Whirlwind

by James Clavell

  Scragger said, “Listen, old sport, you’re an important client of de Plessey, eh? He could fix a charter for you. We’ve a spare 206. If he agreed, all our aircraft are contracted to IranOil but to him in truth, perhaps we could get permission from air traffic control to fly you up the coast—or if you could clear Immigration and Customs at Lengeh, maybe we could nip you across the Gulf to Dubai or Al Shargaz. From there perhaps you could get a flight into Abadan or Bandar Delam. Whichever, old sport, he could let us get you started.”

  “Do you think he would?”

  “Why not? You’re important to him.”

  Kasigi was thinking, Of course we’re very important to him and he knows it. But I’ll never forget that iniquitous $2-a-barrel premium. “Sorry? What did you say?”

  “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 corner 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.

  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 af
ter 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.

  It was almost nine o’clock, still before dinner, and he had been standing near one of the open doorways that led to the gardens, looking out at the candlelights and at the lawns that were spread with fine rugs on which guests were sitting and reclining, others standing in groups under trees or near the little pond. The night was star-filled and kind, the house rich and spacious—in the district of Shemiran at the foot of the Elburz Mountains—and the party like most of the others that, because he could speak Farsi, he was usually welcomed to. All the Iranians were very well-dressed, there was much laughter and much jewelry, tables piled with an abundance of food, both European and Iranian, hot and cold, the conversation about the latest play in London or New York or “Are you going to St. Moritz for the skiing or Cannes for the season,” and about the price of oil and gossip about the Court and “His Imperial Majesty this or Her Imperial Majesty that,” all of it spiced with the politeness and flattery and extravagant compliment so necessary in all Iranian society—preserving a calm, polite, and gentle surface rarely penetrated by an outsider, let alone by a foreigner.

  At the time he was stationed at Galeg Morghi, a military airfield in Tehran, training Iranian Air Force pilots. In ten days he was due to leave for his new posting at Zagros, well aware that this tour with two weeks in Zagros, one week back in Tehran would further inflame his wife. This morning, in a fit of rage, he had answered her letter and sent it special delivery: “If you want to stay in England, stay in England but stop bitching and stop knocking what you don’t know. Get your suburban house wherever you want—but I’m not EVER going to live there. Never. I’ve a good job and it pays all right and I like it and that’s it. We’ve a good life if you’d open your eyes. You knew I was a pilot when we got married, knew it was the life I’d chosen, knew I wouldn’t live in England, knew it’s all I’m trained for so I can’t change now. Stop bitching or else. If you want to change so be it…”

  The hell with it. I’ve had it. Christ, she says she hates Iran and everything about it but she knows nothing about Iran, has never been outside Tehran, won’t go, will never even try the food and just visits with those few Brit wives—always the same ones, the loud and bigoted minority, insular, equally bored and boring with their interminable bridge parties, interminable teas—“But, darling, how can you stand anything that’s not from Fortnums or Marks and Sparks”—who preen for an invitation to the British embassy for another stuffy roast beef and Yorkshire pudding dinner or tea party with cucumber sandwiches and seedcake, all of them totally convinced everything English is the best in the world, particularly English cooking: boiled carrots, boiled cauliflower, boiled potatoes, boiled Brussels sprouts, underdone roast beef or overdone lamb as the acme of goddamn perfection…

  “Oh, poor Excellency, you don’t look happy at all,” she had said softly.

  He had looked around and his world was different.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, a tiny frown on her oval face.

  “Sorry,” he gasped, for a moment disoriented by her, his heart thumping and a tightness in his throat he had never experienced before. “I thought you were an apparition, something out of A Thousand and One Nights, a magical—” He stopped with an effort, feeling like a fool. “Sorry, I was a million miles away. My name’s Lochart, Tom Lochart.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said laughing. Tawny brown twinkling eyes. Her lips had a sheen to them, teeth very white, long wavy dark hair, and her skin was the color of Iranian earth, olive brown. She wore white silk and some perfume and she barely came up to his chin. “You’re the nasty training captain who gives my poor cousin Karim roastings at least three times a day.”

  “What?” Lochart found it difficult to concentrate. “Who?”

  “There.” She pointed across the room. The young man was in civilians, smiling at them, and Lochart had not recognized him as one of his students. Very handsome, dark curly hair, dark eyes, and well built. “My special cousin, Captain Karim Peshadi, of the Imperial Iranian Air Force.” She looked back at Lochart, long black lashes. And again his heart turned over.

  Get hold of yourself, for crissake! What the hell’s wrong with you? “I, er, well, I try not to roast them unless, er, unless they deserve it—it’s only to save their lives.” He was trying to remember Captain Peshadi’s record but couldn’t and in desperation switched to Farsi. “But, Highness, if you’ll give me the exquisite honor, if you’ll stay and talk to me and favor me by telling me your name I promise I will…” He groped for the right word, couldn’t find it and substituted, “I will be your slave forever and of course I will have to pass His Excellency your cousin one hundred percent before all others!”

  She clapped her hands delightedly, “Oh, revered Excellency,” she replied in Farsi, “His Excellency my cousin did not tell me you spoke our language! Oh how beautiful the words sound when you say them…”

  Almost outside himself, Lochart listened to her extravagant compliments that were normal in Farsi and heard himself replying likewise—blessing Scragger who had told him so many years ago when he had joined Sheik Aviation, after he had left the RAF in ’65: “If you want to fly with us, cobber, you’d better learn Farsi ’cause I’m not about to!” For the first time realizing how perfect it was a language of love, of innuendo.

  “My name is Sharazad Paknouri, Excellency.”

  “Then Her Highness is from the Thousand and One Nights after all.”

  “Ah, but I cannot tell you a story even if you swear you will cut off my head!” Then in English, with a laugh, “I was bottom of my class in stories.”

  “Impossible!” he said at once.

  “Are you always so gallant, Captain Lochart?” Her eyes were teasing him.

  In Farsi he heard himself say, “Only to the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

  Color came into her face. She dropped her eyes, and he thought, aghast, he had destroyed everything, but when she looked up at him again her eyes were smiling. “Thank you. You make an old married lady happ—”

  His glass slipped out of his hand and he cursed and picked it up and apologized but no one had noticed except her. “You’re married?” burst out of him, for it hadn’t occurred to him, but of course she would be married and anyway he was married with a daughter of eight and what right did he have to get upset? For God’s sake you’re acting like a lunatic. You’ve gone mad.

  Then his ears and eyes focused. “What? What did you say?” he asked.

  “Oh. I said that I was married—well, I still am for another three weeks and two days and that my married name is Paknouri. My family name is Bakravan…” She stopped a waiter and chose a glass of wine and gave it to him. Again the frown. “Are you sure you’re all right, Captain?”

  “Oh, yes, oh, yes,” he said quickly, “You were saying? Paknouri?”

  “Yes. His Highness, Emir Paknouri, was so old, fifty, a friend of my father, and Father and Mother thought it would be good for me to marry him and he consented though I’m skinny, not plump and desirable, however much I eat. As God wants.” She shrugged then beamed and the world seemed to light up for him. “Of course I agreed, but only on condition that if I didn’t like being married after two years then our marriage would cease. So on my seventeenth birthday we were married and I didn’t like it at once and cried and cried and then, as there were no children after two years, or the extra year I agreed to, my husband, my Master, gratefully agreed to divorce me and now he is thankfully ready to remarry and I am free but unfortunately so old an—”

  “You’re not old, you’re as youn—”

  “Oh, yes, old!” Her eyes
were dancing and she pretended to be sad but he could see that she was not and he watched himself talking to her, laughing with her, then beckoning her cousin to join them, petrified that this was the real man of her choice, chatting with them, learning that her father was an important bazaari, that her family was large and cosmopolitan and well connected, that her mother was sick, that she had sisters and brothers and had been to school in Switzerland but only for half a year because she missed Iran and her family so much. Then eating dinner with them, genial and happy, even with General Valik, and it was the best time he had ever had.

  When he had left that night he had not gone home but had taken the road up to Darband in the mountains where there were many cafés in beautiful gardens on the banks of the stream with chairs and tables and sumptuously carpeted divans where you could rest or eat or sleep, some of them esplanaded out over the stream so the water chattered and gurgled below you. And he lay there, looking up at the stars, knowing that he was changed, knowing he’d gone mad but that he would scale any hurdle, endure any hardship, to marry her.

  And he had—though the way had been cruel and many times he had cried out in despair.

  “What are you thinking about, Tommy?” she asked now, sitting at his feet on the lovely carpet that had been a wedding gift from General Valik.

  “You,” he said, loving her, his cares banished by her tenderness. The living room was warm like all of the huge apartment, and delicately lit, the curtains drawn and many rugs and lounging cushions scattered around, the wood fire burning merrily. “But then I think about you all the time!”

  She clapped her hands. “That’s wonderful.”

  “I’m not going to Zagros tomorrow but the next day.”

  “Oh, that’s even more wonderful!” She hugged his knees and rested her head against them. “Wonderful!”