Mzytryk, the flames now eating his boots. “What you do that for?” one of them said, aghast.
“My brother was martyred at the house, so was your cousin.” “As God wants, but, Ishmael, the comrade general? God protect us, he supplied us with money and arms and explosives - why kill him?” “Why not? Wasn’t the son of a dog an arrogant, ill-mannered Satanist? He wasn’t even a Person of the Book,” Ishmael said contemptuously. “Dozens more where they came from, thousands. They need us, we don’t need them. He deserved to die. Didn’t he come alone, tempting me?” He spat toward the body. “Important persons should have bodyguards.”
A shaft of flames reached for them. They retreated hastily. The fire caught the wooden stairs and was spreading rapidly. In the street they all piled into the truck, no longer an ambulance.
Ishmael looked back at the flames gutting the house and laughed uproariously. “Now that dog’s a burnt father! May all Infidels perish as quickly.”
IN THE PALACE FORECOURT: Erikki was leaning against the 212 when he saw the lights in the Khan’s quarters on the second floor go out. A careful check on the two drugged policemen fast asleep in the cabin reassured him. Quietly he slid the cabin door closed, eased his knife under his belt and picked up the Sten. With the skill of a night hunter he moved noiselessly toward the palace. The Khan’s guards on the gate did not notice him go - why should they bother to watch him? The Khan had given them clear orders to leave the pilot alone and not agitate him, that surely he would soon tire of playing with the machine. “If he takes a car, let him. If the police want trouble, that’s their problem.”
“Yes, Highness,” they had both told him, glad they were not responsible for He of the Knife.
Erikki slipped through the front door and along the dimly lit corridor to the stairs leading to the north wing, well away from the Khan’s area. Noiselessly up the stairs and along another corridor. He saw a shaft of light under the door of their suite. Without hesitation he went into the anteroom, closing the door silently after him. Across the room to their bedroom door and swung it open. To his shock, Mina, Azadeh’s maid, was there too. She was kneeling on the bed where she had been massaging Azadeh who was fast asleep.
“Oh, your pardon,” she stuttered, terrified of him like all the servants. “I didn’t hear Your Excellency. Her Highness asked… asked me to continue as long as I could with… with the massage, then to sleep here.” Erikki’s face was a mask, the oil streaks on his cheeks and on the taped bandage over his ear making him appear more dangerous. “Azadeh!” “Oh you won’t wake her, Excellency, she took a… she took two sleeping pills and asked me to apologize for her if you c - ”
“Dress her!” he hissed.
Mina blanched. “But, Excellency!” Her heart almost stopped as she saw a knife appear in his hand.
“Dress her quickly and if you make a sound I’ll gut you. Do it!” He saw her grab the dressing gown. “Not that, Mina! Warm clothes, ski clothes - by all the gods, it doesn’t matter which but be quick!” He watched her, positioning himself between her and the door so she couldn’t bolt. On the bedside table was the sheathed kookri. A twinge went through him and he tore his eyes away, and when he was sure Mina was obeying he took Azadeh’s purse from the dressing table. All her papers were in it, ID, passport, driver’s license, birth certificate, everything. Good, he thought, and blessed Aysha for the gift that Azadeh had told him about before dinner, and thanked his ancient gods for giving him the plan this morning. Ah, my darling, did you think I’d really leave you? Also in the purse was her soft silk jewelry bag which seemed heavier than normal. His eyes widened at the emeralds and diamonds and pearl necklaces and pendants that it now contained. The rest of Najoud’s, he thought, the same that Hakim had used to barter with the tribesmen and that I retrieved from Bayazid. In the mirror he saw Mina gaping at the wealth he held in his hand, Azadeh inert and almost dressed. “Hurry up!” he grated at her reflection.
AT THE AMBUSH ROADBLOCK BELOW THE PALACE: Both the sergeant of police and his driver in the car waiting beside the road were staring up at the palace four hundred yards away, the sergeant using binoculars. Just the dim lights on the outside of the vast gatehouse, no sign of any guards, or of his own two men. “Drive up there,” the sergeant said uneasily. “Something’s wrong, by God! They’re either asleep or dead. Go slowly and quietly.” He
