The Persian Price (23 page)

‘Tell me,' the Colonel said, his black eyes very mild, ‘is Minister Khorvan responsible?' He hoped that Kelly wouldn't lie or take refuge in evasions. He knew that Khorvan had tried to block Imperial Oil and had only given way on a direct order from the Shah. If the negotiations were failing, as Kelly indicated, then Ardalan wanted to know if the Minister was to blame.

‘Well,' Kelly hesitated, ‘I don't think I should commit myself on that. Can I get us both a drink, Colonel?'

‘That would be kind,' the Colonel said. He followed James in search of a waiter. They both stood sipping champagne.

Ardalan watched the Englishman for a few moments. He didn't look tired; that was an understatement. He looked as if he hadn't slept for days and there was a drawn, haggard expression on his face when it was in repose. Ardalan had seen a similar look of disquiet on Logan Field's face the night he saw the Syrian. He didn't expect James to tell him anything. He just wanted his opinions confirmed.

‘Apart from Imshan,' he said, ‘is there anything else that might worry Mr Field?'

‘No, not that I know of.'

‘I see.' Ardalan sounded disappointed. ‘Tell me, has that Syrian approached him again? People like that can be very persistent.'

‘No. No, definitely not. Mr Field wouldn't touch anything illegal. He made that very clear. I see the Minister has just arrived. Would you excuse me, Colonel? I ought to go and have a word with him.'

‘Of course. Mr Kelly?'

‘Yes?'James said.

‘If at any time you need my help, please let me know.'

‘Thank you,' James said. ‘I will remember that.'

Ardalan saw him edging his way through the crowd towards Khorvan. He watched for a moment, before turning to find someone else to talk to. His prediction to his assistant Sabet was correct. James Kelly hadn't revealed anything, except that he and Logan Field had something very definite to hide.

The garden was filled with trees and ornamental shrubs. It was early evening and quite light, but the shrubberies were thick enough and dark enough to hide a man from view. Among the shadows along the wall of the Embassy garden, there was one that moved.

Yusef Ebrahimi had got into the Embassy grounds with the extra staff brought in to organize the party. He knew, because of what Habib had told him, that Ministers went to foreign Embassies and one of Habib's coffee-shop friends advised him that Khorvan would be going to the French Embassy that night. As if Habib had returned from the dead, he knew that this was the place and the time to exact his vengeance. The traitor and murderer would be in the splendid gardens, drinking and talking to the capitalist enemies of his country. Habib's brother had crouched among the bushes for two hours before the first guests began arriving. He watched from his shelter, looking for the Minister. He felt no fear, only a resolve so strong that it made him tremble. He was a poor man and weak, dust under the feet of the rich and powerful. He had lived his whole life making terms with hunger. When he slept it was the sleep of exhaustion and an escape from the rigours of cruel labour and slave wages. His brother Habib had promised that all this would be changed. He hadn't understood how but he had believed and hoped. He watched from the bushes as Khorvan walked into his view, dressed in his immaculately tailored suit, with diamonds in his cuff links, and it seemed to Habib's brother that blood surrounded him like an aura. He straightened a little and his right hand crept down to his trouser band and found the handle of a long sharp knife.

The Minister was in a sour mood. He had felt unwell the previous day and, in common with many Iranians, he was morbidly afraid of illness. A dozen alarming explanations for his feeling of malaise occurred to him and the reassurances of his fashionable doctor hadn't satisfied him. He preferred to go to London for medical advice. He had an audience with the Shah the following day and this was as much responsible for his symptoms as any germ he had picked up. The Shah wanted a report on the negotiations with Imperial Oil. He was about to give the chairman an audience and he was expecting the Minister to provide full details. The one gift His Imperial Majesty possessed above all others was the capacity to judge other people. Khorvan might feint and dodge effectively with James and Logan Field, and his fellow Iranians; he had no hope of deceiving the Shah. The Shah wanted Imperial Oil to have the concession, albeit on the toughest terms. It was the test of Khorvan's skill to manoeuvre Imperial into a position whereby the company couldn't comply with Iranian terms and the Government couldn't back down on them without a loss of face. Walking this tightrope was difficult enough, but doing it with the tough and resourceful Logan Field tugging at the wire was sufficient reason for having a stomach ache. Khorvan sipped at the orange juice, when he craved a healing draught of Scotch whisky, and made little effort with the other guests. He felt no obligation to be sociable, and when Kelly came up to speak to him he pretended not to notice him. There were four people surrounding the Minister, two of them French, an official from the trade department of the British Embassy, and Kelly. Immediately behind them, the tall bank of shrubs cast an impenetrable shadow. James had waited for some moments without being acknowledged and suddenly lost patience. In the service of Her Majesty's government he had endured bad manners and boredom, but he owed Imperial Oil no such allegiance. As he prepared to turn his back on the Minister, his thoughts were dwelling sourly on the vanished ‘gunboat diplomacy' of past decades, when one of the shadows took shape and left the protection of the shrubberies. It became a crouching form, one arm raised. Before Kelly realized what he was seeing, it sprang towards the Minister.

Khorvan was speaking when the knife struck him. His glass fell and shattered, spattering orange juice; he gave a grunting cry and toppled forward. It was Kelly who acted instinctively and grabbed hold of the assailant as he ran for the shelter of the bushes. He struggled briefly with a small, wiry man who kicked and clawed at him, spitting insults in Farsi. Someone in the crowd screamed. The momentary shock had paralysed the onlookers. Now the woman's cry released them. Seconds later the attacker was seized by other hands and brought to the ground. Kelly knelt down beside the Minister. Khorvan was lying on his back; one of the French officials had opened his jacket and pulled his tie loose. His head lolled to one side. There was a hurried movement among the crowd standing around them and Colonel Ardalan knelt beside James. He turned the Minister's head towards them. The face was a ghastly colour and the eyes were turned up. He laid a hand on Khorvan's chest and then gently turned him on one side. A knife handle was sticking out of his back below the left shoulder blade. Ardalan looked round.

‘The Minister is dead,' he said. He got up and went to where the assassin lay, pinned to the ground by two of the guests. ‘Take him into the Embassy, please,' he said. ‘My men will remove him. I must ask everyone who saw the murder to come with me. If the Ambassador will permit me to make use of a room …'

It was the Ambassador himself who brought the Colonel into the building and placed an office at his disposal. The party was ended and those guests who couldn't assist the Colonel went home. James was the first person to make a statement; there was no change in Ardalan's manner. He was soft-spoken and polite, but it was the head of the dreaded
SAVAK
who was asking the questions, wearing the face of the amiable Colonel like a rubber mask. James described how the man had run out from the shrubbery, struck the blow, and how he had prevented him escaping.

‘That was very brave of you,' the Colonel said. ‘The English always keep their heads in emergencies. His Imperial Majesty will be grateful that you caught the assassin.'

‘It's a shocking thing,' James said. It was his first experience of violent death and it disgusted him. Equally repellent was his brief glimpse of the murderer being hauled by the hair into a police car. There was a grimace of agonized terror on the man's face that haunted him.

‘Who was the man? Why did he do it?'

‘We shall soon know,' Ardalan said.

James drove back to his house, past a police guard that had been set up outside the Embassy, with a small crowd of people gathered by the entrance. Khorvan was dead. It seemed incredible; the transition from life to death had been so sudden, as quick as the thrust of a knife blade. His mind shied away from what must be happening to the assassin in the Colonel's headquarters in Niavaran.

He went home, told his servant he didn't want dinner and sat out in the garden by the fountain with a drink. It was a warm night, scented with flowers; the stars were like diamonds on a velvet cloth above his head and the delicate music of the fountain played at his elbow.

Now that Khorvan was dead, the only obstacle between Imperial Oil and Imshan was gone. He wondered how long it would take for the news to reach Logan in Tokyo. As long as it took Janet Armstrong to cable him. He sat on, his drink forgotten, listening to the water falling into the marble basin. He was a man of thought rather than action; his nature and training combined against a rash or ill-considered act. Loyalty to his superiors was an integral part of his code of life. He had never broken it, even to Logan Field. He went inside to his sitting room and dialled the British Embassy. He was on first name terms with the Ambassador who had been his chief in Madrid. He asked him as a matter of the gravest, urgency to arrange for a private audience with the Shah.

The brother of Habib Ebrahimi was subjected to interrogation; that was the wording on the Colonel's report. Long experience of what prolonged physical torture could extract from different types of people assured Ardalan early on that the assassin was telling the truth. He had manufactured nothing. He was the brother of the murdered waiter, Habib Ebrahimi, and he had killed the Minister as an act of private vengeance, believing him responsible for Habib's death. Ardalan had paused there. It was his usual technique before asking an important question. He lit a cigarette and smoked it through.

‘Why should an important man like Khorvan trouble himself with a worm like your brother?'

The answer was a mumble. Because Habib had been told to spy on the Minister because he was a traitor who was giving Imshan oil-fields to the capitalists. And so the Minister had had Habib's throat cut.

Ardalan went back and sat down. The room was grey with cigarette smoke, writhing upwards under the lights directed at the prisoner. At last the puzzle made a picture that was recognizable. A major piece had just been fitted into place.

Habib Ebrahimi had been told to spy on Khorvan. His direct connection with the American Peters led to Saiid Homsi. And from him to Logan Field. And from the mouth of Khorvan's assassin had come the proof that linked them all together – Imshan oil-fields. He got up and stretched to ease the tension in neck and shoulder muscles. He spoke to the group of officers standing in the background.

‘Take him away,' he said. ‘The Shah will want him executed.'

He went upstairs to his office. It was growing light. He had already reported to the Shah by telephone before leaving the French Embassy. Now he had all the information that he needed to take action. An international terrorist group, masterminded by Syria, was intervening in Iran's most valuable economic and political asset. Oil. One assassination had already taken place. It wouldn't be difficult to present the unimportant brother of Habib Ebrahimi as a politically motivated terrorist. A good policeman could judge when it was right to doctor the facts. At eight in the morning he set out for the Palace. His assistant Sabet went with him.

The moment Eileen woke, she knew that he was in the room. It was an instant transition from sleep to full awareness and she lay very still, waiting. She could see the outline of him in the semi-dark; there was a moon outside and the blinds were up. He was standing still, looking towards her. She sat up and turned on the lamp beside her bed.

He didn't speak. He came and stood by her. There was no expression on his face at all and he was fully dressed. A sense of absolute fatality overcame her as she looked up at him and with it a strange excitement and relief. The current was flowing between them, without words and without touch. It was the most powerful pre-sexual experience of her life, those few seconds while she waited.

‘If you've changed your mind,' Peters said, ‘I'll go.'

‘Don't go,' Eileen said.

He sat on the bed and slowly put his hands on her shoulders.

‘I won't force you,' he said. ‘I'm not Resnais.'

It was Eileen who made the first move. She caught his face with her hands and kissed him on the mouth.

It was an urgent, wordless lovemaking; even so its intensity was matched by tenderness from him. He made love to her and afterwards, when they were quiet, Eileen remembered the words of a friend who had also been a priest. Any fool can have intercourse; it takes a real man to make love. They lay close, their bodies dovetailed, loath to lose contact. For Peters it was a strange experience. Sex and emotion had never mixed before. She was less accomplished as a lover than Madeleine, there were no acrobatics, but there was no comparison in either the satisfaction or the aftermath. He wanted to feel her near him, to touch and kiss. He remembered how other women's desire to cling had jarred upon him. Now he held her possessively until the cycle began again. Passion, exploration, self-loss. Eileen met and matched him as the night passed. It was a different woman who woke in his arms before the dawn. Marriage and childbirth, love and loss, all the human experience of her life with Logan Field was muted. Peters was the reality, the fulfilment she had never imagined could exist. He had made her a part of himself. He woke soon after she did and she felt his hand claiming her breast. She laid her own on it.

‘I'll have to go soon,' he said. ‘Will you be all right?'