Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (82 page)

    
But
Raszer was beyond awe, beyond exhaustion, beyond anything but wanting to make
the right move.

    
He was allowed to collect his belongings before
being taken to Katy. He’d been told that she’d been informed of his coming, but
it was clear when they arrived in the garden that she hadn’t exactly packed her
bags. He watched from a distance as two of the guards tried to martial her. He
grew concerned when she shook her head and began to scoot away from the stream
bank where she sat with some of the other girls. When they tried to pick her
up, she kicked desperately, broke free, and tore off toward a far grove of plum
trees. One guard took off after her; the other turned toward the black-sheathed
figure standing beside Raszer and gestured, as if to say,
What now
?

    
Katy’s
behavior was not at all atypical of the children, wives, and husbands Raszer
had been hired over the last decade to spring from various prisons that most
had walked into with eyes open, and it should have ceased to confound him. She
flailed wildly, and he flinched when the guard struck her to the ground.

    
“This
won’t do,” he said firmly.

    
“I will
take care of it,” said his robed companion.

    
“Please,”
said Raszer, pressing his luck. “Give me a few minutes with her . . . ”

    
“A few
minutes,” said the GamesMaster. “The clock is running on this move.”

    
Katy
spotted him when he crossed the stream; she stilled, her expression as wary as
a cornered animal’s. Raszer stopped eight feet short of where she sat beneath
the tree.

    
“Aïcha?”
he said.

    
She
turned halfway.

    
“Do you
remember who I am?”

    
Just the
slightest nod. Mostly in the eyes.

    
“I want
to take you home.”

    
A
question formed on her face.
Where?

    
“No. Not where you came from. Where you belong.”

    
He moved
a couple of steps closer.

    
“I have
to leave for a little bit, but I’ll be back for you. With Ruthie.”

    
He sat
down beside her, and she didn’t move away.

    
“Aïcha
was born here,” she said quietly. “She’ll die outside.”

    
“That’s
probably true,” Raszer said. “But there’s another woman waiting. None of us is
ever just one person. The thing is to choose the one you like best and settle
in with her. It won’t be the one your father or mother knew. If you choose
wisely, it’ll be the one that most resembles the reflection of God’s face in
your heart.”

    
She
rolled her eyes up to the false sky. “But the world is gone. They told me so.
All in flames.”

    
“After
the fire, Katy, things grow again.” He paused. “Silas, your father, died a few
weeks ago. So you’re free to be whomever you imagine yourself to be.”

    
She
didn’t seem to know how to connect to the information.

    
“Listen,”
he said. “You know about the game, right? The boys told you?”

    
She
nodded.

    
“All I’m
asking . . . is for you to let me be your guide.”

    
“But I
don’t know how to play,” she said.

    
“That’s
all right,” he said. “I’ll teach you.”
 

Raszer left her there, beside the tree, in the
counterfeit garden, beneath the counterfeit sky, and made his way out. The
minute he set foot on the rocky ground outside the enormous iron gates, things
resolved for him in a stark and sobering way. He understood why Ruthie had
come, and why he’d allowed her to stay. He saw that she, too, had a character
to portray in the “chaotic fiction” of his current enterprise. In truth, she
might in large measure be its author, given that she had brought him to Shams,
and Shams had ushered him into whatever sort of gamespace he now occupied.

    
TINAG.
This is not a game
. Not like any he’d
ever played, anyway.

    
And
though he might have wished for the cup to be taken from his hands, he also
understood that whatever Ruthie had set in motion had already fixed certain
probabilities.

    
A
detachment of Green River mercenaries accompanied Raszer to the place half a
mile down the access road where he’d previously arranged to meet Dante and
Ruthie. Raszer couldn’t be sure if the guards’ silence was a consequence of
orders from their captain, or of the fact that a number of them appeared to be
Central or South American, with the high cheekbones and sculpted fierceness of
jungle fighters. In any case, they weren’t the talkative sort. These were the
new model soldiers of fortune, drawn from death squads in places like Chile and
El Salvador. They also represented a new kind of colonialism, since their
commanders were mostly American or British—some Belgian or even Dutch. The East
India Company lived. The empire never ended. The pan-Islamic wars had built
them into a global private army, at the calling of anyone with a fat enough purse.

    
“We’ll
stop up here,” said Raszer, pointing to an overlook up ahead, “and wait.”

    
The
gunman who seemed to be nominally in charge asked, “How long?”

    
“As long
as it takes,” said Raszer. “They’ll come.”

    
The mercenaries remained at arms. They didn’t
banter, or squat in the white soil to share cigarettes or pictures of girls
back home. They were, after all, professionals.

    
After
about twenty minutes, Dante’s sun-bleached head cropped up from the boulders,
on the side of the ridge opposite the sanctuary entrance. This was good. Had he
shown up too quickly and come from the right, the gunmen would have quickly
deduced the location of the cave. Dante hesitated when he saw the battery of
automatic weapons, and ducked out of sight until Raszer had called out a second
time.

    
Cupping
his hands, he shouted the prearranged all clear: “The king is dead!” And then,
when the boy had come within twenty yards, “Bring Ruthie!”

    
“It’ll
take some time!” Dante called back.

    
“That’s
all right! I need her here! Katy needs her!”

    
When
Dante had gone, Raszer finally sat. It didn’t matter that the ground was hard,
or that two muzzles were trained on him. It didn’t matter that they’d just as
soon saw off his head. The sun was warm, he was bone-tired, and after he had
smoked a cigarette, he lay back against an angled rock and slept.

    
In his
dream, he’d misplaced a set of keys and could not enter his own house. Other
doors of other houses were unlocked, but not his. He was making tea in the
kitchen of one of the houses when a woman appeared. It was his wife, but he
didn’t know her. She pointed at him and asked, “What’s wrong with your face?”

    
When he
woke, it was to the prodding of the head gunman’s toe.

    
“Wake
the fuck up,” he heard the man say.

    
Ascending
the rocky path from the right was a figure whose form vibrated in and out of
register, like a desert mirage. Long strands of auburn hair whipped across her
round face. At first glance, she seemed a runaway from his dream.

    
What the hell is this
? he said to
himself.

    
It was
Ruthie as he’d seen her the first time, waiting on the deck of her stepfather’s
trailer. It was Ruthie as Katy.

    
How
long, he wondered, had she been preparing for this entrance? How remarkable, to
have thought to bring the wig and the dress to the other side of the world, to
carry them, secreted in her pack, across a mountain range. For a long time, she
seemed to be moving in place. If he was not mistaken, she was smiling.

    
He said,
when at last she stood close, “You think we’re playing dress-up?”

    
“
You
are, aren’t you?” she replied.

    
Dante
now appeared in the brush on the left, and Raszer signaled him over.

    
“We’re
on,” he told the boy. “Everything as planned. I’ll be at the gates in an hour.
Once things are in motion, go back and wait for us. We’ll meet you there.”

    
He
turned back to Ruthie. “Let’s go. I’ll explain on the way.”

    
The party made its way from the garden, slowly
threading the maze of corridors, and finally entered the vast atrium inside the
fortress gates. Raszer had Katy’s right arm, Ruthie her left, and they were
flanked by the gunmen, with the American and the three black-robed GamesMasters
in the rear. Katy’s gait was uncertain, like that of someone leaving a
sanitarium after a long period of bed rest. Her eyes, after more than a year in
the Garden’s unceasing light, could not adjust to the dimness of the halls.

    
Outwardly,
she was in pretty good shape, though all her muscles had gone slack.
Psychically, it was another story. She kept looking back toward the garden as
if she’d forgotten something. Most likely, she’d been taken there initially in
a drugged state, as he had, and, because it presented such an extraordinary
illusion of limitless space, had never even considered that it might be
contained within the walls of a stone box.

    
When
they reached the inner gate, Raszer turned to the American. “If your men have
nervous trigger fingers, tell them to park them. You may think you know the
score, but you don’t. Just let me walk away with Katy, and not a shot will be
fired.”

    
The
first gate rolled open, and when blue sky appeared through the second, heavier
gates, it was picketed with the rifle barrels of the Kurdish unit.

    
In their
midst stood Francesca, cradling a small wrapped bundle. Raszer gave her a nod
and she stepped forward. The Kurds leveled their rifles, and the mercenaries of
El Mirai responded in kind. Taking Francesca’s package with one hand, Raszer
handed Katy off to her with the other.

    
In the
immediate wake of the exchange, Katy cast an anxious glance at her sister,
who’d stepped back from her place at Raszer’s side. She stood now in the
crossed shadow of the mercenaries’ rifles. He couldn’t read Ruthie’s face, but
caught the almost imperceptible shake of her head. Before he could reflect,
other shadows swept across and the sound of massed boots on scree signaled the
arrival of a second unit of Green River mercenaries. He counted eighteen of
them, and they surrounded the Kurdish unit, pinning them between their guns and
the castle gate. Raszer turned to the black sheikh nearest him. He presumed it
was his own tormentor, but could not be sure.

    
“If one
shot is fired, we all will die,” he said.

    
After a
beat, the sheikh turned to the mercenary leader and gave a nod. It was barely
more than a tic, but it served its purpose, and tension dropped a notch. Raszer
put the parcel into his hands, took a step back, and turned briefly to check
Ruthie. She hadn’t moved. He narrowed his eyes and motioned for her to join her
sister. For the second time in fifteen seconds, he saw that same faint shake of
the head. He kept his eyes on her as his pulse rose and his mind raced to
decipher her body’s code.

    
The
sheikh unwrapped the bundle, put the stone to the sky, and turned it until the
idiosyncratic dimple revealed itself. He handed it to the second of his rank
and motioned him inside. After the man had disappeared, the GamesMaster raised
his palm and said, “Wait.”

    
After a
few minutes, there came from within the fortress the sound of fervent incantation.
Raszer reasoned—if reason had a place here—that the chant was addressed to the
stone, and that a servitor was being summoned. Magick, like expensive drugs,
had to be tested before the buy was made. And bluffs had to be called.

    
Raszer
looked to Ruthie. Her eyes were on her sister. He couldn’t help but wonder now,
remembering the Polaroid snapshots he’d seen that day in Detective Aquino’s
office, if that look said,
Let’s play the
game we used to. You be me, and I’ll be you
.

    
There
was a sharp cry of affirmation from inside, followed by the shout “
Atar’atah! Hi-yae Ho-nae!
” The robed man
nearest Raszer nodded, and Raszer motioned for Francesca and the Kurdish detail
to move out. The two remaining Masters slipped through the gates as they began
to roll shut on massive iron casters. He walked to Ruthie and held out his
hand, and when she gripped it, he thought for an instant all might be well. The
rear gates would be sealed in another ten seconds, and the outside gates had
already begun to close. She released his hand, put her arms around his neck,
and kissed him on the mouth before backing through the line of gunmen and into
the crack that remained between light and darkness. He lunged for her, but
found a muzzle in his face and the ranks closed. An instant later, the gates
came together with a gnashing of steel teeth.