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

by Steven Hardesty

  Patchway got to his feet, a trickle of blood from the puncture. “Just keep me on my feet until I can get to Rome or London, a hospital, they’ll know what to do.”

  “I doubt it,” said Zargoneh.

  Patchway gazed around him, his head lowered, eyes shining too brilliantly, and focused on Homan in his peach-colored shirt. “Homan?” Patchway said, recognizing him.

  Homan to put out his hands to steady Patchway where he stood staggering. “I’ll find you a flight to Rome,” Homan said to him. “I’ll do what I can for you.”

  “You’re actually helping him leave us?” Zargoneh said to Homan. “But you can’t do that!”

  “Passage for two,” Patchway said to Homan. “I’m bringing the boy.”

  “Who’s poisoned a boy?” said Zargoneh.

  Patchway shouted, gripping his stomach. Waves of nausea battered him. Had he gone blind? No, this room was black. Was it still night? Dawn beyond the curtains.

  He was in his hotel room, half-dressed, sprawled on the bed, staring at the ceiling. The dwarf waiter gave him ice water. The clearest object in the room was Homan’s peach-colored shirt.

  “Give me ice,” Patchway said.

  The dwarf fed him ice on a spoon. Blackness.

  “Are you better now, Agha?” said the dwarf.

  Patchway tested his sickness. He was stronger. The pain no longer came in crushing waves. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Too many hours,” said Homan. “Eat yogurt and rice. That cures everything.”

  “I need the plane to Rome.”

  “It has flown,” said the dwarf. “You aren’t on it.”

  “You’re not going to die here,” said Homan. “I’ll put you on the noon plane. But I want to know why someone is killing you…”

  “I don’t want to die with too much undone,” said Patchway.

  “What’s undone?”

  “Get me a car.”

  “You can’t stand up. How are you going to drive a car?”

  Patchway go to his feet. It was not a good getting up but it was enough. Patchway adjusted his clothes. Took more pills from Zargoneh’s vial. Homan watched him swallow the pills without water.

  “It feels good,” Patchway said.

  “Dying feels good?” said Homan, stunned.

  “To be a soldier again.”

  “You’re a soldier?”

  “Get me a car.”

  “To find the boy? What boy?”

  “Get me a car.”

  “Damn, Patchway, you frighten me. You ought to be dead and you’re on your feet looking for what? What do you mean a soldier?”

  “Are you coming with me?”

  “I won’t come with you,” said Homan, surprising himself by his own vehemence. “I’m going nowhere with you. You might die and what do I do then?”

  “Find me a driver.”

  “I’ll drive you,” said the dwarf waiter. “Let’s go.”

  “I’m leaving you, Agha Patchway,” said Homan. “I can’t go with you. I can’t see you die, damn you. I’m sorry but damn you.”

  Patchway said to the dwarf, “Get me to Terence Nutting’s house.”

  * * *

  At dawn Ali Hossein pulled his checked jacket over the yellow shirt in which he had suffered all night the effects of his supposed self-poisoning and left his army barracks. He had triumphed narrowly against the poison. That proved him a far better man than even he had thought. Making this the moment to corner Homan Rostamkolahi, the secret policeman in the peach-colored shirt, to learn what Homan suspected.

  Had Homan seen Ali Hossein poison the American in the garden restaurant? What would he do with that information? Would he shatter the army conspiracy to kill the Saint? Worse, to whom would Homan report the incident – directly to that monster Colonel Ardjovani in SAVAK?

  Ali Hossein had to have answers to these questions to save himself and to save the cause, and report the answers – modified to show himself in the best light – to General Bassari. The General would decide what must be done with a SAVAK agent too clever for the very clever Ali Hossein to evade.

  He went into bright morning light and saw there the man he could not escape, Homan Rostamkolahi. Homan looked at him with eyes red and fatigued. Ali Hossein turned to run down a barracks corridor but Homan had his grip on Ali Hossein’s arm and a tired man’s fury not to lose what he had captured.

  “Agha Nagehshineh,” said Homan, “you can confide in me and had better confide in me.”

  “Confide to you here in a public hallway?”

  “Without fear,” said the secret policeman.

  “Fear?” cried Ali Hossein. He plunged his hands into his coat pockets – surely he had some mang left – and felt the hard shell of the hand grenade given him by Anahita.

  Ali Hossein pulled the grenade from his pocket and Homan grabbed it from him and struck him on the head with it and Ali Hossein cried out and slapped his hands over the bruise.

  “You can’t arrest me!” Ali Hossein cried. “Not in an army barracks!”

  “I will arrest you and let you scream out the remainder of your brief life in a SAVAK cell if you do not immediately tell me why you poisoned the American.”

  Ali Hossein keened and slapped his hands on his head until the pain from the bruise stopped him. “I can’t tell you that!”

  “To save you neck. Zargoneh very nearly did.”

  “Dr. Zargoneh? A traitor to us all?”

  “I can guess who all the traitors are,” said Homan, “but I don’t know why you’d kill an insignificant foreigner like Patchway. Tell me. Tell me and save yourself.”

  “I don’t know! They don’t tell me anything. I follow orders. I’m a triviality!”

  The secret policeman almost laughed. Trivialities make and break conspiracies. Ayatollah Khomeini once led his priests and gangsters in armed attacks on government offices. That was a triviality. He was exiled from Iran to enemy Iraq. Another triviality. The Shahanshah Arya Mehr forced the Iraqis to exile Khomeini to France. More triviality. Now all these trivialities combined to make the rebel priest an untrivial threat to the king. Killing Patchway was a triviality Homan had to understand

  He took Ali Hossein by the collar and hauled the soldier to Homan’s official secret police car. Soldiers in the barracks and on the street gawked at them.

  “Save me, brothers!’ Ali Hossein cried to them. None interfered with a man commanding an official secret car.

  “Where are we going?” Ali Hossein cried.

  “To meet the man you’ve killed,” said Homan.

  Ali Hossein keened in terror.

  * * *

  Saifallah went into the lobby of the Koroush Hotel where Mahvash the receptionist held court for her admirers and said to her, “Pahtchvay. Which room?”

  Saifallah went up to the room drawing the pistol he had taken from Ardjovani’s office. He stood at the door and listened into the room. Silence. He knocked at the door. No sound. “Room service!” he said in English. Still no sound.

  He tried the doorknob – unlocked – and let the door swing open. The room stank of vomit and sickness. It had the feel of abandonment. Patchway was gone.

  Where was he? Beyond the power of Saifallah to find and kill or just behind Saifallah’s back? Hot panic came over him. The game now could be reversed, making Patchway free to maneuver while Saifallah crouched on the target’s center. But could Patchway know Saifallah was following him to kill him?

  Saifallah sat in a chair by Patchway’s unmade bed and tried to reason like a Westerner – in cold blood. The killing of Madjid Afkhami in New Hampshire – how much could that mean to Patchway? Probably nothing. These Westerners have no heat in their veins and don’t understand friendship. Or the death of Reza Horiat in Washington, D.C.? Even less. It was unlikely Patchway knew him. Ah, yes, there was the half-killing of Sheila Bond in San Francisco. But she was merely another Western whore and not Patchway’s private woman. Patchway could pluck her kind from any street i
n any American city anywhere. What loyalty could he feel for her? No, in none of that could Patchway know that he, too, was on Ardjovani’s death list.

  Except for the mad woman who started it all – Glynda Heater. And the son she stole from Colonel Ardjovani. Would a cold-blooded Western man worry himself over Glynda who ran from him to Ardjovani and had a child by Ardjovani? No, there was no Western logic in Patchway’s doing that. No Persian logic in it, either. Nothing but sentiment, honor and shame. Westerners felt none of those things.

  But Westerners felt their own cold-bloodedness. Saifallah had seen that in Patchway, a man who lived as though he had a core of hollowness in him. A man of a chill and bitter self-hate. The self-hate that let all good things be flung away from him until the hollowness inside himself grew to swallow all of the man.

  Saifallah shivered with the thought. He saw the pistol trembling in his hand. He put it away in a pocket and clasped his hands together to stop their shaking. Because he now realized that self-hate also makes a man unwilling to be broken. He will fight to the last bullet and continue fighting because he is a man without hope. Patchway was a hollow man who knew there was no hope for him. He was an empty creature doomed to exist in the empty places between the stars.

  Saifallah felt an immense and sudden loneliness. He began to weep. He had been made a murderer. Murder made him an exile from his species. He was to be flung out to drift in the void between all the stars with Patchway, watching the light of other worlds and having none of those worlds or of life and love.

  Had he any chance to redeem his life and make something fresh for himself? If he killed Patchway before Patchway could kill him, could he escape from SAVAK, from Iran, from murder to a place of redemption and there hope to find hope?

  Saifallah rubbed away his tears. He felt the weight of the pistol in his pocket. How could it be that a search for hope must begin with the killing of another human being? Only Patchway could prevent Saifallah from finding a new way into life. Patchway had to die.

  The idea was sudden and perfect and Saifallah knew how to trap Patchway for his killing. If there was no honor or shame in this Western man, there was the compensating power of self-hate. A hatred that Patchway would turn on his first enemy, the man who stole his Glynda Heater. Colonel Ardjovani. Patchway would not kill Ardjovani. That was too small a punishment for any pleasure for a hollow man. He would steal the Colonel’s son.

  Saifallah drove to Colonel Ardjovani’s house to sit in the stone front garden to wait for Patchway to come take the boy, and then Saifallah would kill him.

  * * *

  “Good God, Patchway, what’s happened to you?” said Nutting as the dwarf waiter hauled Patchway into Nutting’s house behind its double-barred gates.

  “I’ve been poisoned.” Patchway rattled the pills in the bottle given him by Zargoneh. “Temporary antidote. I’ve got to get to a hospital. Put me on the noon flight to Rome.”

  “But the bloody thing’s always booked.” Nutting took Patchway’s pulse. When he spoke, he had doubt in his voice, “How do you know you’ve been poisoned?”

  “Zargoneh told me. He analyzed my blood.”

  “He’s a lunatic and a fool. The most incompetent doctor in the city.”

  “I told him that,” said the dwarf. “Do you have any pistachios? Give him pistachios.” The dwarf waiter went away.

  Nutting opened the bottle and examined the pills. “This isn’t an antidote. These are stimulants. Common as fleas in the market. What possible good can they do a sick man. Who would poison you?”

  “Colonel Ardjovani.”

  “Our SAVAK gauleiter? Whatever for?”

  “Give me your shotgun.”

  “This isn’t suicide, is it? Not in my house.”

  “Self-defense.”

  “You can’t go around this town with a shotgun under your coat.”

  “Give me something.”

  Nutting opened a drawer and took out a big revolver. “What do you want to do with this – kill the Colonel?”

  “I’m beyond that now.” Patchway held the pistol in two trembling hands and then shouted, “God, the pain!”

  Nutting took the pistol from Patchway. The maid gave him yogurt water. He drank it.

  “That’s filthy stuff,” Nutting said, “but the farkles say it cures everything.”

  “It’s easing the pain.” Patchway put the revolver into his pocket. “I want two seats. There’ll be two of us.” He ate more pills from the bottle.

  “What’s the poison?” said Nutting.

  “Mang.”

  “No, no. I’ve seen a man die from mang. You have some of the symptoms but not enough of them. I’m going to get you a real doctor. The Indian coroner. The only medic I trust in this town.”

  Another wave of nausea and pain overcame Patchway.

  Nutting shouted to his bhaji to fetch the coroner.

  “Tell me what you want the pistol for, Patchway?”

  “I want the boy.”

  “What boy?”

  The maid came back into the room with Homan Rostamkolahi in his peach-colored shirt leading Ali Hossein.

  “I found these fools huddled in the kitchen,” said the maid. “Listening.”

  “Agha Patchway,” Homan said, “let me introduce your killer.”

  “You killed me, Ali Hossein?”

  Homan said, “In the garden restaurant last night. He poured mang into your tea. I saw him do it but of course I’m innocent of having understood at the time just what was happening.”

  “You watched him do it and said nothing?” Nutting said. “What kind of man are you?”

  “A secret policeman.”

  Patchway took the pistol from his pocket and shoved it into Ali Hossein’s gut.

  Nutting said, “You’re not going to kill him in my house, are you, Patchway? Don’t do that.”

  Ali Hossein gaped down at the pistol and cried, “Yes, I did it! But it was not my deed alone. I was ordered! I’m a soldier and I was ordered! I’m a conscript!”

  Patchway used both hands to cock the weapon. “Who ordered you?”

  Ali Hossein screamed and broke from Homan and ran out into the street.

  Patchway ran stumbling after him, Nutting behind Patchway. The maid fled.

  Homan was startled to find himself suddenly alone in the house. He began to laugh. He could report to Colonel Ardjovani that three loose ends in the conspiracy against the Saint had been neatly bound up and one or all of them would be dead within minutes.

  His only regret was Patchway, and in a few hours even regret would not matter as Homan and SAVAK opened a new world.

  Chapter 7

  Shiraz

  Ali Hossein ran into the street outside Nutting’s house and threw up his arms to stop a passing car. He dragged out the driver and threw him into the gutter. Jumped into the car. Tromped the gas pedal. Smelled raw fuel. Knew he had flooded the engine. The car died.

  He screamed at the car. Kicked the gas pedal. Twisted the key. Nothing. The driver banged at the window. Ali Hossein swung open the door and smashed the driver with it. The man fell into the street, holding his hands to his bloody face.

  Ali Hossein saw Patchway run out of the house, scan the street and run in a weird, off-rhythm style toward the car until he grabbed the passenger door handle and flung open the door and hauled up the revolver to shoot.

  Ali Hossein shrieked and stabbed his foot on the accelerator and the car lurched ahead. Patchway fell in the street. Nutting hauled him upright and dragged Patchway into Nutting’s four wheel drive.

  Nutting slid the car scraping past trucks in the narrow alleys, swiped jaywalking women in chadurs and sent them sprawling into the open storm drains and shoved aside men carrying breakfast bread. The bunch-up-and-plunge traffic swept them into the bazaar. They spotted Ali Hossein’s car parked among puzzled camels but Ali Hossein was not in it.

  They ran into the bazaar – a long, musty corridor, high-arched brick, dark, a noisy crowd of sh
oppers, motor scooters shrieking down side galleries.

  “He’s gone!” said Nutting.

  “Not from me,” said Patchway. Pain gripped his stomach. Patchway fumbled in his pocket for more pills.

  “Look there,” said Nutting quietly.

  Ali Hossein stood on the edge of an open storm drain under tree shade, looking anxious and smug, so convinced he had shaken off Patchway that he wanted to stand there to watch and savor the confused foreigners as they wandered the bazaar searching for an Ali Hossein they would never find.

  Ali Hossein turned out of the shade and bumped against the tall, white Englishman. He felt the Englishman’s arms close around him. He saw Patchway with an expression so bleak that Ali Hossein gasped in fright.

  Patchway shoved Ali Hossein through a narrow door into a warehouse. Nutting bolted the door behind them.

  Ali Hossein stumbled among stacks of carpets, groaning and keening.

  Patchway switched on the single light bulb. The place was empty but for the carpets and the dust and floating wool fibers. Small, high casement windows showed the crowns of the heads of passersby. Patchway drew his revolver.

  Ali Hossein cowered behind a stack of carpets. He threw up his hands, his two gold buckteeth flashing in the dim light. “What’s the matter with you, Agha? You’re not well, you know. You’re thinking crazy things! I’ve done nothing to you. How can you believe Homan, a secret police agent? What lies they tell! They’re all liars, the secret police! You know that, of course, you have to know it.”

  “You confessed.”

  “Of course not. That’s your illness speaking. Are you truly ill, Agha? No, you’re not! Look at yourself – strong and healthy! Such fine skin! Such excellent hair! Such bright eyes!”

  Ali Hossein thrust a hand into a pocket of his checked jacket searching for Zargoneh’s poison syringe to throw at Patchway. His hand thumped into the solid bulk of Anahita’s hand grenade.

  The world stopped for Ali Hossein. This was the grenade Homan had taken from him to strike Ali Hossein when they wrestled in the barracks. Back in his pocket? Had Homan put it there? What kind of mad secret policeman was he? Did he want this insane Yank to be convinced that Ali Hossein was his killer? What could he do with a hand grenade in this tiny warehouse except kill himself, too?