Escape

by James Clavell

  Uneasily the two men watched them leave, the bodyguard with the two gate guards hurrying after them up the steps. ‘If Her Highness can’t deal with him, what can we do?’ the older policeman said.

  The lights in the forecourt went out. After six minutes the engines were still starting and stopping. ‘We’d better obey.’ The young policeman was very nervous. ‘The Khan said five. We’re late.’

  ‘Be prepared to run and don’t irritate him unnecessarily. Take your safety catch off.’ Nervously they went closer. ‘Pilot!’ But the pilot still had his back to them and was half inside the cockpit. Son of a dog! Closer, now up to the whirling blades. ‘Pilot!’ the corporal said loudly.

  ‘He can’t hear you, who can hear anything? You go forward, I’ll cover you.’

  The corporal nodded, commended his soul to God, and ducked into the wash of air. ‘Pilot!’ He had to go very close, and touch him. ‘Pilot!’ Now the pilot turned, his face grim, said something in barbarian that he did not understand. With a forced smile and forced politeness, he said, ‘Please, Pilot Excellency, we would consider it an honour if you would stop the engines, His Highness the Khan has ordered it.’ He saw the blank look, remembered that He of the Knife could not speak any civilised language, so he repeated what he had said, speaking louder and slower and using signs. To his enormous relief, the pilot nodded apologetically, turned some switches, and now the engines were slowing and the blades were slowing.

  Praise be to God! Well done, how clever you are, the corporal thought, gratified. ‘Thank you, Excellency Pilot. Thank you.’ Very pleased with himself he imperiously peered into the cockpit. Now he saw the pilot making signs to him, clearly wishing to please him—as so he should, by God—inviting him to get into the pilot’s seat. Puffed with pride, he watched the barbarian politely lean into the cockpit and move the controls and point at instruments.

  Not able to contain his curiosity the younger policeman came under the blades that were circling slower and slower, up to the cockpit door. He leaned in to see better, fascinated by the banks of switches and dials that glowed in the darkness.

  ‘By God, Corporal, have you ever seen so many dials and switches? You look as though you belong in that seat!’

  ‘I wish I was a pilot,’ the corporal said. ‘I th—’ He stopped, astonished, as his words were swallowed by a blinding red fog that sucked the breath out of his lungs and made the darkness complete.

  Erikki had rammed the younger man’s head against the corporal’s, stunning both of them. Above him the rotors stopped. He looked around. No movement in the darkness, just a few lights on in the palace. No alien eyes or presence that he could sense. Quickly he stowed their guns behind the pilot’s seat. It took only seconds to carry the two men to the cabin and lay them inside, force their mouths open, put in the sleeping pills that he had stolen from Azadeh’s cabinet, and gag them. A moment to collect his breath, before he went forward and checked that all was ready for instant departure. Then he came back to the cabin. The two men had not moved. He leaned against the doorway ready to silence them again if need be. His throat was dry. Sweat beaded him. Waiting. Then he heard dogs and the sound of chain leashes. Quietly he readied the Sten gun. The wandering patrol of two armed guards and the Doberman pinschers passed around the palace but did not come near him. He watched the palace, his arm no longer in the sling.

  In the Palace Forecourt: 12:03 A.M. Erikki was leaning against the 212 when he saw the lights in the Khan’s quarters on the second floor go out. A careful check on the two drugged policemen fast asleep in the cabin reassured him. Quietly he slid the cabin door closed, eased his knife under his belt and picked up the Sten. With the skill of a night hunter he moved noiselessly towards the palace. The Khan’s guards on the gate did not notice him go—why should they bother to watch him? The Khan had given them clear orders to leave the pilot alone and not agitate him, that surely he would soon tire of playing with the machine. ‘If he takes a car, let him. If the police want trouble, that’s their problem.’

  ‘Yes, Highness,’ they had both told him, glad they were not responsible for He of the Knife.

  Erikki slipped through the front door and along the dimly lit corridor to the stairs leading to the north wing, well away from the Khan’s area. Noiselessly up the stairs and along another corridor. He saw a shaft of light under the door of their suite. Without hesitation he went into the anteroom, closing the door silently after him. Across the room to their bedroom door and swung it open. To his shock Mina, Azadeh’s maid, was there too. She was kneeling on the bed where she had been massaging Azadeh who was fast asleep.

  ‘Oh, your pardon,’ she stuttered, terrified of him like all the servants. ‘I didn’t hear Your Excellency. Her Highness asked. . . asked me to continue as long as I could with. . . with the massage, then to sleep here.’

  Erikki face was a mask, the oil streaks on his cheeks and on the taped bandage over his ear making him appear more dangerous. ‘Azadeh!’

  ‘Oh you won’t wake her, Excellency, she took a. . . she took two sleeping pills and asked me to apologise for her if you c—’

  ‘Dress her!’ he hissed.

  Mina blanched. ‘But, Excellency!’ Her heart almost stopped as she saw a knife appear in his hand.

  ‘Dress her quickly and if you make a sound I’ll gut you. Do it!’ He saw her grab the dressing gown. ‘Not that, Mina! Warm clothes, ski clothes—by all the gods, it doesn’t matter which but be quick!’ He watched her, positioning himself between her and the door so she couldn’t bolt. On the bedside table was the sheathed kukri. A twinge went through him and he tore his eyes away, and when he was sure Mina was obeying he took Azadeh’s purse from the dressing table. All her papers were in it, ID, passport, driver’s licence, birth certificate, everything. Good, he thought, and blessed Aysha for the gift that Azadeh had told him about before dinner and thanked his ancient gods for giving him the plan this morning. Ah, my darling, did you think I’d really leave you?

  Also in the purse was her soft silk jewellery bag which seemed heavier than normal. His eyes widened at the emeralds and diamonds and pearl necklaces and pendants that it now contained. The rest of Najoud’s, he thought, the same that Hakim had used to barter with the tribesmen and that I retrieved from Bayazid. In the mirror he saw Mina gaping at the wealth he held in his hand, Azadeh inert and almost dressed. ‘Hurry up!’ he grated at her reflection.

  At the Ambush Roadblock below the Palace: 12:17 A.M. Both the sergeant of police and his driver in the car waiting beside the road were staring up at the palace four hundred yards away, the sergeant using binoculars. Just the dim lights on the outside of the vast gatehouse, no sign of any guards, or of his own two men. ‘Drive up there,’ the sergeant said uneasily. ‘Something’s wrong, by God! They’re either asleep or dead. Go slowly and quietly.’ He reached into the scabbard beside him and put a shell into the breech of the M16. The driver gunned the engine and eased out into the empty roadway.

  At the Main Gate: Babak, the guard, was leaning against a pillar inside the massive iron gate that was closed and bolted. The other guard was curled up nearby on some sacking, fast asleep. Through the bars of the gate could be seen the snowbanked road that wound down to the city. Beyond the empty fountain in the forecourt, a hundred yards away, was the helicopter. The icy wind moved the blades slightly.

  He yawned and stamped his feet against the cold, then began to relieve himself through the bars, absently waving the stream this way and that. Earlier when they had been dismissed by the Khan and had come back to their post, they had found that the two policemen had gone. ‘They’re off to scrounge some food, or to have a sleep,’ he had said. ‘God curse all police.’

  Babak yawned, looking forward to the dawn when he would be off duty for a few hours. Only the pilot’s car to usher through just before dawn, then relock the gate, and soon he would be in bed with a warm body. Automatically he scratched his genita
ls, feeling himself stir and harden. Idly he leaned back, playing with himself, his eyes checking that the gate’s heavy bolt was in place and the small side gate also locked. Then the edge of his eyes caught a movement. He centered it. The pilot was slinking out of a side door of the palace with a large bundle over his shoulder, his arm no longer in the sling and carrying a gun. Hastily Babak buttoned up, slipped his rifle off his shoulder, moved farther out of view. Cautiously he kicked the other guard who awoke soundlessly. ‘Look,’ he whispered, ‘I thought the pilot was still in the cabin of the helicopter.’

  Wide-eyed, they watched Erikki keep to the shadows, then silently dart across the open space to the far side of the helicopter. ‘What’s he carrying? What’s the bundle?’

  ‘It looked like a carpet, a rolled-up carpet,’ the other whispered. Sound of the far cockpit door opening.

  ‘But why? In all the Names of God, what’s he doing?’

  There was barely enough light but their vision was good and hearing good. They heard an approaching car but were at once distracted by the sound of the far cabin door sliding open. They waited, hardly breathing, then saw him dump what appeared to be two similar bundles under the belly of the helicopter, then duck under the tail boom and reappear on their side. For a moment he stood there, looking towards them but not seeing them, then eased the cockpit door open, and got in with the gun, the carpet bundle now propped on the opposite seat.

  Abruptly the jets began and both guards jumped. ‘God protect us, what do we do?’

  Nervously Babak said, ‘Nothing. The Khan told us exactly: “Leave the pilot alone, whatever he does, he’s dangerous,” that’s what he told us, didn’t he? “When the pilot takes the car near dawn let the pilot leave.” ’ Now he had to talk loudly over the rising scream. ‘We do nothing.’

  ‘But we weren’t told he would start his engines again, the Khan didn’t say that, or sneak out with bundles of carpets.’

  ‘You’re right. As God wants, but you’re right.’ Their nervousness increased. They had not forgotten the guards jailed and flogged by the old Khan for disobedience or failure, or those banished by the new one. ‘The engines sound good now, don’t you think?’ They both looked up as lights came on at the second floor, the Khan’s floor, then they jerked around as the police car came swirling to a stop outside the gate. The sergeant jumped out, a flashlight in his hand. ‘What’s going on, by God?’ the sergeant shouted. ‘Open the gate, by God! Where’re my men?’

  Babak rushed for the side gate and pulled the bolt back. In the cockpit Erikki’s hands were moving as quickly as possible, the wound in his arm inhibiting him. The sweat ran down his face and mixed with a trickle of blood from his ear where the taped bandages had become displaced. His breath came in great pants from the long run from the north wing with Azadeh bundled in the carpet, drugged and helpless, and he was cursing the needles to rise quicker. He had seen the lights go on in Hakim’s apartments and now heads were peering out. Before he had left their suite he had carefully knocked Mina unconscious, hoping he had not hurt her, to protect her as well as himself so she would not sound an alarm or be accused of collusion, had wrapped Azadeh in the carpet and attached the kukri to his belt.

  ‘Come on,’ he snarled at the needles, then glimpsed two men at the main gate in police uniforms. Suddenly the helicopter was bathed in a shaft of light from the flashlight and his stomach turned over. Without thinking, he grabbed his Sten, shoved the nose through the pilot’s window, and pulled the trigger, aiming high.

  The four men scattered for cover as bullets ricocheted off the gate masonry. In his panic the sergeant dropped the flash, but not before all had seen two crumpled, inert bodies of the corporal and the other policeman sprawled on the ground and presumed them dead. As the burst stopped, the sergeant scrambled for the side gate and his car and his M16.

  ‘Fire, by God,’ the driver policeman shouted. Whipped by the excitement, Babak squeezed the trigger, the shots going wild. Incautiously, the driver moved into the open to retrieve the flash. Another burst from the helicopter and he leaped backward, ‘Son of a burnt father. . ..’ The three of them cowered in safety. Another burst at the flashlight danced it, then smashed it.

  Erikki saw his escape plan in ruins, the 212 a helpless target on the ground. Time had run out for him. For a split second he considered closing down. The needles were far too low. Then he emptied his Sten at the gate with a howling battle-cry, slammed the throttles forward, and let out another primeval scream that chilled those who heard it. The jets went to full power, shrieked under the strain as he put the stick forward and dragged her airborne a few inches and now, tail high, she lurched ahead, skids screeching on the forecourt as she bounced and rose and fell back and bounced again and now was airborne but lumbering badly. At the main gate the driver tore the gun from a guard and went to the pillar, peered around it to see the helicopter escaping, and pulled the trigger.

  On the second floor of the palace Hakim was blearily leaning out of his bedroom window, grasped from drugged sleep by the noise. His bodyguard, Margol, was beside him. They saw the 212 almost collide with a small wooden outhouse, her skids ripping away part of the roof, then struggle onward in a drunken climb. Outside the walls was the police car, the sergeant silhouetted in the beam of its headlights. Hakim watched him aim and willed the bullets to miss.

  Erikki heard bullets zinging off metal, prayed they had touched nothing vital, and banked dangerously away from the exposed outer wall towards some space where he could slip behind the safety of the palace. In the wild turn the bundled carpet containing Azadeh toppled over and tangled with the controls. For a moment he was lost, then he used his massive strength to shove her away. The wound in his forearm split open.

  Now he swerved behind the north wing, the chopper still only a few feet high and heading towards the other perimeter wall near the hut where Ross and Gueng had been hidden. Still only a few feet high, a stray bullet punctured his door, hacked into the instrument panel, exploding glass.

  When the helicopter had disappeared from Hakim’s view, he had hobbled across the huge bedroom, past the wood fire that blazed merrily, out into the corridor to the windows there. ‘Can you see him?’ he asked, panting from the exertion.

  ‘Yes, Highness,’ Margol said, and pointed excitedly. ‘There!’

  The 212 was just a black shape against more blackness, then the perimeter floodlights came on and Hakim saw her stagger over the wall with only inches to spare and dip down. A few seconds later she had reappeared, gaining speed and altitude. At that moment Aysha came running along the corridor, crying out hysterically, ‘Highness, Highness. . .. Azadeh’s gone, she’s gone. . . that devil’s kidnapped her and Mina’s been knocked unconscious. . ..’

  It was hard for Hakim to concentrate against the pills, his eyelids never so heavy. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Azadeh’s gone, your sister’s gone, he wrapped her in a carpet and he’s kidnapped her, taken her with him. . .’ She stopped, afraid, seeing the look on Hakim’s face, ashen in this bleak light, eyes drooping—not knowing about the sleeping pills. ‘He’s kidnapped her!’

  ‘But that. . . that’s not possible. . . not poss—’

  ‘Oh, but it is, she’s kidnapped and Mina’s unconscious!’

  Hakim blinked at her, then stuttered, ‘Sound the alarm, Aysha! If she’s kidnapped. . . by God, sound. . . sound the alarm! I’ve taken sleeping pills and they. . . I’ll deal with that devil tomorrow, by God, I can’t now, not now, but send someone. . . to the police. . . to the Green Bands. . . spread the alarm, there’s a Khan’s ransom on his head! Margol, help me back to my room.’

  Frightened servants and guards were collecting at the end of the corridor and Aysha ran tearfully back to them, telling them what had happened and what the Khan had ordered.

  Hakim groped for his bed and lay back, exhausted. ‘Margol, tell the. . . tell guards to arrest those
fools on the gate. How could they have let that happen?’

  ‘They can’t have been vigilant, Highness.’ Margol was sure they would be blamed—someone had to be blamed—even though he had been present when the Khan had told them not to interfere with the pilot. He gave the order and came back. ‘Are you all right, Highness?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. Don’t leave the room. . . wake me at dawn. Keep the fire going and wake me at dawn.’

  Gratefully Hakim let himself go into the sleep that beckoned so seductively, his back no longer paining him, his mind focused on Azadeh and on Erikki. When she had walked out of the small room and left him alone with Erikki, he had allowed his grief to show: ‘There’s no way out of the trap, Erikki. We’re trapped, all of us, you, Azadeh, and me. I still can’t believe she’d renounce Islam, at the same time I’m convinced she won’t obey me or you. I’ve no wish to hurt her but I’ve no alternative, her immortal soul is more important than her temporary life.’

  ‘I could save her soul, Hakim. With your help.’

  ‘How?’ He had seen the tension in Erikki, his face tight, eyes strange.

  ‘Remove her need to destroy it.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Say, hypothetically, this madman of a pilot was not Muslim but barbarian and so much in love with his wife that he goes a little more mad and instead of just escaping by himself, he suddenly knocks her out, kidnaps her, flies her out of her own country against her will, and refuses to allow her to return. In most countries a husband can. . . can take extreme measures to hold on to his wife, even to force her obedience and curb her. This way she won’t have broken her oath, she’ll never need to give up Islam, you’ll never need to harm her, and I’ll keep my woman.’

  ‘It’s a cheat,’ Hakim had said, bewildered. ‘It’s a cheat.’

  ‘It’s not, it’s make-believe, hypothetical, all of it, only make-believe, but hypothetically it fulfils the rules you swore to abide by, and no one’d ever believe the sister of the Gorgon Khan would willingly break her oath and renounce Islam over a barbarian. No one. Even now you don’t know for certain she would, do you?’