'Look, is it against the law for us to go?'
'No, but--'
'Then we're going. Just tell them.'
There was more argument in Turkish, but finally the policemen and the hotel manager appeared to give in, and the team boarded the bus.
They left town. The temperature dropped rapidly as they drove up into the snow-covered hills. They all had warm coats, and blankets in their backpacks, and they needed them.
Mr. Fish sat next to Sculley and said: 'This is where it gets serious. I can handle the police, because I have ties with them; but I'm worried about the bandits and the soldiers--I have no connections there.'
'What d'you want to do?'
'I believe I can talk my way out of trouble, so long as none of you have guns.'
Sculley considered. Only Davis was armed anyway; and Simons had always worried that weapons could get you into trouble more readily than they could get you out of it: the Walther PPKs had never left Dallas. 'Okay,' Sculley said.
Ron Davis threw his .38 out of the window into the snow.
A little later the headlights of the bus revealed a soldier in uniform standing in the middle of the road, waving. The bus driver kept right on going, as if he intended to run the man down, but Mr. Fish yelled and the driver pulled up.
Looking out the window, Sculley saw a platoon of soldiers armed with high-powered rifles on the mountainside, and thought: if we hadn't stopped, we'd have been mown down.
A sergeant and a corporal got on the bus. They checked all the passports. Mr. Fish offered them cigarettes. They stood talking to him while they smoked; then they waved and got off.
A few miles farther on, the bus was stopped again, and they went through a similar routine.
The third time, the men who got on the bus had no uniforms. Mr. Fish became very jumpy. 'Act casual,' he hissed at the Americans. 'Read books, just don't look at these guys.' He talked to the Turks for something like half an hour, and when the bus was finally allowed to proceed, two of them stayed on it. 'Protection,' Mr. Fish said enigmatically, and he shrugged.
Sculley was nominally in charge, but there was little he could do other than follow Mr. Fish's directions. He did not know the country, nor did he speak the language: most of the time he had no idea what was going on. It was hard to have control under those circumstances. The best he could do, he figured, was to keep Mr. Fish pointed in the right direction and lean on him a little when he began to lose his nerve.
At four o'clock in the morning they reached Yuksekova, the nearest village to the border station. Here, according to Mr. Fish's cousin in Van, they would find Ralph Boulware.
Sculley and Mr. Fish went into the hotel. It was dark as a barn and smelled like the men's room at a football stadium. They yelled for a while, and a boy appeared with a candle. Mr. Fish spoke to him in Turkish, then said: 'Boulware's not here. He left hours ago. They don't know where he went.'
Thirteen
1____
At the hotel in Rezaiyeh, Jay Coburn had that sick, helpless feeling again, the feeling he had had in Mahabad, and then in the courtyard of the schoolhouse: he had no control over his own destiny, his fate was in the hands of others--in this case, the hands of Rashid.
Where the hell was Rashid?
Coburn asked the guards if he could use the phone. They took him down to the lobby. He dialed the home of Majid's cousin, the professor, in Rezaiyeh, but there was no answer.
Without much hope he dialed Gholam's number in Tehran. To his surprise he got through.
'I have a message for Jim Nyfeler,' he said. 'We are at the staging area.'
'But where are you?' said Gholam.
'In Tehran,' Coburn lied.
'I need to see you.'
Coburn had to continue the deception. 'Okay, I'll meet you tomorrow morning.'
'Where?'
'At Bucharest.'
'Okay.'
Coburn went back upstairs. Simons took him and Keane Taylor into one of the rooms. 'If Rashid isn't back by nine o'clock, we're leaving,' Simons said.
Coburn immediately felt better.
Simons went on: 'The guards are getting bored, their vigilance is slipping. We'll either sneak past them or deal with them the other way.'
'We've only got one car,' said Coburn.
'And we're going to leave it here, to confuse them. We'll walk to the border. Hell, it's only thirty or forty miles. We can go across country: we'll avoid roadblocks by avoiding roads.'
Coburn nodded. This was what he wanted. They were taking the initiative again.
'Let's get the money together,' Simons said to Taylor. 'Ask the guards to take you down to the car. Bring the Kleenex box and the flashlight up here and take the money out of them.'
Taylor left.
'We might as well eat first,' Simons said. 'It's going to be a long walk.'
Taylor went into an empty room and spilled the money out of the Kleenex box and the flashlight onto the floor.
Suddenly the door was flung open.
Taylor's heart stopped.
He looked up and saw Gayden, grinning all over his face. 'Gotcha!' Gayden said.
Taylor was furious. 'You bastard, Gayden,' he said. 'You gave me a fucking heart attack.'
Gayden laughed like hell.
The guards took them downstairs to the dining room. The Americans sat at a big circular table, and the guards took another table across the room. Lamb with rice was served, and tea. It was a grim meal: they were all worried about what might have happened to Rashid, and how they would manage without him.
There was a TV set on, and Paul could not take his eyes off the screen. He expected at any minute to see his own face appear like a 'Wanted' poster.
Where the hell was Rashid?
They were only an hour from the border, yet they were trapped, under guard, and still in danger of being sent back to Tehran and jail.
Someone said: 'Hey, look who's here!'
Rashid walked in.
He came over to their table, wearing his self-important look. 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'this is your last meal.'
They all stared at him, horrified.
'In Iran, I mean,' he added hastily. 'We can leave.'
They all cheered.
'I got a letter from the revolutionary committee,' he went on. 'I went to the border to check it out. There are a couple of roadblocks on the way, but I have arranged everything. I know where we can get horses to cross the mountains--but I don't think we need them. There are no government people at the border station--the place is in the hands of the villagers. I saw the head man of the village, and it will be all right for us to cross. Also, Ralph Boulware is there. I talked to him.'
Simons stood up. 'Let's move,' he said. 'Fast.'
