Turn of the Cards

Chapter Eleven

What a long, strange trip it’s been … Mark had always thought of that old Dead tune as the soundtrack to his life. Even before the last few years, when things really had started getting strange. Now here he was, literally Truckin’, on a trip in its way almost as strange as the one to Takis in a Network starship: in the dimly red-lit cab of a giant gleaming white Mercedes tractor trailer highballing through the flat Iranian plains on the midnight run from Tabrīz to Tehrān. And on the Blaupunkt CD player was, not Jerry Garcia and company, but Hank Williams, Jr., singing about just who was coming over tonight.

He caught himself on the edge of dozing, glanced over at Otto, his co-driver, who currently had the wheel. Otto beamed and bobbed his head. He was a stocky man in probably his early forties, with a ruddy complexion and thinning blond hair. He was shy a front incisor, apparently because of a dispute with an earlier employer. Or maybe even the one he and Mark were temporarily sharing; Mark could just barely make sense out of his Bavarian accent, with its Austrian lilt and sprinkling of Italian vocabulary. The Yugos on the Montenegro had been easier to understand. They’d learned the same academic Hochdeutsch in school that Mark had.

“Nice rig you got here, man,” Mark said. Otto had had English classes in school and seemed to understand it pretty well, but he spoke the language even worse than Mark understood his southern German.

Otto beamed and nodded. “Ja, ja. Ganz modern.”

Which Mark actually understood. It was nifty. Even Mark, no connoisseur of the big rigs, could tell that. It was all ergonomic and streamlined inside, no sharp corners, and it had one of those neat little sci-fi phones that bounced signals off the ion trails left by meteorites, of all things, so you could talk to just about anywhere in the world. Then above and behind the cab you had an entire apartment, complete with a bed with burgundy silk sheets and a miniature refrigerator and a TV and VCR and a selection of really startling pornographic videos.

As a matter of fact, since he was off-shift, Mark was fully entitled to be up in the apartment, putting the bed and other modern conveniences of his choice to use. Somehow he preferred being awake and alert and down here, so that he could pop an appropriate powder in his mouth when Pasdaran Revolutionary Guard crazies came screaming out of the night with their AK-47s blazing.

There were risks involved, though hundreds of trucks a day made the run from Turkey. The situation in Iran was fraying like a cable under tension, giving way one strand at a time without the Ayatollah Khomeini’s charismatic presence to hold it intact. The ethnic, political, and religious factions that had been kept down by force of Khomeini’s personality — and brute repression — were crawling out into the air again, and most of them had guns. That was why the German trucking company had signed Mark on with few questions asked in Istanbul. Trade went on — Mark was getting the impression that was pretty much true no matter where you were or what else went down.

As a matter of fact Mark had no idea what they were actually hauling in the trailer. Whatever it was, the Islamic Iranian government was eager enough to get its hands on it. They’d been waved across the Turkish frontier with barely a glance. That may also have had something to do with the fact that trucks were lined up for a good eight klicks waiting to cross — and that no matter how hot your zeal once burned for preserving the purity of the revolution, after a dozen years at a border checkpoint your interest in what was in the nine hundred and eighty-seventh truck of the shift was bound to be guttering low.

What blew Mark away was that he was involved in importing stuff into one of the crankiest and most uptight nations on Earth, and it was perfectly legit. Well, except for the vials of powder tucked away in his lurid green fanny-pack. They’d be good for a short gig between a wall and a bunch of automatic weapons if he got caught with them.

Hank, Jr. wound down. Otto took the CD out, put it in its plastic box, stuck it back in the rack built into the padded cream-toned dash. He took out another. Mark craned to see the cover. Lyle Lovett: Pontiac.

Another collection of adobe houses and bad stucco public boxes ghosted past outside. If anybody was up late, they weren’t showing any lights. In 1991 Iran, it paid not to be seen.

If anybody in the village pointed guns at the semi, Mark didn’t see.

Coming into Ruhollah Khomeini Airport in Tehrān, you queued up for your official Customs boys in their trim mustaches and tan uniforms. Beyond them Pasdaran prowled in pairs and packs, wearing those turtleneck sweaters they love so much and carrying assault rifles. They were not official, but one way or another you had to get past them.

Jacobo Burckhardt Bustamante stood in line for Customs, smiling serenely beneath the impressive sweep of his seal-colored mustache. He was a trim man somewhere in middle age, with graying hair cropped close to his head. He wore a dark silk suit and darker shades. He had a London Fog trench coat on one arm and his mistress Elena on the other. With her fine features, light-brown hair, and long legs you knew she had to have a lot of Italian or German in her, as many Argentineans do. She wore an indigo dress with the bodice cut high by European standards, just showing the first hint of cleavage — enough to titillate, but not enough to enrage, puritanical zealots with guns. The short silver-fox jacket she wore against the spring chill up here on the Iranian Plateau, beneath the lofty Elburz Mountains, set off her color to excellent advantage.

Señor Burckhardt’s goons, standing right behind him and the beauteous Señorita Elena, shifting their weight and glaring suspiciously at the rag-heads in line with them, were dressed like goons. They might have come from anywhere in the West; in fact the dark, intense one could well have passed for Iranian. His partner was blond, but there are plenty of blonds in Argentina.

The blond one, who was the bulkier of the two, let his eyes slide toward a pair of Revolutionary Guardsmen who stood watching the Customs men open bags on a long table. They earned old-model M-16s slung.

“‘Look, Ma, I just stepped in some Shi’ite,’” he said out of the corner of his mouth.

“Shut the fuck up, Gary,” the dark one whispered back. “These boys twig to who we are, they’re definitely gonna want to luck you some before they stick the alligator clips on your balls and the tip of your click and plug in the transformer from the Ayatollah’s old Lionel train set.”

“I don’t like this,” the lovely Elena said. She gave her escort a look before clutching his arm tighter.

Señor Burckhardt grinned back over his shoulder. “Iran is like what the Book of Common Prayer says about marriage: ‘It is not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God.’”

“You betcha,” the dark goon said.

Their turn came. Burckhardt passed their papers to a plump man in Customs uniform, who glanced at them, pivoted, and passed them on to a lean, dark man in a buttoned trench coat and snap-brim hat who stood behind him.

Snap-brim stepped forward. “Señor Burckhardt?”

Elena and the goons tensed. Burckhardt said, “Sí,” quite calmly.

“Of the FMA?” He spoke English.

“Yes. Fábrica Militar de Aviones. Of Argentina, as you can see.”

The Iranian nodded. “Please come with me.”

Burckhardt cocked his arm. Elena hesitated. Her face was very pale. She threaded her arm through his, and they followed the man in the snap-brim hat. The goons walked behind them like kids on their way to school.

Snap-brim led them through a side door. Instead of to an interrogation chamber with tile walls and a drain in the floor, though, it led to a corridor, and then out into the Tehrān night.

A gray stretch Mercedes limo was waiting for them. Snap-brim saw them inside; the goons seated facing back, Burckhardt and his mistress facing forward. Then he slid in next to the driver and signaled for him to move on.

“I am Ghodratollah,” he said. “Welcome to Tehrān.”

“It’s always a pleasure,” Burckhardt said.

They drove too fast through streets that seemed too dark for a major world capital. Sometimes they came to barricades manned by shadowy figures with guns. They always drove through, without slowing and without being challenged.

Ghodratollah and Burckhardt conversed between the two goons, chaffing about an airplane FMA built. It was called the Pucará, a light two-engine prop job designed primarily for a light counterinsurgency role. Evidently the Islamic Republic was enjoying the odd light insurgency, though Mr. Ghodratollah did not come out and say so. Both men knew a great deal about the Pucará.

Eventually Elena and the goons relaxed.

The Mercedes pulled into the circular drive of a building shaped like a giant ring-cake section strung with Christmas lights and stopped. Ghodratollah stayed put while the driver got out and scurried back to open Burckhardt’s door.

“Your baggage is in your rooms already. Please enjoy your stay.”

“I always do.”