Their comrades back at the checkpoint screamed prayers and curses. Some were separate, some commingled. The men ran down the A1 toward the blazing horse with wheels. Khalid and Dawud ran with them. Khalid was too stunned to do anything but run. Words boiled inside him, but a stuck valve somewhere inside his head wouldn’t let them out.
“That could have been us,” Dawud panted, the cigar still in his mouth. “That should have been us.”
“I know,” Khalid said. Those were the words, all right.
No one fired at the soldiers as they neared the utility vehicle. Bushes grew by the roadside. Farther back, stone fences marked farm boundaries. A couple of the farms had little almond groves. A regiment could have hidden in plain sight. Certainly, no one was visible. The fanatics who’d smashed the utility vehicle had made their getaway.
The horse with wheels burned and burned. Khalid wasn’t sure the gasoline in the fuel tank could have accounted for so much fire. Maybe whatever was in that crate the soldiers put aboard the vehicle added to it. Looking at their stricken faces, Khalid still didn’t have the heart to ask them about it.
“Poor Luigi! Poor Piergiorgio! Not even enough left of them to bury!” one of them said. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He crossed himself again and again, hardly seeming to know he was doing it. Another soldier worked the beads on his rosary.
Dawud coughed apologetically. “Gentlemen, I hate to remind you of this, but we were on our way to Rome when you, ah, borrowed our car. How are we going to get there now?”
“If you can bring the bastard at the checkpoint back from the dead, you’re welcome to it,” answered the man who’d invited them out of their own machine. He shrugged an expressive shrug. “If you can’t, before too long somebody heading that way will come along. You’ll be able to snag a ride.”
Khalid would have starved as a mechanic. Dawud had all kinds of tricks up his sleeve. Maybe that was one of them. If it wasn’t, the Italian had a point. One way or another, they’d get back to the capital. In the meantime …
In the meantime, a truck grumbled up from the south. The man in it wasn’t a military driver. He was carrying, in fact, a load of chickens in wood-slat cages. As he slowed to a stop, their feathers drifted down onto the badly paved highway like oversized snowflakes. He leaned his head out the window and called to the soldiers on his side of the road: “Can you guys let me by, please? I think I got room to squeeze past the wreck.”
When you had a job to do, you tried to do it regardless of what got in your way. When trying to do it involved asking a favor of angry-looking men carrying assault rifles, you were as polite as you knew how to be. Grudgingly, the soldiers stepped aside. The driver waved his thanks. He put the truck into gear. Trailing a gray-black exhaust plume and more feathers, it went on its way.
As Khalid and Dawud and some of the Grand Duke’s men walked back to the checkpoint, the Jew pointed to the disabled utility vehicle and asked, “What’s wrong with it?”
“Doesn’t want to go,” a soldier answered, which wasn’t the most precise diagnosis Khalid had ever heard. After a moment, the man added, “It tries to turn over when you hit the starter, so I don’t think the battery’s buggered up.”
That was something, anyway. “Well, I’ll check the carburetor first,” Dawud said. He bent so he could work under the hood. After a few minutes of fiddling, he pulled back, straightened up, and nodded to Khalid. “Give it a try.”
Khalid leaned into the passenger compartment. He punched the starter button by the wheel. The engine growled, coughed—and caught. The Italians exclaimed in admiration. Dawud came from an industrialized country. They took it for granted that he’d have a way with machinery. “What did you do?” one of them asked him.
“The needle valve in the float circuit was clogged. I cleaned it out, and we were good to go,” he said with becoming modesty.
One or two of the soldiers seemed to have some idea of what he was talking about. As far as Khalid was concerned, he might have been speaking Kechwa or Nawatil or one of the other strange, obscure languages of the Sunset Lands. He might not understand the explanation, but he couldn’t deny the results.
Before he got into the horse with wheels, he told the Italians, “We’re sorrier than we can say about your friends.”
“That’s right.” Dawud wiped his greasy hands on his trousers.
“You’re lucky it wasn’t you,” a soldier said.
“God was with us,” Dawud said. The Italians nodded. They would have nodded just as solemnly had the Maghribis refused to lend their vehicle, gone down the A1 themselves, and met the fanatics with the grenade launchers. Then their countrymen would have been the ones God was with. You could always say it. You could never prove it.
You could never prove He wasn’t around, either. More and more, though, as science elbowed its way into province after province that had been religion’s, it looked as if He wasn’t. Those lives got more comfortable as knowledge grew, which also made God and religion seem less important.
Saint Thomas Aquinas had foretold all that. It was why he refused to reconcile Aristotle and the Christian Scriptures. He’d been right. He’d been absolutely right. And Europe had paid the price for accepting his rightness down through all the centuries since his time.
The soldiers who’d stayed by the burning horse with wheels waved as Khalid and Dawud drove past. The Maghribis waved back. Dawud, who sat in the back seat for this leg of the trip, saluted the Grand Duke’s men. “That should have been us,” he said once more.
“Tell me about it,” Khalid replied. “We were lucky, that’s all.” Which was what the sophisticated modern man said instead of God was with us. As far as Khalid could see, though, one meant about the same as the other. A scholar at a madrasa might be able to define the difference. He couldn’t begin to.
Both of them tried to look every which way at once as they went down to Rome. Khalid had no idea whether seeing an Aquinist who fired a grenade at the horse with wheels would let him do anything about it, or whether he would only get a moment of dreadful anticipation till the shaped charge smashed the vehicle to blazing scrap metal. Almost better to be taken by surprise, to die before you knew it.
Almost. Even if the chance of doing anything was tiny—and it was—you wanted to grab it if you could. Khalid did, anyhow. By Dawud’s jumpiness, so did he.
Nothing happened. The rest of the drive was quiet. No one fired off anything anywhere near them. The blasted utility vehicle might have been a nightmare, an illusion. If he weren’t behind the wheel of a different one now, Khalid could have thought it was.
As traffic got heavier on the outskirts of Rome, he said, “I’m going to drive to the embassy. Our people need to hear what’s going on in the north.”
Dawud nodded. “Good idea.”
By what would do for a miracle in these secular times, he slipped into a just-vacated parking space a block and a half short of the embassy. The building was draped in black crepe streamers. The Maghrib’s flag flew at half-staff above it. “Who died?” Khalid asked.
He asked the same question of the guard to whom he and Dawud presented their identity documents. The man gaped at them. “Who died?” he echoed. “You did—both of you.”
XVI
Umar ibn Abd-al-Aziz gave Khalid and Dawud a careful inspection, careful enough that it irked Dawud. “Do we pass muster, your Excellency?” he asked pointedly.
“Oh, yes,” the ambassador said. Like everyone else at the embassy, he kept staring at them. “It’s just that I’ve never talked with dead men before. I’ve certainly never had them answer me before.”
“Who told you we were dead, sir?” Khalid asked.
“Why, Captain Salgari did,” Umar answered. “He said he was devastated, but he’d just got word the Aquinists had blown up your vehicle south of Parma. He said it went up in flames—there was no chance anyone inside it could have lived.”
“He’d just got word.…” Khalid said slowly.
“They blasted that horse with wheels, all right,” Dawud said. “We weren’t in it, but they didn’t know we weren’t.”
“He’d just got word…” Khalid said one more time, as the pieces started to fit together inside his head. “He didn’t get word from the Army. The soldiers at that checkpoint knew we were alive. He got word from the people who thought we were dead. From the people who thought they’d killed us.”
“From the Aquinists,” Dawud agreed. “That really should have been us, then. If not for those smuggling Italians and their car that wouldn’t start—” He shuddered.
Another piece fell into place. “No wonder he wanted me to call him before we left Milan. He was setting up the ambush!”
Umar ibn Abd-al-Aziz’s eyes bounced from one of them to the other. “You are the talkiest dead men I ever met. Are you telling me Captain Salgari is playing for both sides at once?”
“Afraid so, your Excellency,” Khalid said. “A captain in the Ministry of Information—in the part of the Ministry of Information that’s been busy fighting the Aquinists—would be just what the fanatics want.”
“Yes, I can see how it might be.” The ambassador had a talent for understatement.
“Could you ask Salgari to come here, your Excellency?” Khalid said suddenly. “He could tell you all about what fine men we were … till we walk in to thank him in person.”
“I like that!” Dawud said. “We can hang on to him until we let Lorenzo know what’s going on, too.”
“Under the strict usages of international law, we shouldn’t,” Umar said. “But, considering that Lorenzo would throw me out of Italy if we didn’t, I think we can bend those usages a little.”
He telephoned the Ministry of Information. When he got through to the captain, he asked if Salgari could possibly come over to give him more information about the deaths in person. A film star couldn’t have given a better performance.
Hanging up, the ambassador reported, “He’ll be here in half an hour, he says. Now I have to let the people up front know, so they don’t give anything away.”
Salgari was late. That might have been because appointment times on this side of the Mediterranean were statements of hope, not intent. Or it might have been because Roman traffic was horrendous. Umar ibn Abd-al-Aziz received the Italian officer in a room with a side door. Khalid and Dawud stood with their ears pressed to the other side of it.
“Yes, a tragedy. They were fine men, dedicated men.” Captain Salgari didn’t make the worst actor himself. He sounded tired and mournful. “It sucked the spirit out of me when I heard they were gone.”
“How did you get the word?” Umar asked.
“From a checkpoint south of Parma,” Salgari said. “They had identified themselves there, and they hadn’t got out of sight before two grenades slammed into their vehicle, one from either side of the road. Nothing was left but a ball of flame. I am more sorry than I know how to tell you.”
It could have been true. By all the signs, it should have been true. He’d had the attack set up just the way he described it. It had worked just the way he described it, too. The only problem—to Salgari’s way of thinking—was that Khalid and Dawud weren’t in the horse with wheels when it rolled past the assassination team.
“I see. Thank you.” Umar must have leaned back in his chair; Khalid heard the creak. Another creak a moment later said he’d leaned forward again. “Then how do you explain—this?”
Dawud turned the knob. He and Khalid stepped into the room with the ambassador and the Italian. Both investigators carried their assault rifles, to make sure Salgari didn’t do anything foolish. For a split second, the captain from the Ministry of Information showed complete and utter dismay. Very few people can hold their faces still when caught by surprise. But Salgari quickly rallied. “It is a miracle!” he said. His mouth twisted into a pretty good wry grin. “Or, perhaps more likely, I was somehow misinformed. I am very glad to see I was.”
“You were misinformed, all right,” Khalid said. “And you misinformed his Excellency about who told you we were bound for heaven or hell. It wasn’t the men at the checkpoint. It was the Aquinists.”
Salgari’s laugh was pretty good, too, but only pretty good. “This is ridiculous!” he said. “Why would I do that?”
“I’m sure Grand Duke Lorenzo will want to know the same thing,” Dawud said. “Now lie down on the floor, on your belly, legs spread, hands clasped on top of your head. Don’t do anything stupid, either. If you do, we may try to shoot you in the legs and keep you from bleeding to death. But if you rush us, chances are we won’t bother.”
Salgari hesitated. “This is ridiculous!” he repeated. Was he trying to nerve himself for martyrdom? If he was, he seemed to discover he didn’t have it in him. Numbly, like a man in the grip of a nightmare from which he could not wake, he did as Dawud told him.
Umar ibn Abd-al-Aziz stepped out of the room. Khalid stood a couple of paces away from Salgari’s head—too far for the Italian to reach him with a lunge. Dawud did the frisking. He didn’t find anything obviously incriminating. Well, Salgari would have been a fool to have something like that on him. He wasn’t a fool—not that kind of fool, anyhow. He’d just made the mistake of believing what he heard from someone else.
The ambassador came back as Dawud was finishing. “Take him to the secure room,” he said. “We’ll keep him there till we decide what to do with him.”
“You have no right to do anything to me. I’m not a citizen of the Maghrib. I’m an officer of the Grand Duchy of Italy,” Salgari said from the floor.
“That’s one of the things we need to work out,” Umar said smoothly.
“You’ll have to guide us to the secure room,” Khalid said. “We haven’t been there before.” Dawud nodded.
Guide them Umar did. The room had no windows, no furniture, and a door that could be barred from the outside. Someone had put a bucket in one corner. “How civilized!” Salgari said when he saw it.
“Just go in,” Dawud told him. As soon as the Italian had, Khalid closed the door. It was thicker and sturdier than the one behind which he and Dawud had listened; no sound would get through. Umar lowered the bar into place himself.
Once it was down, he let out a sigh. “Now I can tell you,” he said. “I spoke to Lorenzo. He is most interested in finding out everything Captain Salgari knows. He’s sending a squad of men whose loyalty he is sure of to take him off our hands.”
“He may be sure of their loyalty, but is he right?” Khalid asked.
“That’s his worry, not ours,” Umar answered. “Any which way, I won’t be sorry to see Captain Salgari gone from the embassy.”
“Well,” Dawud said, “no.” Khalid nodded. He couldn’t have put it better himself.
* * *
Giacomo Badoglio bobbed his head to Khalid and Dawud in turn. “Yes, my father’s much better. Thank you,” he said. “He’s still a little clumsy on one side and sometimes he has trouble finding the word he wants, but the doctors say that will fade with time.”
“Good. Glad to hear it,” Khalid said. Badoglio was a solid enough man. If he’s really on the Grand Duke’s side, he is, Khalid thought. He’d had the same view of Captain Salgari, a view that turned out not to be true at all. But you had to trust somebody. You couldn’t go through life without trust, not unless you found a cave out in the middle of nowhere and spent the rest of your days as a hermit.
“How is our caged bird?” Dawud had to be thinking of Captain Salgari, too. “Is he singing?”
“He’s singing, all right,” Badoglio answered grimly. “The Inquisitors had to singe his feathers a bit before he opened up, but he’s singing now.”
“All right.” Dawud didn’t sound altogether convinced it was. Khalid wasn’t, either. In Italy, you had whatever rights the Grand Duke said you had. If he said you didn’t have any, that was your hard luck. In the Muslim republic and constitutional monarchies, laws limited what the government could do to its citizens. Not in a p
lace like this.
“Anything especially juicy?” Khalid asked.
“He says the Aquinists have men in Pope Marcellus’ guard force,” Badoglio replied. “His Supreme Highness is checking that as quietly as he can. So is his Holiness.”
“That’s the kind of thing he would say whether it’s true or not,” Dawud remarked.
“I know. So does the Grand Duke,” Badoglio said. “It’s the kind of thing where investigating stirs up trouble. That may be why Salgari came out with it. Or they may have squeezed him till he coughed up some truth. They’re good at what they do, but no one is perfect.”
Of course they’re good at what they do. They get enough practice. Khalid didn’t say it. Police and government investigators in the Maghrib sometimes used strongarm tactics. He couldn’t think of a place on earth where that didn’t happen once in a while. Police and investigators were human beings, too. But the Maghrib didn’t keep torturers on the government payroll. There was a difference.
There was a difference now. But some of the outrages the Aquinist immigrants from Europe had perpetrated in the Maghrib and other republics and constitutional monarchies made even civilized people clamor for more limits on their civic rights. Some of the things civilized governments did to block the fanatics weren’t pretty, either.
If we end up looking like these European kingdoms and grand duchies, haven’t the Aquinists won? Khalid wondered. It wouldn’t be the same kind of victory as if they made everyone turn Christian and forget the modern world. They might not recognize it as a victory themselves. One of the things they were after, though, was killing freedom wherever they found it. They were doing all too well with that.
“What else does Salgari say?” Dawud asked. “Does he know who sneaked that new girl into Cosimo’s reception?”
“I wish he did. But they pushed him hard on that, as you can understand, my master, and he showed no sign of it.” Major Badoglio sighed. “All in all, he knows less than we’d like. The Aquinists are careful. He mostly gets his instructions without knowing who gives them to him, and he can give orders without knowing the men who get them. Their spycraft is good, damn them.”
Through Darkest Europe Page 27