On Wings of Eagles (58 page)

    snow-covered hills. They all had warm coats, and blankets in their

    backpacks, and they needed them.

    Mr. Fish sat next to Sculley and said: "This is where it gets serious. I

    can handle the police, because I have ties with them; but I'm worried about

    the bandits and the soldiers-I have no connections there."

"What d'you want to do?"

352 - Ken Follett

    "I believe I can talk my way out of trouble, so long as none of you have

    guns."

    Sculley considered. Only Davis was armed anyway; and Simons had always

    worried that weapons could get you into trouble more readily than they

    could get you out of it: the Walther PPKs had never left Dallas. "Okay,"

    Sculley said.

Ron Davis threw his .38 out of the window into the snow.

    A little later the headlights of the bus revealed a soldier in uniform

    standing in the middle of the road, waving. The bus driver kept right on

    going, as if he intended to run the man down, but Mr. Fish yelled and the

    driver pulled up.

    Looking out the window, Sculley saw a platoon of soldiers armed with

    high-powered rifles on the mountainside, and thought: if we hadn't stopped,

    we'd have been mown down.

    A sergeant and a corporal got on the bus. They checked all the passports.

    Mr. Fish offered them cigarettes. They stood talking to him while they

    smoked, then they waved and got off.

    A few miles farther on, the bus was stopped again, and they went through a

    similar routine.

    The third time, the men who got on the bus had no uniforms. Mr. Fish became

    very jumpy. "Act casual," he hissed at the Americans. "Read books, just

    don't look at these guys. " He talked to the Turks for something like half

    an hour, and when the bus was finally allowed to proceed, two of them

    stayed on it. "Protection," Mr. Fish said enigmatically, and he shrugged.

    Sculley was nominally in charge, but there was little he could do other

    than follow Mr. Fish's directions. He did not know the country, nor did he

    speak the language: most of the time he had no idea what was going on. It

    was hard to have control under those circumstances. The best he could do,

    he figured, was to keep Mr. Fish pointed in the right direction and lean on

    him a little when he began to lose his nerve.

    At four o'clock in the morning they reached Yuksekova, the nearest village

    to the border station. Here, according to Mr. Fish's cousin in Van, they

    would find Ralph Boulware.

    Sculley and Mr. Fish went into the hotel. It was dark as a barn and smelled

    like the men's room at a football stadium. They yelled for a while, and a

    boy appeared with a candle. Mr. Fish spoke to him in Turkish, then said:

    "Boulware's not here. He left hours ago. They don't know where he went."

    THIRTEEN

At the hotel in Rezaiyeh, Jay Coburn had that sick, helpless feeling again,

the feeling he had had in Mahabad, and then in the courtyard of the

schoolhouse: he had no control over his own destiny, his fate was in the

hands of others-in this case, the hands of Rashid.

Where the hell was Rashid?

    Coburn asked the guards if he could use the phone. They took him down to

    the lobby. He dialed the home of Majid's cousin, the professor, in

    Rezaiyeh, but there was no answer.

    Without much hope he dialed Gholam's number in Tehran. To his surprise he

    got through.

    "I have a message for Jim Nyfeler," he said. "We are at the staging area.

    I I

"But where are you?" said Gholam. In Tehran," Coburn lied.

"I need to see you."

    Coburn had to continue the deception. "Okay, I'll meet you tomorrow moming.

    Where?"

"At Bucharest."

"Okay. I I

    Coburn went -back upstairs. Simons took him and Keane Taylor into one of

    the rooms. "If Rashid isn't back by nine o'clock, we're leaving," Simons

    said.

Coburn immediately felt better.

    Simons went on: "The guards are getting bored, their vigilance is slipping.

    We'll either sneak past them or deal with them the other way."

"We've only got one car," said Coburn.

    353

354 Ken FoIku

    "And we're going to leave it here, to confuse them. We'll walk to the

    border. Hell, it's only thirty or forty miles. We can go across country:

    we'll avoid roadblocks by avoiding roads."

    Coburn nodded. This was what he wanted. They were taking the initiative

    again.

    "Ut's get the money together," Simons said to Taylor. "Ask the guards to

    take you down to the car. Bring the Kleenex box and the flashlight up here

    and take the money out of them."

Taylor left.

    "We might as well eat first," Simons said. "It's going to be a long walk.

    11

Taylor went into an empty room and spilled the money out of the Kleenex box

and the flashlight onto the floor.

Suddenly the door was flung open.

Taylor's heart stopped.

    He looked up and saw Gayden, grinning all over his face. "Gotcha!" Gayden

    said.

    Taylor was furious. "You bastard, Gayden," he said. "You gave me a fucking

    heart attack."

Gayden laughed like bell.

The guards took them downstairs to the dining room. The Americans sat at a

big circular table, and the guards took another table across the room. Lamb

with rice was served, and tea. It was a grim meal: they were all worried

about what might have happened to Rashid, and how they would manage without

him.

    There was a TV set on, and Paul could not take his eyes off the screen. He

    expected at any minute to see his own face appear like a "Wanted" poster.

Where the hell was Rashid?

    They were only an hour from the border, yet they were trapped, under guard,

    and still in danger of being sent back to Tehran and jail.

Someone said: Hey, look who's here!"

Rashid walked in.

    He came over to their table, wearing his self-important look. "Gentlemen,"

    he said, "this is your last meal."

They all stared at him, horrified.

"in Iran, I mean," he added hastily. "We can leave."

They all cheered.

"I got a letter from the revolutionary committee," he went

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 355

on. "I went to the border to check it out. There are a couple of roadblocks

on the way, but I have arranged everything. I know where we can get horses

to cross the mountains-but I don't think we need them. There are no

government people at the border station--the place is in the hands of the

villagers. I saw the head man of the village, and it will be all right for

us to cross. Also, Ralph Boulware is there. I talked to him."

Simons stood up. "Let's move," he said. "Fast."

    They left their meal half-eaten. Rashid talked to the guards, and showed

    them his letter from the deputy leader. Keane Taylor paid the hotel bill.

    Rashid had bought a stack of Khomeini posters, and he gave them to Bill to

    stick on the cars.

They were out of there in minutes.

    Bill had done a good job with the posters. Everywhere you looked on the

    Range Rovers, the fierre, white-bearded face of the Ayatollah glared out at

    you.

They pulled away, Rashid driving the first car.

    On the way out of town Rashid suddenly braked, leaned out of the window,

    and waved frantically at an approaching taxi.

Simons growled: "Rashid, what the fuck are you doing?"

    Without answering, Rashid jumped out of the car and ran over to the taxi.

"Jesus Christ, - said Simons.

    Rashid talked to the cabdriver for a minute, then the cab went on. Rashid

    explained: "I asked him to show us a way out of town by the back street.

    'Mere is one roadblock I want to avoid because it is manned by kids with

    rifles and I don't know what they might do. The cabby has a fare ah-eady,

    but he's coming back. We'll wait."

"We won't wait very goddarn long," Simons said.

    The cab returned in ten minutes. They followed it through the dark, unpaved

    streets until they came to a main road. The cabby turned right. Rashid

    followed, taking the comer fast. On the left, just a few yards away, was

    the roadblock he had wanted to avoid, with teenage boys firing rifles into

    the air. 'Me cab and the two Range Rovers accelerated fast away from the

    corner, before the kids could realize that someone had sneaked past diem.

Fifty yards down the road, Rashid pulled into a gas station.

    Keane Taylor said to him: "What the hell are you stopping for? I I

"We've got to get gas."

356 Ken Folkit

    "We've got three-quarters of a tankful, plenty to jump the border on-4et,

    s get out of here. "

I It may be impossible to get gas in Turkey."

Simons said: "Rashid, let's go."

Rashid jumped out of the car.

    When the fuel tanks had been topped up, Rashid was still haggling with the

    ta)u driver, offering him a hundred nals-a little more than a dollar-fbr

    guiding them out of town.

    Taylor said: "Rashid, just give him a handful of money and kt's go."

"He wants too much," Rashid said.

"Oh, God,' 1 said Taylor.

    Rashid settled with the cabby for two hundred rials and got back into the

    Range Rover, saying: "He would have got suspicious if I didn't argue."

    They drove out of town. The road wound up into the mountains. The surface

    was good and they made rapid progress. After a while am road began to

    follow a ridge, with deep wooded gulleys on either side. "There was a

    checkpoint around here somewhere this aftmoon," Rashid said. "Maybe they

    went home. 11

    The headlights picked out two men standing beside the road, waving them

    down. There was no barrier. Rashid did not brake.

"I guess we'd better stop," Simons said.

Rashid kept going right past the two men.

"I said stop!" Simons barked.

Rashid stopped.

    Bill stared out through the windshield and said: "Would you look at that?"

    A few yards ahead was a bridge over a ravine. On either side of the bridge,

    tribesmen were emerging from the ravine. They kept coniing-4iirty, forty,

    fifty--and they were armed to the teeth.

    it looked very like an ambush. If the cars had tried to rush the

    checkpoint, they would have been shot fun of holes.

"Thank God we stopped," Bill said fervently.

    Rashid jumped out of the car and started talking. The tribesmen put a chain

    across the bridge and surrounded the cars. It rapidly became clear that

    these were the most unfriendly people the team had yet encountered. They

    surrounded the cars, glaring in and hefting their rifles, while two or

    dn-ee of them started yelling at Rashid.

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 357

    It was maddening, Bill thought, to have come so far, through so much danger

    and adversity, only to be stopped by a bunch of dumb farmers. Wouldn't they

    just like to take these two fine Range Rovers and all our money? he

    thought. And who would ever know?

    The tribesmen got meaner. They started pushing and shoving Rashid. In a

    minute they'll start shooting, Bill thought.

    "Do nothing," Simons said. "Stay in the car, let Rashid handle it."

    Bill decided Rashid needed some help. He touched his pocket rosary and

    started praying. He said every prayer he knew. We're in God's hands now, he

    thought; it will take a miracle to get us out of this mess.

In the second car Coburn sat frozen while a tribesman outside pointed a

rifle directly at his head.

    Gayden, sitting behind, was seized by a wild impulse, and whispered: "Jay!

    Why don't you lock the door!"

Coburn felt hysterical laughter bubble up in his throat.

Rashid felt he was on the cliff-edge of death.

    These tribesmen were bandits, and they would kill you for the coat on your

    back: they didn't care. The revolution.was nothing to them. No matter who

    was in power, they reiognized no government, obeyed no laws. They did not

    even spei& Farsi, the language of Iran, but Turkish.

    They pushed him around, yelling at him in Turkish. He yelled fight back in

    Farsi. He was getting nowhere. They're working themselves up to shoot us

    all, he thought.

    He heard the sound of a car. A pair of headlights approached from the

    direction of Rezaiyeh. A Land Rover pulled up and three men got out. One of

    them was dressed in a long black overcoat. The tribesmen seemed to defer to

    him. He addressed Rashid. "Let me see the passports, please."

    "Sure," said Rashid. He led the man to the second Range Rover. Bill was in

    the first, and Rashid wanted the overcoat man to get bored with looking at

    passports before he got to Bill's. Rashid tapped on the car window, and

    Paul rolled it down. "Passports. 11