Free Beyond the Call by Lee Trimble Page A

fly?’
    â€˜We lost many men, sir. Good friends of mine. We had fires, blown engines, and wings torn apart by flak, but we managed to make it back every time.’
    While he talked, Robert was conscious of Queen Fawzia’s eyes on him, and tried to avoid returning her gaze too ardently. It was difficult.
    â€˜Captain, are you married?’ she asked suddenly.
    â€˜Why yes, I am, ma’am. I mean, Your Highness.’
    â€˜What kind of fashions does your wife wear? Shoes – are they flat or high heels? What does she wear to formal events?’
    The shah tried to interrupt, but she talked over him, asking pointedly about the lives of women in America: How were they treated bytheir husbands? How did they bring up their babies? Where did they shop? How—
    â€˜Will you please be quiet !’ the shah cut in. ‘I have questions I would like to ask.’
    â€˜I have questions to ask too,’ she said.
    â€˜I have important questions,’ the shah hissed angrily. ‘This is not any business of yours.’
    The atmosphere between the two of them went suddenly from cool to icy. By contrast, Robert felt awfully hot. Glancing nervously at the bodyguards at the next table, and trying to keep his eyes respectfully on the shah, he answered the probing technical questions as best he could. He explained that he was really a ferry pilot now – no more combat for him.
    Eventually, the uncomfortable meeting concluded with the shah inviting Robert to visit his home. Foolishly, Robert asked for the address. The shah chuckled and said he would send a note with the details.
    And so, a few days later, Robert M. Trimble, the boy from Camp Hill, rolled up at the Niavaran Palace – the spectacular sprawl of formal gardens and parkland on the outskirts of the city that contained both the Niavaran Palace and the Sahebqraniyeh Palace, as well as grand pavilions and lodges. He was greeted at the door by a majordomo – an exquisite Iranian version of an English butler. To Robert’s disappointment, neither the shah himself nor Queen Fawzia were present. ( Oh well , Robert figured, I guess he already got all the information he wanted out of me . It didn’t occur to him that the shah might have failed to get the kind of information he wanted.) The majordomo gave him a guided tour of the palace. In a state of awed wonder, Robert passed through halls and chambers filled with light from arched stained-glass windows, walled and floored with glittering tiles and hung with crystal. It was like walking around inside a cabinet of crown jewels.
    When he finally found himself back outside, and the palace doors had closed behind him, Robert felt a sense of relief. Although he’d been a little disappointed, he was glad to have been spared the ordealof a formal dinner. He’d been haunted by an image of himself at one end of a vast dining table, not knowing which fork to use, while the shah and the queen fired questions at him from the far end. (It would come as little surprise when, just a few months later, Fawzia left the shah and went back to her family in Egypt. Robert couldn’t believe that the shah could have the poor taste to treat such a woman that way. ‘A lovely girl,’ he recalled wistfully.)
    Mopping his brow, he put his cap back on, and began to march down the long driveway to the palace gates.

    T HIS TIME THE airplane was a Curtiss C-46 Commando rather than a C-47, but otherwise everything was the same: another flight, more long hours of discomfort. 16 Robert was getting his first introduction to a Russian winter. The temperature had got milder between England and Cairo, cooled a little in Tehran, and now plunged below all reasonable limits.
    The Soviet authorities had finally run out of reasons to keep him waiting and had cleared Captain Trimble to enter the USSR. Along with three other American personnel en route to Poltava, he was taken aboard a Russian-piloted C-46, and