villages. Their radio had been open all the time. The only report they had heard was a venomous broadcast from Isfahan, repeated several times, about a 212 full of traitors that was escaping southward and should be intercepted and shot down. “They didn’t give our names - or our registration,” Ali had said excitedly. “They must’ve forgotten to write it down.” “What the hell difference does that make?” Lochart had said. “We must be the only 212 in the sky.”
“Never mind. Stay at max a hundred feet and now turn west.” Lochart had been astonished, expecting to head for Bandar Delam that lay almost due south. “Where we heading?”
“Forget compass bearings, I’ll guide you from here on in.” “Where’re we heading?”
“Baghdad.” Ali had laughed.
No one had told him their destination until they were ready to land, and by that time, a little over two hundred miles from Isfahan, flying very low all the way with adverse winds, at maximum consumption and far beyond their expected maximum duration - on empty too long - Ali was openly praying. “If we put down in this godforsaken wilderness we’ll never walk out, what about fuel?”
“There’s plenty there when we arrive… God be praised!” Ali WHIRLWIND 361 had said excitedly as they came over the rise to see the lake and the dam. “God be praised!”
Lochart had echoed his thanks and had landed quickly. Beside the helipad was a subterranean 5,000-gallon tank, and the shed hangar. In the shed hangar were some tools and cylinders of air for tires, and racks of water skis and boating equipment.
“Let’s put her away,” Ali said. Together they wheeled the 212 into the shed where she fitted snugly, putting chocks on her wheels. As Lochart adjusted the rotor tie-down he noticed three hang gliders in a rack overhead. They were dust-covered and in tatters now.
“Whose are those?”
“This used to be the private weekend place of General of the Imperial Air Force, Hassayn Aryani. They were his.”
Lochart whistled. Aryani was the legendary head of the air force who, according to rumor, also had been like captain of the Praetorian Guard in Roman times to the Shah, his confidant and married to one of his sisters. He had been killed hang gliding two years ago. “Was this where he was killed?” “Yes.” Ali pointed to the other side of the lake. “They say he got into still-air turbulence and went into those cliffs.”
Lochart studied him. ” ‘They say’? You don’t believe that?” “No. I’m sure he was assassinated. In the air force most of us’re sure.” “You mean his hang glider was sabotaged?”
Ali shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps, perhaps not, but he was much too careful and clever a pilot and flier to get into turbulence. Aryani would never’ve flown on a bad day.” He went out into the sun. Below they could hear the voices and laughter of some of the others, and Valik’s children playing down by the lake. “He used a speedboat to take off. He’d wear short water skis, then hold on to a long rope attached to the speedboat that’d go charging down the lake and when he was fast enough he’d drop his skis and go airborne and soar up five hundred, a thousand feet, then cast off and spiral down and land within inches of the raft down there.”
“He was that good?”
“Yeah, he was that good. He was too good, that’s why he was murdered.” “By whom?”
“I don’t know. If I did, then he or they would have died long ago.” Lochart saw the adoration. “You knew him, then?”
“I was his aide, one of his aides, for a year. He was easily the most wonderful man I have ever known - the best general, the best pilot, best sportsman, skier - everything. If he had been alive now the Shah would never have been trapped by foreigners or snared by our archenemy Carter, the Shah’d never have left, Iran would never have been allowed to slide into the abyss, and the generals would never have been allowed to betray us.” Ali Abbasi’s face twisted with anger. “It’s impossible to conceive that we could be so betrayed with him alive.”
“Then who killed him? Khomeini’s followers?”
“No, not three years ago. He was a famous nationalist, Shi’ite, though a modern. Who? Tudeh, fedayeen or any fanatic of the right, left, or center who wanted Iran weakened.” Ali looked at him, dark eyes in a chiseled face. “There are even those who say people in high places feared his growing power and popularity.”
Lochart blinked. “You mean the Shah might have ordered his death?” “No. No, of course not, but he was a threat to those who misguided the Shah. He was farmandeh, a commander of the people. He was a threat all over: to British interests, because he supported Prime Minister Mossadegh who nationalized Anglo-Iranian Oil, he supported the Shah and OPEC when they quadrupled the cost of oil. He was pro-Israel though not anti-Arab, so a threat to the PLO and Yasir Arafat. He could have been considered a threat to American interests - to any or all of the Seven Sisters because he didn’t give a good goddamn for them or anyone. Anyone. For above all he was a patriot.” Ali’s eyes had a strange look to them. “Assassination is an ancient art in Iran. Wasn’t ibn-al-Sabbah one of us?” His mouth smiled, his eyes didn’t. “We’re different here.”
“Sorry - ibn-al-Sabbah?”
“The Old Man of the Mountains, Hassan ibn-al-Sabbah, the Isma’ili religious leader who invented the Assassins in the eleventh century, and their cult of political assassination.”
“Oh, sure, sorry I wasn’t thinking. Wasn’t he supposed to be a friend of Omar Khayyam?”
“Some legends say so.” Ali’s face was etched. “Aryani was murdered, by whom, no one knows. Yet.” Together they pulled the shed door closed. “What now?” Lochart asked.
“Now we wait. Then we’ll go on.” Into exile Ali thought. Never mind, it will only be temporary and at least I know where I’m going, not like the Shah, poor man, who’s an outcast. I can go to the States.
Only he and his parents knew that he had a U.S. passport. Goddamn, he thought, how clever of Dad: “You never know, my son, what God has in store,” his father had said gravely. “I advise you to apply for a passport while you can. Dynasties never last, only family. Shahs come and go, Shahs feed off each other, and the two Pahlavis together are only fifty-four-year Highnesses - Imperial Majesties! What was Reza Khan before he crowned himself King of Kings? A soldier-adventurer, the son of illiterate villagers from Mazandaran near the Caspian.”
“But surely, Father, Reza Khan was a special man. Without him and Mohammed Reza Shah, we’d still be slaves of the British.”
“The Pahlavis were of use to us, my son, yes. In many ways. But Reza Shah failed, he failed himself and failed us by stupidly believing the Germans would win the war and tried to support the Axis - and so gave the occupying British an excuse to depose him and exile him.”
“But, Father, Mohammed Shah can’t fail! He’s stronger than his father ever was. Our armed forces are the envy of the world. We’ve more airplanes than Britain, more tanks than Germany, more money than Croesus, America’s our ally, we’re the biggest military power and policeman of the Middle and Near East, and the leaders of the outside kowtow to him - even Brezhnev.” “Yes. But we do not yet know what is the Will of God. Get the passport.” “But a U.S. passport could be very dangerous, you know how it’s said almost everything goes through SAVAK to the Shah! What if he heard, or General Aryani heard? That’d ruin me in the air force?”
“Why should it - for of course you would tell them proudly you just got the passport, and kept it secret, against the day you could put it to use for the good of the Pahlavis. Eh?”
“Of course!”
“Open your eyes to the ways of the world, my son - the promises of kings have no value, they can plead expedience. If this Shah or the next, or even your great general has to choose between your life and something of more value to them, which would they choose? Put no trust in princes, or generals, or politicians, they will sell you, your family, and your heritage for a pinch of salt to put on a plate of rice they won’t even bother to taste….”
And oh how true! Carter sold us out and his generals, then the Shah and his generals, and our generals did the same to us. But how could they be so stupid as to assassinate themselves? he asked himself, shuddering at the thought of how close he had been to death in Isfahan. They must have all gone mad!
“It’s cold in the shade,” Lochart said.
“Yes, yes, it is. “Ali looked back at him and shook off his anxiety. Generals are all the same. My father was right. Even these two bastards Valik or Seladi, they’d have sold us all if need be, still will. They need me because I’m the only one who can fly them - apart from this poor fool who doesn’t know he’s in dead trouble. “Get rid of this Lochart,” Seladi had said. “Why take him to safety? He would have left us at Isfahan, why not leave him here? Dead. We can’t leave him alive, he knows us all and he’d betray us all.”
“No, Excellency Uncle,” Valik had said. “He’s more use as a gift to the Kuwaitis, or Iraqis, they can jail him or extradite him. It was he who stole an Iranian helicopter and agreed for money to fly us out. Didn’t he?” “Yes. Even
