The Tenth Saint (24 page)

The man agreed.

That afternoon Gabriel went to work smashing leaves and herbs and resins in a stone mortar until the mixture gave off an astringent odor. He knew from Hairan how to test the efficacy of the poultice. “Trust this,” the old chief would always say, tapping his nose. It had taken many tries over the years, but Gabriel had mastered the art of blending the healing herbs. This was one of many muds, rubs, and teas he could make.

As Gabriel cooked up his concoctions, the merchant put his own skills to work, convincing passersby that the answer to their health woes was a rub away— all they had to do was produce a twopenny and relief would be theirs. Before long, they lined up—mothers with scraped-up children, old men hunched over with arthritis—waiting for their turn at liberation from whatever ailed them.

Centuries pass, progress sets in, the world changes, and yet people remain the same,
Gabriel thought.
One ounce of hope weighs more than a ton of fortune.

By the end of the first night, the two had amassed their first drachm. Gabriel happily accepted the merchant’s invitation to stay the night in his brother’s house in the medina.

Over a meager meal of flatbread and runny lentil gravy, the merchant asked him what had lured him to the savage lands. “White men always know where there are fortunes to be made. Tell me, what riches lie to the west?”

“I know nothing of riches, friend. My reasons for going are not what you think.”

“Please, you must tell me.” In a conspiratorial tone, he added, “There is a girl in the village … I want to make her my wife. But I am a poor man. I have nothing to give her family. I cannot provide for her or any children. But you … you are clever. You know the ways to turn dust into gold. I have seen it.”

“You give me too much credit.” Gabriel laughed. ”I am a simple man, a wanderer. Just as a nomad seeks new pastures when the land dries up, I go in search of knowledge … friendship.”

“But you have a home, no? A wife?”

“I had a wife and a child. They died. I am alone now. Without them, no place feels like home. This is why I cannot linger anywhere for too long.”

The merchant nodded. “We have an old saying in my village: Your shadow is always attached to you. No matter where you go, it follows. You cannot be separated from something that is a part of you.”

The two men laughed and said no more of ghosts and shadows and elusive riches. Not that night or any other night. In the weeks that followed, they earned all the drachms they needed, Gabriel for the
baghlah,
the merchant for his impending marriage and another goat. When the first breath of autumn crept into the dawn air, Gabriel quietly slipped out the door.

Sixteen

B
rehan had been driving more than three hours through snaking unpaved mountain roads, and the only sign of life was the goat herd grazing on the meager grasses of the hillside. As they ascended the mountain, the road became narrower and coarser until it wasn’t a road at all. The path was barely wide enough for one car, with no guardrail to protect against the steep drop down a rocky chasm.

Sarah tried to gauge where they were, but the sameness of the terrain betrayed nothing. They were surrounded by rocky escarpments and stone spires standing on their own like ghosts presiding over this stretch of forsaken country. The Subaru labored over the pothole-strewn red clay path, raising dust so high it nearly wiped out visibility. The crunching of stones beneath the tires drowned out all other noise.

Jostled in the backseat, Sarah and Daniel stoically awaited their fate. Sarah was painfully aware Daniel hadn’t looked at her once during the journey. She was certain he couldn’t forgive her for throwing Simon off the scent. She wanted to explain but couldn’t in the presence of Brehan. What disquieted her most was that she might never have the chance.

Near the top of the mountain, the path disintegrated into a patch of loose gravel.

Brehan stopped the car. “Get out,” he barked without bothering to look at them. He tucked a semiautomatic under his arm and marched them down into the canyon.

The sun beat down with soporific heat, and no shadows were cast on the rocky realm. The spires glowed in the early afternoon light, golden fingers reaching toward the turquoise roof of the earth.

With their bound hands throwing them off balance, the prisoners took awkward steps on the descending path. Behind them, Sarah heard the quick steps of their executioner. When they descended to a ledge hanging over the mouth of the deep chasm, he ordered them to walk to the edge.

Sarah winced as she considered his sinister intentions. He would shoot them and let their dead bodies tumble down the canyon, where wolves and bearded vultures would find them. She recognized this as her final, if narrow, window to save their lives.

She spoke in Amharic, not only to endear him but also to ensure there was no misunderstanding. “Brother Brehan, will you grant this doomed soul one last wish?”

“Why should I?” Brehan barked. “Look at me. You did this. Now you pay.”

“You are alive. Your brother is dead. You took his life with your own hands. When you were in that labyrinth with your head engulfed in flames, the knife you used to puncture Apostolos’ heart lay at his feet. He could so easily have finished it. But he did not. I saw the way he looked at you … with the compassion of a true man of God. Even as his own lifeblood trickled from his body, he could not bring himself to harm his own brother. Does that mean nothing to you?”

“You killed him. He put himself in the knife’s path to save you.” He pointed the gun at her. “Now you will die for your sins.”

Sarah let go of every inhibition, every suppressed emotion, every charade of polite society, and spoke. “Money and power will not save you, Brehan. You must believe me. As a monk, you were free. That still is your gift. Do not forsake it for the pleasures of the flesh.”

He twitched with discomfort, and she did not relent. “Your brother spared your life because God commanded him to. How can you renounce this God? Have you no gratitude for the life granted you? Have you no respect for the one who would rather die than forsake you? Enough blood has been spilled. End it, Brehan. Only you have the power. Show Apostolos you are worthy of his sacrifice.”

Sarah dropped to her knees and bowed her head. Drops of perspiration fell onto the rock and vanished like raindrops on hot asphalt. For the first time, she resigned herself to death. She was no longer aware of where she was but felt utter peace. Icons from her life flashed in her weary mind’s eye: the sun rays filtering through the leaves as she swung under the fig tree in her mother’s garden … her father putting her on a quarter horse when she was seven … her wails of sorrow when she learned of her mother’s suicide … the sensation of the eternal dust in her hands when she dug for humanity’s past even as she tried to escape her own.

A thundering cannonade of gunshots echoed off the canyon walls.

Daniel instinctively cowered to the ground but did not appear hurt. Brehan had either missed or fired the shots in the air.

The monk shouted down at them. “If God wills it, the wolves will find you, and in their jaws you will suffer a slow and miserable death. Your fate is no longer in my hands.”

He made his way up the boulders and disappeared over the ridge.

In the ensuing silence, Daniel sat back against a rock and let out a breath. Sweat trickled from his drenched hair into the furrows of his brow and saturated his T-shirt from his neck to his sternum. His eyes moved to and fro, seemingly unable to focus, betraying his agitation.

For her part, Sarah felt surprisingly calm. Her plan was working, at least for the time being. “We got our second chance. I say we make the most of it.” She studied the bowl of dust and prehistoric rock for opportunities to escape. “We should get ourselves onto the ridge. Better chance of being seen that way.”

“Seen by whom?” His anger was apparent. “The wolves and the jackals? News flash, Sarah: nobody is here. Look around. It’s a fucking wasteland.” He spat on the ground and groaned.

“Maybe not all is lost. I took a chance back at Matakala’s house.”

“You can say that again.”

“It’s not what you think. The reason I called Simon was to give him the SOS.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s something he and my father had put in place ages ago to help each other in times of trouble. Back in the seventies, they had gone stalking for lion in Tanzania—illegally, mind you. A guard for the property owners found my father and detained him at gunpoint. So he radioed his pal Stanley and said the password: ’I do fancy a pint right about now.’ It was a benign enough phrase. The guard never suspected it meant he needed to be rescued.”

He clenched his jaw and nodded. “That’s all well and good, but just knowing we’re in trouble doesn’t mean they’ll find us. Ethiopia is a big place. These mountains are vast and hostile. It would be like looking for an ant in a waterfall.”

“Don’t forget what Matakala said. Scotland Yard agents are already in Ethiopia looking for us. If Simon does his part, which I’m counting on, they can trace the GPS of where the mobile call came from. That would lead them to this general vicinity.”

Daniel shook his head. “That’s a lot of
ifs
. You do know this is a long shot?”

“I do. But it’s the only shot we have. Listen to me, Danny. We can’t despair now. It’s going to take all our wits to get out of this place.”

His voice softened. “I still say this was a gamble.”

“Suppose I hadn’t rolled the dice. We’d probably be dead already.”

He nodded.

They wasted no more time arguing. It was time to move.

By the time they reached the ridge, it was nearly dusk. Their progress up the boulders was slow partly because of their bound hands and partly because of their dwindling energy.

Sarah hadn’t eaten a thing in two days, and the relentless heat sapped what little strength remained. At the ridge, she dropped to her knees and exhaled. “I don’t know if I can go any farther.”

He looked around. “We’ve got to find some food—before we become food. Surely there’s a rabbit or some sort of rodent around here. I’ll eat anything at this point.”

“And how are you going to kill it, caveman? With your own hands?”

“Remember, I grew up in the backwoods of Tennessee. I can hold my own in the wilderness. I’m going to poke around. You wait here.”

“As if I could go anywhere.”

She lay on the ground, her face so close to the red earth she could smell the dust of the eons. She gazed at the horizon. Mercifully, the sun was descending behind the ancient spires, casting shadows on the depths of the canyon. Only the tops of the rocks glowed red, like fired iron. The bands of sediment stacked tightly on top of each other like layers of a terrine. Everywhere else the world might have been moving at terminal velocity, but change came to this rocky realm an inch at a time. She liked the thought of that.

She was drifting in the purgatory between sleep and wakefulness when she heard the rustle of firewood. With her eyes still closed, she addressed Daniel. “Are we going to feast on a juicy rat steak? I’d like mine medium rare, please.”

“The restaurant was all out of rat. How about roast loin of black chat instead?” He threw two tiny bird carcasses on the ground. “Not much meat on them, but it’s the best I could do.”

She sat up, stunned. “How the hell did you manage to shoot birds down without a weapon?”

“There was a nest over yonder. These were too young to fly. It was too easy. Their mother will probably hunt me down and peck my eyes out.”

Sarah looked at the meager kill. “They’d be great with a spot of truffle oil.”

“I knew there was something I forgot to pack,” he said, equally deadpan, as he stacked dry sticks for the fire. He split a branch and lay the two pieces side by side, holding them down with rocks on either end. He rubbed pellets of dried goat dung until he exposed the digested grasses, then stuffed it inside the crack between the two branches. With another stick he sawed at a perpendicular angle until he coaxed the first thread of smoke.

Sarah helped by adding dry grass and blowing into the base of the smoke.

The dry wood lit, and Daniel threw the birds directly onto the fire, removing them a minute later to pluck their charred feathers. When all the feathers had burned off, he skewered them on a stick and held them above the flames to roast slowly.