“I said, wot made you start the project anyway? It’s a long way from home and had to be nothing but trouble. Wot started you?”
“A dream.” Kasigi would like to have lit a cigarette but smoking was only allowed in certain fireproofed areas. “Eleven years ago, in ‘68, a man called Banjiro Kayama, a senior engineer working for my company and kinsman of our president, Hiro Toda, was driving through the oil fields around Abadan. It was his first visit to Iran and everywhere he went he saw jets of natural gas being flared off. He had a sudden thought: why can’t we turn that wasted gas into petrochemicals? We’ve the technology and the expertise and a long-range-planning attitude. Japanese skill and money married to Iranian raw materials that presently are totally wasted! A brilliant idea - unique and another first! The feasibility planning took three years, quite long enough, though jealous rivals claimed we went too quickly, at the same time they tried to steal our ideas and tried to poison others against us. But the Toda plan correctly went forward and the $3.5 billion raised. Of course, we’re only a part of the Gyokotomo-Mitsuwari-Toda Syndicate, but Toda ships will carry Japan’s share of the products that our industries desperately need.” If ever we can finish the complex, he thought disgustedly.
“And now the dream’s a nightmare?” Scragger asked. “Didn’t I hear… wasn’t it reported that the project was running out of money?”
“Enemies spread all sorts of rumors.” Under the ever-present drone of the ship’s generators, his ears heard the beginning of a scream that he had been expecting - surprised it had been so long arriving. “When de Plessey comes back aboard, will you help me?”
“Glad to. He’s the man who c - ” Scragger stopped. Again the thin edge of the scream. “Burns must be terrible painful.”
Kasigi nodded.
Another gush of flame took their attention to the shore. They watched the men there. Now the fire was almost under control. Another scream. Kasigi dismissed it, his mind on Bandar Delam and the teleprinter reply he should make at once to Hiro Toda. If anyone can solve our problem it’s Hiro Toda. He has to solve it - if he doesn’t, I’m ruined, his failure becomes mine. “Kasigi-san!” It was the captain calling from the bridge. “Hai?”
Scragger listened to the stream of Japanese from the captain, the sound of the Japanese not pleasing to his ears.
Kasigi gasped. “Domo,” he shouted back, then, urgently to Scragger all else forgotten, “Come on!” He led the rush to the gangway. “The Iranian - you remember, the one you threw out of the chopper? He’s a saboteur and he’s planted an explosive device below.”
Scragger followed Kasigi through the hatchway, down the gangway two steps a time, rushed along the corridor, and down another deck and another and then he remembered the screams. I thought they came from the bridge and not from below! he told himself. Wot did they do to him?
They caught up with the captain and his chief engineer. Two angry seamen half shoved, half dragged the petrified Saiid ahead of them. Tears ran down his face and he was jabbering incoherently, one hand holding his pants up. He stopped, trembling and moaning, and pointed at the valve. The captain squatted on his haunches. Very carefully he reached behind the huge valve. Then he stood up. The plastic explosive just covered his hand. The timing device was chemical, a vial embedded in it and taped strongly in place. “Turn it off,” he said angrily in hesitant Farsi and held it out to the man who backed off, jabbering and screaming, “You can’t turn it off. It’s overdue to explode … don’t you understand!”
The captain froze. “He says it’s overdue!”
Before he could move, one of the seamen grabbed it out of his hand and half dragging Saiid with him, half smashing him ahead, rushed for the gangway - there were no portholes on this deck but there were on the next. The nearest porthole was in a comer of the corridor, clamped shut by two heavy metal wing nuts. He almost flung Saiid at it, shouting at him to open it. With his free hand he began unscrewing one of them. The swing bolt fell away, then Saiid’s. The seaman swung the port open. At that second the device exploded and blew both his hands off and most of his face and tore Saiid’s head apart and splattered the far bulkhead with blood.
The others charging up from below were almost blown backward down the gangway. Then Kasigi went forward and knelt beside the bodies. Numbly he shook his head.
The captain broke the silence. “Karma,” he muttered.
Chapter 13
AT TEHRAN: 8:33 P.M. After Tom Lochart had left McIver near their office he had driven home - a few diversions, some angry police but nothing untoward. Home was a fine penthouse apartment in a modern six-story building, in the best residential area - a wedding present from his father-in-law. Sharazad was waiting for him. She threw her arms around him, kissed him passionately, begged him to sit in front of the fire and take his shoes off, rushed to fetch some wine that was iced exactly as he liked, brought him a snack, told him that dinner would be ready soon, ran into the kitchen and in her lilting, liquid voice, urged their maid and the cook to hurry for the Master was home and hungry, then came back and sat at his feet - the floor beautifully and heavily carpeted - her arms around his knees, adoring him. “Oh, I’m so happy to see you, Tommy, I’ve missed you so much,” her English lovely. “Oh, I’ve had such an interesting time today and yesterday.” She wore light silk Persian trousers and a long loose blouse and was, for him, achingly beautiful. And desirable. Her twenty-third birthday was in a few days. He was forty-two. They had been married almost a year and he had been spellbound from the first moment he had seen her.
That had been a little over three years before, at a dinner party in Tehran that was given by General Valik. It was early September then, just at the end of English school summer vacations, and Deirdre, his wife, was in England with their daughter, holidaying and partying, and only that morning he had had another irate letter from her, insisting he write to Gavallan for an immediate transfer: “I hate Iran, don’t want to live there anymore, England’s all I want, all that Monica wants. Why don’t you think of us for a change instead of your damned flying and damned company? All my family’s here, all my friends are here, and all Monica’s friends are here. I’m fed up with living abroad and want my own house, somewhere near London, with a garden, or even in town - there are some super bargains going in Putney and Clapham Common. I’m totally fed up with foreigners and foreign postings, and absolutely chocker with Iranian food, the filth, the heat, the cold, their foul-sounding language, their foul loos and squatting like an animal, and foul habits, manners - everything. It’s time we sorted out things while I’m still young …”
“Excellency?”
The smiling, starched waiter had deferentially offered him a tray of drinks, soft drinks mostly. Many middle-and upper-class Muslims drank in the privacy of their homes, a few in public - liquor and wine of all sorts being on sale in Tehran, and also in bars in all modern hotels. There were no restrictions on foreigners drinking openly or privately, unlike in Saudi Arabia - and some of the Emirates - where anyone caught, anyone, was subject to Koranic punishment of the lash.
“Mamoonan,” thank you, he said politely and accepted a glass of the white Persian wine that had been sought after for almost three millennia, hardly noticing the waiter or the other guests, unable to shake off his depression and irritated that he agreed to join this party tonight, substituting for McIver who had had to go to their HQ base at Al Shargaz, the other side of the Gulf. “But, Tom, you can talk Farsi,” McIver had said airily, “and someone’s got to go…” Yes, he thought, but Mac could just as easily have asked Charlie Pettikin.