by David Poyer
SHE dragged a stinking black wool sleeve across festering eyes, uncertain of what she saw. But it was true. Just now, no one was around. None of the women. None of the guards. Not even the kids.
A hiss. She whipped her head round so fast she almost keeled over. The French nurse, Frédérique Trézéguet. They’d slept together to stay warm, and memorized the addresses of each other’s parents. She looked almost like an Arab woman, small and bent in dark clothes.
They’d realized it at the same moment. For the first time in days, no one was holding a gun on them. From down the ravine came voices: ecstatic shouting.
“Que’est-que ce’st que ça? What’s going on?”
“Pas d’idée. No idea,” Gráinne muttered, glancing around the night camp. No other captives were awake. Exhausted, they huddled under thin blankets. “But they’re not watching.”
Their eyes met, and in the nurse’s she saw hope and fear. She was beautiful, or must’ve been, in a delicate dark style. “D’you know where we are? Can we escape?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
They’d crossed a road the day before. At a guess, fifteen kilometers back. Too far, in their condition, under the blazing sun, without water.
The answer of course was not to hike it in the sun. They’d have to hide, till the caravan pressed on. Then make their way to the road in the dark, and persuade, threaten, or bribe whomever they ran into to let the army know about them.
Not a great chance. But better than whatever lay at the end of this trail.
All this flashed past more quickly than anything had for days. But Trézéguet must have thought she was hesitating. She stood with fists clenched. “Viens avec moi?”
“Fuck, yes.” She scrambled out of the blanket, ran a step or two, then stopped. Not only did her thighs feel like they were on fire, but she needed that blanket.
They climbed the side of the ravine, torn feet slipping on rocks and scree. She poked her head up cautiously.
Her heart sank. Beyond lay undulating desert, dotted in the quiet sunrise with rounded purple humpings of sand like surfacing whales. To the south, mountains; to the west, mountains, but more distant. She oriented by the sun. Pointed, and they began running, or, rather, shambling.
After they passed the first patch of loose sand, she looked back to see their tracks. She cursed and headed for gravel, but the damage was done.
The men caught them before they’d hobbled a mile. Perhaps they’d left the captives unguarded on purpose, to see which would run. They swung off the camels and pushed them down in the sand. They beat them with large sticks, then began tearing at their clothes. She screamed, but the stick made her quiet. She almost wasn’t conscious of the rape.
As the men took turns, Frédérique bit one. They beat her again, so hard that when they pulled her up and let her go she tumbled down like a broken mannequin. Her eyes were rolled up into what was left of her skull. Her black hair was clotted with blood. They dragged her back to the ravine and made the other captives bury her.
The next day they tied Gráinne on the camel again.
THIS continued for days. Finally, far from the last road, the camels nodded to a halt and drifted one by one, as if knowing they were home, down into a black scar in the white hardpan; a jumbled ravine dotted with ruins. Something about its shape pulled at her memory, but not enough to unravel the skein. She was pulled down one last time, her ropes unknotted. The cloth was jerked from her head, and her captors recoiled as her red hair tumbled out.
She took a deep breath of light, of air. Then had to squat, whimpering as the scabbing on her raw thighs cracked open. At the bruises from the beatings and what was probably a cracked rib, a stabbing that made her gasp each time she leaned. Her eyes itched so badly she wanted to claw them out of her head. Fluid ran from them, thick and stinking.
They lay in a cavern with light glimmering in under an overhang. Less a ravine than a chain of linked sinkholes. She lay examining the sunbeams that flickered as people walked by the entrance, throwing queer writhing shadows on the back wall. Listening to the coo of doves.
There’d been water here once. Most likely still was, in water holes, maybe too in deeper caves, level on level of sinkholes, chambers, worming passages like the intestines of the earth. The piles of karst, broken and eroded limestone, at the back of the cave told her that. The rock around her was dolomite. Over many ages the rain had slowly eaten it away. The striations on the walls told of alternating wet and dry periods, dating back probably twenty, thirty thousand years. She saw no stalactites, but there would be, deep in some secret chamber sunk in the fathomless dark.
They gave them corn mush and alkaline-tasting water. Her stomach hurt, but she made herself eat and drink it all.
THE next day she woke with mind empty. She thought fleetingly of the mad professor and of Efrain. Of her mother, her husband, Frédérique. Her eyes were gummed shut. After she worked through the anguish of opening them—it felt like tearing open a scabbed-over wound—she looked around for the professor. It took a while to remember: he wasn’t there. The caravan had led him off jangling and cavorting, his tin armor sparkling. Really, some of his antics had been so funny. She’d miss his company.
Away with the fairies again, O’Shea?
Breakfast was mush and a cupful of dirty water.
The captives sat or lay all morning. She crept to the mouth of the cavern, blinking in the painful light; then retreated. From time to time the guards came and took someone away. No one came back. Once they heard far-off shots.
She sat uncaring. She wished only they’d hurry up and get to whatever scheme they had for her. Maybe they’d let her drink a little more water before they shot her. She giggled, making the other captives glance her way. Water was all she wanted now. While there were billions of liters deep beneath her, beneath them all.
She remembered and tried to straighten. To retrieve her mind from wandering. She had to tell someone about the water. Above all, whatever happened to her, she had to live to do that.
They came for her a little after midday. Led her stumbling, a hand tented over her eyes, up a rocky trail. They stopped by a blue plastic jerrijug, the kind the nomads had left lined up as they waited for the Seabees to finish drilling. They made motions; wash your face, your hands. She obeyed, slurping a furtive palmful under the guise of rinsing her mouth. The guard pulled the black cloth over her head and led her down again, into a depression dotted with tents. An ancient collapsed sinkhole. Goats stood about, ridiculously small, watching her hobble past with insolent eyes. The guard shouted and pushed her head down.
They halted. The guard said something dismissive, and pushed her forward.
She raised her eyes to an extraordinary gaze. Black, burning eyes above a tangled beard with something strange in it. No; the jaw itself was swollen, shockingly so. Realizing she was staring, she dropped her eyes.
Silence. A mechanical click. Then a hand waved at a camp stool. Someone said, in accented but well-educated English, “You may sit.”
The stool was rickety, but when she hobbled over and let herself down it felt lovely. She sighed, then raised her eyes again.
The man looked as if he’d once been tall, but huddled now in the shadow of a tent flap he didn’t seem so. The most shocking thing was that grotesque facial distortion, disfiguring, worse than a goiter. In back a small desk with the legs sawed off stood on a threadbare green-and-scarlet carpet in a Walled Garden pattern. At it sat a neatly groomed chubby man in Arab robes. And to her right, another, focusing a video camera.
“Your name.” The cultured voice came from the robed man. The one with the misshapen face didn’t speak, only gazed at her.
“Dr. Gráinne O’Shea.”
“A doctor?”
“Of hydrology. Yes.”
“Would you be willing to examine this man’s jaw?”
“Hydrology is a geological specialty. I’m not a physician. There was a nurse with us, but she—was raped and killed.”
“I am sorry. In war, such things happen. We lose many friends as well, to your soldiers.”
“They’re not my soldiers. Ireland’s a neutral.”
“What were you doing in the Empty Quarter?”
“Research.”
Now she realized what they were staring at. “What is that symbol, on your neck?” the small man said politely.
“The claddagh.”
“A Christian symbol?”
“No.”
“Jewish?”
“It’s a Gaelic friendship sign.”
“ ‘Gaelic’?”
“Irish.”
“What does this symbol mean?”
“It means friendship. Love. Loyalty. My husband gave it to me.”
“You have a husband. Where is he?”
“In Ireland.”
“Yet you work here?”
“Correct.” She explained about the International Hydrological Programme. He waved her to silence before she was done. “Yes, the UN. We know. What is your relation to your husband? That he’s in Ireland, and you’re here?”
“We’re estranged.”
He sighed. “Are you a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew?”
“I’m not a Christian or a Jew, no. Nor a Muslim.”
“Then what religion are you?”
She tried to keep her tone level, soft, the way the guards liked the captives to speak. “I’m a scientist. I don’t believe in religion, I’m afraid. I have aunts back home who do.”
They exchanged glances. Finally the fat man said, a bit sadly, “You will not say you are a Christian?”
“That wouldn’t be true. As a scientist I value the truth, you see.”
“That is what we also value. You must become Muslim, then.”
She almost smiled, but tried to make it look sympathetic rather than superior. “I’ve no reason to do that.”
The man in robes shifted; the one squatting in shadow remained motionless. Could this be the one they called Al-Maahdi? He was supposed to be very dangerous. The steadiness of his stare was disconcerting. Could he be mad?
“I believe you have a very good reason, Doctor. You see, if you are a Christian, or a Jew, that would not be a problem. Unless you attempt to proselytize, of course. Proselytizers must be put to death. However, we are not required to make People of the Book convert. So long as you submit, you may stay Jew or Christian. But a pagan must convert.”
She shifted on the stool; her infected thighs felt like the skin was being peeled off. Her eyes itched madly. “Right. Or else what?” she managed to say, not really following. No question, she’d showed a better game once.
“Otherwise you must die,” the little man said, still apologetic, a customs official explaining a silly rule. “It is not difficult. All you need do is say: ‘There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.’ That’s all that is required. See those others, over there? They have converted, have joined Islam.”
She saw them: the ones who’d been called away before her. At least, some of them. They sat a few yards away, bowls before them, though they weren’t eating. She started to laugh, then found she couldn’t. Could these gobdaws be serious?
They seemed so, absolutely, as did the red light of the video camera. She swallowed, mouth suddenly devoid of the water she’d stolen. “Please, may I have a drink?”
“Water’s precious. You were given some when the sun rose. You should not need more.”
“There’s something wrong with my eyes. I need medical attention.”
“We’ll discuss that after you convert.”
“My aunts are Catholic. I was raised Catholic.”
“No, Doctor. You already renounced Christianity. But if you think we’re asking you to renounce Jesus—Issa—we too hold him to be one of the great prophets.”
The man on the carpet interjected a few words, leaning his face on his fingers. Looking at him, she thought through her terror: It must hurt. Must hurt terribly. But he didn’t seem in pain. Or perhaps just didn’t mind.
“You must decide now,” the little man said regretfully, as if to imply, I’m really sorry to put you to all this trouble. She wanted to say, Wait a minute, let me think, but the guard was already hauling her up. He walked her twenty paces to the lip of another, deeper sinkhole. The videographer followed, silently, as if he were only a great eye.
She was thinking now, though, reasoning desperately with each hobbled, pain-filled stride. She’d decided years before religion was pants. At best a prescientific way of explaining the world by imaginative but ignorant desert tribes. At worst, a cynical scam, selling tickets to a nonexistent afterlife to yobs too credulous to see through the mumbo jumbo. Virgin births, invisible angels . . . bollocks.
On the other hand, if the alternative was death, and she didn’t believe anyway, why not recite a few ridiculous words?
She stopped at the edge. Down there, at the bottom, lay bodies. Fresh ones. She recognized the nun who’d led the prayer group.
“The proselytizers,” the fat man said. “Those who brought lies to our land. Even now, we would have forgiven them, had they come to the truth. Will you?”
She wanted to say, Science is the search for truth. Not religion.
But you couldn’t martyr yourself for science. The very idea was a contradiction.
She opened her mouth, to find something else stopping her. Church as a child? Her aunts’ humorless explications of how a merciful God sent all non-Catholics to Hell? Whatever it was, she couldn’t form the words. She felt more violated, more deeply defiled, than after the rape.
This was ridiculous! It didn’t matter what she said to some fundamentalist fanatic! She had to survive. Without her, no one might ever know about the life that waited beneath the desert.
She bowed her head. “There’s no god but Allah,” she tried under her breath. It didn’t taste very good.
“Louder, please. Face the camera.”
“What then? What’ll you do with us? Those you haven’t killed.”
“We’ll release you. Why not? We’re getting in touch with your friends in the city. Now, confess the truth.”
“There is no god. But Allah. And Muhammad is his prophet.”
Had they caught it, that hesitation? Even as she spoke she’d been unsure; it had come out of a tangle of urges and fears that tried to pick and choose the next word past cracked lips. But they didn’t seem to notice, or didn’t care. Once the magic words were spoken.
They smiled, and led her from the edge. Took her to the others, and served corn mush, flat bread, a little gristly goat meat, and as much water as she cared to drink. She and the other new converts sat not meeting one another’s eyes. She made herself swallow. But the food had no taste, and her hands trembled so, water slopped from her plastic cup onto the lifeless goat-churned sand.
30
Ashaara City
HAVE you seen my assistant? Nuura?”
The Ashaaran at the reception desk bowed. “No, ma’am. She did not come in this morning.”
Aisha frowned. Her small, modest translator was dependable as the sun. But today she was nowhere to be seen.
She stopped at a window. The day was bright, but past the compound wall smoke darkened the sky. The embassy staff carried themselves with new jauntiness, calling cheerful greetings. Everyone looked relieved, though the host country employees seemed guarded.
For now, the rebels had been pushed back. Chaos was at a safe distance. Others were suffering, not they.
But where was Nuura? She glanced at her watch, then dismissed the question till later. She found the right door, next to the deputy’s office, and gimlet-eyed the GrayWolf guard, impassive behind his wraparounds, as she flashed her pass. He seemed familiar—the one who’d hassled her at the conference?—but said nothing as he stepped aside.
Peyster was already sitting with Jolene Ridbout and the ambassador. The deputy too, the AID director, and several other counselors. She grimaced inside; the ambassador
, by protocol and custom, arrived at meetings on time and expected everyone else already seated. She’d planned to be early but had gotten sidetracked searching for Nuura.
Dalton looked more rested than at their last encounter. He half rose, smiling icily; she nodded and hastily took the last seat. The attaché was in the battle dress she’d worn since hostilities had begun, sleeves rolled up, holstered pistol riding on a nylon belt. Peyster wore a white cotton kurta, like a Pakistani guayabera, with slate slacks and woven leather shoes. She owned some herself, from Morocco. “Going native, Terry?” she whispered.
“Love the scarf.”
“Why’re we here, Terry?”
“The news is good.”
“I read the cable.”
“You did?”
“You info’d NCIS and DIA.”
The deputy put a finger to his lips. She quit whispering and focused on Ridbout. The attaché was giving the daily report. “The Marines have retaken the Victory Bridge. The rebels are in retreat. They counted on overwhelming us. When that didn’t work, they had no staying power. They’re fading back into the desert. We have road communication from the Zone to Camp Rowley and bulldozers are clearing the ring road. The marine terminal’s bringing in their first ship this afternoon. With luck, we’ll be able to discontinue rationing and resume food, fuel aid, and electrical power to the city very soon. That completes my report, Mr. Ambassador.”
“That leaves the rest of the country,” Dalton said. “WFO’s predicting thousands of deaths.”
“We can’t be held responsible, sir. Not in the face of a major attack. Force protection had to come before the humanitarian mission.”