I’ve been very patient, Erikki thought, more patient than with any man, wishing the interview was over. “What about my wife, Highness?” It was custom to call him that and Erikki did so from time to time out of politeness.
Abdollah Khan smiled a thin smile at him. “Naturally my daughter’s future interests me. What is your plan when you go to Tehran?”
“I have no plan. I just think it is wise to get her out of Tabriz for a few days. Rakoczy said they ‘require’ my services. When the KGB say that in Iran or Finland or even America, you’d better clear the decks and prepare for trouble. If they kidnapped her, I would be putty in their hands.” “They could kidnap her in Tehran much more easily than here, if that is their scheme - you forget this is Azerbaijan” - his lips twisted with contempt - “not Bakhtiar country.”
Erikki felt helpless under the scrutiny. “I only know mat’s what I think is best for her. I said I would guard her with my life, and I will. Until the political future of Iran is settled - by you and other Iranians - I think it’s the wise thing to do.”
“In that case, go,” her father had said with a suddenness that had almost frightened him. “Should you need help send me the code words…” He thought a moment. Then his smile became sardonic: “Send me the sentence: ‘All men are created equal.’ That’s another truth, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know, Highness,” he said carefully. “If it is or if it isn’t, it’s surely the Will of God.”
Abdollah had laughed abruptly and got up and left him alone in the Great Room and Erikki had felt a chill on his soul, deeply unsettled by the man whose thoughts he could never read.
“Are you cold, Erikki?” Azadeh asked.
“Oh. No, no, not at all,” he said, coming out of his reverie, the sound of the engine good as they climbed up the mountain road toward the pass. Now they were just below the crest. There had been little traffic either way. Around the corner they came into sunshine and topped the rise; at once Erikki shifted gears smoothly and picked up speed as they began the long descent, the road - built at the order of Reza Shah, like the railway - a wonder of engineering with cuts and embankments and bridges and steep parts with no railings on the precipice side, the surface slippery, snowbanked. He changed down again, driving fast but prudently, very glad they had not driven by night. “May I have some more coffee?”
Happily she gave it to him. “I’ll be glad to see Tehran. There’s lots of shopping to be done, Sharazad’s there, and I have a list of things for my sisters and some face cream for Stepmother…”
He hardly listened to her, his mind on Rakoczy, Tehran, McIver, and the next step.
The road twisted and curled in its descent. He slowed and drove more cautiously, some traffic behind him. In the lead was a passenger car, typically overloaded, and the driver drove too close, too fast, and with his finger permanently on the horn even when it was clearly impossible to move out of the way. Erikki closed his ears to the impatience that he had never become used to, or to the reckless way Iranians drove, even Azadeh. He rounded the next blind corner, the gradient steepening, and there on the straight, not far ahead, was a heavily laden truck grinding upward with a car overtaking on the wrong side. He braked, hugging the mountainside. At that moment the car behind him accelerated, swerved around him, horn blaring, overtaking blindly, and hurtled down the wrong side of the curving road. The two cars smashed into each other and both careened over the precipice to fall five hundred feet and burst into flames. Erikki swung closer into the side and stopped. The oncoming truck did not stop, just lumbered past and continued up the hill as though nothing had happened - so did the other traffic.
He stood at the edge and looked down into the valley. Burning remains of the cars were spread over the mountainside down six or seven hundred feet, no possibility of survivors, and no chance to get down there without serious climbing gear. When he came back to the car he shook his head unhappily. “Insha’Allah, my darling,” Azadeh said calmly. “It was the Will of God.” “No, it wasn’t, it was blatant stupidity.”
“Of course you’re right, Beloved, it certainly was blatant stupidity,” she said at once in her most calming voice, seeing his anger though not understanding it as she did not understand much that went on in the head of this strange man who was her husband. “You’re perfectly right, Erikki. It was blatant stupidity but the Will of God that those drivers’ stupidity caused their deaths and the deaths of those who traveled with them. It was the Will of God or the road would have been clear. You were quite right.” “Was I?” he said wearily.
“Oh, yes, of course, Erikki. You were perfectly right.”
They went on. The villages that lay beside the road or straddled it were poor or very poor with narrow dirt streets, crude huts and houses, high walls, a few drab mosques, street stores, goats and sheep and chickens, and flies not yet the plague they would become in summer. Always refuse in the streets and in the joub - the ditches - and the inevitable scavenging packs of scabrous despised dogs that frequently were rabid. But snow made the landscape and the mountains picturesque, and the day continued to be good though cold with blue skies and cumulus building.
Inside the Range Rover it was warm and comfortable. Azadeh wore padded, modern ski gear and a cashmere sweater underneath, matching blue, and short boots. Now she took off her jacket and her neat woolen ski cap, and her full-flowing, naturally wavy dark hair fell to her shoulders. Near noon they stopped for a picnic lunch beside a mountain stream. In the early afternoon they drove through orchards of apple, pear, and cherry trees, now bleak and leafless and naked in the landscape, then came to the outskirts of Qazvin, a town of perhaps 150,000 inhabitants and many mosques.
“How many mosques are there in all Iran, Azadeh?” he asked. “Once I was told twenty thousand,” she answered sleepily, opening her eyes and peering ahead. “Ah, Qazvin! You’ve made good time, Erikki.” A yawn swamped her and she settled more comfortably and went back into half sleep. “There’re twenty thousand mosques and fifty thousand mullahs, so they say. At this rate we’ll be in Tehran in a couple of hours…” He smiled as her words petered out. He was feeling more secure now, glad that the back of the journey had been broken. The other side of Qazvin the road was good all the way to Tehran. In Tehran, Abdollah Khan owned many houses and apartments, most of them rented to foreigners. A few he kept for himself and his family, and he had said to Erikki that, this time, because of the troubles, they could stay in an apartment not far from McIver. “Thanks, thanks very much,” Erikki had said and later Azadeh had said, “I wonder why he was so kind. It’s… it’s not like him. He hates you and hates me whatever I try to do to please him.”
“He doesn’t hate you, Azadeh.”
“I apologize for disagreeing with you, but he does. I tell you again, my darling, it was my eldest sister, Najoud, who really poisoned him against me, and against my brother. She and her rotten husband. Don’t forget my mother was Father’s second wife and almost half Najoud’s mother’s age and twice as pretty and though my mother died when I was seven, Najoud still keeps up the poison - of course not to our face, she’s much more clever than that. Erikki, you can never know how subtle and secretive and powerful Iranian ladies can be, or how vengeful behind their oh so sweet exterior. Najoud’s worse than the snake in the Garden of Eden! She’s the cause of all the enmity.” Her lovely blue-green eyes filled with tears. “When I was little, my father truly loved us, my brother Hakim and me, and we were his favorites. He spent more time with us in our house than in the palace. Then, when Mother died, we went to live in the palace but none of my half brothers and sisters really liked us. When we went into the palace, everything changed, Erikki. It was Najoud.”