The Final Crusade td-76

by Warren Murphy

  "It's okay," he said, getting back on the bed. "There's no one under the bed."

  Victoria Hoar arched a penciled eyebrow. "Spies?"

  "No," replied the Reverend Eldon Sluggard, climbing on top of her cool immaculate body. "The devil." It was in that first twenty minutes of bliss that Eldon cried out that Victoria Hoar was his personal savior and she hadn't even revealed her master plan yet. Pacing his conference room, the afterimages of that first fevered night together fading in his mind, Eldon Sluggard wished that he hadn't. The woman was great, but no piece of tail was worth being drawn and quartered by Moslem fanatics. And where the hell was she? He was going to tell her off. This was it. This was quits. Victoria Hoar entered the room with the assurance of a woman to whom no room, no building, was off limits.

  "This is your fault!" Eldon Sluggard thundered in his best orator's voice, turning on her with an accusing finger.

  Victoria Hoar looked down at his crotch with a knowing smile. "Is it now?" she asked.

  The Reverend Eldon Sluggard looked down at himself. His zipper was becoming undone. It looked like magic. But it was only the pressure of his manhood straining to burst free. Damn, he thought, I shouldn't have thought of that first night.

  "Forget this!" Sluggard shouted, pointing to himself. "That isn't me. That's just the flesh, and the flesh is weak. Not me. Ah'm strong. Ah'm fortified with the word. "

  Victoria Hoar clicked over to his side, picked the heavy book off the table, and laid it in his hands so that it fell open. The open pages showed as white as snow. "Hallelujah!" she said smugly.

  "This can't go on. Have you been reading the papers? Do you know who's gunning for me? What they'll do?"

  "Forget today's problems. We have to concentrate on tomorrow's opportunities," Victoria Hoar said, her face inching toward his, her perfume billowing into his nostrils, her hands kneading his hips, moving in growing circles, so close but not quite in the right place.

  "Forget?" he said weakly, dreamily. "How can I forget?"

  And Victoria Hoar's moist mouth touched his briefly, her tongue darting between his teeth, and then she sank to her knees and her tongue began to work in earnest and Reverend Eldon Sluggard forgot all about the terrorists with their AK-47's and the mullahs with their sharp instruments.

  He forgot everything.

  Chapter 10

  Rashid Shiraz trembled as he entered the great Parliament building in downtown Tehran. He was not used to trembling. For nearly a decade he had made others tremble, for he was one of the most brutal of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. But he had never stood before a Grand Ayatollah before. Nor had he had any truck with Supreme Defense Commander General Adnan Mefki. The Pasdaran despised the Iranian military. The military hated the Pasdaran. Everyone hated the Pasdaran.

  But Rashid Shiraz understood in the early days of the Revolution that he who did not hold power during the transition was unlikely to hold on to his head.

  Rashid had been nothing under the Shah. A beggar in the streets of Tehran, a thief who eluded the police, and later, as his crimes grew bolder, the dreaded Secret Police called SAVAK. When the Ayatollah Khomeini returned from French exile, the executions began immediately. Rashid had just lifted a businessman's wallet when he ducked around a corner. He saw a bearded mullah exhorting Revolutionary Guards to hang a trio of schoolteachers who had been accused of counterrevolutionary deeds. They were made to stand on old Coke cartons as nooses were fitted around their necks. The mullah himself kicked the cartons from under their feet. The makeshift scaffolding collapsed. In a fury, the mullah personally shot the accused as they lay in heaps.

  It was then that Rashid fully understood the true meaning of the phrase "dog eat dog," and he knew that all of Iran was about to become a feeding ground. And who better than Rashid Shiraz to play the role of chief cannibal?

  He joined the Pasdaran. It took nothing to join, other than a willingness to shout slogans, pay lip service to Allah, and carry out brutal and merciless orders.

  With rifle in hand, and men under his command, Rashid Shiraz began paying back old grudges. The jeweler who turned him in for stealing was denounced as pro-Western. He was shot before a firing squad. The woman who spurned his advances was buried up to her neck and stoned to death. The landlord who had thrown him out one cold winter for not paying his rent was pulled from his fine house in the Doulat quarter. The house and all its contents became the property of Rashid Shiraz.

  Rashid Shiraz came to live like a king in Tehran while the old rulers drowned in their own blood. It had gone well for him, even during the bitterest days of the war with Iraq, when, as section after section of the city was turned to rubble by enemy rockets, Rashid abandoned the home that he had acquired and agreed to a transfer to the Kharg Island oil facility. A house was offered for his use, but it was too small. He walked the street with his pistol hanging from his tight fist until he found one he wanted. He knocked on the door, When a woman, veiled in the traditional chador, answered, he tore the veil from her face, and firing several shots into the air, denounced her as an adulteress and then shot her husband when he came to her aid.

  To the gathering crowd, he pronounced the couple to be Mufsed fel-Ardh, Corrupters of the Earth, and after they were hauled off for summary disposal, took the house as his. It was as easy as that in revolutionary Iran.

  But now Rashid Shiraz trembled. He understood better than anyone that in a land where bitter men in turbans could justify imprisoning or killing anyone merely by quoting passages from the Koran, no one was truly safe. Not even a Revolutionary Guard. The tide had a way of turning against any man who did not watch his back. Who was to know that some relative of one of his victims did not come to power and demand Rashid's head? When Rashid heard that he had been summoned to go before a Grand Ayatollah and a general, he thought he had angered someone too powerful even for him to deal with.

  Retainers greeted him at the entrance and in silence brought him to the Ayatollah's modest quarters. "Salaam," said Rashid Shiraz, placing one hand dutifully over his heart, his head inclining in the traditional gesture of respect and humility.

  The Ayatollah sat on a rug on the otherwise bare floor. The black turban which signified direct descent from the Prophet sat heavily on his head. He raised his hand in a gesture of greeting that was so indolent as to appear feeble. The general stood off to one side, his face glowering. Rashid Shiraz' bitter heart quailed.

  "Sadamm adechim," the Grand Ayatollah whispered.

  "May Allah maintain your shadow," Rashid Shiraz said deferentially.

  "And yours," the general said. But his eyes spoke volumes of distaste.

  Rashid Shiraz regarded both men in the lengthening silence. The Ayatollah looked the very image of holiness, but Rashid knew that the mullahs, repressed for so long under the Shah, and his father before them, had soured on life. No kindness existed in their breasts. It was said that they hennaed their beards with the blood of their victims. Rashid-who had no love for their religious beliefs any more than he had for the West's-did not know that as a fact, but he did know that hundreds of thousands of Iranian mothers were in mourning because the mullahs preferred to martyr their children rather than submit to a negotiated peace with Iraq until the war was nearly lost. In the aftermath of their folly, Iran was crumbling, and the formerly laughable counterrevolutionary National Liberation Army had replaced the Iraqis as the thorn that could not be withdrawn. And still the mullahs made pronouncements and urged the populace to fight on.

  Even Rashid Shiraz had grown weary of it. But as long as he was not ordered to the front, he kept his opinions to himself.

  "You are the one who uncovered the foul Western plot against us," the Grand Ayatollah said softly. His words escaped his beard like ants fleeing a hole in a rotted tree.

  "Yes, Imam," Rashid admitted.

  "We have interrogated this Cross-Worshipper. This koffar told us that a king among Cross-Worshippers, a man very powerful in America, is behind this plot against Islam. "
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  "Death to the Cross-Worshippers," Rashid shouted automatically. He shut up when General Mefki signaled for him to contain his zeal.

  "This unbeliever is known as Reverend Eldon Sluggard," the Ayatollah droned on. "The word 'reverend' denotes holiness in America, but we know how godless those people are."

  "This man must be punished," said Rashid Shiraz firmly, but quietly. General Mefki nodded. Rashid regarded him carefully. This was not going in the direction he had feared. Perhaps he was safe after all. But he noted how well-fed the general looked. He had the look of a timsar, a pre-Revolution general. Perhaps he continued to harbor pro-Western designs. Rashid told himself that it would serve him well to learn this man's background. Perhaps he had a fine house that would be good to live in.

  "It is good you agree," said General Mefki directly. "For we believe you are the one to undertake this task."

  "How? I will do anything."

  The general fingered his tiny mustache with satisfaction, and Rashid knew him then as a former officer of the Shah, probably a homosexual too. Almost every officer was a homosexual in the days of the Shah. It was part of their corruption.

  "We have sent agents to America to take this man Sluggard. Although you will not read of it in the newspapers, these attempts have failed. Our complaints to the international community are met with scorn and derision. Evidently this Sluggard is so powerful that he sways international opinion, or- "

  "Or he is in the pay of the American hypocrites," the Grand Ayatollah put in. "If so, this is another black mark against Shaitan Bozorg, the Great Satan, and must be punished. "

  "Let us sink their warships in the Gulf!"

  "You are forgetting what happened the last time we tried that," General Mefki said dryly. "No, what we have in mind is more direct. Our attempts to force America to hand this Sluggard over to us have failed. Now we will try another way."

  And before the next words came, Rashid Shiraz felt dizzy. He did not hear the words when they came. There was a roaring in his ears and his breathing came hot and bitter. He did not hear them order him to America to assassinate Eldon Sluggard. He did not have to.

  When they revived Rashid Shiraz with smelling salts, even before his head cleared, his mouth was volunteering him for service on the battle front. Even deadly poison gases were preferable to what he was being asked to do.

  He came to in a hospital. General Mefki loomed over him. There was no sign of the Grand Ayatollah.

  "You are going to America," the general said. He touched his mustache and then Rashid realized it was not some leftover effete gesture, but that the general was attempting to mask a self-satisfied smile. No one hated the Revolutionary Guard more than the generals-because the Pasdaran answered to no one and had usurped the military's primacy everywhere.

  "But it is a foul and corrupt place, full of sin and unbelievers. They eat pork. Their woman show their brazen faces in public. Their priests do not wear beards. Surely Allah does not ask a True Believer to enter such a perdition?"

  "Since when are you a True Believer, thief?" the general answered openly. "And we are not asking you to live there. Take the American with you. He will guide you. He is so frightened and so desperate to return to his homeland that he will commit any crime to see America again."

  "I would rather go to the front with the bassejis," said Rashid Shiraz sincerely.

  "The war effort needs volunteers, and nothing would please me more than to see you facing an enemy who shoots back. But the Grand Ayatollah has decreed this. So you will go."

  Lamar Booe cursed the darkness.

  Prayer had not worked. Faith had not worked. God refused to hear him. And the darkness of the stone cell continued unrelieved. Even when they brought bowls of soupy water, no light penetrated his cell in the basement of Tehran's Evil prison. They kept him in darkness to break him. But he had already broken. He had told them everything. And he was ashamed.

  At first, he blamed himself for not having enough faith. But the Reverend-General had promised that he would be safe from harm so long as he held the banner of the Cross Crusade high. God would watch over him. He was a lamb of God. A lamb with a proud banner. After they extracted the truth from him, they put him in the cell with its Turkish-style toilet-a square hole over an open sewer, with things crawling over his feet when he squatted over it and Lamar resolved that he would be stronger when they returned to interrogate him further.

  They did not return. And the soupy bowls continued to come and the stench continued to waft into the dripping limestone cell and the darkness continued unabated.

  Lamar cried out in anger at the darkness, at the Reverend-General, at the Lord. It was all a lie. A lie. And he had believed it.

  The guards heard him wail, first in bitter English and then in a spiraling incoherence. They laughed cruelly. In English they taunted him. "Your God has forsaken you, American. If you desire mercy, you must ask Allah. You are in Allah's land now. How do you like it, American devil?"

  Through the walls, dimly, distantly, came words being shouted. Only their monosyllabic monotony indicated the passage of time. If the crowd were chanting, it was day. If not, night. But it was always night in the cell.

  The shouting was a blind repetition of the same words, over and over.

  Marg bar Amrika! Marg bar Amrika!

  Death to America, was the cry. It continued so long and so monotonously that it was like a catchy song that stayed in the mind until you grew to despise it. It was the same chant that haunted the ears of the American hostages throughout their long 444 days of captivity in Iran. And they were diplomats and guests of the country. Lamar Booe was a confessed invader and spy.

  After an unknown length of time, Lamar Booe found himself whispering it under his breath. Chanting it along with the crowd. Not that he believed it, but the chanting was his only human contact, and joining the chanting was his only link with humanity and sanity.

  "Marg bar Amrika! Marg bar Amrika!" Lamar Booe whispered. The tears ran hotly down his soiled cheeks. The chanting had ceased for the day when the oaken door to his cell opened. This time, a light came with it.

  Lamar cried out, the pain to his eyes was so intense. He covered his eyes with his hands.

  A man knelt beside him, putting down a kerosene lantern. He grasped Lamar's longish hair in his hand and pulled his head back. With his other hand the jailer forced Lamar's eyelids open.

  "Look, look, Cross-Worshipper. Behold the light of Allah. If you cannot endure it, it will burn your eyes from the sockets of your very skull."

  "Leave me alone," Lamar said resignedly. "I want to go home. I want my parents."

  "And we want this unholy holy man, Eldon Sluggard," the voice hissed. "You do not know me, Cross-Worshipper, but I am the one who saved your life on the oil tanker, I knocked you into oblivion. I kept you alive. Now I will do you another favor."

  "I wish you had killed me," Lamar Booe moaned, the light seeping past his eyelids. It was red. Everything was red. But the pain was lessening.

  "I will take you back to America. Back to Sapulpa, Oklahoma. You would like that, Lamar Booe?"

  "Please. "

  "I will take you back, only if you lead me into this den of serpents where this Sluggard dwells."

  "Why?"

  "So that he will face his just punishment. He tricked you into invading the Islamic Republic of Iran. Now he has abandoned you. Do you not want to see him punished?"

  "Yes," Lamar Booe sobbed. "I hate him with all my might."

  "Not as much as I do," said Rashid Shiraz, yanking Lamar Booe to his feet and hauling him from the cell.

  Chapter 11

  The Reverend Eldon Sluggard had collapsed into his conference-room chair like a deflated balloon. His broad face was flushed with release. He watched Victoria Hoar quietly and expertly reapply the reddest lipstick he had ever seen to her moist mouth. Just watching that mouth redden got him going all over again.

  Someone knocked at the door.

  "Who
is it?" Sluggard asked, placing his mock Bible on his lap so that his recurring problem didn't show.

  "Head of security, Reverend Sluggard."

  "Come in."

  A man built like two linebackers welded side by side stepped into the room.

  "Yeah?" Sluggard asked, wiping his face. Victoria Hoar retreated to a corner of the room and pretended to examine a bookcase.

  "There are two men at the gate, Reverend Sluggard. They say they can solve your security problem."

  "Do Ah have a security problem?" Sluggard asked.

  "Not that I'm aware of."

  "Yes, you do," a squeaky voice said.

  "What is that?" Sluggard asked, clutching the Bible in his lap.

  The security chief looked around, as if for a hidden loudspeaker.

  "Your security problem," a deep male voice said. A different voice.

  "That sounds like the two I mentioned," the security chief said frantically. "But they're being held at the gate. How can they be here?"

  "Obviously, there is a security problem," Victoria Hoar said coolly. Her eyes darted from Sluggard to the security man.

  "Don't just stand there like an oaf," Sluggard shouted. "They're in this room. Find them!"

  The security chief crashed around the room desperately. It was a rectangle furnished only with the conference table and chairs. The walls were all bookcases and TV monitors. There was no place one person could hide, never mind two of them. The security chief flailed around the room anyway, his hands running over the walls, as if seeking a secret door.

  "You're getting warmer," the deep male voice taunted.

  "No, colder. He is getting colder," the squeaky voice said querulously.

  "Be fair, Little Father. Don't make it any harder for him."

  Victoria Hoar stepped away from the roaming security chief. "Where could they be?" she asked sharply. "There's no possible hiding place."

  "Never mind that. What I want to know is how long have they been here?" Eldon Sluggard's face was desperate. He was seeing his name on the cover of next week's National Enquirer.