Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation

by A. W. Hill

  It was hard to tell if the system could be gamed by personal choice. Raszer was pretty sure it wasn’t meant to be, but on the other hand, the lords of the dance would probably have had to allow some room for human caprice in their calculations. And so, it was with both surprise and a certain sense of symmetry that Raszer found himself in his last circle of six with two fleshy village women, two tall men of indeterminate age, and Ruthie Endicott.

  A trio of drummers drew near, heads bobbing, eyes rolled back to the whites. Ruthie shot sidelong glances to the older women who flanked her, then leveled a woozy gaze at Raszer. He couldn’t say how high she was by now. He knew that he was flying. One of the village women momentarily broke the chain to lift her skirts just above the knee. The second woman went her one better and took the silky fabric provocatively to midthigh, then flashed Raszer a wink.

  Ruthie was not to be outdone. With hand on haunch, she began to knead the cotton smock she’d borrowed for the evening—hardly more than a brightly dyed sack—gathering the fabric into pleats that drew the hem first to her knee, then to her thighs, and finally to her swaying hips, permitting Raszer and his rivals a glimpse of the what was, after all, to be the final ground of the dance. The gesture had the power of a claim. The village women unlocked themselves from the circle and dragged the two tall men away by the shirttails.

  They stood in semidarkness at the entrance to a cul-de-sac, encircled by drums whose rhythm still recalled the original tune from hours ago. The drummers were faceless, perhaps even veiled. It seemed that their function was not only to exhort the dancers, but also to give musical sanction to each act of consummation.

  It was Ruthie who found their beat. Perfectly. With each orbit of her hips, she backed a few inches further into the cul-de-sac. Had Raszer wanted to retreat or delay, he would first have had to break through the tightening circle of drummers at his back, but he had no wish to retreat. The three-hour ceremony had succeeded in suspending time, and with it, all sense of causation. Now there was only a single moment of wanting, and what he wanted was this girl.

  A few yards deeper into the cul-de-sac was what appeared to be an abandoned donkey cart, its bed sloped at a forty-five-degree angle between two rough-hewn wooden wheels, anchored by its heavy, rusted hasp. A single kerosene lamp, its glow reduced by a soot-blackened enclosure, hung from a post overhead. The youngest of the drummers set down his instrument, shinnied up the post, and snuffed it out. In the seconds that followed, the village—already dark—grew darker still, as all lamps were extinguished, all candles blown out.

  Raszer peeled off the sweat-dampened black hoodie he’d worn as a buffer against the night’s chill, and laid it over the unfinished cedar slats of the bed. Then he placed one hand on Ruthie’s right elbow and the other on the back of her neck and lowered her gently into place, letting her brace her bare feet against him. He slipped his hand under her knee to part her legs, then caressed her center until she cried out. He kissed her, swallowing her tongue and holding it with his breath until he was inside her, and when he had released it, her lips curled into a smile.

  She breathed into his mouth the words “Now you’re in real trouble, mister.” And he was.

  This would change everything. Sex always did.

  THIRTY

  The pale sun rose over the front range like a blob of mercury, gradually displacing the lid of dawn. They had been on the road to Hakkâri for three hours. Raszer had taken shotgun position so that he and Francesca could map out the approach to the neo-Assassin fortress, which, by her estimate, they would reach in three days, weather permitting—the first by car and the second two on foot. The distance was not excessive, but the terrain was exceedingly rough, and the primitive routes riddled with Turkish army roadblocks and PKK flashpoints.

  Ruthie leaned forward and laid her elbows on the seat back. “Did we do it last night?” she asked Raszer, eyes bloodshot behind her red bug glasses.

  This drew a gesture from Francesca that Raszer knew well: a biting of lip, a lowering of eyes, a turning away to stare out the window at the passing whiteness. Like tea leaves, it required interpretation. It might have registered disdain for Ruthie’s ignorance of the nature of the ceremony they’d joined in, it might have signaled disapproval of Raszer’s lapse in judgment, or it might have been something else.

  There’d been an hour’s worth of strenuous argument that morning over whether Ruthie should be sent back to Suayb with Mikhail, who had finally boarded the 7:00 am dolmus alone.

  The principal reasons for their eventual decision to allow her onboard—with Francesca dissenting—were arguable, and Raszer knew it. The first was a sense that she was a loose cannon, more controllable nailed down to deck than rolling free. The second line of reasoning, Raszer thought more compelling: If Katy Endicott, after more than a year of captivity in a cloud-blanketed mountaintop fastness, was in the classic cultic mindstate, she might not want to come back to the world without some sign of what it held for her. Ruthie was a bright, shiny lure. She had been for Katy before, and she had been for Raszer only last night. Ruthie Endicott was a human chaotic attractor.

  There were other reasons Raszer kept to himself. The first was that he suspected she knew more than she let on, and that he might eventually get it out of her. The second had to do with the kinship born of lovemaking. He wanted to see her home.

  “Once we get to Daglica,” said Francesca, aiming a finger at a point roughly forty miles east of Hakkâri on Raszer’s survey map, “we’ll leave the cars and pack in. The high passes are snowed in until late May, and even if they weren’t, anyone stupid enough to drive into the Buzul Dagi right now would lose his car to the PKK or the Turks . . . maybe even the Americans. The days will be hot and the nights will be cold, and everyone will have to carry his weight.” Raszer watched Francesca’s glance shift to the rearview mirror. It was ostensibly to affirm that Dante was still on their tail in the second Cruiser, but his eyes dropped and remained fixed on the middle of the backseat.

  “If you’re worried about me carrying my weight,” said Ruthie, “don’t be.”

  “Experienced hikers die in those mountains. What experience do you have?”

  “Plenty,” said Ruthie, and sat back hard.

  “Right,” Francesca replied tightly. “All the wrong kind.”

  “This is bullshit,” Ruthie spat.

  “Enough,” Raszer said, raising his voice. “Things change. You try to play that to your advantage.” He leveled his eyes at Ruthie. “Ruthie, if you don’t want to be sent to Istanbul on the next bus, you’ll jump to every word she says. She will keep your head attached to your body.”

  He aimed a finger out the side window.

  “I don’t know if you noticed,” he went on, “but ever since we started climbing into these foothills, there’ve been vultures in the sky.” Raszer turned back to Francesca. “Now, you were saying . . . ”

  By midafternoon, the windows were caked with dust the color of camel hair. The dust found its way into everything and had an adhesive consistency that reminded Raszer of metal filings clumped by a magnet. The mountains here were no one’s idea of pretty, but against the preternaturally blue sky, they did have a stark mineral magnificence—God’s own quarry, set aside for the making of Adam and his dusty kind. There were flashes of places Raszer had been before—the Golan Heights, or even certain stretches along the California–Nevada border—but nothing in his experience quite compared to the emptiness.

  Abandoned to warriors and brigands, the space offered little evidence of any permanent settlement—an occasional shepherd’s hut, perched way up in some cleavage of earth, a stone well, but nothing that resembled community or commerce. There were the skeletal remains of bomb-gutted military transports overturned on the roadside, wheels stripped, canvas in wind-whipped tatters, and empty crates and trunks of ordnance, but so far, no soldiers. Francesca assured him that this would not remain the case, that the mountains they were headed into were the heart of the Kurdish w
ar. She added that if the fighters weren’t on the road, that meant only that they were in the hills, sighting down at them.

  At four o’clock, as they began to mount a steep grade, Francesca slowed and pulled onto the shoulder. Once Dante had drawn up behind, he hopped out, taking a pair of binoculars up the rock.

  “The last time we were through this pass,” she said, “there was a Turkish army checkpoint on the other side. If it’s still there, we may have to double back and take the long way around.”

  Raszer ran his hands over his brown friar’s robe, the mainstay of his disguise. “Will this getup help or hurt?” he asked her.

  “It probably won’t hurt,” said Francesca. “There are still Christian missions in these mountains. And they used to let us bring European trekkers through here in spring and fall. Things have changed, though.” She climbed out of the car. “I’m going to pee,” she said. Shaykh Adi followed her into the gully, presumably to do the same.

  Raszer gave Ruthie a nod. “Go now if you need to. If we get stuck at the checkpoint, you may not be able to get out for a while.”

  “So did we?” she asked again, and smiled.

  “If you’re not sure,” he said, returning the smile, “then I’m going to say no.”

  She gave him her middle finger, and he got out to have a cigarette.

  Within sixty seconds, there was a fine coating of dust on his shaven pate. In another sixty, the grit was in his teeth. The wind here was abrasive enough to polish a diamond. He left the car and hiked a couple hundred feet into the scree to collect his thoughts. Francesca came up out of the ravine and stopped a few yards short of him, her hands on her hips. For a moment, she made as if to speak, but didn’t.

  Raszer crushed out the cigarette and turned to see Dante rockhopping down the incline like a goat, the binoculars in his hand. He arrived out of breath.

  “What’s it look like?” asked Raszer.

  “There’s still a checkpoint,” the boy answered, “but it’s PKK. That’s good for us. If the Kurds control this pass, then they probably control the whole sector.”

  “Safe passage?”

  “Well . . . safer. We’ve been using Kurdish guides on our treks for years, sometimes even sharing campsites with PKK units way up in the hills. We’re closer to Baha’i and they’re closer to Alevi Marxists—but it’s the same root: Yezidi. ”

  “These mountain Kurds are Yezidi?”

  “Most of ’em. Or some variation. In five years, this spot’ll either be the northern frontier of a Kurdish state or the site of an Armenian-style genocide.”

  “Let’s go,” Francesca called, heading down the slope. “We’ve got to make another hundred miles before we stop for the night.”

  They piled back in, Raszer keeping his shotgun seat. Francesca pawed through her belt pack and handed Raszer the Canadian passport and visa that the authors of his present journey had prepared for him.

  “Compliments of Philby Greenstreet,” she said.

  Raszer examined it. It was a first-rate job.

  With a groan and a rattling of valves, the Toyota crested the seven-thousand-foot pass. Along with the engine’s cacophony was another soundprint: a high-pitched whine accompanied by a throbbing drone, punctuated by two sonic booms.

  “Stop the car for a sec,” said Raszer. “And let me use your binoculars.”

  Three miles down the narrow and precipitous road, he could make out the checkpoint clearly. He couldn’t tell how heavily guarded it was, but the nearby barracks suggested a small garrison. He lifted his gaze to the sapphire sky and saw the vapor trails, then followed them to the tiny, birdlike shapes at their head and put the field glasses to his eyes. “Shit,” he said, then got back in the car.

  “Those are American fighters,” he told them. “A flyover. Wonder whose side they’re on today.”

  “I hope they don’t mistake us for a convoy,” was all Francesca said.

  A scant minute later, there came another rumble, throatier, rougher, and closer. After that, multiple drones of various pitches. More planes. Francesca dropped the Toyota into second and braked.

  “It’s a squadron,” she said. “Can’t tell whose . . . probably Turkish, from the sound of the engines.”

  “With the Americans as their escorts,” said Raszer.

  The mountains shook, releasing a cascade of rock, and in the valley below, the earth erupted in flame, smoke, and soil as if heaving up a dozen small volcanoes. When the dust cleared, what had been a Kurdish outpost was no more.

  “Jesus,” Ruthie hissed, perching forward to peer over Raszer’s shoulder. “That could have been us.”

  It took almost ten seconds for the road to stop trembling.

  Raszer turned to Francesca, who had stopped the car. “Is there another road?”

  “Not one we can get on soon. We’ll have to make it at least to the Zap River gorge near Uludere before we have an alternate. The road splits just past there, and there’s a low route that runs along the river. Unfortunately, it’s popular with pirates.”

  “Pirates?” Ruthie queried.

  “Thieves and human traffickers,” explained Francesca, and added, “They especially like American girls. They fetch a good price in Bahrain.”

  “Well, we’ll see how it looks when we get there,” said Raszer. From his duffel he pulled out a plain white T-shirt. “Give me a sec,” he said. He hopped out, tore the shirt down the middle, and tied it to the antenna. “Let’s go,” he said. “Slowly. If there’s anyone alive down there, we’re liable to get shot at coming this soon after.”

  From two hundred yards away, they could see that the road had been cratered and was entirely impassable. There was nothing left of any of the standing structures but rubble and ash. The sole sign of life lay ahead of them in what remained of the road. A soldier had been thrown by the blast and had landed a good hundred feet from what had once been the gate. Both arms and one leg were gone, and the remaining leg was folded grotesquely behind him, as if he’d been a toy, dropped by a careless child. The limbless torso arched and dropped spasmodically, a mortally injured bug pumping out its last reflexive heartbeats. Francesca stopped ten feet short.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God!” Ruthie burst out, just short of hysterical.

  Gripping the wheel, Francesca drew a breath and turned to Raszer. “We’ll have to go around. We should have enough ground clearance. The land is pretty flat here, but . . . there may be mines.” They blinked at each other. She nodded toward the body in the road, her jaw tight. “What do you want to do?”

  Raszer thought for a tick before replying. “What I would want done.”

  Francesca nodded, and Raszer stepped out. She was close behind him. He dropped to a squat beside the soldier, the hem of his priest’s garment wicking up the young guard’s blood from the road. He was not more than twenty, and twitching uncontrollably. Raszer made the sign of the cross, then took his thumb and forefinger and laid them gently on the soldier’s eyelids. “Let’s get you home,” he said. He slipped the soldier’s pistol from his belt and put the barrel to the young man’s fire-blackened forehead. He must be cold, Raszer thought, his own hand shaking. Then he fired.

  Francesca, beside him now, wore an expression he couldn’t decipher, and it shook him. He kept the gun, retrieved a box of cartridges from the soldier’s pouch, and said, “Let’s go.”

  They returned to the cars and talked soberly as a group about the course they would take to avoid tripping land mines. Reasoning mines would lie on the perimeter rather than close in, they opted for a route that took them directly through the ruins, even if that meant driving the Land Cruisers over smoldering piles of wood and heaps of fallen brick that might conceal their own perils. Francesca eyed the pistol warily as Raszer got back in.

  “I know,” said Raszer. “I don’t like them either. Do you want me to drive?” She shook her head.

  They rolled through the fallen outpost at a deliberate pace. Too fast would have been foolhardy, and too slow would
have invited fire from any possible survivors. There was a fifty-foot span of open scrub on the southeast boundary of the compound to be crossed before they could return to solid pavement, and it presented the greatest hazard.

  It was the only place Francesca hesitated.

  Raszer thought they ought to hug the road as closely as possible, but he kept his own counsel and let the driver drive. The killing of the young soldier was in his blood like venom. He knew he’d done what the moment’s truth called for, but he couldn’t shake the doubt. The bombs had taken the soldier’s limbs, but Raszer had taken his life. Would he have done the same on a Jerusalem street in the aftermath of a suicide bombing? No. Different rules applied. Under those rules, he’d have stayed at the man’s side until the stretchers came, and then walked away clean, knowing full well that too much blood had already been lost, and that even if by some chance the soldier did survive, he’d curse his rescuer. Human choice is about what is exigent, and exigencies are different in a war zone. Raszer knew all this, but it didn’t stop the ache.