Leif Baron hadn't been kidding
about camel trails. They came equipped with real camels.
"Okay, are we officially having an adventure now?" Trish Baxter
called from the back of her beast. Wedged between the furry humps, she swayed
alarmingly in her saddle with each lurching step the camel took.
"Well, if you're cold, miserable, uncertain where you're going to spend
the night, hoping it doesn't snow again, and your butt and the insides of your
legs are chafing," Annja said, "that's definitely an adventure."
It was cold, although not currently snowing, and the winds weren't strong as
the group threaded their way among hills where the steep rocky sides were
dotted with bare scrub. Annja and her mount were cresting a low gravelly pass
between ridges. Half of the long column had already passed over it.
Annja wasn't at all miserable. Oddly enough the transfer to the camel and mule
train had perked up the spirits of the whole
Chasing History's Monsters
crew. In fact, everybody's moods had improved. It was as if the transition from
the familiar modern world to the
Arabian Nights
version had signaled an
entry into a fantasy realm. Annja held no illusions that they were any safer
than when they were clanking along in their collection of ramshackle vehicles.
And she didn't know if any of the others actually harbored any. But she still
shared the general high spirits.
* * *
THEY HAD DRIVEN PERHAPS twenty
miles from the point of the ambush, along roads that started out as goat tracks
and got worse from there. Charlie had brought Annja and Levi into the Citroën
to ride with him in the lead vehicle while Larry drove. Baron and Hamid
followed in the truck right behind.
"So what's the CV in 2CV stand for, anyway?" Larry asked, trying to
play tour director, as usual.
"
Cheval-vapeur
," Annja said. "The full name means 'two
steam horses.'"
"Steam horses? You're kidding!"
"Not at all," Annja said, smiling despite herself. It was a relief to
get away from the
Chasing History's Monsters
crew and their silent
reproach. Their stares had gotten a little hard to take while waiting for
Baron's return. She'd struggled to keep from telling them to grow up and face
the reality of their situation. "It's a measure of engine power," she
continued.
"Surely you don't mean this car has only two horsepower?" Charlie
said, turning around in the front passenger seat to stare at Annja in alarm.
She shook her head. "Different measurement system. And no, I don't have
any idea what it really means. I just always loved the name steam horses."
"You're quite a remarkable woman, Ms. Creed," Charlie said.
"It's simple French, Mr. Bostitch," she said.
Half an hour later the car had come to a stop next to what appeared to be a
large herd of camels and donkeys standing in a draw. Everyone had gotten out of
the cars, believing they were only stretching their legs and lower
backs—welcome, after jouncing over miles of washboard track. The
Chasing
History's Monsters
crew unloaded their gear and set to shooting the herd,
grateful to have something to do.
Baron put his head together with Hamid and a little wizened man with a skullcap
and a spectacular gray beard falling halfway down a long blue robe that hung
almost to the high tops of his green Converse knockoffs. The small man seemed
to have charge of the beasts.
When the conversation wrapped up Baron came striding purposefully back shouting
orders to the acolytes. Looking bemused they started unpacking gear from the
trucks. Suddenly, Annja saw a large group of men rise from behind the rocks up
a slope to their left.
Then she realized with some surprise that the men weren't armed. Instead they
were throwing away cigarettes they'd been squatting out of the wind to smoke,
which she hadn't smelled because the wind was blowing away from her. The men
hadn't even been hiding, which unnerved her since she hadn't spotted them. They
started gathering up the ropes trailing from the halters on the enormous shaggy
two-humped beasts.
"What's going on?" Jason demanded of Baron.
Baron showed him a mirthless smile. "There's only one way around the
Turkish army patrols, and the cars can't go, junior. So we're saddling up to
ride. Old-school."
* * *
"SO DO THESE THINGS, LIKE,
BITE?" Tommy Wynock sang out. The travelers rode in front of the long line
of baggage animals. He had a video camera propped on one shoulder. With his
other hand he hung on for dear life to the high pommel of his camel saddle.
"Yes," Baron called. "Keep any fingers you want to keep away
from their mouths."
"But they're, like, so much fuzzier than real camels," Tommy said.
"They are real camels, you dork," Trish said.
"No, I mean, like, those ones on the old cigarette packs, like you always
see in old movies with Arabs in them. The ones with one hump."
"Those are dromedaries, these are camels," Jason Pennigrew said.
"How much longer do we have to ride these ambulatory skeletons?"
Robyn Wilfork called out. "Have pity on an old man's bones."
"Not up to it, Wilfork?" Baron said.
"Oh, cut him some slack, Leif," Charlie said. "I feel the same
way." Annja had the strong impression he was aching to add the words
I
need a drink
.
"We've got some distance to make yet," Baron said. "Just a
little longer tonight, though."
"Aren't we past the army patrols yet?" Jason asked.
"Nope."
"Hey!" Larry Taitt called out. He fumbled his glasses, which had
slipped down his nose, back into place and pointed.
Looming up suddenly before them against the mauve evening sky was…a block,
almost a cube, huge and featureless, with a white or sand-colored wall tinged
pink and orange with light thrown horizontally beneath the canopy of clouds by
the near-setting sun.
"What's that?" Trish asked.
Hamid had turned his camel and, swatting it lightly and deftly on the flanks
with his whip, brought it trotting back along the line.
"It is what they call here a
khaan
," he said.
"It's a caravanserai," Annja said in amazement.
"What's that?" Josh Fairlie asked.
"It's, like, a Holiday Inn for camel caravans," Tommy said.
Everyone looked at him in surprise.
"You don't mean to tell me you've ever actually cracked a history
book," Jason said.
"I think I read it in an old
X-Men
comic," Tommy said.
One of the other men, stocky and middle-aged, rode out in the lead on a mule.
He was already halfway down the slope toward a high and broad arched opening in
the wall. As they got closer Annja realized there were narrow windows around
the upper stories. They looked like arrow slots. Or rifle loops.
Both Jason and Tommy had their bulky video cameras balanced on their shoulders,
with the rubber eyepiece guards pressed to their faces. "Loving
this," Jason said.
The arched door was actually a passage at least twenty feet long. As they rode
through Annja craned her neck to look upward. In the gloom she couldn't see
anything but shadowed stone.
"Looking for murder holes?" Wilfork asked cheerfully.
"What are those, Mr. Wilfork?" asked Levi, who rode right behind
Annja clinging to his saddle with both hands.
"They put them in the ceilings of the entrances to medieval European
castles," Annja said. "They used them to pour stuff like boiling oil
on unwelcome visitors. And yes, Mr. Wilfork, I was looking for them."
Trish, who rode right in front of Annja, had passed into the open courtyard
inside the caravanserai. She twisted around in her saddle. "You guys are
sick," she said while scowling at them.
"Not Levi," Annja said. "He was just asking a simple
question."
Trish glared at Annja for a moment then turned and rode away.
They emerged into a wide courtyard. The tan ground was swept bare of snow and
tamped hard. Around the courtyard the lower floor was lined with stalls with
broad but pointed arches similar to the ones they entered through. A well of
yellow-stuccoed mud-brick occupied the center of the large open square. Snow
huddled in clumps against the south and west walls, dirty and with the glazed
look that suggested it had partially melted and frozen over.
Some of the stalls held animals. Some held men sitting cross-legged on carpets,
smoking and arguing. Others stood empty. A gallery ran around the second floor.
Beyond it were what looked like small rooms—or cells. Between the armed men
walking along the gallery and at least a couple more on the flat roof, Annja
got an impression of a prison more than of a hostelry.
As the procession wound inside and around the central well the animals came to
a halt. They brayed greetings to the beasts in the stalls. The human guests
eyed the newcomers with an interest Annja hoped was only curiosity.
"Holy crap, we're not actually going to stay here?" Jason said.
"No," Hamid said. "You'll be at the Hilton over the next ridge
where you cannot see. Paris Hilton herself, she will carry your bags."
"But it's medieval," Trish said with disbelief.
"It is Asia," Hamid said. "Not the Asia of the Chinese infidels
or Singapura with its shiny skyscrapers. The
real
Asia. We are poor
here. Things go as they always have, with little change."
Annja couldn't help noticing that wasn't strictly true. She doubted, for
example, that carvanserais in the heyday of the Silk Road had boasted any
appreciable number of bicycles. Nor had many of the guests in Tamerlane's time
sported Kalashnikov rifles, or auto-pistols thrust through their sashes. Much
as they no doubt would have liked to.
The caravan master had dismounted and gone to talk to several large men who
stood not far from the entrance. Hamid joined them. Instructing the others to
hang loose, Charlie followed Hamid. Larry Taitt trotted obediently behind.
Stiffly everyone else climbed off their mounts. Annja stretched. Her back made
interesting noises, creaking and popping, but it felt wonderful.
The other inmates of the caravanserai either ignored them or eyed them with
frank interest. "These totally look like the dudes who held Tony Stark
hostage in the first
IronMan
movie," Tommy said with fanboy fervor.
"Hold that thought," Baron said.
"What kind of people do you think they really are?" Tommy asked.
Jason shrugged. "Smugglers. Drug runners. Terrorists."
"I don't know about you," Baron said, "but I intend not to go
sticking my nose in their business, and hope they'll extend us the same
courtesy."
Trish glared at him. "What, you're not going to do anything about
it?"
"What, like call in an air strike on my cell phone? Then where would we
spend the night?"
"I thought you were the big law-and-order type," she said.
He shook his head. "What you think of as the law doesn't reach here and
never has. Most likely never will. Regardless of what you and I might prefer.
But there's law here, just the same. The Old Testament patriarchs would feel
right at home. And I think we'll find all the order we need."
"You really think that?" Jason asked.
Baron shrugged. "What I know is that we're a long way from home, and it's
probably not a good idea to go making enemies. This isn't New York City and
we're
the foreigners. Satisfied, junior?"
Jason, Tommy and Trish all moved closer to each other and looked unhappy but
they kept their opinions to themselves.
The caravanserai turned out to be run by an indeterminate number of brothers,
each one larger and more formidable than the last, and ruled over by an even
bigger patriarch, who looked like Omar Sharif if Omar Sharif had turned into
the Incredible Hulk, and whose white moustache was the largest Annja had ever
seen on a human being. Then again she wasn't sure she'd ever seen a larger
human being to go with it; but even at that he barely lived up to its
magnificence.
"Bismarck himself would go palsied with envy of that brush," Wilfork
murmured. "I've only ever seen one greater, and that was on a Sealyham
terrier."
"The rules are simple," Hamid said, coming from the darkness and
gesturing for the party to gather together near the well in the compound's
center. He explained that the caravanserai was run by Gypsies—which he seemed
to disapprove of—and that they were good Muslims, which he heartily approved
of.
"You want anything, you pay," he said. "You cause disturbance,
they beat you with sticks and throw you out in the snow. You steal, they chop
off your hand. You use a weapon, or threaten one of them, they kill you. Then
it's your body they throw out in the hills."
"They don't even give you a proper Muslim burial?" Wilfork asked.
"They leave you for the wolves," Hamid said, nodding with approval.
"Wolves?" Larry Taitt asked, his eyes saucer-like behind his glasses.
For once his compulsive amiability seemed to have deserted him. It was such a
startling transformation Annja suspected their guide had touched a raw phobia.
"Like that's a big deal," Trish scoffed, her hands in the pockets of
her thick down-filled jacket. "Wolves are never known to attack
people."
Hamid fixed her with a baleful dark eye. "This may be true in the land of
clean sheets and the MTV. Our strong Kurdish wolves have steel in their
spines," he said menacingly.
Despite the talk of wolves, after piling the gear and saddles in several
stalls, the caravan master and a couple of his drovers led the unloaded camels
and mules back out into the cold evening. Hamid explained there was an
enclosure on the far side of the caravanserai from the one they'd come in
through.
"Aren't they worried about bandits?" Josh asked.
"Why?" Zeb asked.
"They're all inside with us," Jeb said, finishing his twin's thought.
Jason Pennigrew sighed with
satisfaction.
"It's all right out of the
Arabian Nights
," he said.
"Except, of course, for the ridiculous French techno-pop blasting from
somebody's iPod speakers. This may be Asia, the
real
Asia, but the
modern age had made some inroads, looks like."
"Hey," Tommy said. "We've got a whole wall to ourselves. Both
floors."
"There's benefits to traveling with a bazillionaire," Trish observed,
lying back and stretching on a genuine Bokhara carpet—rented from the Gypsy
proprietors—that covered the floor of one of the stalls. The trio shared it
with Annja and the cheerful, myopic Rabbi Levi, although the coolness they
still showed Annja indicated it might be a temporary arrangement at best.
"But, how does he pay?" Tommy wondered aloud. "I mean, I doubt
the Angry Moustache Gypsy Brothers take travelers checks, or will just, like,
swipe his Visa plutonium card for him."
"I wouldn't be too sure about that," Trish said. "I don't know
if Charlie would use plastic, though. I don't think he wants to leave that kind
of paper trail."
"At any rate," Annja said, "we're probably better off not
asking."
Jason gave her a puzzled frown. He'd seemed more pained than censorious, as if
trying to understand her rather than condemn. But now things seemed to have
changed.
"I don't get you, Annja," he said. "I thought you were one of
us. Then you go all Rambo on those guys at the roadblock. And you sure seem to
want to play the good German where our right-wing fundamentalist pals are
concerned."
Annja took a very deep breath to calm herself before responding. "The
right-wing fundamentalist pals are paying for this expedition," she said.
"
Chasing History's Monsters
is paying for you to tag along. And
they've hired me as an expert."
"Me, too," Levi said. He didn't seem to be interested in the
political subtexts here, far less the cultural ones—neither impinged much on
his personal solar system. But he seemed determined to show solidarity with
Annja. Apparently he considered her a friend.
And what better reason is there? Annja thought appreciatively. One way or
another, his support comforted her.
"Do you really think you should have taken the law into your own hands
like that?" Trish asked.
Annja sighed. "It looked to me as if it was me or nobody."
"But you killed that man," Trish said.
"His friends had just shot down poor Mr. Atabeg in cold blood. His friends
were trying their level best to kill Charlie, Leif and Larry. And he didn't
look as if he'd boarded the bus to give us a language lesson in Kurdish. He had
a gun and he looked ready to use it. I saw my chance to stop him. So I
did."
The
CHM
trio passed tight-lipped, furrowed-brow looks all around.
"But, you don't seem…upset," Trish said tentatively.
"Why should I be? It's been hours since it happened. My heart rate's had
plenty of time to settle," Annja said impatiently.
"I didn't mean that. I thought…shouldn't you be overcome by guilt for
taking a human life?" Trish asked.
"Why should I feel guilty? I figured it was him or one of you. Or all of
us. Why should I feel bad about the choice I made? I doubt he would have."
"Cops always have bad dreams when they shoot somebody," Tommy said
solemnly. "They have to go through mad therapy."
"Some of them do," Annja said. "And they're all taught to say
they are. But I've talked to plenty who haven't really been traumatized or
anything like it."
"But…why not?" Trish asked.
Annja shook her head. "Listen. I may have nightmares tonight about what
happened today."
They looked relieved. She was starting to fit the profile again.
"But I'll have nightmares about what could have happened if I didn't kill
those men. If I'd missed. If they'd hurt or killed me. Or my friends. What they
might have done to any survivors they captured."
She paused for a moment to let that sink in. She hoped they'd be able to
understand the position she was in.
"But as for feeling bad about stopping somebody intent on doing something
bad, intent on commiting murder—no. I don't feel remorse for that," she
said plainly.
Trish's eyes glittered with tears. She shook her head. "Oh, Annja, you
seemed like such a nice person. And now I'm afraid you might be some kind of
sociopath or something."
"If you'd feel more comfortable I can go somewhere else. I'll find
someplace else to room, too." She and Trish had accepted Charlie's offer
to share a chamber upstairs for the night.
"No. No. I don't want to…abandon you," Trish said.
Don't want me to abandon you, Annja thought with a sudden stab of annoyance.
She realized that Trish feared the other occupants of the
caravanserai—including, most likely, some of the Young Wolves.
It must be so weird and unhappy to live like that, she thought. To require so
much violence to protect your lifestyle, and to impose your views on others yet
be so terrified of those who exerted violence on your behalf. For all that she
disagreed with them on just about every point, philosophically, Annja had great
respect for pacifists. But that was
real
pacifists. Not those who smugly
felt themselves morally superior while relying on men with uniforms and guns to
do their dirty work for them.
Still, she admitted to herself, we're not here to agree with each other. Nor to
serve my bruised ego. She forced herself to smile.
"That's very good of you," she said to Trish. "Look, I
appreciate your concern. And I just have to ask you, please, to accept that
we're different people with some different outlooks."
Trish pressed her lips together. Annja guessed that for her part she was biting
back on saying how glad she was that they
were
different.
"Okay," Trish said. "I—"
A figure loomed out of the courtyard darkness. Everybody tensed for a moment.
Seeing it was Baron caused incomplete relaxation.
"Chow's on," he said. "Better hustle your butts if you want to
eat."
"What is it?" Jason asked, standing and stretching like a big lean
cat. "Meals Refused by Ethiopians?"
"Got it in one."
"Why use up our own supplies?" Annja asked. They might need their
MREs to fuel them once they started their mountain-climing expedition. "I
thought they sold food here," she said.
Baron shrugged. "We put heads together and decided we didn't have a high
trust level in what the Gypsy Bros have on offer."
"So they're typical capitalists," Jason said, "selling tainted
food to their customers."
Baron snorted laughter through his nose. "More like, the kind of food
their usual patrons can afford, and are happy to eat, wouldn't settle too
easily in tender Western tummies. Too many rat and insect parts per million. To
these people, it's all just protein."
"There was an Indian mathematician who moved to Britain in the early
twentieth century," said Robyn Wilfork, who had wandered over munching from
his own MRE tray. "He starved to death because the British rice was
lacking in just those proteins—the bug and rat ones. Too clean, you see. Not
like Mama served back in Bombay."
"I think you're talking about Ramanujan," Levi said shyly.
"Actually, he didn't starve to death, exactly. But he did suffer a severe
protein deficiency that probably contributed to his death at the age of
thirty-two."
Wilfork raised an eyebrow at him. "I'd think he and his area of expertise
was somewhat different from yours."
The rabbi shrugged. "It's a nerd thing," he said.
"Hey," Tommy said, getting to his feet. "I'm a committed
carnivore, I'm not gonna lie to you. So why make a big deal about it?"
"Yeah," Trish said. "I guess I trust the mystery meat in MREs
over the rat bits."
"Always assuming the Meals Ready to Eat aren't made of rat parts
themselves, you poor naive creature," Jason, said, laughing.
"Hey," Trish said, a little defensive. "At least they're sterile
rat parts."
They walked off, following Baron to dinner like school children, bantering as
they went. Wilfork gestured with the travel fork he'd taken from a pocket and
unfolded. "A moment of your time, if you please, Annja."
"What is it?" she asked, staying behind.
"That Baron is an interesting man," Wilfork said, pointing after the
furloughed security-company executive with his hobo tool. "With emphasis
on
man
. Charlie's still an overgrown schoolboy. As am I, for that
matter. Levi's a scholar, which is another thing altogether. And our muscular
Christians—they may be of the age of majority, but they remain at core boys,
with the happy feral fury of adolescence."
After a moment's silence, broken only by the tinkle of bells as a camel was led
out through the eastern door and the tinny strains of Algerian hip-hop, Annja
said, "So you were going to warn me about Baron."
Wilfork snorted a laugh. "Perceptive and tenacious! You're a formidable
woman, Ms. Creed. Yes, indeed I was. Perhaps I'm wasting my breath."
"I appreciate the thought. I respect Baron. He seems to be good at his
job. He's certainly the only thing that's got us this far. He may have kept us
all alive."
With a little help from me, she thought. But she was just as happy that part
wasn't widely known. "Otherwise I wouldn't associate with him if he were
the last man on Earth."
"That's certainly decisive. Let us hope you never have cause to regret
it."
"It's always a risk, isn't it, Mr. Wilfork? But isn't life risky?"
"An excellent point, my dear," Wilfork said. "'No one here gets
out alive,' as the poet said."