Silent Partner

by Leigh Brackett

  "I can see the logic, if a man had the courage to force it through. I do not say I believe, yet I cannot take the risk of ignoring the possibility. Of course, we must search for the cache, and there must be a strong guard on the ridge. My first duty is security.”

  “I was pretty sure of that,” said Zacharian. “But wait a minute.”

  Maktabi stayed his hand from the intercom switch.

  “If Karim's alive, I want him. So do you. Failing him, you want the next man in line. Perhaps we can have it both ways.”

  “How?”

  “There's one problem. How does Karim or anyone get onto the terrace? Only those with official invitations and the proper credentials will be admitted, and there's no chance of sneaking past the guards unseen.”

  Impatiently, Maktabi said, “There are such things as forged credentials.”

  “Very well, let’s let our man get onto the terrace. How does he get up to the Apadana and onto the speaker’s stand? Remember he's armed. He must go undetected until the very last minute, right past all the soldiers and police, the honor guard, the sentries on the steps. How does he do that?”

  “I am waiting for you to tell me.”

  “No civilian could make it. He'd be stopped and questioned, searched. But a soldier, Hanookh—a soldier can carry a rifle and move about unnoticed because his uniform is a badge of safety. A soldier can approach a general with a message even when he's on a speaker's stand. Even if he were not permitted to mount those final steps, he'd be in a position to shoot his way on if he had to.”

  Maktabi said irritably, “You are not thinking clearly. All the soldiers on duty tomorrow are picked men. Any substitution would be impossible. Also, each one has his assigned post which he may not leave.”

  “Right. But suppose this is just a soldier, an orderly. He's already on the terrace, so he must belong there. Each officer would assume that he was from some other unit—”

  “And how did this soldier get onto the terrace? He would have to come with the assigned units, and I have just explained—”

  “Oh, no, he wouldn't.” Zacharian rose, his body taut with nervous energy. “Remember the security plans. This afternoon the terrace was closed, cleared of everyone but the indispensable personnel, who will be checked off when they leave. Routinely, all possible hiding places, such as the tombs and the museum building, will be gone over. Guards will be posted at all entrances to the terrace, including the old post on the mountain which covers the only path down from the crest. This is to prevent unauthorized persons of any sort coming in for any purpose whatever.”

  “So?”

  “So having been done once, the search will not be repeated. Listen, Hanookh, it's already late; you’ll only lose a little bit of daylight. Give me tonight. If I’m wrong, you’ve still got all of tomorrow morning.”

  Maktabi was silent, considering. At last he said, “Exactly what do you intend?”

  Zacharian told him.

  29

  They sat in the dust, leaning against the base of the eastern stair of the Apadana. Dust and stone both still held some warmth from the day. Overhead the sky was a pellucid blackness holding a blaze of stars.

  Tony’s eyes had become used to the starlight. He could see the carvings to his left and, to his right, the tall immortals with their spears in their hands. They wore long robes and sandals with buttoned thongs. Their beards were curled, and their eyes were proud and calm. They were not very good company. Neither was Zacharian, who rested against the skirts of a Mede and appeared to sleep. Tony wanted desperately to talk, but talking was forbidden.

  Up on the cliff of Rahmat the southern tomb was hardly visible. It was too close to the guard tower for what Zacharian had in mind. The northern tomb was almost directly opposite. The deep niche showed as an area of darknes against the paler rock. Tony would have liked a moon. That would not come until later, and meantime, there was nothing to do but sit and wait and wonder.

  Nervous tremors set his thigh muscles jumping. He put his hands on them and clamped them tight, and the posture made him aware of the gun under his arm, the same gun he had lost on the night they took Hassani. From time to time he could hear one of the soldiers on guard duty cough or scuff his boot against the stone. Otherwise the night was very quiet.

  The dim light began to bother his eyes. He closed them. High above him the kneeling bulls of a double-headed capital rubbed their fronts against the stars and dreamed of other days. A small dry wind came in from the desert, stirring Tony's hair, making whispering noises. The long lines of the embassies marched—men of Egypt and India, Bactria and Babylon, Sogdiana and Thrace, Phoenicia and Punt, bearing gifts to the Great King. Tony had a confused idea that they were really moving, and he snapped to with a violent start to find that it was Zacharian who had moved, gathering himself forward with a faint, soft scuffing in the dust.

  His hand came over Tony's mouth. Tony nodded to signify that he was awake, and the hand moved away, pointing.

  Behind the mountain the sky had turned milky, and now the western-facing cliff was all in darkness. The niche of the tomb was lost, and Tony had trouble finding it again. When he did, it took him even longer to see what Zacharian was pointing at.

  A tiny blob of darkness more solid than the shadow crept down the face of the sheer cut above the tomb.

  The great ganglion at Tony's middle contracted in a stinging flare of heat. He made to rise, and Zacharian whispered, “Wait. Let him get all the way down."

  The dark blob crept and crawled, infinitely patient. Nothing thumped or rang against the rock. Somewhere up above there would be men paying out the rope. They were too far away from the guard tower to be seen, and they would take care not to be heard.

  The figure slid lower and came finally to rest on the tomb ledge.

  “Wait,” said Zacharian. “Give them time to take the rope up.”

  They waited, hearing nothing, seeing nothing. The figure was now hidden. Probably, Tony thought, he had already gone into the cold chamber of the tomb, to wait there until tomorrow, when the terrace would be thronged with people and he could take his place among them unnoticed.

  Zacharian said, “Now.”

  He sprang up, shouting to the soldiers. The sergeant in charge had been briefed when they had returned to Persepolis after dark. Somebody let off a rifle twice as a signal to the men in the tower and at the gate below—two at each place, two more at each end of the terrace. There were sounds of men running.

  Tony and Zacharian were far ahead, going between the Hall of a Hundred Columns and the Treasury. As they came into the open at the foot of the cliff, something large and furious rushed down the steep path from the tomb, sliding, leaping, scattering pebbles. It fired at them in mid-leap. They dropped behind a fragment of wall and heard the bone-jarring finish of the descent. Then silence. The man had taken shelter beyond a row of cubicles that once housed part of the Great King’s soldiery. No one had shot at him. They wanted him alive.

  Tony shouted, "Karim!” The name rang off the cliff. “Karim!”

  There was no answer. Tony trembled with impatience. Up on the ridge there were cries and an outburst of firing. A man came tumbling down the cliff, shrieking. About midway he stopped that. He struck bottom with a noise like someone slapping a pillow, and a few rocks fell after him. The cries and shots receded over the eastern slope of the mountain. The four soldiers on the terrace called to one another. From the placement of their voices they were fanning out across the Hall of a Hundred Columns and the court beyond, forming a line that would pin the quarry against the cliff and hold him there.

  Zacharian spoke in Persian; whether or not he was Karim, the man behind the wall would understand that. Tony knew that he was being told to surrender. Once again there was no answer. A thin old moon climbed over the ridge and washed Persepolis in a vague light more baffling than the steady, shadowless gleaming of the stars. The shattered columns and stark doorways seemed to float between reality and dream.

&
nbsp; The soldiers began to call again, closing in.

  Tony said, "Where is he?”

  Suddenly, at the far end of the barrack row, one of the soldiers yelled and waved his arms.

  "Hell," said Zacharian, "he’s slipped around them somehow.'

  They ran across the hundred-columned hall. When they reached the doorway on the other side, they could see that all the soldiers were heading toward the northern end of the terrace, where an active man might escape. Zacharian stopped abruptly.

  "How many soldiers do you see?"

  Tony strained his eyes against the swimming light.

  "Five.”

  Zacharian grunted. "So the one that yelled wasn't one of ours. It was him, and who’s to tell the difference?”

  In that light, with the men separated from one another in the tangle of ruins, no one had.

  Zacharian climbed onto the low wall, then up on a higher block of stone. Tony followed to the top of the wall, where he could see better. One of the soldiers had dropped far behind the other four and was coming back this way.

  Zacharian shouted and fired a warning shot.

  There was a second shot, almost overlapping Zacharian's. Tony heard the impact of the bullet. He tried to catch Zacharian as he fell but only succeeded in falling with him onto the pavement behind the wall. Zacharian lay partly on top of him; he was still alive because Tony could feel the labored agony of every breath he drew. Tony disengaged himself. His hands were covered in blood. He stood up and wiped them, not knowing what to do.

  Karim came over the wall twenty feet away and told him.

  "Stand there, Tony. Right there.”

  He came closer, trim and soldierly in khakis and beret. He had a pistol in his hand, and Tony stood, holding his hands wide, knowing it was no use to try for his own gun.

  "You should have kept going,” he said. "You could have got away.” In the distance he could hear the voices of the soldiers. The shots had turned them. "They’ll be here in a minute—”

  Karim said, "They can have me. I wasn’t trying to get away.”

  Tony stared at him, uncomprehending, remembering Karim’s face, remembering love. And he cried out, "Why? Why have you done these things?”

  "Harvey asked me the same question before he died. Because I wanted to save my people. I don’t want them changed, Westernized, made over in somebody else’s image. I don’t want the girls turning into little fornicating Sandras and the young men into fat spoiled children like you. Reza Shah began it, taking the veils from the women, making the men wear brimmed hats so they couldn’t pray ... I might have stopped it, but you—you and that Armenian pig—”

  The soldiers were still a long way off. Tony stood alone, looking into the black, round eye of Karim’s gun.

  "So you’re going to kill us.”

  "I spared your life once, Tony. You should have been more grateful. You know what’s going to happen. I’ll make the best bargain I can for my father, and then I’ll be tried, convicted, and shot. You’ve got what you wanted, but I’m damned if I’ll leave you to enjoy it.”

  Tony said, "Karim, please—’’

  And Karim waited one moment too long, saying, “Go ahead and cry, Tony. You’ve always been good at that.”

  Tony cried, and at the same time he charged forward, his hands high, above the gun. There was no conscious thought about it. The nerves and the muscles, the glands and the beating heart, did it all by themselves out of a compulsion as old as life, because there was no help and nothing to be lost. His fists crashed down on Karim’s arm. The gun went off, and he heard the bullet snarl away, chipping the paving stones. In a blind rage of fear he held Karim’s wrist and bore him backward, ground him with his heavier weight against the wall, beat his hand against the hard clay until it let the weapon fall. He kicked it out of reach and stepped back, drawing his own gun, shaking so that he could hardly hold it.

  Karim leaned against the wall, groping for his injured hand and staring at Tony in shocked amazement.

  “I never thought you had the guts.”

  “Neither did I.” He heard the soldiers coming toward the door and smiled. “Cheer up,” he said to Karim. “There may be hope for your people yet.”

  30

  And this, after all, was how it ended. Not among the stones of Persepolis, or at the hospital in Shiraz where Zacharian was recovering from the bullet that had cracked his heart rib; where Karim, under heavy guard, was being treated for a broken hand and the aftereffects of the minor wound he had taken at Isfahan, telling all he knew of the Western network, the Marlowe Foundation, and the Lion, in exchange for leniency to his father.

  It ended here, in a green churchyard high up on the edge of Dartmoor, with the clouds rolling overhead and a smell of rain on the wind. The grass had grown thick on Harvey Martin’s grave, so that only the newness of the headstone was out of place, and that was already beginning to weather down. Tony noticed that a small patch of lichen had appeared.

  He and Ellen had both felt that somehow this last visit was necessary, a kind of explanation and farewell. They had brought flowers. They stood on opposite sides of the grave, quite silently, for some time, while the sun broke out from between the clouds and then was gone again. A few drops of rain began to fall. Ellen laid the bright flowers on the grass and looked at Tony and he nodded. He came around and took her hand, and they went together to the car and got in and drove away across the moor.