On Wings of Eagles (38 page)

    It was a small, drab apartment crowded with ancient finmiture and dimly lit

    by a couple of candles. lisman was a short, fat man of about Boulware's

    age, thirty-five. Ilsman had not seen his feet for many years-he was gross.

    He made Boulware think of the stereotyped fat police sergeant in the

    movies, with a suit too small and a sweaty shirt and a wrinkled tie wrapped

    around the place where his neck would have been if he had had a neck.

    They sat down, and the woman-Mrs. Ilsman, Boulware presumed-served

    tea--just like Tehran! Boulware explained his problem, with Mr. Fish

    translating. Ilsman was suspicious. He cross-questioned Boulware about the

    two fugitive Americans. How could Boulware be sure they were innocent? Why

    did they have no passports? What would they bring into Turkey? In the end

    he seemed convinced that Boulware was leveling with him, and he offered to

    get Paul and Bill from the border to Istanbul for eight thousand dollars,

    in all.

234 Ken Follett

    Boulware wondered whether Usman was for real. Smuggling Americans into the

    country was a funny pastime for an intelligence agent. And if Hsman really

    was MIT, who was it that Mr. Fish thought might have been following him and

    Boulware across town?

    Perhaps Ilsman was free-lancing. Eight thousand dollars was a lot of money

    in Turkey. It was even possible that Ilsman would tell his superiors what

    he was doing. After afl--Usman might figure-if Boulware's story were true

    no harm would be done by helping; and if Boulware were lying, the best way

    to find out what he was really up to might be to accompany him. to the

    border.

    Anyway, at this point Ilsman seemed to be the best Boulware could get.

    Boulware agreed to the price, and Ilsman broke out a bottle of scotch.

While other members of the rescue team were fretting in various parts of the

world, Simons and Coburn were driving the road from Tehran to the Turkish

border.

    Reconnaissance was a watchword with Simons, and he wanted to be familiar

    with every inch of his escape route before he embarked on it with Paul and

    Bill. How much fighting was there in that part of the country? What was the

    police presence? Were the roads passable in winter? Were the filling

    stations open?

    In fact there were two routes to Sero, the border crossing he had chosen.

    (He preferred Sero because it was a little-used frontier post at a tiny

    village, so there would be few people and the border would be lightly

    guarded, whereas Barzagan-&e alternative Mr. Fish kept recommending-would

    be busier.) The nearest large town to Seto was Rezaiyeh. Directly across

    the path from Tehran to Rezaiyeh lay Lake Rezaiyeh, a hundred miles long:

    you had to drive around it, either to the north or to the south. The

    northerly route went through larger towns and would have better roads.

    Simons therefore preferred the south edy route, provided the roads were

    passable. On this reconnaissance trip, he decided, they would check out

    both routes, the northerly going and the southerly on the return.

    He decided that the best kind of car for the trip was a British Range

    Rover, a cross between a jeep and a station wagon. There were no

    dealerships or used car lots open in Tehran now, so Coburn gave the Cycle

    Man the job of getting hold of two Range Rovers. The Cycle Man's solution

    to the problem was character-

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 235

istically ingenious. He had a notice printed with his telephone number and

the message: "If you would like to sell your Range Rover, call this number."

Then he went around on his motorcycle and put a copy under the windshield

wipers of every Range Rover he saw parked on the streets.

    He got two vehicles for twenty thousand dollars each, and he also bought

    tools and spare parts for all but the most major repairs.

    Simons and Coburn took two Iranians with them- Majid, and a cousin of

    Majid's who was a professor at an agricultural college in Rezaiyeh. The

    professor had come to Tehran to put his American wife and their children on

    a plane to the States: taking him back to Rezaiyeh was Simons's cover story

    for the trip.

    They left Tehran early in the morning, with one of Keane Taylor's

    fifty-five-gallon drums of gasoline in the back. For the first hundred

    miles, as far as Qazvin, there was a modem freeway. After Qazvin the road

    was a two-lane blacktop. The hillsides were covered with snow, but the road

    itself was clear. If it's like this all the way to the border, Coburn

    thought, we could get there in a day.

    They stopped at Zanjan, two hundred miles from Tehran and the same distance

    from Rezaiyeh, and spoke to the local chief of police, who was related to

    the professor. (Coburn could never quite work out the family relationships

    of Iramans: they seemed to use the word "cousin" rather loosely.) This part

    of the country was peaceful, the police chief said; if they were to

    encounter any problems it would happen in the area of Tabriz.

    They drove on through the afternoon, on narrow but good country roads.

    After another hundred miles they entered Tabriz. There was a demonstration

    going on, but it was nothing like the kind of battle they had got used to

    in Tehran, and they even felt secure enough to take a stroll around the

    bazaar.

    Along the way Simons had been talking to Majid and the professor. It seemed

    like casual conversation, but by now Coburn was familiar with Simons's

    technique, and he knew that the colonel was feeling these two out, deciding

    whether he could trust them. So far the proposis seemed good, for Simons

    began to drop hints about the real purpose of the trip.

    The professor said that the countryside around Tabriz was pro-Shah, so

    before they moved on, Simons stuck a photograph of the Shah on the

    windshield.

The first sip of trouble came a few miles north of Tabriz,

236 Ken Folleu

where they were stopped by a roadblock. It was an amateur affair, just two

tree trunks laid across the road in such a way that cars could maneuver

around them but could not pass through at speed. It was manned by villagers

armed with axes and sticks.

    MaJid and the professor talked to the villagers. The professor showed his

    university identity card, and said that the Americans were scientists come

    to help him with a research project. It was clear, Coburn thought, that the

    rescue team would need to bring Iranians when and if they did the trip with

    Paul and Bill, to handle situations like this.

The villagers let them pass.

    A little later Majid stopped and waved down a car coming in the opposite

    direction. The professor talked to the driver of the other car for a few

    minutes, then reported that the next town, Khoy, was anti-Shah. Simons took

    down the picture of the Shah from the windshield and replaced it with one

    of the Ayatollah Khomeini. From then on they would stop oncoming cars regu-

    larly and change the picture according to local politics.

On the outskirts of Khoy there was another roadblock.

    Like the first one, it looked unofficial, and was manned by civilians; but

    this time the ragged men and boys standing behind the tree trunks were

    holding guns.

Majid stopped the car and they all got out.

To Coburn's horror, a teenage boy pointed a gun at him.

Coburn froze.

    The gun was a 9min Llama pistol. The boy looked about sixteen. He had

    probably never handled a firearm before today, Cobum thought. Amateurs with

    guns were dangerous. The boy was holding the gun so tightly that his

    knuckles showed white.

    Coburn was scared. He had been shot at many times, in Vietnam, but what

    frightened him now was the possibility that he would be killed by goddam

    accident.

"RoosUe," the boy said. "Rooskie."

He thinks I'm a Russian, Coburn realized.

    Perhaps it was because of the busby red beard and the little black wool

    cap.

"No, American ", Coburn said.

The boy kept his pistol leveled.

    Coburn stared at those white knuckles and thought: I just hope the punk

    doesn't sneeze.

    7be villagers searched Simons, Majid, and the professor. Coburn, who could

    not take his eyes off the kid, heard MaJid

    ON WINGS OF EAGLES 237

say: "They're looking for weapons." The only weapon they had was a little

knife that Coburn was wearing in a scabbard behind his back, under his

shirt.

    A villager began to search Coburn, and at last the lad lowered his pistol.

Coburn breathed again.

    'Men lie wondered what would happen when they found his knife.

The search was not thorough, and the knife was not found.

    The vigilantes believed the story about a scientific project. "They

    apologize for searching the old man," Majid said. The "Old man" was Simons,

    who was now looking just like an elderly hwian peasant. "We can go on,"

    Majid added.

They climbed back into the car.

    Outside Khoy they turned south , looping over the top end of the lake, and

    drove down the western shore to the outskirts Of Rezaiyeh.

    The professor guided them into the town by remote roads, and they saw no

    roadblocks. The journey from Tehran had taken them twelve hours, and they

    were now an hour away from the border crossing at Sero.

    That evening they all had dinner-chella kebab, the h-Anian dish of rice and

    lamb-with the professor's landlord, who haPpened to be a customs official.

    Majid gently pumped the landlord for information , and learned that there

    was very little activity at the Sero frontier station.

    They spent the night at the professor's house, a two-storY villa on the

    outskirts of the town.

    In the morning majid and the professor drove to the border and back. They

    reported that there were no roadblocks and the route was safe. Then Majid

    went into town to seek out a contact from whom he could buy firearms, and

    Simons and Coburn went to the border.

    They found a small frontier post with only two guards. It had a custorns

    warehouse, a weighbridge for trucks, and a guardhouse. mie road was barred

    by a low chain stretched between a post on one side and the wan of the

    guard house on the other. Beyond the chain was about two hundred yards of

    no-man's-land, then anodw, smaller frontier post on the Turkish side.

    They got out of the car to look around. The air was pure and bitingly cold.

    Simons pointed across the hillside. "See the tracks? I

Coburn followed Simons's finger. In the snow-, close behind

238 Ken Follett

the border station, was a trail where a small caravan had crossed the

border, impudently close to the guards.

    Simons pointed again, this time above their heads. "Easy to cut the guards

    off." Coburn looked up and saw a single telephone wire leading down the

    hill from the station. A quick snip and the guards would be isolated.

    The two of them walked down the hill and took a side road, no more than a

    dirt track, into the hills. After a mile or so they came to a small

    village, just a dozen or so houses made of wood or mud brick. Speaking

    halting Turkish, Simons asked for the chief. A middle-aged man in baggy

    trousers, waistcoat, and headdress appeared. Coburn listened without

    understanding as Simons talked. Finally Simons shook the chief s hand, and

    they left.

    "What was all that about?" Coburn asked as they walked away.

    "I told him I wanted to cross the border on horseback at night with some

    friends. "

"What did he say?"

"He said he could arrange it."

    "How did you know the people in that particular village were smugglers?"

"Look around you," Simons said.

Coburn looked around at the bare, snow-covered slopes.

"What do you see?" Simons said.

    'Nothing. "

    "Right. There is no agriculture here, no industry. How do you think these

    people make a living? They're all smugglers. "

    They returned to the Range Rover and drove back into Rezaiyeh. That evening

    Simons explained his plan to Coburn.

    Simons, Coburn, Poch6, Paul, and Bill would drive from Tehran to Rezaiyeh

    in the two Range Rovers. They would bring Majid and the professor with them

    as interpreters. In Rezaiyeh they would stay at the professor's house. The

    villa was ideal: no one else lived there, it was detached from other

    houses, and from there quiet roads led out of the city. Between Tehran and

    Rezaiyeh they would be unarmed: judging by what had happened at the

    roadblocks, guns would get them into trouble. However, at Rezaiyeh they

    would buy guns. Majid had made a contact in the city who would sell them