Homan glanced across the lobby at the orange plastic TV blaring news of the Saint’s progress from the airport. He sighed again, took a notebook from his shirt and began to laboriously copy information from Patchway’s hotel registration card. Reading and writing, he reflected as he worked, had come to him late in life but the Shahanshah Arya Mehr had seen his own two older children well-schooled. But the wildness of the Islamic revolution sweeping the Gulf with its conflict and bickering had ruined the schools and left his youngest barely literate.
Homan cursed the contemptible British for whatever mad scheme they had devised to use the Islamic revolution to recapture Iran and its oil wealth, also its women and pistachios.
* * *
Ali Hossein drove Patchway to the army padegan – the base – that lies between the baked mud hills and a narrow neighborhood street with signs in misspelled English. Fashionable city women in chadurs transparent and lacy as mantillas dodged through clumps of cars parked outside the base. Ali Hossein led into General Bassari’s outer office where a male aide and a female secretary, both in lieutenant’s uniforms and armed, sat behind battered desks. Sand had drifted in the corners of the room.
Ali Hossein stood humbly before the officer-secretary’s desk. “Khanoum sootvan, I beg your pardon. The General has an immediate appointment with this American.”
The officer-secretary leaned around Ali Hossein to flash pharaoh eyes at the foreign stranger. She motioned toward a glass door in a wall. Pressed a button to release a lock. Patchway followed Ali Hossein into a passage like a phone booth. The glass door locked behind them. Another electric lock opened the door in front. They went into Bassari’s office.
The room was immense, dusty and stuffed with furniture as huge and unattractive as dead elephants. Bassari sat royally at his desk behind an obstacle course of furniture, regimental flags and samovars. He switched off his orange plastic TV, got to his feet, threw out his arms and shouted for them to enter.
“Please! Sit down!” Bassari roared as he made a lingering handshake with Patchway. A tea boy scuttled past with tiny glasses of bitter tea and lumps of yellowed rock sugar. “Have tea!” shouted Bassari.
Behind his desk was the obligatory picture gallery of the Shah, the Shahbanou and the Crown Prince. On the desk, in line of sight for any guest, was a gold-framed color photograph of Bassari bowing humbly before the Shah, the king arching away from his general, one hand in his uniform pocket – a royal prerogative – and the arrogance of his face accented by dark glasses.
Bassari was a general who spent little time in the sun. White hair receded from a pink face. Shoulders too narrow for the epaulets and braid of his uniform. He had a big rice belly on a small frame. He was not a commander of men. Military expertise is not now nor was it ever required of an Iranian military man. Political right-thinking was and is.
Bassari nodded to Ali Hossein who bowed to the general, backed toward the sealed door and went out, backwards. Bassari fitted a cigarette into an ivory holder and lit the cigarette. “May I be direct as you Americans prefer?”
“Be as direct as you like, General,” said Patchway.
“I regret the errand that has brought you to Shiraz – this wretched slaughter of an American in a village of social reactionaries. You realize, of course, that this bizarre self-expression of a small community is itself a sign of treason against the Shahanshah Arya Mehr? A symptom of a larger problem” – he held up one of the Saint’s green armbands – “and that a symptom of something larger.”
He waited for Patchway to speak, like a child reciting in school.
Patchway said, “The Ayatollah Khomeini?”
“That damned priest exiled to France! A fanatic and bank robber! Exactly. May I be indiscreet with you?”
“Be as indiscreet as you like, General.”
“In the days of the padehshah, the old shah, the father of the Shahanshah Arya Mehr, we would have cut off his head rather than exile him to Paris! So you have my point.”
Patchway said, “I presume the larger problem about which you must be discreet is the matter of the Shahanshah Arya Mehr? He is not the man his father was.”
“Al-lah, must you say things like that openly in my office?” Bassari forced a chuckle. “I see you have a grip on the problem of the age. The entire age! A world problem. We in Iran are the focus of the planet, as always, and what are we to do for ourselves?”
The general leaned across his desk to get nearer Patchway and said, without shouting, “Have you any idea what would happen to Iran if this alleged ‘Saint’ or Khomeini or any of their kind were to win rule over this country? An ‘Islamic socialist republic’! Imagine that? But this ‘republic’ of priests would be empty of any of the wild tribal joys of old Persia and full of the natural mean-spiritedness of my countrymen. Can you imagine this city of roses and nightingales made by the Bakhtiari tribe turned into Budapest? Whoo! We need to keep the Shahanshah Ayra Mehr to fight off these new Mongols.”
Bassari sucked his cigarette to a stub. He said, “When the world changes next time, Agha Patchway, my kind will be swamped. Unless I make the change myself and put myself on top. Which is why I now ask, what can I do for you, the man with all the guns and connections?”
“Help me get a corpse to Tehran.”
“Done. I’ll deal with the Indian.”
“What can I do for you, General?”
“I thought of it only last night when I discovered you were coming to Shiraz on this unhappy errand. Sodium nitrate. You have some of this in your company storehouse in Shiraz. I want it.”
“You can have it, General. It’s not much of an explosive but it makes a fast and intense fire, like napalm.”
“To whom do you routinely sell this inferior explosive?”
“Anyone frightened that a mob might overrun his premises before he can destroy documents best left out of the public view. Sodium nitrate makes a fast fire.”
“You sell it to government offices, foreign companies, SAVAK, the Saint when he was still mortal?” Bassari chuckled again, less forced. “Where is it manufactured?”
“The batch we have on hand is from the States.”
“In metal drums?”
“Fifty gallon drums, if you want that much.”
“Give me a dozen barrels immediately.”
“I’ll arrange for our local vendor to get them to you. That’s Terence Nutting.”
Bassari threw back his head and made a tongue click. “He’s a lamentable man. I’ve discussed this matter with him and gotten no satisfaction.”
“We’re in business to sell things,” said Patchway. “You’ll have your drums.”
“You won’t leave town until I do,” said the general. “Nor your dead man.” Bassari extended his hand to Patchway. “You’ll be discreet about this.”
“Of course.”
“Where’s the body?”
“At the coroner’s.”
“I’ll reserve cargo space on a military flight to Tehran tonight. That’s all the time I’ll give you.”
Whatever General Bassari wanted to do with a dozen barrels of sodium nitrate was one more reason Patchway had to abandon the gold mine.
Patchway went out to the reception room and said to Ali Hossein, “Drive me to Terence Nutting’s house and then to the airport.”
“What do you mean the airport?” cried Ali Hossein, sudden horror on his face.
“I’m leaving. I do a task for the general and then I fly to Tehran tonight.”
“No one leaves Shiraz tonight!” cried Ali Hossein. “Think of the mobs. Think of the airport. Think of the Saint’s jumbo jet. This is the city of roses and love, Agha, you must stay the night. Surely you want to do that,” he said, desperately.
“Nutting’s place and then the airport, Ali Hossein. Let’s go.”
“For the corpse?” he cried in pain.
“For me alone.”
“But I have another task for the general! I need thirty minutes.” His eyes goggl
ed desperately.
“I’ll make my own way. I don’t need you anymore. Call me a cab.”
“But you can’t go anywhere in the city without me!”
“Why not?”
“The general commands me!”
Patchway watched the jerks and tics of the strangely frantic young man with gold buckteeth until Ali Hossein settled down.
“I have a solution,” Patchway said.
“Wonderful! What is it?”
“You meet me at Nutting’s in thirty minutes. Be prompt.”
“Prompt? I’ll be so very prompt. If you spare me any more of your corpses.”
“Give me your pistol.”
“What do you want that for?” cried Ali Hossein.
“To keep myself alive in the streets for General Bassari.”
“For him?” cried Ali Hossein, goggling in fierce confusion.
“Give me the pistol.”
Chapter 5
Shiraz
Ali Hossein found Anahita Zargoneh at home where a proper girl should be rather than flaunting herself in a white chadur in the bazaar for every lusty yokel’s eye. Fortunately, he thought, peering around furtively, her father Dr. Zargoneh the Mouseface was not at home.
Ali Hossein sat on the garden bench by Anahita, not close enough to touch her, as her aunts and servants tramped noisily around the garden keeping him under wary eye. They all knew perfectly well that any unmarried man becomes a beast when confronted with a virgin.
Anahita was thirteen years old, short and beautifully round. She hung on every word Ali Hossein spoke as a future wife should. She was somber when he was serious, joyous when he was happy, tearful when he was sad. He considered himself a lucky man to have found her and to have found her first.
But Dr. Zargoneh had refused to enter into haggling over the bride price and that troubled Ali Hossein. Could the old fool be against a son-in-law as remarkable as Ali Hossein? No! Unbelievable! It must be the old man’s creeping senility.
Ali Hossein looked down at Anahita’s feet where the chadur showed her blue jeans and yellow platform sandals. That was as much of her body as he was allowed to see.
“Anahita,” he said to her, “you know of course that one day soon I shall be great, rich and famous.”
“All the world recognizes your worth,” Anahita told him.
“Yet there are moments when even great men have their doubts.”
“Never you!”
Anahita made a cry of despair to accompany Ali Hossein’s somber mood.
He puffed himself up and squared his shoulders, knowing he was making a fine masculine impression in his checked jacket and yellow shirt, and glared around at her aunts and servants staring at him unceasingly.
“In fact,” he said, “I’m worried about a certain thing. As you are practically my wife and I may someday concede to include you in my counsels, I’ve come here with a vexing question.”
“Ask, Beloved,” Anahita cried.
“During the riots you did a remarkable thing.”
She looked proud and then troubled. What was her proper feminine role regarding her murderous past?
“I was only a child then and didn’t know what I was doing,” she said in frightened suspicion.
“I was afraid you’d say that. How I wish you wouldn’t.”
“What do you want me to say?” the girl cried. “Tell me and I’ll say it!”
“Tell me you did it deliberately. That you found a grenade in the rubble, hid yourself, planned the attack and killed two men in a jeep with it.”
“Ooooh!” she groaned. Anahita’s servants leaped from the bushes. Ali Hossein jumped to his feet to defend himself.
She waved away the servants and aunts. Ali Hossein sat down warily, feeling exhausted from having to keep his eyes on all her gloomy relatives.
“No, no, listen,” he said to her. “You are heroine to the Shahanshah Ayra Mehr” – she beamed at him uncertainly – “and everyone praises your glorious defense against the revolutionary hooligans. But I need to know, for myself alone, for a decision I must take, how you came to do it.”
Ali Hossein stared at the girl with such earnestness that she was perplexed. What could she say?
That the schools had been closed for months due to the fundamentalist riots and she was bored sitting in this garden like a prisoner, as she was always bored when she was not with Ali Hossein.
That in those days last month her father was not so strict. She was still a child so he did not insist on chadur but only a kerchief over her hair. She had been in this horrible garden so long with so many exciting things happening outside all around her that when the gunfire started she climbed the wall and ran down to the bazaar and everyone let her pass because she was a child.
That it was the most amazing thing to see! Men on camels fighting men in jeeps. Boys her own age throwing rocks at rebel fighters. She found a rock and threw it. It blew up. In a rebel jeep!
Before Anahita could see what had become of the two men in the jeep, adult friends of her father carried her back to her prison. Here she stayed. Would stay until Ali Hossein freed her of it.
Anahita sighed deeply. There was none of that story she could tell him. So she said in a rush, changing subjects so fast she startled the brooding Ali Hossein, “You must hurry and finish your conscript time. My father will never allow me to marry a common soldier.”
She added in a whisper, “He hates and fears your master, General Bassari.”
Ali Hossein started. What an unpleasant thing to hear. Zargoneh was half the killing of the Saint with Bassari!
Ali Hossein felt a pang of fright. Had he thought that news or had he spoken it aloud? Had he actually said here in this garden full of witnesses that Bassari planned to kill the Saint?
He looked at Anahita. She gazed at him loving and suspicious.
No, he had said nothing. His brain simply was too full of the assassination plans and of his own plans for Anahita. He was confusing speech and thought. Relief! Then sudden fright that out of this confusion he may say the wrong thing to the wrong person. That he might confess his wedding scheme to the General or the assassination plan to the Saint’s followers.
In that gloomy worry, Ali Hossein turned his mind back to his own problem. “You did not kill deliberately?” he said to Anahita.
“Oh, I killed them. My father was very pleased about that. Or Bassari persuaded him to be pleased even though my father had beaten me senseless for jumping over the wall. He beat me until he wept.”
Anahita gazed at Ali Hossein. “Why are you interested in this? It all happened so long ago last month.”
“Don’t question me!” he said.
Anahita gathered her veil around her face. “I can’t criticize or question but I can advise if you ask me.”
“Advise me, then.”
“Is it a revenge killing? Is there a man to be dealt with before you marry me?” she said with growing excitement.
Ali Hossein recoiled from her excitement, astonished at his thirteen year old fiancée. He saw in her hot, wild face the answer to his question about her two killings – yes, she had done it as an uncomprehending prank. But when she had seen what she had done she reveled in it as she reveled in it now.
He got to his feet, frightening into the bushes the tiresome servants. He said, “I know what I must do.”
“Wait here.” Anahita ran into the house and returned with a small package wrapped in newspaper.
Ali Hossein unwrapped the paper. “Al-lah, a hand grenade!”
“I kept it from the time of trouble. A woman never knows when she will need a hand grenade.”
* * *
Ali Hossein with the love gift in his pocket drove to Dr. Zargoneh’s office above an Indian cheeseburger restaurant. He had a key to the office. The reception room was bare, dusty and had a desk with a missing foot replaced by a medical book. He went through the doctor’s private office into the tiny laboratory.
The worktables were lit
tered with half-filled glassware and dirty culture plates. A single rack of test tubes stood in neat order, carefully labelled. Among them was a vial with a red label and a clear liquid inside.
This was the vial Ali Hossein would have to give Patchway when the General or Zargoneh gave him the word they wanted the American dead.
It was one of Zargoneh’s delightfully gruesome snake venom poisons, a dilution of the venom of the Indian krait mixed with enough arsenic to confuse any doctor called to treat the victim. This poison had been a popular killer in the Middle East since Persia’s first King of Kings, Cyrus the Great. Some say it is the poison Nasser used to kill King Farouk and that Sadat used to kill Nasser. A poison sold in every bazaar.
Ali Hossein’s hand trembled so violently he was afraid he would spill the horrible stuff on himself.
He stuffed the vial into his shirt pocket and buttoned it shut. He opened a drawer and took out a small cylinder with a capped needle – a carbon dioxide cartridge fitted to a hypodermic syringe and filled with more of the venom. He had the option to murder Patchway by poisoning his food or pressing this needle against his thigh and letting the compressed gas do it for him.
Neither of these options appealed to Ali Hossein. He would rather just drop Anahita’s grenade on the American – from a distant fourth story window. But that was no good – Bassari needed Patchway dead but recognizable after the killing of the Saint.
Ali Hossein put the poisons in his jacket pocket and went out to meet the man he must kill.
* * *
Ahwaz
Saifallah found Jahangard holding court in the bar of the Royal Astoria Hotel overlooking the shrinking Karoon River. The old man’s patchy gray hair plastered to his skull stank of stale rose water. The broad tie on his fat belly was stained with scotch. He was shouting and laughing at his own comic tales of working for foreigners when Saifallah came up to the table and said, “Agha Jahangard, come with me.”
The Runaway Man: A dying man, a dying world, a child to be saved Page 11
