Another set of doors, these of intricately carved sandalwood, were pushed open by a pair of dark-skinned southerners. The official straightened to his full diminutive height and motioned Jake to walk behind him. They passed through stout pillars supporting a domed portico decorated with ivory mosaics. Sharp-eyed courtiers gathered about fountains of sparkling silver grew silent and furtive at his passage. Stern warriors stood at attention, gleaming scimitars at the ready. Peacocks squawked a raucous greeting from tall cages.
A third pair of doors opened before them, these inlaid with intricate patterns of silver and ivory and semiprecious stones. Jake stepped inside, looked up, and gasped. The high dome was layered in sheets of gold.
The official murmured a salutation and bowed low. Jake decided a salute suited him better. When the sultan motioned them forward, Jake proceeded at a stiff-armed march. He approached across a sea of bright carpets, stopped before the dais, and saluted a second time.
The sultan wore an elaborately embroidered cloak of gold and black, sealed at the neck with a ruby the size of a hen’s egg. His trousers and curled cloth slippers were sewn with shimmering gold thread. His be-ringed fingers grasped a staff of gold topped with an emerald half the size of Jake’s fist. But nothing could disguise the flabby folds of the man’s indolent body, nor the cruel glint of his hooded dark eyes.
The staff dipped in Jake’s direction and the sultan spoke languidly. His official translated, “Great sultan asks, why you not bow like other mens.”
“In my country,” Jake replied, still at rigid attention, “the greatest sign of respect a soldier can give to a superior officer is the salute.”
“Superior, yes, is good answer.” The official turned and replied with a torrent of words and florid hand gestures. As the sultan listened, he gave a tiny flickering motion with one finger. Instantly a servant appeared at his side, stoked the bowl of a silver hookah, set a smoldering coal on the top, then with an elaborate bow handed the sultan the pipe. The sultan sprawled upon his dais, settled within gold-embroidered velvet cushions, and drew hard until the pipe gurgled and threw up great clouds of pungent smoke. Finally satisfied that it was drawing well, he spoke again.
“Great sultan ask, when are cars ready.”
“The first should be up and running in two days,” Jake replied. “Three at the most.”
The official risked a warning glance. “Is best not to be wrong.”
“My assistant and I are working around the clock,” Jake replied solemnly. “Can’t have the great sultan kept waiting.”
“No, yes, is true.” Hesitantly the official turned back and replied.
The sultan, his face wreathed in smoke, watched Jake. Again Musad al Rasuli spoke. Hareesh translated, “And the other Rolls Royce motor vehicles?”
“A couple of weeks. Probably not more than that.”
“Great sultan say, he wait a year, more, and you fix Rolls Royce motor vehicles in days, maybe he keep you here, give you job in stable. Permanent retainer.”
“Tell the great sultan it would be an honor to serve him,” Jake replied solemnly, keeping his thoughts to himself about being made a slave. Years of dealing with superior officers had taught him that a direct refusal was the worst possible reply to an order.
“Great sultan say, what you expect for these workings.”
“The great sultan strikes me as a fair and generous man,” Jake replied straight-faced. “Why don’t we let him decide what the work is worth.”
The official tossed him another uncertain glance, then replied. The sultan contemplatively drew upon his hookah, then motioned his dismissal. Jake threw another exaggerated salute, spun about, and marched back alongside the little official. Only when the great doors had closed behind them did he permit himself a quiet little smile.
* * *
Every sense was on full alert as together they went to the rendezvous with Jasmyn that afternoon. His mind shouted danger, but Jake could not refuse Pierre’s insistence that he come along. Despite the heat, Pierre wore the black knit cap many older Arabs used against the night chill. With his shoulders hunched, walking half a pace behind and beside Jake, he remained as much hidden as possible.
Jasmyn’s calm demeanor dissolved when she spotted Pierre. She rushed up and shepherded them into a refuse-littered alcove between the stalls. “Why do you come?”
“To see you,” Pierre replied.
“Oh, oh, oh,” she said, reaching for him, pulling back, her face a tormented mask of fear and hope. “How I have dreamed of hearing those words.”
“I have thought and I have thought and I have thought,” Pierre said, speaking to the stones at his feet. “I speak now so that my friend can hear this as well. Without him I would be lost in the darkness still. I do not know what the answer is, but I know that my life without you is no life at all.”
Tears streamed unheeded down her face as she reached with trembling fingers and took one of Pierre’s hands in both of hers. Jake blocked them from the view of passersby as much as he could and felt his own heart sing. Jasmyn stroked Pierre’s hand and whispered, “Pierre, oh, Pierre.”
“Perhaps,” Pierre said, his voice unsteady, “perhaps you can help me to find the answers.”
“There is nothing I would rather do,” she whispered. “For now, for tomorrow, for all the tomorrows to come.”
Jake felt eyes searching his back, probing the shadows where a fair-skinned stranger held the hands of a weeping woman dressed in the garb of the desert tribes. “I think we’d all have a better chance of seeing another tomorrow if we continued this somewhere else.”
Pierre nodded. “You will come with us?”
“I cannot,” she said, and released one hand long enough to wipe her face. “I would never be permitted entry into the palace grounds. And I have news.”
Pierre stiffened. “Patrique?”
She nodded. “He is here.”
“But how did the official not recognize me?”
The tears started anew. “I have word that he is not as he once was.”
The glint in his eyes turned fierce. “What have they done to him?”
“Pierre,” she whispered. “You are hurting me.”
Immediately he slackened his clenched fist. “Tell me.”
“He is held in the palace dungeon. I have a map.” She reluctantly released his hand to extract a slip of paper from the folds of her robe. “There is a barred window high up in his cell wall. It opens onto the yard just beyond the stable courtyard.”
“We will find it,” Jake said, an idea taking form in his mind.
“You must hurry,” she said. “Ibn Rashid’s men are said to be here now, striking the final bargain.”
“Tonight,” Pierre hissed. “My brother will greet the next dawn as a free man.”
“But how can you escape?” Her tone became increasingly frantic. “They would shoot you on sight. I could not bear—”
Jake interrupted her with, “Would your people offer us shelter?”
She showed confusion. “How—”
He leaned down. “Would they?”
Jasmyn forced her mind to work. “Some of my mother’s tribe are camped at the valley’s far eastern end. This I heard from the kinsman who works in the sultan’s palace. If I left now, I could be there before nightfall. If I ask for help, they are bound by custom to grant it.”
“Better and better,” Jake said. “We should be at the road’s far eastern end just after dawn tomorrow.”
“How is that possible?” She turned to Pierre and begged, “Do not get yourself hurt. If you were to die, I would as well.”
He reached for both her hands, held them a moment, then asked Jake, “You have a plan?”
“The bare bones is all.”
“Go to your people,” Pierre told her. “Tell them we come. Ask them for shelter.”
She looked long into his face, drinking in what had so long been denied her. Then she leaned forward and kissed him once, twice, a third time,
before releasing him and pulling up her scarf. “Promise me you will come.”
“With the dawn,” Pierre said, his eyes kindled with a new light. “Now go.”
Chapter Sixteen
“They fire a cannon to open and close the main gates?”
Jake stared at his friend. “You really have been out of it, haven’t you.”
“I don’t understand. How can we be sure exactly when it fires?”
“We can’t. But the mountains throw the sound back and forth for a while.”
“How long?”
“Long enough. That is, if we’re ready.”
Pierre was silent.
“What do you think?”
He rose to his feet. “I think I need to hear this cannon for myself.”
As they walked the crowded ways, Jake told him, “That was a great thing you did, speaking to Jasmyn like that.”
“I confess to you and you alone that it would have been impossible without your help, my friend.”
“Without God’s help, you mean.”
“Perhaps,” Pierre said, climbing the rampart’s ladder behind Jake. “Still, I find it easier to credit you than the Invisible.”
They stood in silence and watched the evening descend. When the cannon boomed on cue, Jake counted off the rumbling thunder. “I give it ten, maybe twelve seconds. More than enough time.”
“For what?” Pierre demanded.
As night draped the highlands in a blanket of darkness and the immense doors rumbled shut beneath them, Jake outlined his idea. He finished just as the muezzin’s wail began to fade. Pierre remained silent for a time, mulling it over in his mind before declaring, “It is a good plan.”
“You think it’ll work?”
“We can only hope.” He clapped his friend on the shoulder and turned for the ladder. “Come. It is time to see if the directions are correct and my brother truly languishes in an Arab’s dungeon.”
Night cloaked their movements as they walked past the stables and entered a narrow connecting passageway. Eighty meters farther on, the passage opened into a second yard, this one for farm animals. Cows, chickens, ducks, geese, goats, and even a few sheep filled the muddy area with their noise and their smell.
Together the two scouted the surrounding walls and saw, to their immense relief, that the map was correct—no windows faced them from the upper palace walls. They stood and listened to the cacophony and searched the walls of the inner keep.
Jake’s guess appeared to be correct—guards were concentrated along the outer keep and within the palace itself. The inner wall was unguarded except for the sentinels at the gate.
They could see only one opening into the palace foundations, a low window just beyond the trough. The air rising through the thick iron bars was so foul that Jake had trouble approaching. Pierre fell to his knees, clenched the bars, and hissed into the fetid darkness, “Patrique!”
From the pit came a stirring, clinking shuffle. At the sound of chains dragging across stone, the cords of Pierre’s neck and arms stretched taut, as though he sought to tear the bars from the wall. He hissed a second time, “Patrique!”
“C’est qui?” came the fearful reply.
“Pierre.”
A long pause, then the tremulous murmur, “Mon frère?”
Jake examined the crossbars and knew a qualm of doubt. They were not bolted to the wall, but imbedded deep into the stone. “Ask him if he’s chained to the wall.”
Pierre did so. The reply wafted upward with the stench. “Oui.”
“Three ropes,” Jake muttered.
“What?”
“Give him the scoop,” Jake replied. “Hurry.”
Pierre spoke at length while Jake nervously watched the shadows. Seconds stretched like hours until Pierre sighed, released his hold, and stood. “We go.”
* * *
When dinner was brought, they sent the servant to summon Hareesh Yohari. The official bustled in more than an hour later, clearly miffed at being disturbed. “What this is, hey? You tell servant go bringing sultan’s personal administrator, better having good reason.”
Jake straightened, wiping his hands on an oily rag. Pierre kept his burning rage hidden beneath the engine cowling. “This one’s almost ready,” Jake replied, unable to drag up the pretense of respect. The sound of Patrique’s fearful voice rising from the foul darkness hovered still in his mind.
“Yes?” The official was too pleased to note Jake’s casual manner. “Is two days early for Rolls Royce motor vehicle to running.”
Jake nodded. “We need to take it out for a trial spin tomorrow morning.”
Hareesh’s brow furrowed. “What this is, trial spin?”
“We need to take the car, the motor vehicle, out to make sure it’s running right. You wouldn’t want it to break down with the sultan driving, would you?”
The diminutive official showed real horror. “By the Prophet’s sword, no, no, is great danger. Heads watching sunset from spike on wall.”
“Right. So before the city wakes up and the streets become crowded, just after the cannon fires and the doors open, we’ll drive the car out a ways and check it all out. Then we’ll bring it back, give it a good polish, and send for you.”
Hareesh bobbed his head like a feeding waterbird. “Yes, yes, is smart thinkings. You going for trial before sultan waking.”
“Gotcha. You better tell the guards so they don’t wonder what we’re doing.”
“Yes, am telling all peoples tonight.”
Jake played it casual, asked the inevitable, “You want to come along?”
Hareesh pretended to give it serious consideration before replying, “No, is not necessary. I drive with sultan.” He smiled in utter superiority. “Where are mens to going with car? Valley closed, no roads out, yes?”
“Exactly,” Jake agreed, and heaved a great internal sigh as the little official spun on his heel and paraded off.
Pierre chose that moment to extract his grease-smeared face and demand, “Why did you have to ask him that?”
“The only way I could be sure he wouldn’t pop up unexpectedly,” Jake replied. “The car ready?”
“This car has been perfectly ready,” Pierre replied, “for fifteen years.”
“Then let’s fire the sucker up.”
With a new battery and tires and oil and filters, not to mention a careful adjustment by two semiskilled mechanics, the Rolls fired on the first try. Jake swung the cowling closed, fastened the great leather straps, and stepped back. From a dozen paces the sound was barely audible.
He walked over to where Pierre sat behind the wheel. “Who drives tomorrow?”
“You,” he replied immediately. “I will be far too nervous.”
When their preparations were completed, neither man showed any interest in sleep. They hunkered down by the cooking stove, sipped cups of steaming tea, and silently mused upon what lay ahead.
Finally Pierre raised dark eyes over the rim of his cup and asked, “Do you think it would be a good thing for us to pray?”
“I think it would be a very good thing,” Jake said, setting down his cup, realizing he had been half-hoping Pierre would ask. “A very good thing indeed.”
Chapter Seventeen
While it was still pitch black, they drove the Rolls through the narrow passage separating their stable from the animal yard. The engine purred with silent grace as Jake eased it forward with scarcely an inch to spare on either side. The yard was quiet save for the bleating of an amiable goat and a single rooster anticipating the dawn. Jake backed the big car up close to the dungeon window, then went back to help Pierre with the ropes.
While his friend lowered the pair of ropes down into the stinking darkness, Jake ran the thickest strand they had found in the stable yards back and forth among the crossed iron bars, then tied both ends to either side of the Rolls’ bumper. After carefully testing the knots, he helped Pierre measure out and prepare his own lines. “You better hope your brother understood
to tie the longer one to his waist and the shorter one to the wall. Otherwise we’re going to stretch him to the limit.”
“He understood,” Pierre said, frantically tugging on the lines.
“You’re sure there’s enough play in those lines so they go taut in turn?” Jake cautioned. “The bars have to give first, then the chain is pulled from the wall, then he’s raised up to safety. Otherwise—”
“Enough, enough,” Pierre hissed, pointing to the lightening sky. “Get into position, Jake. It is almost time.”
His heart in his throat, Jake climbed into the quietly idling automobile and waited. Minutes stretched out endlessly, granting him ample time to worry through all the possible things that might go wrong. The sky continued to brighten until he finally decided that the cannon had misfired, that the gates were long since open, that they couldn’t hear the muezzin’s cry from this end of the palace, that soon a guard was going to appear and point a great blunderbuss down on their heads and—
The cannon’s boom caught him totally by surprise. Jake’s hand slipped off the gear lever in a sweaty jerk. He fumbled, meshed into first, eased the clutch, and started forward. As the rope connected to the bars pulled taut, he turned back, saw Pierre check the other two and give him a pumping action with one fist. He gunned the engine and willed the bars to give.
Nothing.
The motor roared, the tires spun, Pierre was pelted by a storm of dust and gravel and barnyard filth. His anger mounting, Jake eased off, reversed back, slapped it back into first gear, and tried again. The bars refused to give.
Jake felt something snap in his head. Casting caution to the wind, he slammed the car into reverse, swiveled in his seat, stomped on the accelerator, and roared with the bellowing engine.
He struck the wall with a crashing thud.
Pierre inspected the wall, shouted, “Again!”
A second time he drove forward, raced back, and slammed into the palace.
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