eyes against the rising sun. She had seen something glint in the valley below. Was that light reflected off a gun, or harness? She readied the M16, picked up the binoculars. Behind her Erikki lay sprawled on some blankets in the 212’s open cabin, heavily asleep. His face was pale and he had lost a lot of blood, but she thought he was all right. Through the lenses she saw nothing move. Down there the countryside was snow-locked and sparsely treed. Desolate. No villages and no smoke. The day was good but very cold. No clouds and the wind had dropped in the night. Slowly she searched the valley. A few miles away was a village she had not noticed before.
The 212 was parked in rough mountainous country on a rocky plateau. Last night after the escape from the palace, because a bullet had smashed some instrumentation, Erikki had lost his way. Afraid to exhaust all his fuel, and unable to fly and at the same time stanch the flow of blood from his arm, he had decided to risk landing and waiting for dawn. Once on the ground, he had pulled the carpet out of the cockpit and unrolled it. Azadeh was still sleeping peacefully. He had tied up his wound as best he could, then rewrapped her in the carpet for warmth, brought out some of the guns, and leaned against the skid on guard. But much as he tried he could not keep his eyes open.
He had awakened suddenly. False dawn was touching the sky. Azadeh was still huddled down in the carpet but now she was watching him. “So. You’ve kidnapped me!” Then her pretended coldness vanished and she scrambled into his arms, kissing him and thanking him for solving the dilemma for all three of them with such wisdom, saying the speech she had rehearsed: “I know a wife can do little against a husband, Erikki, hardly anything at all. Even in Iran where we’re civilized, even here, a wife’s almost a chattel and the Imam is very clear on wifely duties, and in the Koran,” she added, “in the Koran and Sharia her duties are oh so clear. Also I know I’m married to a non-Believer, and I openly swear I will try to escape at least once a day to try to go back to fulfill my oath, and though I’ll be petrified and know you’ll catch me every time and will keep me without money or beat me and I have to obey whatever you order, I will do it.” Her eyes were brimming with happy tears. “Thank you, my darling, I was so afraid…”
“Would you have done that? Given up your God?”
“Erikki, oh, how I prayed God would guide you.”
“Would you?”
“There’s no need now even to think the unthinkable, is there, my love?” “Ah,” he said, understanding. “Then you knew, didn’t you? You knew that this was what I had to do!”
“I only know I’m your wife, I love you, I must obey you, you took me away without my help and against my will. We need never discuss it again. Please?”
Blearily he peered at her, disoriented, and could not understand how she could seem to be strong and have come out of the drugged sleep so easily. Sleep! “Azadeh, I’ve got to have an hour of proper sleep. Sorry, I can’t go on. Without an hour or so, I can’t. We should be safe enough here. You guard, we should be safe enough.”
“Where are we?”
“Still in Iran, somewhere near the border.” He gave her a loaded M16, knowing she could use it accurately. “One of the bullets smashed my compass.” She saw him stagger as he went for the cabin, grope for some blankets, and lie down. Instantly he was asleep. While she waited for the daylight she thought about their future and about the past. Still Johnny to settle. Nothing else. How strange life is. I thought I would scream a thousand times closed up in that vile carpet, pretending to be drugged. As if I would be so stupid as to drug myself in case I would have to help defend us! So easy to dupe Mina and my darling Erikki and even Hakim, no longer my darling: “… her everlasting spirit’s more important than her temporary body!” He would have killed me. Me! His beloved sister! But I tricked him.
She was very pleased with herself and with Aysha who had whispered about the secret listening places so that when she had stormed out of the room in pretended rage and left Hakim and Erikki alone, she had scurried to overhear what they were saying. Oh, Erikki, I was petrified you and Hakim weren’t going to believe that I’d really break my oath - and frantic in case the clues I’d placed before you all evening wouldn’t add up to your perfect stratagem. But you went one better than me - you even arranged the helicopter. Oh, how clever you were, I was, we were together. I even made sure you brought my handbag and jewel bag with Najoud’s loot that I wheedled out of Hakim so now we’re rich as well as safe, if only we can get out of this God-lost country.
“It is God-lost, my darling,” Ross had said the last time she had seen him in Tehran, just before he had left her - she could not endure parting without saying good-bye so she had gone to Talbot to inquire after him and then, a few hours later, he had knocked on her door, the apartment empty but for them. “It’s best you leave Iran, Azadeh. Your beloved Iran is once again bereft. This revolution’s the same as all of them: a new tyranny replaces the old. Your new rulers will implant their law, their version of God’s law, as the Shah implanted his. Your ayatollahs will live and die as popes live and die, some good men, some bad and some evil, in God’s time the world’ll get a little better, the beast in men that needs to bite and hack and kill and torment and torture will become a little more human and a little more restrained. It’s only people that bugger up the world, Azadeh. Men mostly. You know I love you?”
“Yes. You said it in the village. You know I love you?”
“Yes.”
So easy to swoop back into the womb of time as when they were young. “But we’re not young now and there’s a great sadness on me, Azadeh.” “It’ll pass, Johnny,” she had said, wanting his happiness. “It’ll pass as Iran’s troubles will pass. We’ve had terrible times for centuries but they’ve passed.” She remembered how they had sat together, not touching now, yet possessed, one with the other. Then later he had smiled and raised his hand in his devil-may-care salute and he had left silently. Again the glint in the valley. Anxiety rushed back into her. Now a movement through the trees and she saw them. “Erikki!” He was instantly awake. “Down there. Two men on horseback. They look like tribesmen.” She handed him the binoculars.
“I see them.” The men were armed and cantering along the valley bed, dressed as hill people would dress, keeping to cover where there was cover. Erikki focused on them. From time to time he saw them look up in their direction. “They can probably see the chopper but I doubt if they can see us.” “They’re heading up here?”
Through his aching and tiredness he had heard the fear in her voice. “Perhaps. Probably yes. It’d take them half an hour to get up here, we’ve plenty of time.”
“They’re looking for us.” Her face was white and she moved closer to Erikki. “Hakim will have alerted everywhere.”
“He won’t have done that. He helped me.”
“That was to escape.” Nervously she looked around the plateau and the tree line and the mountains, then back at the two men. “Once you escaped he’d act like a Khan. You don’t know Hakim, Erikki. He’s my brother but before that he’s Khan.”
Through the binoculars he saw the half-hidden village beside the road in the middle distance. Sun glinted off telephone lines. His own anxiety increased. “Perhaps they’re just villagers and curious about us. But we won’t wait to find out.” Wearily he smiled at her. “Hungry?”
“Yes, but I’m fine.” Hastily she began bundling the carpet that was ancient, priceless, and one of her favorites. “I’m thirsty more than hungry.” “Me too but I feel better now. The sleep helped.” His eyes ranged the mountains, setting what he saw against his remembrance of the map. A last look at the men still far below. No danger for a while, unless there are others around, he thought, then went for the cockpit. Azadeh shoved the carpet into the cabin and tugged the door closed. There were bullet holes in it that she had not noticed before. Another spark of sunlight off metal in the forest, much closer, that neither saw.
Erikki’s head ached and he felt weak. He pressed the starting button. Wind up, immediate and correct. A quick check of his instruments. Rev counter shattered, no compass, no ADF. No need for some instruments - the sound of the engines would tell him when the needles would be in the Green. But needles on the fuel gauges were stuck at a quarter full. No time to check on them or any other damage and if there was damage, what could he do? All gods great and small, old and new, living or dead or yet to be born, be on my side today, I’ll need all the help you can give me. His eyes saw the kookri that he remembered vaguely shoving in the seat pocket. Without conscious effort his fingers reached out and touched it. The feel of it burned. Azadeh hurried for the cockpit, turbulence from the rotors picking up speed clawing at her, chilling her even more. She climbed into the seat and locked the door, turning her eyes away from the mess of dried blood on the seat and floor. Her smile died, noticing his brooding concentration and the strangeness, his hand almost near the kookri but not quite. Again she wondered why he had brought it.
“Are you all right, Erikki?” she asked, but he did not appear to have heard her. Insha’Allah. It’s God’s will he
