And that retreat wasn’t a real emergency, he reminded himself. How to operate in one? Last week he had flown to Kowiss to pick up some special spares and had asked Starke how he planned to operate at Kowiss if there was real trouble.
“The same as you, Rudi. You’d try to operate within company rules which won’t apply then,” the tall Texan had said. “We got a couple of things going for us: just about all of our guys’re ex-service of some sort so there’s a kinda chain of command - but hell, you can plan all you want and then you still won’t sleep nights because when the stuff hits the fan, it’ll be the same as ever: some of the guys’ll fall apart, some won’t, and you’ll never know in advance who’s gonna do what, or even how you’ll react yourself.” Rudi had never been in a shooting war, though his service with the German army in the fifties had been on the East German borders, and in West Germany you’re always conscious of the Wall, the Curtain, and of all your brothers and sisters behind it - and of the waiting, brooding Soviet legions and satellite legions with their tens of thousands of tanks and missiles also behind it, just yards away. And conscious of German zealots on both sides of the border who worship their messiah called Lenin and the thousands of spies gnawing at our guts.
Sad.
How many from my hometown?
He had been born in a little village near Plauen close to the Czechoslovakian border, now part of East Germany. In ‘45 he had been twelve, his brother sixteen and already in the army. The war years had not been bad for him and his younger sister and mother. In the country there was enough to eat. But in ‘45 they had fled before the Soviet hordes, carrying what they could, to join the vast German migrations westward: two million from Prussia, another two from the north, four from the center, another two from the south - along with other millions of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Austrians, Bulgarians, of all Europe - all starving now, all petrified, all fighting to stay alive.
117 Ah, staying alive, he thought.
On the trek, cold and weary and almost broken, he remembered going with his mother to a garbage dump, somewhere near Nürnberg, the countryside war-ravaged and towns rubbled, his mother frantic to find a kettle - their own stolen in the night - impossible to buy one, even if they had had the money. “We’ve got to have a kettle to boil water or we’ll all die, we’ll get typhus or dysentery like the others - we can’t live without boiled water,” she had cried out. So he had gone with her, in tears, convinced it was a waste of time, but they had found one. It was old and battered, the spout bent, and the handle loose but the top was with it and it did not leak. Now the kettle was clean and sparkling and in a place of honor on the mantelpiece in the kitchen of their farmhouse near Freiburg in the Black Forest where his wife and sons and mother were. And once a year, each New Year’s Eve, his mother would still make tea from water boiled in the kettle. And, when he was there, they would smile together, he and she. “If you believe enough, my son, and try,” she would always whisper, “you can find your kettle. Never forget, you found it, I didn’t.”
There were sudden warning shouts. He whirled around to see three army trucks burst through the gate, one racing for the tower, the other toward his hangars. The trucks skidded to a halt and Green Band revolutionaries fanned out over the base, two men charging at him, their guns leveled, screaming Farsi which he did not understand, as others started rounding up his men in the hangar. Petrified, he raised his hands, his heart pounding at the suddenness. Two Green Bands, bearded and sweating with excitement-fear shoved gun barrels at his face and Rudi flinched. “I’m not armed,” he gasped. “What do you want? Eh?” Neither man answered, just continued to threaten him. Behind them he could see the rest of his crew being herded out of their barrack trailers onto the apron. Other attackers were jumping in and out of the helicopters, searching them, carelessly overturning gear, one man hurling neatly rolled life jackets out of their seat pockets. His rage overcame his terror. “Hey, Sie verrückte Dummköpfe,” he shouted. “Lass’n Sie meine verrückten Flugzeuge allein!” Before he knew what he was doing he had brushed the guns aside and rushed toward them. For a moment it looked as though the two Iranians would shoot, but they just went after him, caught up with him, and pulled him around. One lifted a rifle by the butt to smash his face in.
“Stop!”
The men froze.
The man who shouted out the command in English was in his early thirties, heavyset, wearing rough clothes, with a green armband, a stubbled beard, dark wavy hair, and dark eyes. “Who is in charge here?”
“I am!” Rudi Lutz tore his arms out of his assailants’ grasp. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”
“We are possessing this airport in the name of Islam and the revolution.” The man’s accent was English. “How many troops are here, air staff?” “There’re none. No troops - there’s no tower staff, there’s no one here but us,” Rudi said, trying to catch his breath.
“No troops?” The man’s voice was dangerous.
“No, none. We’ve had patrols here since we came here a few weeks ago - they come from time to time. But none are stationed here. And no military airplanes.” Rudi stabbed a finger at the hangar. “Tell those… those men to be careful of my airplanes, lives depend on them, Iranian as well as ours.”
The man turned and saw what was happening. He shouted another command, cursing them. The men shouted back at him carelessly, then after a moment came out into the sunset, leaving chaos in their wake.
“Please excuse them,” the man said. “My name is Zataki. I am chief of the Abadan komiteh. With the Help of God, we command Bandar Delam now.” Rudi’s stomach was churning. His expats and Iranian staff were in a frozen group beside the low office building, guns surrounding them. “We’re working for a British comp - ”
“Yes, we know about S-G Helicopters.” Zataki turned and shouted again. Reluctantly, some of his men went to the gate and began to take up defensive positions. He looked back at Rudi. “Your name?”
“Captain Lutz.”
“You have nothing to fear, Captain Lutz, you and your men. Do you have arms here?”
“No, except Very light pistols, aircraft stores. For signaling, distress signaling.”
“You will fetch them.” Zataki turned and went nearer to the S-G group and stood there, examining faces. Rudi saw the fear of his Iranians, cooks, ground staff, fitters, Jahan, and Yemeni, the IranOil manager. “These are all my people,” he said trying to sound firm. “All S-G employees.”
Zataki looked at him, then came very close, and Rudi had to steel himself not to flinch again. “Do you know what mujhadin-al-khalq means? Fedayeen? Tudeh?” he asked softly, heavier than Rudi, and with a gun. “Yes.”
“Good.” After a pause, Zataki went back to staring at the Iranians. One by one. The silence grew. Suddenly he stabbed a finger at one man, a fitter. The man sagged, then began to run frantically, screaming in Farsi. They caught him easily and beat him senseless.