by A. W. Hill
“The game?”
“Right. Then he saw what they were doin’ over there. That’s when he went native.”
“What game? The Gauntlet?”
“Shams knows about all the games. I think he’s even invented a few. And he knows these people.”
“Katy’s abductors . . . ”
“Yeah,” she said, grabbing the cold beer from the waitress’s tray. “Them.”
Raszer waited for his beer to be delivered. The sun had now dropped fully into the breach, and the alpenglow rendered the mountains luminescent.
“How does he know them? From the game?”
“He’ll tell you the story,” said Ruthie. “One day he just walked away from his post. Lived like an Arab, in Turkey, Syria . . . even Iran, I think. Converted to Islam and learned all sort of weird shit. I guess they must’ve pulled him in the same way they did Johnny and Henry. Except Shams got free of ’em. They don’t scare him. The fucker lives in a yurt up by Red River. He knows all this survival shit. Like I said, he’s deep.”
Raszer picked up the tabletop candle and lit it with his Zippo. He studied her eyes for a moment in the underlight. Until now, he hadn’t been able to gauge Ruthie’s intelligence, and knew even less about Katy. Judged solely by their actions, neither one seemed more than natively bright, but he saw now that Ruthie had a plan for him.
“When do we go see him?” he asked.
“After you feed me,” she replied. “Can I order a burrito?”
“Order whatever you like,” he said. “Has your mother or father ever hired anyone else to find Katy? PIs, ex-FBI men, bounty hunters . . . ”
“Not as far as I know,” she answered. “My mom couldn’t afford it, and my old man . . . well, for a while, he was gonna go lookin’ himself, but I guess he gave that up.”
“Where would he have looked?”
“I dunno . . . Asian sex clubs, maybe. Maybe that’s why he never went.”
“And where do you think she is?”
“Who the fuck knows?” Ruthie said. “She doesn’t send me postcards. But Shams says he knows, so I figure it must be over there.”
“In Turkey?”
“Ask Shams,” she said, and took a look around to see who was within earshot. “See, I am scared of these guys. They like to cut off parts of you.” The waitress checked in. Ruthie ordered a burrito with extra cheese, Raszer a bowl of albóndigas.
“I’m betting you have a pretty good idea where she is, too,” said Raszer. “Because Henry must’ve known, and the two of you stayed close.”
“Henry had visions. ‘Flash frames,’ he called ’em. Things he saw in his scrying stones. But he’d never been there . . . to El Mariah, or whatever they called it.” She reached down into an oversize Navaho-weave handbag she’d set beside her chair, and drew out a plain tan envelope stuffed with documents. “Here,” she said. “Check it yourself. This is what you came for, right?”
Raszer accepted the folder, opened it, and saw immediately that it contained printed copies of the email correspondence between Ruthie and Henry. He nodded. “This, yes,” he said, then reached across the table, gently touched her head, and indicated her heart. “And what’s in here . . . and there.” He sat back. “So, why do I rate?”
The food arrived and was set before them. The waitress paused for approval.
“’Cause you didn’t fuck me when you could’ve,” said Ruthie. The waitress cleared her throat and backed away. “And because you went to see my mother.”
“She knew who I was?”
“No. She told me some guy came by about a homecoming, and I knew.”
“How did you manage to keep these from the FBI?” Raszer asked.
“Simple. I hid them.” Ruthie forked into her burrito.
“Yeah, but the original data. Hell, the feds can decrypt email with a keystroke.”
“Henry and Johnny used a pirate server. They might’ve been hicks, but they weren’t dumb. They picked up a lot from the insurgents in Iraq. The FBI is old school. Wherever they are, guys like Henry are three steps ahead. Those files are long gone, and they used the hard drives to make IEDs.”
Raszer set the folder aside. “So nobody’s ever seen these?”
“That’s right,” Ruthie said. “That FBI asshole . . . he never got close. These are Henry’s last will and testament. These are his love letters to me.”
At nine thirty, they navigated a switchback on their way up the Front Range and sent a coyote scampering into the chaparral. It was dark on the mountainside; the lights of Taos, far below, did not send up much spill. There were other predators in that darkness. It occurred to Raszer that the dark had never been the friend of social man. Social man loved fire, gaslight, even neon. It was the sociopath who found allies in the lampless night.
On the other hand, you could love the dark and not love what it concealed. Once, on a conditioning trek through Goblin Valley, Utah, Raszer had awakened in his tent to a holy vacuum, soundless except for the gentlest of tip-tap-tip-tap-tip-tap-tip-taps. He’d switched on his flashlight to find his sleeping bag swarming with little scorpions. That’s what the darkness held.
Never, ever forget it, he told himself. “How much further?” he asked.
“About four miles, and then another mile up a dirt road,” Ruthie answered. “Almost to the ski valley. Shams gets snow in October sometimes. Least he says so.”
“Well, since we’ve got a ways, why don’t you tell me—from your memory of Henry’s letters—how he and Johnny first hooked up with these guys.”
She said nothing at first. They made another switchback, and Raszer lit her a cigarette. It was a small gesture, but it would mean something passing from his lips to hers.
“They were in some little village south of An Najaf, supposedly a nest of bad guys. They’d been there all day, goin’ from house to house, herding the families out on the streets to search for weapons, and they hadn’t found nothin’ except a bunch of scared kids and women. The men were mostly farmers and boys too young to fight. Henry said it was just like what his uncle said about Vietnam: that you didn’t know which old hag might be packing heat in her laundry basket, or which kid might be running information to the enemy, even though prob’ly none of ’em were. There were about eleven of ’em, all young guys from the boonies, and one girl from Arkansas.
“Around sundown, one of the soldiers freaked ’n shot a kid—a boy who’d snuck up behind him, wantin’ to trade his mom’s jewelry for American candy bars. Blew his little head off right in front of his house. They tried to make it right with the family, but Henry knew they should get the fuck outta there. There was blood and brains on the ground, and the kid’s mother just laid down in it and screamed all night until finally they shot her, too.
“Anyhow, they made camp in the middle of town, and just before dawn, the villagers attacked with knives and hatchets and whatever they had. Just crazed, that’s all, ’cause of the kid. And Henry ’n Johnny’s unit started blasting away, killing anything that moved. Killing the women and the kids and the old men. Then all of a sudden the insurgents—I guess they were Sunnis there, I can never remember which—came down outta the hills, started raining shit down on them.
“Three or four of their guys—Johnny and Henry’s guys—went down right away. Another guy had his arm shot off. Henry said the fucker just sat down in the dirt and kept tryin’ to stick it back on. The Alabama girl, she musta looked at those dead kids and thought, What the hell am I doin’ here instead of gettin’ married to the town dentist? ’cause she turned around and shot the CO, and then she took it in the chest.”
“Anyhow, now they’re down to, like, four or five, and Johnny just goes apeshit, picks up one of the bodies for a shield ’n just wails on these wogs, killing, like, ten of ’em, screaming the whole time, ‘Not me, motherfuckers! Not me!’ And there’s smoke everywhere and they can’t see shit. They can’t see shit except each other, Johnny and Henry. It’s just the two of them. They’re all that’s left,
and outta the smoke come the insurgents, walkin’ real slow and wearing rags on their heads and scarves so they can’t smell the death, and it gets real quiet and the boys know it’s all over. Henry says that’s when he died. He said he was never the same after. And the insurgents—the Sunnis or whatever—make a circle, and the guns go up and they try to make Johnny and Henry get on their knees but they won’t do it. And then there’s machine gun fire from every direction, and the Iraqis just drop where they are. Just like that.
“Next thing, they hear this weird flute that sounds like a sparrow hawk, and when the smoke clears, there’s this guy, this fuckin’ sheikh dressed in black from head to toe, and six more mean motherfuckers with Uzis. Henry said they looked more like Indiana bikers than Arabs. And the sheikh starts laughin’ and says to Johnny in English, ‘We need to talk.’ And they take them to this camp in a . . . a wadi, Henry called it, and feed them roasted lamb and hashish, and that’s where the deal went down.” Ruthie stubbed out the cigarette and pointed with her right hand. “That’s your turn, by the way. Up past that big tree.”
Raszer made the turn in silence and heard the Jeep’s tires bite into loose dirt and rocks. The headlight beams came to a vanishing point thirty yards ahead, and then there was nothing but black. He’d never seen that before. No reflection. He stopped the car.
“So what was the deal?” he asked her.
“The deal was, there’s only one army, there’s only one fight. There’s only one insurgency that matters. We’re it. You two guys are warriors, but you’d be dead warriors if we hadn’t just saved your asses. Now you play on our side.”
“And I take it they accepted . . . ” said Raszer.
“They took a blood oath,” said Ruthie. “They got shitfaced on hash, they got laid, and they woke up in the desert two hundred yards from their base. Johnny said it was destiny. Henry wasn’t so sure. But I don’t really think they had much choice.”
“And they served out their tours?”
“Yeah. They didn’t hear from these guys until they were back in the States.”
“And Henry left Iraq with his testicles?”
“Drive,” she said. “I’ve told you enough for now.”
Raszer put the gearshift into first. “Direct me,” he said. “I can’t see a thing.”
A build-it-yourself yurt could be purchased on the Internet. On the granola circuit, they had attained a certain multicultural cachet. The yurt occupied by the man who called himself Shams had not come from a kit, but appeared—based on what the glow from its central fire revealed—to have been constructed from raw materials in the manner of an Uzbek or Kazakh original. The basic architecture was universal: a circular, wooden frame with a skin of felt or canvas, a single door, and a conical roof with an aperture at the peak to let smoke out and light in. After that, it was a matter of style. Some yurts had raised floors, some were furnished like teahouses. Shams’ was right off the Mongolian steppes, and so—at least, it seemed at first—was Shams himself.
He was hanging by his feet from one of two heavy crossbeams that quartered the circle and braced the yurt’s six-foot walls just below its circus-tent roof. Hanging, as in dangling, his head about eight inches from the floor, his arms folded across his chest. It was difficult to get a fix on his face, given the dim light, the quantity of blood that had rushed into it, a full beard, and a knitted Mongolian shepherd’s cap with a pointed top and large earflaps fastened at the chin.
“How do, Shams?” said Ruthie.
“Hi, precious,” he replied, in a voice as reedy as a duduk. The white markings in his beard gave the impression that there were eyes both above and below his mouth.
“You got time for visitors?” she asked.
“I’ve got all the time in the world,” said Shams.
He reached up effortlessly, grabbed the beam, and untied the thongs binding him. Then he did a short flip, landing upright, all five-feet-four of him. Raszer stepped into the firelight. The hearth was vented by an aluminum hood that tapered to a chimney. It gave off enough heat to make the yurt’s interior sweat. Hanging over the fire was an iron kettle in which something with a powerfully alkaline odor simmered.
“I guess I’m the one responsible for the impromptu visit,” Raszer said, offering his hand.
“And you would be?” asked Shams, pulling off his sheepskin glove.
“Stephan Raszer. I’m looking for Ruthie’s sister.”
“Ray-zer. Raaay-zor,” said Shams, feeling the name on his tongue as he took Raszer’s hand. “Interesting name.”
“We have that in common. I only know of one other Shams. Shams of Tabriz, the spiritual mentor of Jalaluddin Rumi . . . and one of the few guys to survive the Mongol assault on the Ismaili citadel of Alamut. The Assassin fortress.”
“Praise Allah!” said Shams, with a twinkle in his eye. “I am remembered! My name is known to someone.” He bent back and threw a lusty “Ha!” toward the hole in the roof. “That’s the cry of the exile when he reaches Na-Koja-Abad. Do you know it?”
“I have a feeling I should,” said Raszer. “I may be going there.”
Shams waggled his finger. “Not so fast, brother,” he cautioned, then swept his arm over a wooden floor covered with Turkish carpets and an assortment of pillows. “Sit,” he said. “Sit.”
From the moment Shams gripped his hand, Raszer took him as a man entirely self-created. He might’ve been raised in Fresno or Cedar Rapids as Arnold Schmidt, but somewhere along the way, he’d become Shams. And if on the street, someone were to walk up and say, “Hey! Aren’t you Arnold Schmidt? I went to high school with you,” they’d be wrong. You could call it a con, but Shams didn’t strike Raszer as a flim-flam man. No wonder Ruthie called him “the shit”; he was the transformed identity she probably wished for herself, the role you play when you’ve played out all the others.
Their host sat first, and they joined him in a half-moon of cushions around the fire. “Shams I am,” he said. “Shams the sham. Shams the shaman.” The hearth, which sat on three stumpy cast iron legs, was a circle within the greater circle of the yurt. It resembled the votaries found in ancient tombs, a big cast iron dish hammered out over some Hephaestian forge. The kettle hung about eight inches above the coals by a hook at the end of a winched steel cable. Steam rose into the chimney along with smoke.
“What’s cooking?” Raszer couldn’t help but ask. It didn’t smell like stew.
“Broth,” Shams replied. “Mushroom broth. Ready to sip in two minutes.”
Raszer smiled. “Those aren’t morels in there. I smell heavy metal.”
“A connoisseur of fungi, are you? Well these aren’t psychotropic . . . not exactly. . . but they will cure warts and whooping cough, restore lost hair, and give you a hard-on that lasts through any dark night of the soul.”
“You don’t say,” Raszer said. “Satisfaction guaranteed?”
“Or your manna back!” answered Shams. “So, what’s your duty, friend? Are you after wisdom or just information? ‘Cause if you want information, you can Google it.”
Raszer considered his reply.
“A little of both,” said Raszer. “I try to get people out of trouble when they want to be gotten out. Have you played The Gauntlet?”
“Most assuredly, man. I played it for two years. Even wrote a piece of it when it went persistent. The Gauntlet’s the king of the IRGs. Or was, until the FBI opened the curtains. Now all that’s out there are the weekenders and the guys who played their line all the way out to the ninth level. It was like living inside the web, man. You just jumped from link to link and never knew where you’d wind up. A God game.”
“Like I said,” Ruthie told Raszer, “he knows.” She curled up tight and laid her head on Shams’ thigh, and with his tea-stained fingers he began to stroke her hair.
“You started playing when you were in-country, right?” Raszer asked.
“On my second tour, yeah. But I didn’t jump the wires until my discharge.”
; “Jump the wires?”
“When you leave the Internet and go walking. Though it ain’t like you leave ‘virtual reality’ and enter the ‘real world.’ It’s more like you take virtual reality with you.”
“Were any of the other soldiers into it?”
“Most definitely, man. Especially the guys working intel. It played like a Eurail pass to the Middle East. It works in the Muslim world. Muslims understand submission to God. It was too heady for most of those Alabama boys, but not for the codebreakers.”
“I lost a kid to it,” said Raszer. “Somebody I was hired to bring home. I studied the game, but from the outside. The designers did their homework: Aquinas, Erigena, Averroes, the I Ching . . . all of that. But at some stage of play—way the fuck out there when the player’s been stripped of everything that binds him to his old self—it starts looking like a proving ground for sociopaths. My kid got sidetracked. Now he’s in federal custody. An ‘enemy combatant.’ An accused assassin. And that ties into Katy—”