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  A half-dozen Iranian air force helicopters swooped in low over the valley, the flash of machine-gun fire raining down on the Russian position.

  Moving as fast as he could, Kurshin scrambled farther to the right around to the other side of the hillock in the opposite direction McGarvey might think he would go.

  Suddenly he jumped up, swinging the heavy assault rifle right to left. McGarvey was just getting to his feet twenty yards away. Kurshin fired on full automatic, the bullets raking the dirt to the left of McGarvey and then slamming into his body, shoving him aside like a rag doll.

  He saw the American falling, in slow motion it seemed, everything else that was going on in the valley blotted out of his consciousness. He started to run forward so that he could get a better angle, to finish the job, and he pulled the trigger again, but nothing happened. The gun was empty or jammed.

  Somehow McGarvey was turning over onto his back, his own rifle coming up. Kurshin tried desperately to sidestep, but at least three bullets tore into his body, lifting him off his feet and propelling him back behind the hill, his assault rifle falling harmlessly to the dirt.

  He was crawling. Helicopters seemed to be everywhere overhead and on the ground. The sounds of gunfire were intense.

  Like a moth in reverse, Kurshin sought out the darkness, crawling always away from the spotlights stabbing the night, the flames rising over the wreckage of the Russian Badger and the Iranian helicopter, and the flashes and heat traces of weapons fire.

  “My life for yours,” he’d promised Baranov so many years ago. As long as there was breath in his body he would not go back on his promise.

  Darkness was life. Light was death.

  This night was not his time to die. Not yet.

  52

  THE COBRA ATTACK HELICOPTER with SAVAK markings touched down about fifty yards from the still smoldering wreckage of the Russian transport aircraft. The wind was strong and gusty, but the pilot was an expert. The valley was crawling with air force troops and SAVAK officers up from Qom.

  The hatch opened and Captain Peshadi and Sergeant Turik jumped down. A command post of sorts had been set up in one of the big transport helicopters nearby. They walked over to it.

  Dawn was coming, and beneath the thickly overcast sky the light was flat, lending a curiously one-dimensional air to the long valley and sheer cliffs. This was a brutal land. Nothing human could or should live here.

  All resistance of any sort had ceased. One Iranian helicopter had been completely destroyed, and a second had been badly damaged. There were more than four dozen bodies, most of them Iranian, laid out in three ragged rows on the cold ground.

  “It must have been some fight,” Sergeant Turik said in awe.

  “Yes, but thankfully it was confined to this valley,” Peshadi said, staring down the runway.

  Wreckage from the Russian aircraft was strewn for over a thousand yards. Evidently the plane had crashed on landing. He shook his head and looked up into the thick sky. Insanity, he thought. All of it had been designed by lunatics and carried out by maniacs.

  “Captain Peshadi,” someone called from the command helicopter.

  Peshadi looked around. “Colonel Masijed?” he asked.

  “That’s right.” The air force colonel jumped down from the open hatch. He’d been one of the officers who’d trained at the shah’s military academy and survived the revolution. He commanded the air wing at Qom, and he was no friend of SAVAK —past or present.

  They shook hands.

  “The situation here seems secure,” Peshadi said.

  “It is,” Masijed said. “Your people did a fine job. Without them we might have been too late.”

  Peshadi acknowledged the compliment. “The convoy is in the clear, from what I understand.”

  “They will be in Qom within the hour. The danger is past.”

  Again Peshadi glanced down the runway, and along the trail of wreckage that led to the Russian aircraft. “What happened here? I was told that you have taken prisoners.”

  Colonel Masijed said nothing.

  Peshadi turned back to him. “Colonel?”

  “This is an air force operation.”

  Peshadi’s eyes narrowed. “The convoy …”

  “Is safe.”

  “If there are prisoners, they will be turned over to SAVAK for transportation to Tehrn, where they will be placed on trial.”

  “These were Russians here to steal our … to attack the convoy.”

  “How many of them did you capture? Did you get any of their officers?”

  “The Russians are all dead. They refused to surrender. Let me tell you, had their lead aircraft not been shot down, and had their other forces been allowed to land, I do not believe we could have contained them.”

  “Shot down?” Peshadi asked.

  Colonel Masijed nodded. “Yes. By an American. A spy, I think. He and his two companions work for the CIA, no doubt.”

  Peshadi stiffened. “I want them,” he said.

  “They were here, Captain, to help protect the shipment.”

  “No,” the word escaped involuntarily from the back of Peshadi’s throat, and he stepped forward.

  Sergeant Turik grabbed his arm. Two of Colonel Masijed’s men suddenly materialized from inside the helicopter. They were armed and looked very serious.

  “Two of these men are wounded, one of them quite seriously. As soon as my surgeon is finished we will transport them to the Turkish border near Urmia, where they will be allowed to cross. Unhindered.”

  “I won’t allow this.”

  “You have no choice, unless you want to die here,” the colonel said harshly. He lowered his voice. “Listen, Peshadi, they may have spied on us, and they are the infidel, but this time they were sincerely here to help. They returned our money to us, and they were making sure it got to Tehrn. That nobody would take it.”

  A part of Peshadi could see the logic in what the colonel was telling him, but he couldn’t let go. His emotions were too mixed, to muddled by his past.

  “I will report this. You will face court-martial.”

  “I accept that responsibility, of course,” Colonel Masijed said calmly. “But you must understand that it could have been much worse here. A number of airplanes we believe were transporting American Delta Force soldiers nearly made it past our radar before they were stopped … by us and by the storm. There could have been a full-scale war here. Is that what you want?”

  Yes, he almost said. No. He didn’t know what he wanted. Except for revenge. His sister had been only sixteen when she’d started with her American lover, and seventeen when she’d been executed.

  One of the smaller transport helicopters behind them whined into life, its drooping rotors beginning to move slowly, as three men were helped out of a first-aid truck. Two of them were on stretchers.

  Peshadi yanked out his pistol, but the sharp sounds of several rifle ejector slides being drawn back and snapped into place made him stop short.

  Colonel Masijed took his weapon from him.

  The three men came past. One of them on a stretcher looked up. He wasn’t Abbas or Ghfari. He was the other one. The tall Westerner in the Range Rover. The one who’d entered Iran on a Russian passport.

  “You’re going home now, Tinker,” Peshadi said to him in English.

  “Yes.” McGarvey smiled weakly. “Glad we could be of some help, Captain.”

  BOOK FOUR

  53

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  ONE-ON-ONE WITH the President of the United States, the Oval Office had always seemed like an immense room, even to Roland Murphy. This evening, however, it was crammed with most of the cabinet, the advisers, and a number of other key administration people. It was too small.

  It was a few minutes before the President’s scheduled eight o’clock news conference downstairs, in the East Room, and as usual the air was electric with expectation. Presidents had been made and they had been broken in that room.

  Murphy had c
ome over from Langley the moment he’d had word from Turkey. They’d been expecting this ever since analyzing the early-morning satellite passes over Iran. But the actual news was in one respect better than their speculations. As he’d told Lawrence Danielle, “Anything worth doing makes a mess.”

  He’d thought that saying was especially appropriate when it came to intelligence operations.

  The President beckoned Murphy over. “What have you got for me, General?”

  “Good news, Mr. President,” Murphy said.

  The President took him aside, and they put their heads together by the bow windows. “Is it confirmed?”

  “We just got word from our people on the Turkish border: Kirk McGarvey, Dick Abbas, and Bijan Ghfari came out of Iran less than an hour ago. McGarvey and Abbas were wounded, but they’re expected to recover.”

  “How’d they manage to get so far so soon?” the President asked sharply, holding his relief in check.

  “That’s the amazing part. Evidently they were given medical attention and then transported to the border by the Iranian air force.”

  The President was shaking his head. He glanced over Murphy’s shoulder at the others in the room, who were talking quietly.

  “There’s been no protest from Iran,” the President said. “In fact, there’s not been so much as a word out of them. The gold is safely in Tehrn. The Russians have been stopped. And no one is pointing a finger at us, for a change. You’re right, General, it is amazing.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The President looked at him. “What’s left, Roland? Spell it out.”

  “McGarvey will be flown to the hospital in Wiesbaden to have his wounds tended to, but he is insisting that Arkady Kurshin may still be alive.”

  “He was shot and left for dead in a hostile environment crawling with Iranian military and SAVAK troops.”

  “Yes, sir. He was in a worse fix off the coast of Syria two years ago, and he survived.”

  “Is it possible this time?”

  “I don’t know,” Murphy said. “But all things considered, I wouldn’t count the bastard out until the autopsy is over.”

  The President’s press secretary, Richard Wood, motioned from the door. “It’s time, Mr. President.”

  The President hesitated a moment longer. He looked into Murphy’s eyes. “I’m going to have to go downstairs now and face the press corps. They’re going to want to know what the hell is happening in Azerbaidzhan. It’s even possible that one of them has heard of the doings in Iran. What do I tell them, Roland? Is it over?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. President.”

  “No,” the President said heavily. “But then they’re paying me, not you, for this job.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States,” Richard Wood announced from the podium. He stepped aside as the President entered the East Room and took his place. A hush came over the 237 journalists.

  A brief statement had been prepared for the President to read, but he held it up. “I expect everyone has a copy of this.”

  Some of the journalists nodded.

  “Then I’ll dispense with the usual reading,” the President said. “But before we get to the questions, let me just say that our latest intelligence indicates that the fighting in Baku and along the border has already stopped. And I want you guys to read my lips on this one. There are no—repeat no—Russian tanks in any city in Azerbaidzhan. Nor was any force directed from Moscow used in the brief uprising.

  “From what I’ve been told, most of the actual bloodshed occurred at the airport outside of Baku when a KGB installation tried to defend itself. Elsewhere in the country it was the Azerbaidzhani Coalition for Independence that fought with local police—not Russians—for control of the radio and television stations, the telephone exchange, and a number of electric power plants.

  “At no time were the two nuclear generating plants in the region in any danger, nor were any of the Soviet Missile Defense installations threatened.”

  The President pointed to William McKinstry from CBS. “I’ll start with you this time, Bill.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President. Do you have any clear word on the number of casualties yet?”

  The President shook his head. “No, and I was just discussing this with Jim Bardley over at the National Security Agency. They’ve picked up radio reports from the Soviets that claim as few as one or two dead to as many as a thousand. So what we’re saying here is that there are casualties, we know that much for sure, but it’s going to be a while before we can say for certain how many.”

  The President pointed to a woman in the middle. She stood up.

  “Laura Rodgers, Denver Post. Mr. President, do you think that Mr. Gorbachev learned his lesson in Latvia and Estonia two years ago, and if so, will he handle this problem in Azerbaidzhan differently? And a follow-up question: Have you spoken with Mr. Gorbachev since this disturbance began?”

  “No, I haven’t talked with him in the past forty-eight hours. He’s got his hands full at the moment. But you’ve got to understand that what’s been happening in Azerbaidzhan is not the same as Latvia. The trouble was not ordered or in any way sanctioned by the Azerbaidzhani congress. The fighting is independent of the local government.”

  “But it has the support of the people, isn’t that so?” Laura Rodgers asked.

  Other reporters were clamoring to be heard, but the President held them off.

  “Just a minute,” he said. “There’s no way of knowing if what’s happening there has popular support. There’s no Gallup Poll in Baku.” The President leaned forward over the lectern. “Listen, all we can go on is what the government of Azerbaidzhan tells us. And they haven’t told us very much. As I said, there was no vote in their legislature like there was in Latvia, for independence. They’d declared nothing.”

  Again the reporters called out and raised their hands to be heard.

  “Mr. President, what about operation PLUTUS in Iran?” one voice was clear above the others.

  The president groaned inwardly. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Tom Haines, his national security adviser, was just as surprised and dismayed by the question.

  “What’s your question?” the President asked.

  “Thank you, sir. Paul Spencer, Reuters. It’s my understanding that the United States signed an agreement with the government of Iran to return something more than a thousand million dollars in gold which represents funds the United States had held for nearly fifteen years. Is that true? And in a follow-up question, it’s my understanding that the shipment may have been attacked in Iran. Is that true?”

  “Where did you hear this?” the President asked, trying to keep it as light as possible. But the other journalists had perked up. They smelled blood.

  “I have my sources,” the British reporter replied smugly.

  “I have to take my hat off to them. The operation you mentioned was highly classified and known only to a handful of people. We were going to make our announcement tomorrow morning. You’ve jumped the gun.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” the Reuters man said. “But are these stories true?”

  “Yes, and no,” the President said coolly.

  “I don’t understand,” the man insisted.

  “Yes, the first is true. No, the second is not true.”

  “Then there was no trouble with the gold convoy on Iranian soil?” the Reuters man shouted, but the President had already pointed to another reporter.

  “Perry, you’ve been patient.”

  Perry Nichols, from the Associated Press, got to his feet. “Mr. President, I think I can speak for most of us in this room when I say that I am surprised. I hadn’t heard a thing. Would you care to expand on this situation in Iran?”

  The President sighed audibly. “What do you want to know, Perry?” But then he held up his hand. “Wait,” he said. “Before I’m accused here of hiding something, let me tell you that’s exactly what we’re doing, and intend doing so long as it invol
ves national security.”

  The Associated Press reporter started to protest, but the President continued to hold him off.

  “Let me finish here. In an effort to continue normalizing relations with Iran, we agreed to release certain oil funds that had been frozen here, in this country, and return them to Iran. They specifically requested that the funds be sent over in the form of gold bullion. Which we agreed to. In an effort to insure the safe transport of that much gold, we naturally had to keep the entire operation under close wraps. There was no trouble with the shipment. And in fact at this moment the gold is safely in Tehrn.”

  “Can you tell us exactly how much gold was shipped, Mr. President?”

  “Four thousand ounces,” the President said.

  There was a collective sigh through the press corps.

  The President grinned. “That’s enough for them to start their own McDonald’s chain.”

  A few of the reporters guffawed, but the Reuters man was deadly serious. Again his voice cut through the noise.

  “Are you denying, Mr. President, that a Soviet-made converted Badger bomber crash-landed in a high valley south of the city of Qom? And that the aircraft had U.S. markings, and brought U.S. troops?”

  “As you said, Mr. Spencer, a ‘Soviet-made’ aircraft,” the President said sharply.

  “Did the United States try to steal back the gold it was sending to Iran, Mr. President? Can you answer that question?”

  “Yes, I can,” the President said. “And the answer is no. And now let’s let someone else have a chance. After all, everyone here has an editor breathing down his neck. Mine is called the American public.” And the President emphasized the word American.

  54

  MCGARVEY’S HEAD WAS ROARING, threatening to split in two at any moment. He became aware that he was strapped into a narrow cot or stretcher. The entire room was moving around, sometimes violently, accompanied by a tremendous noise.

  “Mr. Wills,” someone shouted at his side. The voice was not familiar. Not American.