The Runaway Man: A dying man, a dying world, a child to be saved

by Steven Hardesty

  The surly dwarf waiter banged the saucers and glasses of tea on the table and went away.

  Zargoneh put a cube of sugar between lips and teeth and sucked his tea through the cube, noisily.

  He said, “The child is going to Arizona – you’ve heard of the place? – to marry a good Iranian boy studying there. The airline director insists he won’t give her a ticket to marry because she’s only thirteen. You actually have this age restriction in States? Absurd! And because she hasn’t completed military service. Mere red tape, you understand. Airline regulations which everyone knows are meant as guidelines and not cosmic law. Unfortunately, this director unlike your good friend Khanoum Sheila Bond is an Iranian and therefore very unreasonable. But you, good sir,” – Zargoneh patted Patchway’s knee under the table – “have happily set my mind at rest. The child can leave even before this business with the Saint is done” – Zargoneh peered at Patchway with sudden, frightened suspicion – “and she can marry the man I’ve chosen for her.”

  Zargoneh released a smile as broad as his pinched face would allow.

  “Can’t do it,” said Patchway. “I don’t have time for that. I’m leaving the country.”

  “Leaving Iran?” cried Zargoneh. The gleam went out of his black eyes. “Leaving me to deal with this horror alone? How can I talk to a director who’s never not in an opium dream? And his deputy is a woman – why do you foreigners insult us by sending women to positions of authority in our country? Shall I crawl to a woman with my daughter’s case?”

  “I don’t care whether you send it in blood,” said Patchway. “I leave Shiraz as soon as I can and leave Iran for good. I can’t help you this time.”

  “Look here!” said Zargoneh, drawing a photograph from his pocket and handing it to Patchway. “How could you not help this beautiful child?”

  Patchway looked at a girl of thirteen with huge sloe eyes that seemed to fill up the picture with sparkling life, a mane of dark hair and a tawny complexion. She had some of the narrowing of face that was her father’s.

  Zargoneh snatched back the photo. “She’s beautiful,” he said, “but she won’t be beautiful long. In a few more years she’ll be as ugly and pinched-face as I am and then she’ll be dead. Look at my face. Feel my skin.”

  Zargoneh grabbed Patchway’s hand and held it to his cheek. The skin was like wood.

  “The disease is called scleroderma,” said Zargoneh. “An arthritis that is unpredictable and incurable. As it grows over the body, muscles and skin harden and the face twists into this grotesque parody that I wear of a mouse’s face.”

  Zargoneh’s black eyes spilled tears down his woody cheeks. “There’s no cure! None! Research here and there. I’m doing most of it! But that’s precious little because I’m going to die soon myself.”

  Zargoneh rubbed the tears from his face. “I have 28,000 national insurance patients – I am lucky to have found among them five certain cases of scleroderma. I saved two of them with my formulas, though I won’t know for certain for another ten years. I’m not even certain how I managed it! The other three died of starvation – their jaws froze shut. I couldn’t even get a feeding tube into them. But they were goatherds and what does the national insurance care about goatherds?”

  Zargoneh said in a sudden frenzy, “That is why I must have Anahita join the man I’ve chosen for her in Arizona! She is thirteen. She may not live another thirteen years. My research is complicated and needs more years than that. I want my daughter to have as full a life as she can. I want her married and to make children. It can skip generations. There’s a fair chance for my grandchildren. But no chance at all if I don’t get her out of Iran.”

  Zargoneh was surprised to see that he had crumpled Anahita’s photograph in his hands. He made a mouse-like squeak and lay the picture on the table to work it smooth.

  “My daughter knows nothing of her disease,” said Zargoneh. “But I am further afflicted by Ali Hossein Nageshineh, whom you seem to know. That ignorant young man who drives you.” Zargoneh made a tongue click of disapproval. “He has forced himself on my family with the insane idea he will marry my child. Very regrettably, Anahita has returned his foolish favor and my wife, an idiot, likes the boy. So you see I’m doubly pressed to get her out of Shiraz. Ali Hossein is the lackey of General Bassari – you can imagine the wretched crimes he must commit for that man.”

  Zargoneh looked earnestly at Patchway. “I am guaranteed by the police – SAVAK, in fact – an exit permit for my child, a thing very difficult to get. It will be limited for one trip to States. It is contingent on my getting Anahita an airline ticket. The permit will expire at five P.M. on the day” – he stopped suddenly and peered around the lobby and then spoke in a whisper – “the Saint departs Shiraz.”

  Zargoneh pulled a document from his pocket, decorated in fancy script and painted birds. “This is a new birth certificate for Anahita. I bought it this morning, properly signed and countersigned by all the appropriate ministries, so it’s quite valid. It proves that Anahita is eighteen years old and has finished military service. You’ll need it when you speak to the airline director. It will satisfy all their demands.”

  Patchway held the document in his hands. “If you have this, why don’t you show it yourself and get the ticket?”

  “Because everyone in this town knows the truth!” Zargoneh said in despair. “What am I to do in a place like this? They’ll accept the lie from you, Agha Patchway, because everyone knows foreigners are too stupid to lie. From your mouth, it’s the truth!”

  Patchway gazed at the glittering black eyes in the mouse face waiting to hear Zargoneh speak the only argument he had not yet used.

  The doctor leaned his mouse face nearer Patchway and said, “You have been waiting to hear me say this so I shall,” said Zargoneh. “We have a common secret, haven’t we, Agha Patchway? Let that persuade you to help me.”

  Yes, there was the threat. There the risk. One more stumbling block to Patchway’s escape from Iran.

  Everything cycled back to Ardjovani and that morning standing at Mehrabad Airport in Tehran watching a 747 launch westward carrying away Glynda Heater and her son Georgie. Zargoneh had made that happen. Now he could reveal that morning to SAVAK and see Patchway torn into the same little pieces in which Patchway had found the ex-Marine’s corpse. Patchway would never escape the gold mine. It would fall in on him.

  “Yes,” Patchway said, “I’ll get Anahita her ticket.” What else could he say? How or if he would do it was something else.

  Zargoneh began to weep again.

  * * *

  Patchway had one more bargain to make. In his room, he grabbed the telephone and heard a voice he had never expected to hear again. “Patchway!” Glynda said, “is that really you? Say something so I know it’s really you?”

  “Are you all right? You sound drugged.”

  “I am, Patchway – I’m calling from a hospital – I’m drunk and depressed and happy together – that’s what they do to you in a place like this – you know he’s stolen my son! Patchway! Say something to me so I know it’s you. Admit that you loved me. If you’d been able to say that two years ago, it would’ve been different for us and I wouldn’t be here now without my Georgie! Oh, God, Patchway, you’ve got to help me.”

  Patchway felt a sudden chill from the wound scar on this belly. Here was more delay, another stumbling block to his getting far and fast away from Colonel Ardjovani and his killer.

  “Patchway! You are going to help? You must! You have to!”

  What have I really got to do? Patchway thought. Except fly out of this city tomorrow, collect my gold nuggets stored in Tehran and fly out to some fresher, fatter gold mine?

  “Are you there, Patchway? Patchway! Find my son! Ardjovani has the boy.”

  “If he’s in his father’s custody, what can I do about it? This is Iran and the boy’s Iranian.”

  “That’s no answer! Find him, Patchway! Bring him to me. You can do that, I know you can. You
did it before. You got the two of us out of Iran. Do it again.” Glynda’s voice trailed off in exhaustion. “Patchway?” she croaked.

  He held the phone over its cradle, ready to put it down and cut the call. What was he to do about a stolen boy? Legally stolen. He saw his hand holding the telephone. The tremble was back. No flash of red in memory but the hand was trembling. What did it mean?

  He had to leave the country quickly to stay alive and here was a woman – now a stranger – who wanted him to risk his life searching for a boy in this alien city. To take the boy from Ardjovani whose murderous revenge had killed Afkhami and Reza Horiat and nearly killed Sheila Bond.

  It was then that Patchway realized he did not know why he had come to Shiraz. Not just to deliver a body to the only coroner capable of embalming a corpse. Not just to have Terence Nutting identify Ardjovani’s address by its blue gate with cherubs. Not just as a way station to escape the collapsing gold mine.

  Patchway looked at his hand and saw a soldier’s tremble. Not a tremble of fear of combat, though a soldier is always afraid of combat. But of the soldier’s knowing he must do a hard thing because it must be done. That he must do a thing or drift through the rest of his life a zombie.

  The tremble went out of Patchway’s hand. Disappeared. As though the tremble had been a living thing inside him waiting for this telephone call. As though that living thing had delayed Patchway’s escape from Iran until this phone rang.

  Patchway had come here to this city, to the stronghold of the man who had killed Afkhami and Reza Horiat and wanted to kill Patchway, to wait for this telephone call. And now he had it.

  The soldier in him said to Glynda, “Yes, I’ll find the boy. I’ll bring him to you.”

  “Patchway!” she cried, and hung up.

  * * *

  Ali Hossein in his freshly brushed checked jacket and yellow shirt drove down the tree-lined path to the entrance to the Hotel Koroush as Dr. Zargoneh in his yellow Mercedes drove away from the hotel. He waved the doctor to a stop and shouted, “We’re going to the party in Bagheh Eram – Patchway and me – shall I kill him tonight?”

  “What? Kill him?” croaked Zargoneh, looking around fearful of witnesses. “Of course not yet, you idiot. Keep your eyes on him. Wait for my signal.” Zargoneh pulled away hastily.

  Ali Hossein went in to the hotel lobby, the poison vial, the injector and Anahita’s hand grenade heavy in different pockets. The lobby was filled with the evening rush of drinkers. Women in chadurs and others in mantillas flaunting nearly bare breasts above petticoated skirts. Men in French fashions carrying purses, hawking and spitting into ashtrays. Homan in his peach-colored shirt half hidden behind a pillar gawking at the receptionist Mahvash with the immense breasts.

  Those breasts inspired in Ali Hossein a sudden hunger for food. The dwarf waiter passed him, sneering, with a tray of flat bread and yogurt cheese. Ali Hossein grabbed bread and cheese and jammed it into his mouth.

  The dwarf cried, “That food is for the foreigners! You’re not a guest in this hotel.”

  “Get away from me, you idiot, I’m General Bassari’s man.”

  “And I am my own man,” said the dwarf.

  Ali Hossein threw a kick at the dwarf and missed. He wiped cheese from his mouth on his coat sleeve and there was Patchway in front of him.

  Ali Hossein’s gold buckteeth glittered as he said to Patchway, “It is women who drive me to food! I’ve been engaged six months and not had so much as a kiss from her or any other woman – even my cousins! Am I less a man for being betrothed?”

  “Shut up,” Patchway said.

  “What?”

  “Silence. Answer me.”

  “Ask and I’ll answer.”

  “Where is the house of Colonel Ardjovani?”

  “Why would you want to know that? You’ve business with that monster? What business? I’ll have to tell the general.”

  “Where’s the house?”

  “Television Hill overlooking Bagheh Eram, Agha. Everyone knows that because it’s death to go near it.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “A very rich and tasteful blue steel gate with cherubs in a yellow brick wall. Behind that, a house like a whitewashed Temple of Karnak. Very lovely, though everyone wonders why he didn’t use Persepolis as his model. Is that all you want to know?”

  “Drive me to the airline director’s house. I need to arrange a ticket.”

  “He’s in the hospital, Agha, too much opium.”

  “His deputy, then. You know where she lives?”

  “Shiraz is a half million people and I know where everyone lives. I can tell you she’s not at home. She’s out west watching a gunfight between some Islamic tribesmen and the gendarmerie. There are a lot of gunfights these days. She makes a spectator sport of them all. I’ll take you there after the garden party, after her evening sports.”

  Ali Hossein felt the weight of the poisons in his pockets and cried, “You are going to the party, Agha?”

  There is no sunset on the high plain of the city of Shiraz – the sun sinks beyond the rim of desert tableland and makes instant night. It became night as Patchway and Ali Hossein stopped the army car before the entrance to the garden.

  He was startled again by the signal from a soldier standing at the garden gate, another of Bassari’s messengers. It was the sign. Do it now! Bassari wanted the American poisoned tonight. The countdown to the new world was beginning! The Saint would die and Ali Hossein would be elevated among the country’s greatest men. He would have his Anahita!

  In a near delirium of joy, Ali Hossein, clutching his pockets full of poison, followed Patchway into the tiny restaurant behind the garden gate and gawked with terror at the woman with henna red hair and heaps of petticoats giggling up at Patchway from a table.

  Terence Nutting, unbent from where he had been bowing and leering over the woman’s immense tanned bosom, cried, “Dear Patchway, there you are! I promised to find you a princess and here she is.”

  Ali Hossein goggled at this horror who was rustling in her starched skirt with its little bows and saying, “Really, Agha Nutting,” she said to the Englishman, “must I introduce myself?” She waved at her entourage to make room for Patchway at the table.

  “I am,” she said to Patchway, “Yasamin Safavifard.”

  “A princess,” said Nutting, “as I guaranteed!”

  Yasamin flashed a dark eye at the Englishman to silence him and said, “Yes, I am a princess, if you can believe it in these democratic times. But a princess of the Gashghaie nomads who ruled the province around Shiraz before Whatshisname became our sainted lord and, in fact, before the Shah’s father was Shah.” She plucked a lump of rock sugar from her tea and sucked it noisily.

  “My name is Patchway.”

  “Of course you are! Who is this fool with you?”

  Ali Hossein stared with fright at this shocking scene – the American who would give General Bassari the sodium nitrate to kill the Saint and the drunken English who had divined too much of the plan to kill the Saint both seated with Yasamin Safavifard, a desert princess and royalist from the Gashghaie tribe and the last woman in the world Bassari would want to piece together the secret of the conspiracy.

  Yasamin waved away Ali Hossein as though he were a fly.

  He fled. The conspiracy might be ruined here and now but what was he to do about it? He thrust his hands into his coat pockets and felt the reassurance of the poison in one pocket and Anahita’s hand grenade in the other. Perhaps, just perhaps, with these tools he could make it all work out and become an even greater hero than he had expected. But how?

  Yasamin leaned toward Patchway, giving him the full effect of her bodice, and said, “Your Ali Hossein is a dull little toy soldier who stands on street corners lusting after school girls in their white chadurs. Sell him to SAVAK as soon as you can. Here, I’ll make you some help.”

  Yasamin shouted to Homan in his peach-colored shirt. “Agha Rostamkolahi! I introduce my
foreign guest – Agha Patchway, this is Agha Rostamkolahi of SAVAK. Say ‘hello’ to the American, Homan.”

  “Must you make a spectacle of me here?” cried Homan. “The whole world is watching! What will my superiors think? The Colonel!”

  “Stop following me, you little creature,” said Yasamin.

  “I’m not following you tonight,” said Homan.

  “Then who?”

  “Ali Hossein Nagehshineh, who else?”

  “Go away, go away,” said Yasamin. “If you don’t follow me, you bore me.”

  “But I have to know for my report,” cried Homan, “why this half-witted Ali Hossein Nagehshineh is constantly with Agha Patchway.”

  Yasamin turned to Patchway: “Why is he always with you? Are you lovers? No, I didn’t think so. The fool,” she said to Homan, “is Agha Patchway’s driver.”

  “Why would the army give him a driver?” said Homan.

  “Answer that in your report however you like,” said Yasamin. “Now go away, away.”

  Yasamin led her entourage, Patchway and Nutting up a dirty staircase into the restaurant’s elite level. “Where’s my waiter?” Yasamin shouted. Her entourage took up the shout.

  “Here I am, Khanoum!” cried a fat man, shoving through the giggling women and sneering men around the princess.

  “Bring tea,” Yasamin said to him. “And caviar.”

  Ali Hossein crept into the dining room and found a lone chair and table in a far corner.

  “But nothing for that little man over there,” said Yasamin of Ali Hossein. “Starve him!”

  “No food for me?” cried Ali Hossein.

  “No spirits for me?” cried Nutting.

  “Not in public,” the waiter said. “Not at the order of the Saint.”

  “But even the lizard-eaters across the Gulf let you pour scotch under the table!”

  The waiter shook his head. “I shall bring you tea. What kind do you like – American, Russian or Scottish?”

  “This is a very fine restaurant after all,” cried Nutting.

  They ate caviar and cheeseburgers with their bourbon and scotch.