by Harold Lamb
Sergeant Daniel, who had been cleaning his rifle barrel, stepped over recumbent men to Jacob. "You should lie down," he muttered. "Sleep."
And he held out his hand, explaining brusquely that he would take back the paper with the family names. It would not be necessary, now, for the American gentleman to remember them.
"Why not?"
The question seemed to surprise the Assyrian. With furrowed brow he considered it. "Now will be no danger." And he nodded at the tribesmen. "Some Baradust men are here. Their aimak—their camp for winter is near to Riyat. They will take you, riding horses, to Riyat."
"Why will they do that?"
Again the old Assyrian looked at Jacob in surprise. "Because you wish to go there."
Simply because he and Michal had taken shelter in their tent, these tribesmen would assume responsibility for the two strangers, finding a way down the mountain ridges, providing food, and keeping them from harm.
"What will you do, Daniel?" Jacob asked them.
"I go with him to the church of Mar Giorgios." He pointed at the boy who had been hurt by the glancing bullet. It was as if he were telling Jacob how he planned to take a different train out of a junction. For a moment Jacob wondered if he should not turn aside with the Assyrians for the nearest refuge. But the monastery would not be in communication with Baghdad.
Taking back his list of names, Daniel explained carefully, "The Baradust say English artficers are at Riyat, making investigation of happenings. They have good transport." And it flashed across Jacob's mind that Daniel feared that his list of names might in some way involve him with the British.
Jacob reflected that he and Michal alone could not survive two days of this storm. Beside him the shaggy horses, pressing close together, hung their heads, drawn close to the men, seeking the warmth of the tent. "You think we can get down through this storm, Daniel?" he wondered.
"After, you can. Certainly." The Assyrian's dark eyes blinked, and for the first time since Jacob had known him he laughed. "This storm? It is a very little wind. It will hide your tracks. Sixty-three years I have lived, and in all those years the mountains have done me no harm."
The first word of Araman came to the outer world over the cables. It was a brief dispatch of the Soviet news agency, Tass, datelined Teheran. Published in many American dailies including those in Washington, it related concisely:
According to the newspaper Rahbar, the conference of the Democratic Kurdish party in the valley of Araman was interrupted by unlawful action of reactionary Kurds, These reactionaries serve foreign imperialism and the Anglo-American oil companies. Some Kurds were filled. Until order is restored in the valley of Araman, the representatives of the Democratic Kurdish party will meet in Sanjbulak,
Jacob and Michal came in touch with the outer world when, in a lull between rain gusts, they rode down into the familiar ravine of Riyat, having said good-by to the Baradust guides beyond sight of the Iraqi sentries at the village approach.
Immediately they felt the change in Riyat. Troops were quartered along the swollen streams; Sir Clement Bigsby's bungalow looked deserted behind its shutters; Mr. Parabat's cherished black car was mud-splashed, with a military tarpaulin stretched over it.
Quickly Michal reined her pony into the courtyard gate and stopped with a whispered, "Oh, Jacob."
The neglected garden was scarred by hoof and wheel prints, the guest bungalow had lost its windows, and one corner of the laboratory had been demolished by a shell. The water wheel churned noisily under the pressure of the flood.
Michal, wet and hungry, had clung to an unreasonable hope that here she might find warmth and dry clothes, if not servants to wait on her.
Two men came out of the undamaged part of the perfume factory, and the one in a squadron leader's uniform quickened his step. He was ruddy and well groomed and he exclaimed, "Michal Thorne, by the gods—missing and found again!"
When he looked up into her face, he reached out to help her down. And she wondered why once she had thought that Aurel Leicester was almost Jacob's twin. They were so different now. Long, long ago she had known officers who wore such immaculate uniforms and made small talk.
"Aren't you a little late, Aurel," she asked curiously, "in arriving?" She had not known she was so tired, until she heard her voice saying things that her mind never meant. "It has all happened, and we are only ghosts."
Aurel was still staring at her gravely. "Then we'll give your ghost a spot of whisky, Michal, and put her into dry blankets. But who's the other ghost?"
Jacob, who had turned off to inspect the car, came back then. "Squadron Leader," he asked, "is that car running? Is the road open to Baghdad?"
The two Britishers had seen extreme fatigue before, and they were cheerfully non-committal as they escorted Michal and Jacob into a drawing room where an elusive sweet odor still clung and newspapers and magazines lay under a lighted lamp. Not until they were sipping a second drink did the older man in civilian clothes question Jacob carelessly. "You've seen something of the Kurds in these seven months, Captain Ide?"
Jacob nodded. This civilian seemed to know his rank. In the next room an impassive sergeant sat by a radio.
"Then what do you make of this?" The quiet civilian showed Jacob a copy of the Tass dispatch that had been repeated to them over the air from Baghdad. When Jacob read it through twice without answering, he insisted a little. "You notice it mentions the valley of Araman. You've been there, Captain Ide?"
They wanted the military angle of it all, Jacob thought, that was their job. They were on duty here, in rooms with warm stoves, and what he said to them would go immediately over the air to officials in Baghdad. The ache of his fatigue separated him from them; his weariness had no voice to speak to these bright, ruddy, and polite beings. Aurel was insisting that Michal take a sandwich from a clean white plate. Even Michal, with a Kurdish embroidered shawl tucked around her waist and her fur jacket dark with wet, seemed out of place in this room. "Araman? It's more important than——" His voice broke off. "How soon can we start?"
"He means for Baghdad," Michal added. "And the American Legation."
The two Britishers exchanged a quick glance, as if consulting together about the mentality of the exhausted wayfarers.
"But, Michal," objected Aurel, "I shouldn't leave Riyat, and you can't in this beastly weather."
"But, Aurel, yesterday we rode through snow and hail, and today in the rain, and I can certainly ride to Baghdad in the sunshine in your luxurious car."
"It's Mr. Parabat's car, you know."
"Mr. Parabat is dead," Jacob said, "and Mullah Ismail is dead. We ought to start in an hour to get out of the ravine before sunset"
Again the officer and the civilian consulted each other silently. "Right!" agreed the squadron leader. "I'll drive you both down, Captain Ide, and you can tell me the story on the way—of course after lunch. We have an omelette with the curry today."
When Jacob came back to the door of the Regent Palace Hotel two days later, in Baghdad, he stopped, feeling that it was not himself but another man who was walking into the familiar lobby. This other man stood there in a pair of indescribable shoes and a stained, torn suit that attracted the gaze of the small doorboy who wore a shining white 'abba. The real Jacob was listening to Paul, who said he could never leave the people of Araman, and he was watching Daniel carry the wounded boy in the drifting snow.
This shining lobby and dusty, crowded Rashid Street outside were no more than the setting of a stage across which the wraith of Jacob Ide moved, speaking when he heard his cue, paying money at the proper time. This stage had been cleverly lighted and painted, but it would inevitably change with the next act, as Mr. Parabat's garden had changed.
At the legation, in a room blistering hot with the afternoon sun, a chargé d'affaires—the minister being absent in Cairo—had suggested sleep and rest, after which Jacob could return to dictate his story to a stenographer, to be forwarded in the next pouch after a week or so to t
he Department at Washington. The youthful charge had been frank and friendly in admitting that they knew almost nothing about the tribal area in the northern mountains—which was certainly out of the legation's jurisdiction—nor did he personally understand tribal legends. But he had been very explicit in reminding Jacob that the former captain of USAFIME could no longer travel without a civilian passport, now that travel orders were unavailable, since all military commands had been moved out of Cairo. Application for a passport, explained the bored young man in the stifling room, would have to be forwarded to Washington; in which case there would be a delay of a month before Jacob Ide could leave Baghdad.
This other shadowy Jacob Ide, finding his way through the stage setting, could not argue that he had to speak at once with somebody in America, in the Pentagon or the State Department. The fact that he wanted terribly to do so had no meaning in the act that was going on in Baghdad that day. He had walked out of the legation, without taking the long printed application for a civilian passport that would mean a month's delay. . . .
Now he swung himself around and ran up the marble steps to the bedroom floor. A servant carrying a lunch tray drew back respectfully before the impetuous foreigner. Oblivious, Jacob hurried on to Michal's room. For hours he had not been near her, and now he longed for her smile and the warmth of her eyes.
Inside her door he looked around, surprised. He had imagined the room as he had left it, with blinds drawn down and Michal drowsy on the bed, the fingers of one slim hand signing a farewell to him, and her two talismans, the bronze horse and ikon, beside her. Now the windows were open wide. Michal wore a man's gray dressing gown, with a blanket wrapped around her feet, and, with her hair uncombed, she was chattering to two strangers—one a well-dressed elderly Arab, the other a slight girl with a Sister's blue headgear.
"Jacob," she cried, "they want our passports, the hotel people do. I left mine in the suitcase, and I don't know what you've done about yours, so I said you would tell them. This is Dr. Jemail Ishaq of the Royal Hospital—Aurel sent him—and this is Sister Miriam, and they've both been examining me by turns, and finding a temperature with other things not so important."
"Only a little temperature, Miss Thorne." Dr. Ishaq showed white teeth in a smile. "Really, less than two degrees."
Michal had done nothing to her face, and her eyes looked dark against the whiteness of it; her voice had the brittle edge of excitement. The physician had advised her to come to the hospital for observation for a few days.
"When?" Jacob asked.
"Today is always better than tomorrow. You see we have such a variety of fevers in Baghdad—we don't know ourselves how many. It is always better to find out than to wait and see, Miss Thorne."
The name did not sound like Michal. The strong light showed the walls to be purple instead of soft blue. Flies clustered around the ceiling fan, and the rasp of auto horns rose from the street. Jacob remembered that these people of Baghdad, at least the diplomatic corps, knew Michal—that other Michal who had escaped to Mr. Parabat's garden after the war. He remembered that a physician here would not visit a woman unless someone else were present.
They had conventions here, and for what you obtained you paid. Jacob had no more than a few hundred dollars in creased and water-stained express checks that had been stuck in his hip pocket and forgotten until now. For those bits of paper the hotel clerks handed over dinar notes to him readily. The legation had not been willing to advance him money. Still, with the creased slips of paper he and Michal could pay their expenses in Baghdad for a month. She could stay at the hospital for observation and he could find a room in a smaller hotel.
Fear touched him swiftly, because Dr. Ishaq stood there, smiling inexorably. Michal, coming out of the cold of the high altitudes into the germ-ridden heat of the congested city, might develop pneumonia in her weakened condition. Even if they had had unlimited money, she could not start out in a plane like this.
"Yes," he said to the physician. "Miss Thorne will go to the hospital today."
"But, darling," Michal objected instantly, "I feel very well, and I have no desire to be cooped up in the Royal Hospital."
The Arab doctor and the nurse looked at Jacob in silence. With a nod, he drew them out into the corridor. "Is there danger of pneumonia?" he asked bluntly.
"Possibly, yes," the Arab stated carefully. "It might prove to be malaria. I do not think anything worse. We have merely learned to be suspicious of a temperature until we are certain." And again he waited courteously.
"I'll telephone you if Michal is coming around today."
For the first time Sister Miriam spoke diffidently. "Dr. Ishaq is not easy for you to telephone. I shall wait."
It seemed to Jacob that they wanted Michal to go with them at once. While Sister Miriam seated herself in the corridor, he went back into the door and said, "You should go for this observation they want."
Beckoning him, she made room for him on the bed. "Tell me what happened at the legation first."
"They want me to write a letter about it all."
"Oh, Jacob, you shouldn't do that."
No, he shouldn't do that now. For years in Cairo he had typed long reports which had been carried away in pouches and had disappeared somewhere in a labyrinth of files in offices. He should not do that with the story of what they had seen and heard in the valley of Araman. But what could he do? Telephone? If connection could be made from Baghdad to the Capital, it would be no more than an unknown voice, relating incredible things to strange ears. If he had money enough . . .
"Jacob." She had been waiting for him to speak, lying back, trying not to cough, her hand dry and restless in his. "What should we do? I feel as if this room was holding us in, like two helpless children, and I want——" She looked up at him, unsmiling. "I know the British Ambassador. Would it help to talk to him?"
He shook his head.
"My stuff can wait." He was thinking of the hospital.
"Ours—and don't call it that." She pretended to think portentously, with brows drawn down. "It's so real to me now, more real than when I teased you that time at the lake. Wait, Jacob. Give me a minute to think. I'm rather stupid about such things, but I can feel the need of this."
For a while she was quiet, looking at the bronze Pegasus and beyond through the window where a small balcony opened into the garden. "I can understand a little, Jacob. The mountains of Kurdistan aren't going to stay as they were, after all that happened at Araman. They may be like the Dardanelles, something to make conflict among the powerful nations unless they are made into something secure. Your idea is to make them inviolate—like a bridgehead toward peace, something that exists. You see," she added proudly, "how I've been thinking about it, and about. A dream never comes true, does it, Jacob? But this can be so real and fine."
Like Dr. Ishaq, Jacob waited, knowing that Michal was talking half to herself, until her mind was made up about something.
"My house didn't come true, but something must come out of what we saw and what you planned."
"And what Sir Clement sought for."
She nodded a little. "And Paul and his father. They knew what could be done. Where is Daoud, Jacob?"
Although he had tried that morning, he had not been able to reach the young archaeologist at the museum. Daoud had arrived safely, only to be taken away, to Cairo or to England, after he had spent some days at the British Embassy. Even Aurel Leicester had denied knowledge of him, so Jacob reasoned that the British authorities had held his information to be vitally important, and had sent him elsewhere for closer questioning, perhaps to the Foreign Office itself.
"I suppose we're both idiots about this," Michal went on in her judicial manner, "but I can't help feeling that we belong in the valley of Araman. Am I too idiotic, Jacob?"
"No"
"And if people like us can't go back there, it will be worse for the world. You needn't answer that, and I'll be sensible now."
"I haven't been sensible at all toda
y, Michal. This place seems like a stage with everybody dressed up to act a part."
"Perhaps that's just what they're doing. I prefer to think in terms of marionettes." Her low laugh reached him. "I wonder what we'd think up for New York?"
"You'd think first about some new clothes."
"I wonder."
Now Michal had done with her thoughts; she brushed back her obtrusive hair and smiled up at him importantly. "You're going there at once, Jacob darling."
"Not I, and not at once."
"The only thing you can do is to go right away to Washington and talk to the people who can get things done. And you shouldn't lose a day."
That, she said flatly, was the unanswerable logic of facts. They had not money enough for the two of them to go, even if she were able to make the trip.
"Can't you see me boarding a plane in this garment, Jacob ? But I'm dressed perfectly for the hospital."
After he had made his report, she insisted, and had started the mills of the gods grinding in the State Department for safeguarding Kurdistan, he could cable her money and she could follow him—after Dr. Ishaq had finished with his observation and had christened her fever.
"It's a nice dream, Michal," he admitted fondly; "one of your best, in fact. The stubborn fact is that without cash enough for air transport all the way, or any American plane, or passport, I can't go now."
"Of course you can. All you have to do is call Aurel. British Security and the British Army can still move marionettes about, if so inclined."
She insisted until, to please her, he went down to the telephone; without expectation he labored with the instrument and in time heard Aurel's modulated voice say, "Squadron Leader Leicester speaking." As if the war were still on.
And Michal was justified in her confidence. There was a BOAC aircraft leaving the airdrome in two hours, and a place could be had for Jacob. Under the circumstances he would need pay only a minimum fare, to be transported to Cairo, Malta, Marseilles, Croydon, and across the Atlantic to Gander, where he could be ferried over to the American planes. A special order could take care of the matter of the passport, since Jacob still had his military identification. . . ."It's rather important that you should be sent through without delay, Captain Ide."