While the crowd was still collecting itself, Wade jammed the two of them through. Not quite a run, but fast enough to jar. Aggressive. Hard and sharp and as determined as his gaze. The crowd parted before them.
“What happened?” Ben demanded, hustling to keep up with Wade.
“A thief tried to take my bag,” Allison said, gradually recovering. The vision of the knife blade still swam before her eyes, and she was grateful for Wade’s supporting arm.
“It wasn’t just a grab,” Wade said, not slowing down. “And it wasn’t just a thief. There were a lot of them, and it was slick. They separated us before I even knew what was going on. Just a tight group of people, sliding us apart one half step at a time, and if she hadn’t yelled I wouldn’t have noticed what was going on until too late.”
“Take this left,” Ben directed. “How can you be so certain it wasn’t just a thief taking advantage of the situation? We haven’t finished covering the ground yet.”
“I don’t know how I’m sure,” Wade said stubbornly. “But I am. And I’m not going to let her risk staying around here any longer.”
Let me risk staying. Normally Allison would have bristled at the sound of someone looking out for her like that. But just then it sounded nice. Warm and comforting. Something a friend would do. Let her be weak for a moment. The knife.
“I’m still not clear—”
Wade slammed to a stop so sharp that Allison almost lost her footing and Ben rammed into them from behind. Ben protested but was cut off by Wade’s upraised hand. “I thought I heard something,” he said and squinted into the shadows of a rank and narrow alley.
Then Allison heard it too. A voice. Speaking in a tongue she had heard before but could not understand. Soft and sibilant and musical. Wade answered in kind.
She asked, “Is that Russian?”
The voice from the shadows said once more, “Can this truly be the man who has robbed me of my nights?”
“Alexis,” Wade said, his heart hammering hard. “Is that you?”
“Rogue said he had found you in Aqaba, but I could believe it only because of the anger he shows when speaking your name. I have both hoped for and feared this moment.” The Russian stepped forward far enough to reveal himself, then slipped back again. “All night I hear your voice, my friend. There alongside the calls of my wife and child. Asking me questions for which I have no answers.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Yes,” Alexis agreed. “That is one of them. And others. Many others. Too many. I find I cannot go on, but I also do not know where I might go instead.”
“Is Robards after you?”
“If they already know of my absence,” Alexis replied, “then you are speaking to a dead man. I saw you and your friends from my window, and I slipped out. They leave me alone much of the time, you see. I have not been well. I lie in bed much of the day, trying to regain what you have taken from my nights.”
“Will you come with us?”
Still he hesitated. “I am defeated. I cannot go and do what I know is wrong. It would kill me. But where else can I go? You have given me so many questions; now answer one. What can I do? I will not go back to Russia, that is certain. Where else is there for me? How can I bring my family together again?”
“I don’t know,” Wade replied honestly. “But I will try to help.”
Alexis thought on this, and decided. “Then I will come.”
A cry was raised behind them. Wade started, wheeled around, and saw the man he had shoved from the sidewalk heading a gang that stalked the alley toward them. “We must flee!” he cried, for a moment not even aware that he still spoke Russian. “To the boat!”
Whatever the language, they all understood. They raced down the alley and across the central square, dodging through the throngs gathered about the various peddlers. And it was the crowd that saved them. Where four white-faced foreigners were given the leeway to scramble through, a gang of local ruffians was caught like a beast in quicksand. One pushed someone, who hit another, who pushed back, and soon the entire clearing was a mass of cursing, heaving, jostling humanity.
Together the four of them raced down the central port road, skirted the hawkers, rushed past the guards, and ran up the gangway to the boat.
And safety.
20
The next afternoon, Allison found Wade waiting in Ben’s empty office. “Did he call for you too?”
“Oh.” At the sound of her voice, Wade leapt to his feet. “I mean, hello.”
His shy uncertainty was such an incredible difference from the take-charge attitude he had shown the day before.
“I’d like to thank you for what you did yesterday.”
“I didn’t really do anything....”
“Don’t say that,” she said, determined not to be put off by his reserve. She took the seat next to him, then waited for him to settle. “If you hadn’t moved so fast, I might not be here today.”
Wade looked down at his hands. “I don’t know what came over me,” he said quietly. “When I heard you call—”
She repressed a shudder at the memory and said lightly, “A lot of good my homing device would have been.”
“Your what?”
“Oh, something Cyril gave me. He said I should switch it on if I was ever in trouble.” She sobered at the reality of how close the encounter truly had been. “I could have been—”
“Don’t say it,” Wade told her. “Don’t even think it.”
“All right.” More softly, “At any rate, I do thank you.”
“Oh good, you’re both here,” Ben Shannon said briskly, entering and closing the door behind him. “I have something to discuss with you.”
“Did they find anything in Nuweiba?” Allison demanded.
“As I understand it,” Ben replied, seating himself behind his desk, “the preliminary search last night was unsuccessful. But with the information Alexis supplied, the Egyptian authorities are again combing the area, and no doubt they will soon have everything under lock and key. Alexis himself is now safely ensconced in a hotel in Amman.” He looked from one to the other. “I now feel that your work here at the clinic has come to a close.”
Allison found herself with nothing to say. She looked at Wade. The young man observed the doctor with quiet intensity and said, “You were frightened.”
“But you knew about this risk before we started,” Allison protested.
“I did,” Ben concurred. “Yet I did not truly come face-to-face with the possible danger until yesterday. I am in the business of running a clinic, not chasing after international smugglers and terrorists. I could not sleep last night from the thought of what might have happened.”
“We’re willing to take that risk,” Allison responded.
“Perhaps, but I am not.” Ben sighed. “Now these terrorists in Egypt know of us and probably know of my clinic. Whose lives have we put at risk? What will keep them from attacking us here?”
“We understand,” Wade said quietly. “We’ll pack and depart this afternoon.”
“We will?” Allison demanded.
Wade turned her way and nodded slowly. “Could you really stay if he doesn’t want you here anymore?”
“Allison, your administrative work is impeccable. Wade, you are one of the finest healers I have ever had occasion to work with. I would love to keep you both on in these capacities and simply ask you to stop with the intrigue. But I can’t. I hope you understand that. It has gone too far. I simply cannot put you or my patients or my other staff at risk.”
Wade stood and lifted Allison with his gaze. “You have other responsibilities.”
Ben did not rise. He kept his gaze on his desk, clearly unhappy with the turn of events. “I will stop in and see you both again before you go.”
Wade followed her from the room. Once the door had closed behind them, she demanded, “Why wouldn’t you let me argue with him?”
“Because it was tearing him apart,” Wade replied softly. “
His mind was made up. He was doing what he thought was correct, and he was doing it for valid reasons. What right did we have to try and force him to do something different?”
They walked outside and entered the brilliant sunshine. “I guess I better go pack,” Wade said.
“Wait,” said Allison. Someone was standing by the front gate, talking with Fareed and gesticulating urgently. “I think I know him.”
“Who?”
Then it came to her. “That’s Mahmoud. He’s a Bedouin leader and a friend of Ben.” She started walking. “Come on.”
Mahmoud was so fiercely involved in his discussion that he did not notice their approach. Then he saw Allison, shouted, and waved her over.
Allison demanded of the driver, “What’s he saying?”
“Mahmoud, he say he must talk to Dr. Ben and right now.”
“The doctor’s tied up,” Allison replied. “What’s the matter?”
“He say men come at dawn, set up camp. Another truck arrive later. He not know them, but one was tall white man who moved like a soldier. Two others spoke a different language, he thinks Russian.”
“How can he be so sure?” Wade said, his voice taut.
Another rapid exchange, then, “Before were many Russian soldiers in desert, here with Jordanians, with Iraqis. Make much trouble. He say maybe are people you seek.”
Allison said, “Ben is going to stay tied up pretty much all day. Ask Mahmoud if he will take us with him now.”
“But Dr. Ben, he say—”
“It’s all right,” Wade chimed in.
“We just spoke with him,” Allison went on. “He can’t be disturbed today. So we’ll take care of it. Ask Mahmoud if that’s okay with him.”
Ben’s driver posed the question. Mahmoud responded by turning and striding toward where his dusty truck was parked.
“Tell him I have to write Ben a note and pack a couple of things,” she said to Fareed, then to Wade, “Let’s get moving.”
“Where are we going?” Wade said, hurrying to catch up.
“The desert!”
Night painted the desert with a mystic’s brush. The half-moon competed with a million stars for their attention. The sands glowed as though lit by soft silver fires. The mountains were silver and still as the night, watchful as the stars, timeless as the wind.
Wade sat with his back to the camp, so he did not know of her approach until he heard the soft footfall. “Can I join you?”
He nodded, then realized she could not see him. “Please do.”
“It’s so beautiful,” she said, sinking down beside him. “Like another world.”
“It is another world,” he said quietly.
Mahmoud had brought them to the Bedouin camp just before sunset. Together they had paid respects to his father, talked with several of the men, arranged for Allison to bed down in one tent with the women and Wade in another, then Mahmoud had taken off again. He had not yet returned.
She looked at Wade. The campfire behind them cast half her face in the softest golden hues. “Are you afraid?”
It took him a while to answer. “I’ve been frightened for so long, I guess I’ve grown used to it.”
“I don’t think I could ever grow used to fear—or want to,” she replied, then asked, “Would you tell me the whole story of how you came to Jordan?”
Because she asked with the tone of a friend, because they shared the exquisite aloneness of an empty desert night, because their fear was a bond between them, he told her. All of it.
She watched him intently while he talked, her gaze large and solemn, so quiet that Wade did not notice her shivering until he was almost done.
He interrupted himself with, “You’re cold. Why didn’t you say something?”
“I’m fine, really. Please don’t stop.”
But he was already up and moving toward the camp. He returned with a heavy blanket, which he flipped open and draped around her shoulders. “It’s amazing how cold it gets out here at night.”
As he settled back down, Allison lifted the edge toward him. “Come share.”
Wade slid closer and allowed her to drape the blanket around his back.
“Okay, now finish your story.”
He did so, acutely aware of her warmth and the memory of her touch on his shoulder. He spoke, but scarcely heard himself. He was too full of her closeness and the night and the scent of her.
“So you used the church’s money and followed them down here,” Allison said when he fell silent. “Amazing. And you’re sure it was the same man behind you in the Aqaba souk? What was his name?”
“Barton Robards—Rogue. And yes, I’m sure.” Once again he was chilled by the memory of Rogue’s words. A knife. He pushed the thought away by telling her the whole story of Alexis.
After a silence, Wade heard a new tone. With the voice of a woman-child, Allison asked him, “Did you leave a girl behind in—whatever that city was called?”
“Grozny.” And because of the vulnerability in her voice, and because of the night and the stars and the wind, Wade found the courage to speak from the yearnings of his heart. “I’ve never had someone I really, you know, loved.”
She backed off far enough to inspect his face. Wade turned to meet her gaze, although it was hard. With a wisdom that transcended his feeble words and her own awkwardness, Allison’s gaze opened, filled with compassionate understanding. And slowly, ever so slowly, she drew closer to him, stopping now to study his eyes, finding the reassurance she sought, moving closer, closer still, until her lips met his.
Wade awoke to a desert choir in full performance.
Donkeys brayed. Camels groaned. Goats bleated. Desert sparrows relished the power the echoes gave their chirps. Behind his tent a group of men chanted their morning prayers. Other voices murmured and called and even sang in their desert tongue. Baby goats cried like a band of hungry young children.
He rolled from his bedding, looked around, saw that all the other men of his tent were up and started with their day. He combed back his hair with his fingers, tucked in his shirt, flipped open the tent cover, and blinked in the glare.
“Good morning, sleepyhead.” Wade squinted and saw Allison approach with a smile and a glass of tea. “I was just coming to wake you up.”
Gingerly he accepted the steaming glass, grasping it around the rim. “How long have you been up?”
“Oh, hours.” She smiled. “Truthfully, about fifteen minutes. Mahmoud wants to tell us something. He’s waiting in the main tent.”
Wade sipped his tea, struggled to find the proper way to say what he wanted to express. “Our talk last night was, uh, really...”
“Me, too.” The touch she gave his arm was as soft as her gaze. “But we probably should save the rest for later. Mahmoud looked like a man in a hurry.”
At their approach Mahmoud rose and offered them a formal greeting, to which they nodded in thanks, then he waved them to seats. His father blessed them with a toothless grin and chanted words they could not understand.
Mahmoud gestured with hands to the side of his head, asking how Wade had slept. Wade leaned forward and patted the stones lining the tent’s central fire. Like a rock. The old man cackled with delight, then heaved his chest full with a deep breath. The desert air. Wade nodded his agreement and sipped at his tea. It was good to be alive.
By the tent’s outer corner an older woman sat where she could remain in the shadows, yet still watch the children play. She combed shreds of thick goat’s hair with a pair of wire brushes, then gathered the strands and spun them into black thread on a portable spindle. Beyond her, children laughed and squealed and rolled a pair of inflated goatskins back and forth between them. The children were beautifully bright, their intelligent faces so full of character that they looked more like miniature adults than children. Then Wade heard the sloshing liquid inside the skins, and realized they were making curds from goat’s milk.
Mahmoud brushed the sand before him flat and smooth, then drew
a line and pointed to the eastern hills. He made a humping motion. Up and over to the other side. The old man nodded and spoke a running commentary as Mahmoud drew a slit running partway through the line—a narrow passage leading to the mountain’s other side. Here he drew a circle, then pointed around him. A camp.
Next Mahmoud pointed to his own truck, pointed at the sun, drew a wavering line toward the sun. Then he pointed higher in the sky, drew another wavering line from a different direction. A third time the finger raised to point directly overhead, then a third line drew in toward the camp. Wade nodded and spoke to Allison, “I think he means he watched trucks come in yesterday at different times, from different directions.”
“A meeting point,” Allison said, slightly breathless with the sudden excitement.
Again Mahmoud pointed at his truck, then showed an open palm. Five vehicles. He then tapped the nearest stone, hands held over his head, squinted, looked around, shrugged. This time Wade looked confused; Mahmoud repeated the gesture. Then Allison understood. “He’s saying the chasm has ledges so that the camp can’t be detected from above.”
Wade asked Mahmoud, “Bedouin?”
Mahmoud balanced his hands in the air. He was not sure. Then he pointed to his chest and shook his head. Definitely not of his tribe. He pointed at Wade and nodded vigorously. “Foreigners in the camp,” Allison said.
Mahmoud stood. “Jallah?” We go?
Wade rose to his feet and Allison followed. “Jallah,” he agreed.
Before starting out, Mahmoud had them don old Jordanian army jackets—camouflage against prying eyes. He then brought out a pair of men’s headdresses and insisted on fitting them both personally. The white-and-red-checked kaffiyeh was set on the head, held in place with a black thong twisted into a figure eight then folded into a double loop. Mahmoud pointed from it to the camel’s hoofs, indicating that it was also used for hobbling the animals in an emergency. Then the kaffiyeh’s two tasseled ends were crossed behind the head and tucked into the hoops.
By that time most of the camp had gathered to watch and see them off. They smiled and murmured approval when Wade was equipped and joined in delighted laughter when Allison’s headdress was set in place. They laughed even harder when the camels were led up.
Riders of the Pale Horse Page 23