“Never, never been in the middle of a nightmare like that, Charlie,” Nogger Lane continued shakily. “Troops were all as young as the mobs and they all seemed scared shitless, too much to take night after night, mobs screaming and throwing stones. … A Molotov cocktail caught a soldier in the face and he burst into flames, screaming through the flames with no… and then those bastards cornered us and started manhandling Paula, trying to get at her, pawing her, tearing at her clothes. I went a bit mad myself and got hold of one bastard and smashed his face in, I know I hurt him because his nose went into his head and if it hadn’t been for this mullah …”
“Take it easy, laddie,” Pettikin said worriedly, but the youth paid no attention and rushed onward.
“.. . if it hadn’t been for this mullah who pulled me off I’d’ve gone on smashing until that bugger was pulp; I wanted to claw out his eyes, Jesus Christ, I tried to, I know I did… Jesus Christ, I’ve never killed anything with my hands, never wanted to until tonight but I did and would have….” His hands were trembling as he brushed his fair hair out of his eyes, his voice edged now and rising. “Those bastards, they had no right to touch us but they were grabbing Paula and… and…” The tears began gushing, his mouth worked but no words came out, a fleck of foam was at the corners of his lips, “and… and … kill… I wanted to killlll - ” Abruptly Pettikin leaned over and belted the young man backhanded across the face, knocking him spread-eagled on the sofa.
The others almost leaped out of themselves at the suddenness. Lane was momentarily stunned, then he groped to his feet to hurl himself at his attacker.
“Hold it, Nogger!” Pettikin roared. The command stopped the youth in his tracks. He stared at the older man stupidly, fists bunched. “What the bloody hell’sthematterwithyou, youdamn near broke my bloodyjaw,” he said furiously. But the tears had stopped and his eyes were clean again. “Eh?” “Sorry, lad, but you were going, flipping, I’ve seen it aco - ” “The bloody hell I was,” Lane said menacingly, his senses back, but it took them time to explain and to calm him and calm her. Her name was Paula Giancani, a tall girl, a stewardess from an Alitalia flight. “Paula, dear, you’d better stay here tonight,” Genny said. “It’s past curfew. You understand?”
“Yes, understand. Yes, I speak English, I th - ”
“Come along, I’ll lend you some things. Nogger, you take the sofa.” Later Genny and McIver were still awake, tired but not sleepy, gunfire somewhere in the night, chanting somewhere in the night. “Like some tea, Duncan?”
“Good idea.” He got up with her. “Oh, damnit, I forgot.” He went over to the bureau and found the little box, badly wrapped. “Happy anniversary. It’s not much, just a bracelet I got in the bazaar.”
“Oh, thank you, Duncan.” As she unwrapped it she told him about the haggis. “What a bugger! Never mind. Next year we’ll have it in Scotland.” The bracelet was rough amethysts set in silver. “Oh, it’s so pretty, just what I wanted. Thank you, darling.”
“You too, Gen.” He put his arm around her and kissed her absently. She didn’t mind about the kiss. Most kisses nowadays, hers as well, were just affectionate, like patting a beloved dog. “What’s troubling you, dear?” “Everything’s fine.”
She knew him too well. “What - that I don’t know yet?”
“It’s getting hairier and hairier. Every hour on the hour. When you were out of the room with Paula, Nogger told us they’d come from the airport. Her Alitalia flight - it’d been chartered by the Italian government to evacuate their nationals and had been grounded for two days - had got clearance to leave at midday, so he’d gone to see her off. Of course takeoff was delayed and delayed, as usual, then just before dusk the flight was grounded again, the whole airport closed down, and everyone was told to leave. All Iranian staff just vanished. Then almost immediately a group of heavily armed, and he meant heavily armed revolutionaries, started spreading out all over the place. Most of ‘em were wearing green armbands, but some had IPLO on them, Gen, the first Nogger’d seen. ‘Iranian Palestine Liberation Organization.’” “Oh, my God,” she said, “then it’s true that the PLO’s helping Khomeini?” “Yes, and if they’re helping, it’s a different game, civil war’s just started, and we’re in the bloody middle.”
Chapter 3
AT TABRIZ ONE: 11:05 P.M. Erikki Yokkonen was naked, lying in the sauna that he had constructed with his own hands, the temperature 107 degrees Fahrenheit, the sweat pouring off him, his wife Azadeh nearby, also lulled by the heat. Tonight had been grand with lots of food and two bottles of the best Russian vodka that he had purchased black market in Tabriz and had shared with his two English mechanics, and their station manager, Ali Dayati. “Now we’ll have sauna,” he had said to them just before midnight. But they had declined, as usual, with hardly enough strength to reel off to their own cabins. “Come on, Azadeh!”
“Not tonight, please, Erikki,” she had said, but he had just laughed and lifted her in his great arms, wrapped her fur coat around her clothes, and carried her through the front door of their cabin, out past the pine trees heavy with snow, the air just below freezing. She was easy to carry, and he went into the little hut that abutted the back of their cabin, into the warmth of the changing area and then, unclothed, into the sauna itself. And now they lay there, Erikki at ease, Azadeh, even after a year of marriage, still not quite used to the nightly ritual.
He lay on one arm and looked at her. She was lying on a thick towel on the bench opposite. Her eyes were closed and he saw her breast rising and falling and the beauty of her - raven hair, chiseled Aryan features, lovely body, and milky skin - and as always he was filled with the wonder of her, so small against his six foot four.
Gods of my ancestors, thank you for giving me such a woman, he thought. For a moment he could not remember which language he was thinking in. He was quadrilingual, Finnish, Swedish, Russian, and English. What does it matter? he told himself, giving himself back to the heat, letting his mind waft with the steam that rose from the stones he had laid so carefully. It satisfied him greatly that he had built his sauna himself - as a man should - hewing the logs as his ancestors had done for centuries.
This was the first thing he had done when he was posted here four years ago - to select and fell the trees. The others had thought him crazy. He had shrugged good-naturedly. “Without a sauna life’s nothing. First you build the sauna, then the house; without sauna a house is not a house; you English, you know nothing - not about life.” He had been tempted to tell them that he had been bom in a sauna, like many Finns - and why not, how sensible when you think of it, the warmest place in the home, the cleanest, quietest, most revered. He had never told them, only Azadeh. She had understood. Ah, yes, he thought, greatly content, she understands everything.