“But…but what about you?” she said, wide-eyed and filled with hope at so much potential pishkesh.
“I’ve ten more,” he said, the lie coming easily. “Emergency funds, courtesy of Her Majesty’s Government.”
“Oh, Johnny, I think we’ve a chance now—this is so much money to them.”
They both glanced at the window as a wind picked up and rustled the sacking that covered it. She got up and adjusted it as best she could. Not all the opening could be covered. “Never mind,” he said. “Come and sit down.” She obeyed, closer than before. “Here. Just in case.” He handed her the grenade. “Just hold the lever down, pull the pin out, count three, and throw. Three, not four.”
She nodded and pulled up her chador and carefully put the grenade into one of her ski-jacket pockets. Her tight ski pants were tucked into her boots. “Thanks. Now I feel better. Safer.” Involuntarily, she touched him and wished she hadn’t for she felt the fire. “I’d… I’d better go. I’ll bring you food at first light. Then we’ll leave.”
He got up and opened the door for her. Outside it was dark. Neither saw the figure scuttle away from the window, but both felt eyes feeding on them from every side.
“What about Gueng, Johnny? Do you think he’ll find us?”
“He’ll be watching, wherever he is.” He felt a spasm coming. “’Night, sweet dreams.”
“Sweet dreams.”
They had always said it to each other in the olden time. Their eyes touched and their hearts and both of them were warmed and at the same time filled with foreboding. Then she turned, the darkness of her chador making her at once almost invisible. He saw the door of the headman’s hut open and she went in and then the door closed. He heard a truck grinding up the road not far off, then a honking car that went past and soon faded away. A spasm came and it was too much so he squatted. The pain was big but little came out and he was thankful that Azadeh had gone. His left hand groped for some snow and he cleansed himself. Eyes were still watching him, all around. Bastards, he thought, then went back into the hut and sat on the crude straw mattress.
In the darkness he oiled the kookri. No need to sharpen it. He had done that earlier. Lights glinted off the blade. He slept with it out of its scabbard.
AT THE PALACE OF THE KHAN: 11:19 P.M. The doctor held the Khan’s wrist and checked his pulse again. “You must have plenty of rest, Highness,” he said worriedly, “and one of these pills every three hours.”
“Every three hours…yes,” Abdollah Khan said, his voice small and breathing bad. He was propped on cushions in the bed that was made up on deep carpets. Beside the bed was Najoud, his eldest daughter, thirty-five, and Aysha, his third wife, seventeen. Both women were white-faced. Two guards stood at the door and Ahmed knelt beside the doctor. “Now…now leave me.”
“I’ll come back at dawn with the ambulance an—”
“No ambulance! I stay here!” The Khan’s face reddened, another pain went through his chest. They watched him, hardly breathing. When he could speak he said throatily, “I stay…here.”
“But Highness, you’ve already had one heart attack, God be thanked just a mild one,” the doctor said, his voice quavering. “There’s no telling when you could have… I’ve no equipment here; you should have immediate treatment and observation.”
“What…whatever you need, bring it here. Ahmed, see to it!”
“Yes Highness.” Ahmed looked at the doctor.
The doctor put his stethoscope and blood pressure equipment into his old-fashioned bag. At the door he slipped his shoes on and went out. Najoud and Ahmed followed him. Aysha hesitated. She was tiny and had been married two years and had a son and a daughter. The Khan’s face had an untoward pallor and his breath rasped heavily. She knelt closer and took his hand but he pulled it away angrily, rubbing his chest, cursing her. Her fear increased.
Outside in the hall, the doctor stopped. His face was old and lined, older than his age, his hair white. “Highness,” he said to Najoud, “better he should be in hospital. Tabriz is not good enough. Tehran would be much better. He should be in Tehran though the trip there might… Tehran is better than here. His blood pressure’s too high, it’s been too high for years but, well, as God wants.”
“Whatever you need we’ll bring here,” Ahmed said.
Angrily the doctor said, “Fool, I can’t bring an operating theater and dispensary and aseptic surroundings!”
“He’s going to die?” Najoud said, her eyes wide.
“In God’s time, only in God’s time. His pressure’s much too high… I’m not a magician and we’re so short of supplies. Have you any idea what caused the attack—was there a quarrel or anything?”
“No, no quarrel, but it was surely Azadeh. It was her again, that stepsister of mine.” Najoud began wringing her hands. “It was her, running off with the saboteur yesterday morning, it wa—”
“What saboteur?” the doctor asked astonished.
“The saboteur everyone is looking for, the enemy of Iran. But I’m sure he didn’t kidnap her, I’m sure she ran off with him—how could he kidnap her from inside the palace? She’s the one who caused His Highness such rage—we’ve all been in terror since yesterday morning…”
Stupid hag! Ahmed thought. The insane, roaring outburst was because of the men from Tehran, Hashemi Fazir and the Farsi-speaking Infidel, and what they demanded of my Master and what my Master had to agree to. Such a little thing, giving over to them a Soviet, a pretended friend who was an enemy, surely no cause to explode? Clever of my Master to set everything into motion: the day after tomorrow the burnt offering comes back over the border into the web and the two enemies from Tehran come back into the web. Soon my Master will decide and then I will act. Meanwhile, Azadeh and the saboteur are safely bottled in the village, at my Master’s will—word sent to him by the headman the first moment. Few men on earth are as clever as Abdollah Khan and only God will decide when he should die, not this dog of a doctor. “Let us go on,” he said. “Please excuse me, Highness, but we should fetch a nurse and drugs and some equipment. Doctor, we should hurry.”
The door at the far end of the corridor opened. Aysha was even paler. “Ahmed, His Highness wants you for a moment.”
When they were alone, Najoud caught the doctor by the sleeve and whispered, “How bad is His Highness? You must tell me the truth. I’ve got to know.”
The doctor lifted his hands helplessly. “I don’t know, I don’t know. I’ve been expecting worse than this for…for a year or more. The attack was mild. The next could be massive or mild, in an hour or a year, I don’t know.”
Najoud had been in a panic ever since the Khan had collapsed a couple of hours before. If the Khan died, then Hakim, Azadeh’s brother, was his legitimate heir—Najoud’s own two brothers had died in infancy. Aysha’s son was barely a year old. The Khan had no living brothers, so his heir should be Hakim. But Hakim was in disgrace and disinherited so there would have to be a regency. Her husband, Mahmud, was senior of the sons-in-law. He would be regent, unless the Khan ordered otherwise.
Why should he order otherwise? she thought, her stomach once more a bottomless pit. The Khan knows I can guide my husband and make us all strong. Aysha’s son—pshaw, a sickly child, as sickly as the mother. As God wants, but infants die. He’s not a threat, but Hakim—Hakim is.
She remembered going to the Khan when Azadeh had returned from school in Switzerland: “Father, I bring you bad tidings but you must know the truth. I overheard Hakim and Azadeh. Highness, she told him she’d been with child but with the help of a doctor had cast it out.”
“What?”
“Yes…yes I heard her say it.”
“Azadeh could not… Azadeh would not, could not do that!”
“Question her—I beg you do not say from where you heard it—ask her before God, question her, have a doctor examine her, but wait, that’s not all. Against your wishes, Hakim’s still determined to become a pianist and he told her he was going to run aw
ay, asking Azadeh to come with him to Paris, ‘then you can marry your lover,’ he said, but she said, Azadeh said, ‘Father will bring you back, he’ll force us back. He’ll never permit us to go without his prior permission, never.’ Then Hakim said, ‘I will go. I’m not going to stay here and waste my life. I’m going!’ Again she said, ‘Father will never permit it, never.’ ‘Then better he’s dead,’ Hakim said and she said, ‘I agree.’”
“I—I don’t—believe it!”
Najoud remembered the face gone purple, and how terrified she had been. “Before God,” she had said, “I heard them say it, Highness, before God. Then they said we must plan, we m—” She had quailed as he shouted at her, telling her to tell it exactly.
“Exactly he said, Hakim said, ‘A little poison in his halvah, or in a drink, we can bribe a servant, perhaps we could bribe one of his guards to kill him or we could leave the gates open at night for assassins…there are a hundred ways for any one of a thousand enemies to do it for us, everyone hates him. We must think and be patient…’”
It had been easy for her to weave her spell, deeper and deeper into the fabrication so that soon she was believing it—but not quite.
God will forgive me, she told herself confidently as she always told herself. God will forgive me. Azadeh and Hakim have always hated us, the rest of the family, wanted us dead, outcast, to take all our heritage unto themselves, they and their witch of a mother who cast an evil spell over Father to turn his face from us for so many years. Eight years he was under the spell—Azadeh this and Azadeh that, Hakim this and Hakim that. Eight years he dismissed us and our mother, his first wife, took no notice of me, carelessly married me to this clod, Mahmud, this foul-smelling, now impotent, vile, snoring clod, and so ruined my life. I hope my husband dies, eaten by worms, but not before he becomes Khan so my son will become Khan after him.
Father must get rid of Hakim before he dies. God keep him alive to do that—he must do it before he dies—and Azadeh must be humbled, cast out, destroyed too—even better, caught in her adultery with the saboteur, oh yes, then my revenge would be complete.
FRIDAY
February 23
NEAR TABRIZ ONE, AT THE VILLAGE OF ABU MARD: 6:17 A.M. In the dawn, the face of another Mahmud, the Islamic-Marxist mullah, was contorted with rage. “Have you lain with this man?” he shouted. “Before God have you lain with him?”
Azadeh was on her knees in front of him, panic-stricken. “You’ve no right to burst into th—”
“Have you lain with this man?”
“I… I am faithful to my…my husband,” she gasped. It was only seconds ago that she and Ross had been sitting on the carpets in the hut, hastily eating the meal she had brought him, happy together, ready for immediate departure. The headman had gratefully and humbly accepted his pishkesh—four gold rupees to him and one she had secretly given to his wife—telling them to sneak out of the village by the forest side the moment they had finished eating, blessing her—then the door had burst open, aliens had rushed them, overpowering him and dragging them both into the open, shoving her at Mahmud’s feet and battering Ross into submission. “I’m faithful, I swear it. I’m faithf—”
“Faithful? Why aren’t you wearing chador?” he had shouted down at her, most of the village collected around them now, silent and afraid. Half a dozen armed men leaned on their weapons, two stood over Ross who was face downward in the snow, unconscious, blood trickling from his forehead.
“I was… I was wearing chador but I… I took it off while I was eat—”
“You took off your chador in a hut with the door closed eating with a stranger? What else had you taken off?”
“Nothing, nothing,” she said in more panic, pulling her unzipped parka closer about her, “I was just eating and he’s not a stranger but an old friend of mi…old friend of my husband,” she corrected herself hastily but the slip had not gone unnoticed. “Abdollah Khan is my father and you have no r—”
“Old friend? If you’re not guilty you’ve nothing to fear! Before God, have you lain with him? Swear it!”
“Kalandar, send for my father, send for him!” The kalandar did not move. All eyes were grinding into her. Helplessly she saw the blood on the snow, her Johnny groaning, coming around. “I swear by God I’m faithful to my husband!” she screamed. The cry went over them all and into Ross’s mind and seared him awake.
“Answer the question, woman! Is it yes or no? In the Name of God, have you lain with him?” The mullah was standing over her like a diseased crow, the villagers waiting, everyone waiting, the trees and the wind waiting—even God.
Insha’Allah!
Her fear left her. In its place was hate. She stared back at this man Mahmud as she got up. “In the Name of God, I am and have always been faithful to my husband,” she pronounced. “In the Name of God, yes, I loved this man, years upon years ago.”
Her words made many that were there shudder and Ross was appalled that she had admitted it.
“Harlot! Loose woman! You openly admit yourself guilty. You will be punished accord—”
“No,” Ross shouted over him. He dragged himself onto his knees and though the two mujhadin had guns at his head, he ignored them. “It was not the fault of Her Highness. I—I’m to blame, only me, only me!”
“You’ll be punished, Infidel, never fear,” Mahmud said, then turned to the villagers. “You all heard the harlot admit fornication, you all heard the Infidel admit fornication. For her there is but one punishment—for the Infidel…what should happen to the Infidel?”
The villagers waited. The mullah was not their mullah, nor of their village, nor a real mullah but an Islamic-Marxist. He had come uninvited. No one knew why he had come here, only that he had appeared suddenly like the wrath of God with leftists—also not of their village. Not true Shi’as, only madmen. Hadn’t the Imam said fifty times all such men were madmen who only paid lip service to God, secretly worshiping the Satan Marx-Lenin.
“Well? Should he share her punishment?”
No one answered him. The mullah and his men were armed.
Azadeh felt all eyes boring into her but she could no longer move or say anything. She stood there, knees trembling, the voices distant, even Ross’s shouting, “You’ve no jurisdiction over me—or her. You defile God’s name…” as one of the men standing over him gave him a brutal shove to send him sprawling then put a booted foot on his neck pinioning him. “Castrate him and be done with it,” the man said and another said, “No, it was the woman who tempted him—didn’t I see her lift her chador to him last night in the hut. Look at her now, tempting us all. Isn’t the punishment for him a hundred lashes?”
Another said, “He put his hands on her, take off his hands.”
“Good,” Mahmud said. “First his hands, then the lash. Tie him up!”
Azadeh tried to cry out against this evil but no sound came out, the blood roaring in her ears now, her stomach heaving, her mind unhinged as they dragged her Johnny to his feet, fighting, kicking, to tie him spread-eagled between rafters that jutted from the hut—remembering the time she and Hakim were children and he, filled with bravado, had picked up a stone and thrown it at the cat, and the cat squealed as it rolled over and got up, now injured, and tried to crawl away, squealing all the time until a guard shot it, but now…now she knew no one would shoot her. She lurched at Mahmud with a scream, her nails out, but her strength failed her and she fainted.
Mahmud looked down at her. “Put her against that wall,” he said to some of his men, “then bring her her chador.” He turned and looked at the villagers. “Who is the butcher here? Who is the butcher of the village?” No one replied. His voice roughened. “Kalandar, who is your butcher?”
Quickly the headman pointed to a man in the crowd, a small man with rough clothes. “Abrim, Abrim is our butcher.”
“Go and get your sharpest knife,” Mahmud told him. “The rest of you collect stones.”
Abrim went to do his bidding. As God wants, t
he others muttered to each other. “Have you ever seen a stoning?” someone asked. A very old woman said, “I saw one once. It was in Tabriz when I was a little girl.” Her voice quavered. “The adulteress was the wife of a bazaari, yes, I remember she was the wife of a bazaari. Her lover was a bazaari too and they hacked off his head in front of the mosque, then the men stoned her. Women could throw stones too if they wanted but they didn’t, I didn’t see any woman do it. It took a long time, the stoning, and for years I heard the screams.”
“Adultery is a great evil and must be punished, whoever the sinner, even her. The Koran says a hundred lashes for the man…the mullah is the lawgiver, not us,” the kalandar said.
“But he’s not a true mullah and the Imam has warned against their evil!”
“The mullah is the mullah, the law, the law,” the kalandar said darkly, secretly wanting the Khan humbled and this woman who had taught new disturbing thoughts to their children destroyed. “Collect the stones.”
Mahmud stood in the snow, ignoring the cold and the villagers and the saboteur who cursed and moaned and, frenzied, tried to fight out of his bonds, and the woman inert at the wall.
This morning, before dawn, coming to take over the base, he had heard about the saboteur and her being in the village. She of the sauna, he had thought, his anger gathering, she who had flaunted herself, the highborn whelp of the cursed Khan who pretends to be our patron but who has betrayed us and betrayed me, already engineering an assassination attempt on me last night, a burst of machine-gun fire outside the mosque after last prayer that killed many but not me. The Khan tried to have me murdered, me who am protected by the Sacred Word that Islam together with Marx-Lenin is the only way to help the world rise up.
He looked at her, seeing the long legs encased in blue ski pants, hair uncovered and flowing, breasts bulging against the blue and white ski jacket. Harlot, he thought, loathing her for tempting him. One of his men threw the chador over her. She moaned a little but did not come out of her stupor.
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