by A. W. Hill
“Enough,” said Raszer. “We’re not going to announce ourselves, but before we move on, I need to get an idea of what the issue is down there. I’m going to follow that gulley to the outcropping about twenty feet from the road and find out what I can hear.”
“Too dangerous,” said Francesca. “And unnecessary.”
“I disagree,” said Raszer. “Respectfully—but I disagree.”
“Then I’ll go with you,” she said. “I’m light on my feet . . . and I know Kurdish.”
Raszer gave her a steady look, and nodded.
It took them more than ten minutes to work their way down to a vantage point. They had reasonably good cover for most of the way; the danger lay in setting loose the scree that covered the mountains. Halfway down, Raszer lifted his binoculars and confirmed what he’d both suspected and hoped: The Kurdish captain was none other than the young soldier with the piercing blue eyes. His men were a racial mix. Some were dark as Egyptians, others almost as fair as Dante. The Kurds claimed the lineage of the ancient Assyrians, but trade and conquest had long since had their way with the gene pool. Kurdish people were bound together by land and shared history—and the solidarity that comes with being the common enemy of their neighbors.
The gulley carved its way to within about fifty feet of the road, at which point they scrambled up the side to a large, jagged outcropping with chinks affording a view. The problem was the absence of flat ground; in order to see, they had to lock their toes against the steeply angled slope and lever up to position.
The first words Raszer was able to make out were in English, from the mercenary leader: “ . . . think you can hold that pass with twenty men, you’re both a martyr and a fool. I’ll be happy to prove my point if you like . . . but why not let us take a look around? If it’s clear, we’ll turn it back over to you. Or”—he turned and swept his arm across his own company and its arsenal of fully automatic weaponry—“you can die today.”
The Kurdish leader replied in carefully measured English.
“No. We cannot stand against your guns. But you cannot kill us, either. If you do, and then bring your men into the Buzul pass, there will be three hundred more of us raining fire down on your heads. By midday, you will be food for buzzards.”
“Don’t count on it, Mustafa,” the leader sneered. “Another few hours, and the air strikes’ll clear those hills out for us. Enjoy the last days of Kurdistania, friend, because by May 1, the ground you piss on will belong to El Mirai, along with your whore wife and whore daughters.” The CO spat and parked a hand on his gun.
There was no movement on the other side. The Kurdish chief’s fighters were well trained, indeed, for they remained as undemonstrative as he was and would have altered their posture only if he had. “It is said that we hate in others what we most hate in ourselves.” He took a quick count of the mercenaries. “I see thirty whores here. You make it thirty-one. I’m sure you are the best paid whore of all.”
“You’ve got fifteen minutes to stand down, and then we cut you to pieces.” The leader gave a nod to the man on his right, and rifles were raised to hips.
Raszer watched the Kurdish commander battle with himself, and saw his blue eyes flash. “My orders are not to die defending the pass. Not today. Go ahead. We will not stop you. The snipers will pick you off.” With that, he stepped aside.
With his attention squarely on the unfolding scene, Raszer hadn’t noticed that Francesca was about to lose her footing and was now clawing at the rock. In an effort to regain her purchase, she involuntarily dislodged a stone the size of a grapefruit, which skittered down the gulley wall and hit bottom with a sharp clink.
The two adversaries turned, as did most of their men. Raszer quickly scanned the rock formation for a hiding place. He worked his way over to Francesca, gave her his hand, and helped her to a more solid foothold. She apologized with her eyes, but he only put his finger to his lips and motioned to a small chimney in the rock. Barely large enough for one grown man, it would be a squeeze with the two of them. He got her in first, then wedged in beside her and pulled her down until they had become one featureless form, unmoving, hardly breathing.
A few seconds later, the two commanders arrived, each with a gunman at his back. They stood on the far side of the outcropping and continued their argument while their deputies began to search the area.
“Could have been a coyote,” said the American. “Or one of those fucking opium peddlers.”
“A stone rolls every second in the mountains,” the Kurdish captain replied.
The gunmen simultaneously stepped around the rear of the outcropping, where Raszer and Francesca’s hiding place was in plain sight but grayed down by shadow. Had the soldiers not been keeping an eye on each other, they would surely have picked them out. Raszer buried his face in Francesca’s hair. He felt her heart beating like a bird’s against his. One of the gunmen—he could not tell which—approached. Raszer drew a single breath and held it. There was an unforgiving pause. It sounded as though the Kurdish leader had come around the west side of the rocks.
“Nothing here,” the American called out. “But I don’t like what my nose tells me, so I’ve modified the plan. You save face for today, Mustafa. You and your men fall back. After you’re out of sight, we’ll do the same. It’s only a reprieve. In twenty-four hours, we’re coming in with air cover.”
“I will believe that when I see it. Until then, be assured that the Kurds in the Buzul will pay no more tribute to your lord. And when we stop, the rest will soon follow. Even those jackals in Iran who bow to you.” He shot a question to his scout.
“Like I said,” the merc said scornfully, “enjoy it while it lasts.” A pause. “Let’s go.”
Raszer and Francesca waited a good ten minutes, until both forces had begun to withdraw into the hills. Then they extricated themselves and took a last look through the chinks. It was difficult to countenance what they saw: From the roadway leading directly to the fortress, two long black Lincolns had rolled down into the crossroads. The driver of the first got out to consult with the men from Green River Security. He removed his dark glasses and ran a finger across his blond mustache. Then he muttered something Raszer couldn’t catch the whole of, but that concluded with two words he did pick up: “Greenstreet. Motherfucker.” The episode had the immersive mise-en-scène of a dream in which events are seen simultaneously from all angles.
If Raszer needed evidence of Philby Greenstreet’s wildest assertions, there it was. The driver, standing there in a navy blue suit and tie, would have no trouble boarding a plane at LaGuardia. This man looked like a Mormon.
“That was way too close,” Dante said upon their return. “I hope it was worth it.”
“I think it was,” Raszer replied.
Ruthie was wide eyed. “I can’t believe they didn’t see you.”
“I’m not sure the Kurd didn’t see us.”
“What’s going on, then?” Dante asked.
“I think we should talk to him,” Raszer said calmly.
“Talk to who?”
“To the blue-eyed Kurd,” Raszer answered. “I think we have common interests. Look, if I do get Katy out, it probably won’t be tidy. It’ll require some kind of trick, and those always have short fuses. We’re unarmed, and we’re going to need some protection to get her clear. From what I heard down there, things around here are about to get noisy, and we may be able to slip out under that cover.”
“Noisy how?” asked Dante.
“The Kurds in the Buzul are refusing to pay the Old Man’s tribute. That’s not going to go down well.”
“It’s about time,” said Francesca.
“So I’m going to try and catch Blue Eyes before he disappears into these hills.”
Francesca nodded. A moment later, Raszer was gone with Shaykh Adi.
His name was Dostam Ahmid Rahim, but to all in the Buzul Dagi, he was known as Mam: Uncle. The moniker was more than honorary; he claimed to have no less than forty nieces a
nd nephews in these mountains—an impressive fact, given his age. He was thirty or thirty-one—he’d forgotten which—but he’d already lived three lives fighting Iraqis, Turks, and rival warlords. Raszer’s overture had been received with raised guns and wary curiosity, the presence of Shaykh Adi at his side attenuating the sense of threat.
Raszer liked the commander instantly. More than once, he felt the urge to drop the charade, the French accent, the labored English, the monkish docility. But he couldn’t, because once a ruse is practiced, dropping it only makes its target feel like a fool, and then a doubly cautious one.
Adi stretched between them as they sat by the embers of the breakfast fire, drinking coffee thick as oil. Where the operational details were concerned, Raszer told the leader everything he had in mind, except exactly how he intended to bring Katy Endicott out. Even if he’d known, it wasn’t germane to their discussion. What was critical was that once he had her out, he be able to turn her over to an armed unit for escort to a helicopter waiting in the nearby village of Hadad, a chopper that would transport Katy, Ruthie, and the Fedeli back to the cars in Ispiria.
The unresolved detail was money. Raszer had proposed that $5,000 from his personal account be wired to a bank his host specified, as payment for the protection he and his men would provide. But Mam would hear nothing of it. Conducting an innocent young woman to safety was a mission of honor. To accept money would make his men no better than the whores the Old Man employed. But beyond that lay a more personal matter of honor—and vengeance.
One of Rahim’s nieces, a seventeen-year-old from Cukurka, was believed to have been taken to El Mirai. Her abduction had caused such great rage and shame among her kin that there was no guarantee they would take her back. Still, Mam had sworn to her father that the rape would be avenged. It was far bigger, he told Raszer, than one girl. Villages from here to Diyarkabir were missing young women. The future mothers of Kurdistan were being devalued. It was, the leader pointed out, a novel form of ethnic cleansing, for no honorable Kurdish man would ever take one of these girls as his wife.
In the end, Raszer accepted Mam’s pledge. To have questioned it would have been a grievous insult. There was no guile in the Kurdish leader’s mien. Beyond that, it was clear as his cobalt eyes that his men would honor his agreement. Still, Raszer’s own sense of symmetry called for a reciprocal gesture. He reached into his pack and brought out the fragment of age-polished black stone that Henry Lee had stolen from the Old Man’s mysterious recruiter and carried back to Los Angeles.
He set it on the woven blanket before Mam Rahim and said, “In the eyes of the world, it may be of great worth or no worth at all. But I believe that for our adversary, it has a special value. If what I have been told is true, it is a fragment of the original al-Hajar al-Aswad of Mecca, the pilgrim’s stone of the Ka’ba. If it is needed to secure the girl’s freedom, use it. If not, it will remain in your family’s possession forever.”
Mam Rahim picked up the stone, weighed it on his palm, put it to his lips, and held it to the sky. He pressed his hands in acceptance.
After discussing the logistics of the escort, Raszer told the Kurd that he would need a few hours of “sanctuary” with Katy after bringing her out, ideally in a safe location somewhere between El Mirai and the village; at the least, Rahim could provide armed protection. Raszer had to assume Katy’s psychic condition would be tenuous, maybe even dissociative; he could not pluck her from one reality and drop her into another without allowing her a period of decompression.
As Raszer prepared to leave, Mam Rahim stood, holding the stone in one hand. He stooped to give Shaykh Adi a scratch, then looked at Raszer and said, “If God had not chosen you for his army, Frère Deleuze, you would have made a good soldier.”
Raszer shook his hand and said, “Only for a cause like yours.”
As he made his way back to his companions, Raszer felt for the first time in more than a year that he’d earned back a measure of grace. This turned his thoughts to Monica, and he decided that while he was on the high ground, he’d attempt again to reach her. They hadn’t connected for twenty-four hours. He got through for a scant three minutes before the signal dropped, but what she told him in that time backed up his decision to entrust the black stone to his new ally.
“Don’t lose me, Raszer,” she said breathlessly. “This is good. You asked to open a file on the Ka’ba stone. Well, I’ve been all over it—mostly misses. But this is a hit: We know the stone was an object of pilgrimage before Islam. We know the legend is that it fell from heaven, outer space, whatever. We think it was associated with the pre-Islamic triple goddess. Well, check this out: Around 928 ad, the Ka’ba stone was stolen from Mecca by a splinter Ismaili sect called the Qarmatians, serious Muslim anarchists who said they lived in the resurrection body. They took the stone to Bahrain and kept it for twenty-two years. When they returned it, it was in pieces, and some pieces were missing. The stone that’s in Mecca now is a patch job. But here’s the best part: There’s a theory that the Qarmatians secretly worshipped Atargatis, the goddess on your coin, only they worshipped her as Al’Uzza, the mother aspect of the triple goddess of Mecca! And Al’Uzza links to Isis, who links to Inanna and Cybele, and all of them inspired castration cults.” She paused. “So maybe that’s something?”
“More than something,” Raszer responded.
THIRTY-FOUR
“Easy for Shams to say,” Raszer muttered, contemplating the eight-hundred-foot wall of rock he had been instructed to climb. “He could just beam himself up.”
“She’s no easy scramble,” said Dante. “It’s like El Capitan times three.”
“El Capitan’s got marked routes,” said Raszer. “This . . .” He stepped back and tipped his head as far as his neck would allow, still not able to see the top; the wall rose sheerly up from the ledge and teetered back at an obtuse angle. “ . . . Worries me.”
“Well,” Dante said, taking the monocular from his eye after scanning the ascent, “if it’s any consolation, it doesn’t look as if the last two hundred feet will be any harder than the first five hundred.” He pulled out two thick coils of rope. “Let’s harness up.”
The previous night had been a sober one in every sense. They’d been over the plan many times. Each round, one or more of them brought up something they hadn’t yet considered. Katy’s rescue had begun to look like one of those many-worlds scenarios from theoretical physics—too many possibilities, and always the stark probability of failure. Raszer had to keep reminding his companions that what they were attempting was not a hostage rescue. They were neither trained nor equipped for that, and he made it clear he wanted to see no acts of heroism. This was more akin to visiting the judge on the eve of sentencing to plead for the life of a son. The court held all the cards; all you could do was argue was that the consequences of a harsh decision might come back to haunt the judge.
Or kill him.
If the Old Man were merely some wildly inflated, mysticized version of a territorial crime boss, Raszer would have to figure that the chances of his walking out with Katy were miniscule. He was wagering everything on the hunch that his adversary was something more than a thug, because, against all odds, his only card was the faith that if the Old Man did indeed see himself as a lord, he would also grant the occasional mercy.
Raszer had been painfully aware since the twin meetings in Colorado and Iskenderun that this was a one-man show. He was a human gambit, presenting his opponents with a classic dilemma: They could kill the pawn and risk opening their flank to a bishop or a queen, or they could gamble on extending their domination of the board by letting Raszer claim some small victory. In this sense, his mission was exactly like that of the character he portrayed: the petitioning priest, sent by the king to the enemy lines to negotiate for the princess’s release. He might return with her; he might return without his head. Either way, as Greenstreet had said, the presence of one man altered all the variables.
The sanctuary Mam Rahim had of
fered for Katy’s debriefing seemed more than ideal. There was a network of caverns deep inside the fortress mountain, used by the Kurdish fighters to cache arms and evade Turkish attacks. Ruthie had begged to wait there with Dante for Raszer’s arrival, rather than accompany Francesca to the village. She wanted to be the first to see her sister free, and though Raszer’s every instinct fought the idea, he found himself unable to say no. If he couldn’t grant such a request, how could he expect the adversary to grant his? If Katy’s release took place by day, they’d proceed with their escort to Hadad. If it were at night, they would await the sunrise before moving out.
On the outskirts of the tiny hamlet, Francesca would wait with Raszer’s satellite phone to relay news to the soldiers fanned out along the road between her and town, and to Monica. Splitting up their meager forces was designed not only to facilitate the conveyance of information, but also to increase the chances that in the event of a trap, at least one of them might be able to get away and bring help.
Where that help would come from was uncertain, but Monica was a resourceful woman.