Riders of the Pale Horse

by T. Davis Bunn

  4

  It’s too much,” Allison murmured as they passed through another timeless university courtyard. “There’s no way I can learn everything.”

  “Of course not,” Cyril soothed. “No one expects you to, my dear. What we wish is to introduce you to the topics and terms.”

  The days had proved to be long and draining. Late each afternoon Cyril met her at Oxford, where one expert after another had droned for endless hours, until her eyelids had weighed ten pounds each, and the voices had taken on the consistency of strawberry jam. “I can’t remember a thing anyone has told me.”

  “I confess that even I find some of these experts to be as interesting as watching snow melt.”

  At Cyril’s direction, Jules brought the car around, and Allison sank back with a sigh of relief. “You don’t seem the least bit worried by my lack of expertise.”

  He settled into the seat beside her and murmured, “Of course yournot. You are John Taylor’s daughter after all.”

  She leaned back in her seat. As the car left the spires of Oxford behind, Allison felt a deep familiar ache. How much this day would have meant to her dad. If only, she reflected sadly, he could have lived long enough to be a part of this with her. As the veil of fatigue rose once again, she found herself recalling another evening, one where Ben Shannon and Cyril Price had gathered with her father. It was the evening when Allison had come to realize that her father was more than a gentle pipe-smoking professor. That John Taylor had a past filled with mystery upon mystery.

  Allison Taylor had positively adored her father. She had been born long after her parents had given up hope of ever having children. From the very beginning, Allison had been her daddy’s girl. Her father had been an analyst for a Washington think tank, and had taught international economics at Georgetown. Allison had decided she was going to be an analyst soon after she learned to say the word. Analysts had lots of interesting friends who dropped by day and night. They came from all over the world, and they sat and listened while Allison’s father talked in the same soft patient voice he used to answer her own questions.

  Allison was seven when she learned of her father’s mysterious past. She had discovered that if she hid in the tiny crawl space behind his filing cabinets, he would sometimes forget that she was there. That afternoon, Cyril Price had come to visit and found her father seated in the study with Ben. Cyril had brought with him a problem so serious that it had creased her father’s face in unnaturally severe lines. For several months after, she had suffered nightmares that began with the words Yom Kippur War. Allison had not understood much of what was said that day, but her young mind discerned that Ben and Cyril placed great weight on what they called her father’s experience in the field.

  There had never been any question of what Allison would study at college or what she wished to do with her life. She had yearned for the days when the two professors, father and daughter, would stroll across campus, caught up in their glorious shared world of thoughts and dreams and ideas.

  Allison had reveled in college life, reinventing herself with people with no memory of her Raggedy Ann days. But once a month she had eagerly returned to the easy routine of home. Her mother had stuffed her like the Christmas goose and asked about young men, questions Allison had always avoided. Her father had taken her for long rambling walks in winter-clad forests; she had returned with her cheeks burning and her ears numb and her mind filled to overflowing.

  And then her father had dropped dead of a heart attack three days after her final examinations. As soon as Allison had heard her mother’s broken voice, she had known. Even before the words were spoken, she had known. The dream of sharing her father’s world had been shattered just as it had approached her grasp.

  “My dear, is everything all right?”

  “I think maybe I’ve gotten a little too tired.” She pushed away the hurt and said, “It will be nice to see Ben again. My mother always said he was rude and overbearing but Pop thought the world of him.”

  “They met in college, I believe,” Cyril offered.

  “Yes, but Ben finished at the university in two years, didn’t he?”

  “That is correct. Then he entered medical school at the ripe old age of nineteen. I made the error of referring to him in your father’s presence as the James Dean of mental giants, made outcast by his intelligence and his age. Your father was sharper with me than ever before or since.

  “My father always thought a lot of him,” Allison said. “He used to say that Ben was the only one who had the strength to bring their youthful ideals to maturity.” She looked over at the gentleman beside her, wondered at what secrets he carried and how they never seemed to touch the polished surface. “Was that where you two met as well?”

  “Who, your father and I?” Cyril shook his head. “No, our own beginnings were not so commonplace. Quite the contrary. Your father happened to save my life. Not once, but on three different occasions.”

  “He never told me—”

  “Now is not the time, my dear. Suffice it to say that the bonds which tie us together, your family and mine, are there for life.”

  “Do you know why Ben went off to Aqaba?”

  “Not exactly. When I heard of his rabid conversion, as I used to call it at the time, I simply assumed it was a result of his relative youth and his obvious loneliness. But your father told me that medical school had forced Ben into contact with suffering, and that in suffering Ben had found the one thing on earth which intelligence alone could never fathom.”

  “That sounds just like Pop.”

  “Your father’s wisdom is the salve I place upon his absence from my life,” Cyril said.

  She said quietly, “I miss him, too.”

  “You have not seen Ben in quite some time, I take it. No, of course not. He has not returned to Washington since your father’s funeral, as far as I am aware. Well, my dear, you will find him much altered. More than either of us might have thought possible.”

  “In what way?”

  “His wife certainly has a great deal to do with it. Leah is quite a formidable woman in her own quiet way. She is a Palestinian Christian. But I am quite certain there is more than just a woman’s hand at work in Ben’s transformation.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That is for you to decide. But I suggest you do not expect to find the same person you recall.” His gaze became distant. “The desert tends to pare men and women down to the basic components of their nature. For some, it brings out the essence of evil; for others, the essence of good. Nowadays I find being around Ben Shannon a very unsettling experience. There is much to him which I wish I had gathered for myself.”

  5

  By dawn Wade was already up and moving. They had overnighted at the edge of a small village, where an enterprising Ingush had built a roadside caf;aae in the hulk of a burned-out bus. They had shared camp with seven other trucks, all laden with farm produce and gathered into a separate enclave. Upon their arrival Mikhail had exchanged formal greetings, to let the others know they were no threat. Since then the two trucks of medical supplies had been left alone.

  Rogue squatted next to the road with Mikhail, a greasy map unfolded on the ground in front of them. While Wade broke camp, the pair shared one of Robards’ slender cheroots and a tin mug of steaming coffee. They spoke in hand signs and nods as the old man described the rutted road that led toward the hills.

  The Caucasus Mountains dominated the distance. Their bases were lost in mists that drifted in the still air. The dawn light tinted their looming snow-capped peaks with hues of rose and gold. They rested on earthbound clouds and stretched from horizon to horizon, a serrated nine-hundred-mile wall that divided two worlds. To the north lay the endless steppes, the Arctic, the brutal Siberian winds. To the south opened the balmier Mediterranean realms.

  Rogue waved Wade over. When he hunkered down beside the pair, Rogue said, “Tell me about the conflict up ahead.”

  “There are wars up
and down the Caucasus range,” Wade replied. “But the one that concerns us most is between the Chechen and the Russians. Other than that, there are constant skirmishes between the Chechen, the Ingush, and the Ossetians.”

  “Ossetia is the state next door, right?”

  “Right,” Wade agreed. “Well, technically, it’s North Ossetia, or Severnaja Osetija. They’re another autonomous republic, part of the Russian Federation just like here. Then there’s South Ossetia, below the mountain range, which is a part of Georgia.”

  “And these three tribes don’t get along.”

  “Not for centuries,” Wade agreed. “Chechen and Ingush are Muslim; Ossetians are Christians. They hate each other. Then there is the local Russian population, brought in by Stalin to dilute the tribes during his policy of Russification. They made up almost forty percent of the population before the Chechens started fighting to secede. The Chechen warlord recently vowed death to all Russians who attempted to remain in his homeland.”

  “Chechen warlord,” Rogue mused aloud. “This place is getting more interesting by the minute.”

  Wade took a moment to translate for Mikhail. When he was finished, the old man waved a veined hand toward the mountains. “The Chechen are traders and sheep farmers and cleverer than the Ingush,” Mikhail began. “The Ingush tend to hug the land. They put down deeper roots. They raise cattle. They and the Chechen were neighbors and only sometimes enemies until Stalin, may his name be erased from the earth, stole their lands and brought in the Russians. Then more Russians lived on Chechen land than the Chechen themselves. More Chechen died in Siberia than survived to tell the tale. Ingush as well. Now they taste the wind of liberation and seek to steal both what was theirs and what their neighbors have managed to settle—neighbors such as my own Ossetians.”

  The old man ran a knotted hand around the back of his neck. “The winds of change are not always kind. I myself have lost sons and grandsons to a war that means nothing except misery for everyone.”

  “Which war was that?” Robards demanded, nodding to Wade for the translation.

  “The war beyond the count of man’s days. The war that has continued since before the birth of my father’s father.”

  Mikhail stooped, picked up a stick, and drew a crude map in the dust at their feet. “This long line is the Caucasus range, separating Russia from Georgia for all of time. Here to the west of us lies the Black Sea, where the mountains begin their eternal march. The lands bordering sea and western hills belong to the Abkhazi, those whom Stalin left alive. Next to them, south of the mountains still, are the Svaneti, then the Ushguli, then the Ossetians. The Ossetians are the first tribe both north and south of the mountains, because here lies the first great Caucasus pass. We are also the only Christian hill tribe left alive. You as a warrior will understand what this means. Here in the heart of the mountain tribes stands the Ossetian stake, which the Muslim tribes are sworn to tear from the earth and burn on the fires of their hatred.”

  “What is there to the east of us?” Robards demanded, focused on the map at his feet.

  “North of the mountains, the Chechen and Ingush, as I have said,” Mikhail replied, almost chanting the words. “In the southern highlands, some Chechen and Ingush still, but not many. Mostly Tusheti tribes. Some Karachai also, but most Stalin deported to Siberia. They have not returned.”

  “Is there trouble in that area?”

  “For the modern man, there is trouble everywhere,” Mikhail replied, “but more here than elsewhere. Farther east the mountains curve down southward and fall into the Dagestani lowlands, which in turn slide into the Caspian Sea.”

  Robards pointed with the toe of his boot to the region where the mountains began their curve. “What about to the west here?”

  “The Kasheti region of Georgia,” Mikhail answered once Wade had translated. “Though they are more a name than a tribe in these days. Stalin had a special hatred for them. Why, no one knows. But almost the entire tribe was scattered. On the other side of the Georgian border, here to the southeast, lies Azerbaijan. Further south, Armenia. To the southwest, Turkey. There again one finds the battle between Muslim and Christian, especially in the Christian enclave inside Azerbaijan.”

  Robards nodded approvingly. “Your knowledge is great, old man.”

  “In my youth I journeyed far and wide,” the elder replied proudly. “I was a trader, and a good one. Dagestani carpets were my specialty.”

  “Are there passes down through the Caucasus range to the southern lands?”

  “None that are not fiercely guarded by tribesmen.” Mikhail squinted. “Was not our objective the highland hospital?”

  “Always best to know where the back door’s located,” Robards replied. “Ask the gent how old he is.”

  “I am about to see my seventieth year.” He cupped his arm close to his chest and made as though holding an invisible gun. “Yet remain strong enough to hold a Skorpion with one hand and shoot a level line.”

  “Skorpion’s a machine pistol with the kick of a mule,” Robards explained to Wade. “Says a lot about the world we’re in when an old guy uses that as the symbol of his health. Tell him I hope I’m in such shape at his age, if I make it that far.”

  “Your friend carries the scent of good fortune with him,” Mikhail replied. “That is why I agreed to come. He should choose to remain and make his home here. There is much work for one such as him, and the hillsmen are known for their long lives. My father still tends his sheep, and my great-uncle swears he will see his two hundredth year.”

  “We oughta talk once this little jaunt’s over,” Robards replied. “First I need to see how much chance there is of me walking into somebody else’s bullet.” He stared at the crude map drawn in the dust and said, “Tell me about the pass we’ll be taking.”

  “We shall join the Georgia Military Highway south of Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia’s capital city,” the old man replied. “This follows the central and clearest pass through these jutting peaks. It winds through gorges and hairpin turns and drops and ravines before descending into Georgia. The road is the single paved Caucasus artery, not often either washed out or bombed. Too many trucks carrying far too many goods have ground the road’s surface to a trail of cracks and bumps and gravel and dust. But at least we should be safe. Russian military convoys travel its length, followed by civilians who bribe the transport officers for the right...”

  A swiftly moving cloud brought them all around. Wade searched the windless horizon and realized with a start that the approaching cloud was alive. A sound of honking strengthened as the cloud became hundreds of thousands of migrating waterbirds.

  Robards looked an astonished question at Mikhail, who replied through Wade, “North of our campsite is the Volga Delta, a remnant of the wilderness that once held all of Russia in its grasp. Where the great river joins the Caspian Sea, there lies a maze of marshes and streams. Three hundred species of birds live there. Plus the saiga antelope. Wolves. Wild boar. Steppe eagles.”

  The cloud of birds arrived overhead, throwing their campsite into fleeting shadows. The bird cries became so loud that the old man had to shout to be heard. “In my father’s time, the birds formed flying walls that went on for hours and days on end. Now the flocks pass only in the morning and in the evening, and only for a week at most.”

  Robards listened, nodded, and watched the sky. There was nothing to see save the cloud of birds. He called the question, “Same time every year?”

  When Wade had translated the old man shook his head emphatically. “There is no set time to their pattern, no date upon which the giant gatherings begin. Yet the birds know, as do the saiga antelope. On a certain day each autumn, as early as the first week in September or as late as November, the herds join and begin to move. And then, a few days later, the first Siberian wind arrives.”

  As quickly as it began, it ended. The last of the birds passed overhead, and within a few seconds their raucous cries blended with the gathering wind.

>   “In the autumn,” Mikhail continued in a quieter tone, “the steppe’s silver featherwood stands burnished by the sun like ripening wheat. It shivers in these gathering winds as though knowing what the birds and the animals know—that soon the wind will turn and howl in icy fury from the north. Here in the south we have only the slightest taste of Russian winter. But I have traveled. I know. Not so far to the north, the land will soon turn to iron, its coat of ice so hard and jagged that tires can be cut to shreds. Then the land is empty as only a Russian steppe can be, lost to the vacuum of unconquered winter, its isolation accented by a lone wolf’s howl.”

  “A good time to be somewhere else.” Robards raised his boot and deliberately erased the map scratched into the earth.

  “Let’s move out.”

  The Caucasus Mountains, one of the world’s youngest ranges, were not yet worn down and softened by nature. They did not rise gradually from plains to foothills to high reaches. Instead, they leapt into being. The world was flat, an endless steppe, and then came the walls of rock crowned by ice and snow. Waterfalls thundered down from all sides. Among the silent giants loomed a dozen peaks higher than Mont Blanc, Europe’s tallest mountain. Two thousand glaciers locked the highlands beneath frozen seas a mile and more in depth.

  The southern Kalmyk Steppe was a sweeping earthen sea, bound on the south by the Caucasus Mountains, rimmed to the east and west by the Caspian and Black Seas. To the north there was no boundary, no ending, no rise nor fall nor physical landmark. The name changed with distance, from southern to central to northern, yet in truth the steppe continued in one flat empty stretch from the Caucasus to the Arctic wastelands, a distance of over three thousand kilometers. Winter winds generated in the depths of Siberia howled unchecked down its length until they crashed in frustrated fury against the unyielding Caucasus range.

  Today, however, the weather was with them. Warm sunlight marked their traverse along the steppe’s southern edge. They kept to byroads that were little more than rutted tracks, circling around several Chechen enclaves, heading ever closer to the mountains that dominated the horizon.