“I just don’t want this to turn into another Grail hunt. Last time we didn’t have two pennies to rub together.”
“It’s not going to be a Grail hunt,” Rick snapped. “We know the Ark is real, ok? We just have to get to it.”
Sighing, Kai turned to the boarders. “Tell your guys they’ll get half the payment now, and half after we reach Axum,” he said to jersey kid.
One of the boarders said something in Amharic. Jersey kid shook his head. “They won’t like that.”
Kai shrugged. “Then they won’t get paid. All we need is a ride. Are they really going to pass up an easy job like this?” It sounded weak to him; negotiating and bluffing had never been his strong suit. Rick was the expert bullshitter. “Also, if we don’t go north, then you don’t get the gear. So it’s in your best interest to convince your pals.”
Jersey kid’s eyes narrowed, and he turned to consult with his peers. Kai swore inwardly. Had that been pushing it too far? Kids like these had a certain amount of pride, and would only be jerked around for so long.
They discussed in low voices for several minutes, until their leader pulled out a phone, presumably to call the smugglers. He spoke in clipped, business-like tones, sounding twice his age. After a few terse lines, he pocketed the phone. “Fine. They aren’t happy, but fine.”
“They can bite me,” Rick muttered.
Jersey kid grinned. “Wouldn’t say that too loud.”
A pair of headlights swung into view at the far end of the alley, shining bright enough to scare a couple cats out from behind a dumpster. Slowly a cargo truck pulled in, the rumble of its gas engine echoing off the walls. Judging by the logo above the cab, it had once been used to transport ice cream.
Kai grew more alert, an unconscious reflex. He took note of every detail, counting the silhouettes visible in the cab of the truck (three), noted how the one in the back was sharing his seat with a long, thin object (assault rifle, probably), and quickly located the bulge of the pistols beneath the shirts of the two men who stepped out of the truck. The third remained seated with his rifle. Kai also noted how jersey kid and his group bunched up, forming a tighter knot.
The driver approached first, his passenger following at his side. Both were wiry-looking, dressed in clothes that were too large to obscure their weapons and wearing mosquito-repelling paste in various shades of pale green and orange. The driver had merely smeared his on; the passenger wore it like tiger stripes.
For a moment, no one spoke. They all stood there, sizing each other up. Both the driver and his passenger spent a good ten seconds staring at Kai through narrowed eyes. Kai kept a vague, friendly smile on his face. At best, it would put them at ease. At worst, they’d be slightly concerned for his sanity and therefore less likely to start anything.
“Ah, ok,” Rick said. “I guess I’ll go first –”
The driver barked something, not at Rick but at jersey kid. His voice was a lot reedier than Kai had expected. Jersey kid barked back, eyes narrowed. The driver gestured to the A/V crates. Jersey kid shook his head. The exchange continued, growing more animated. Both began gesticulating wildly.
“What’s happening?” Kai asked, voice low.
“My Amharic’s not good enough,” Rick said. “But if I had to guess, I’d say they’re arguing.”
Jersey kid took a step back and spat on the ground. The driver sniffed but said nothing, scowl set defiantly.
“Well, that didn’t inspire confidence,” Rick sighed. “Hey, kid. Care to fill us in?”
Jersey kid turned to them, exasperated, suddenly every bit the teenager. “He doesn’t want to take you.”
“What? Why?” Rick turned to the driver, then back. “We had a deal. You told him that, right? Look.” He raised his wristband to display the interface of the crypto app that was currently open on it. “Look! Asiri shihi! Crypto!” He tapped at the screen, setting up a transfer. “More later, ok?”
A soft buzz was audible across the space between them. The driver pulled out his phone and peered at it for a moment, then tapped. Rick’s wristband binged, and Kai saw, with a slow sinking in his gut, the number representing their joint savings dwindle rapidly.
“Ok?” Rick asked. “We good?”
“Good,” the driver said flatly. “You ride in back.”
“We’ve got two more,” Kai told him. “We paid for four.”
The driver glanced at the car, then eyed him for a long moment. His eyes tracked down, settling on the holstered pistol for a long second. Then he made a motion with his head that could’ve been a shrug or a nod or just to get rid of an irritating fly. As one both smugglers turned and started back towards their truck.
“You better go,” jersey kid said in a low voice. “They’ll leave without you.”
“Right.” Rick turned to Kai. “Come on. Let’s get the children ready.”
* * *
The door opened, letting in a waft of night air, and Kazacsky held out a hand for Estelle. She peered up at him, his face friendly behind the beard, then glanced past him to the group of teenagers and, further down the alley, the idling truck.
“That’s our ride?”
“Afraid so,” Kazacsky said.
Berhanu muttered something in Amharic behind her. “I do not like this.”
“Then feel free to stay behind,” Nachson said, opening the opposite door to let the curator out. “We’re really only responsible for Miss Kingston.”
“No -- no, I am coming,” Berhanu said resolutely, stepping out into the night. “It is my duty as well.”
Estelle took a breath. She’d watched with growing trepidation as her security detail appeared to barter with these teens, and then the men in the truck. Now the moment had come for a decision. Whatever she did, she knew there was no turning back. Accept the situation fate and Nasim had placed her in, or return to her safe and predictable life.
She took Kazacsky’s hand and climbed out of the car.
* * *
Parked two blocks down, Booker watched, eyes itching with exhaustion, as Álvarez and Villeneuve met first with the kids, then the men in the truck. The smugglers, here to take them north to Axum. To Tigray, where a rebel army was fiercely defending their territory.
Now it looked like the negotiations were wrapping up. Álvarez and Villeneuve were moving back to their car, opening the rear passenger doors. It’s now or never, Booker thought. He made to open his own door, hoping his sudden appearance would scare off the smugglers rather than starting a firefight.
A man stepped out of the back of the car, tall and thin. Álvarez ushered him towards the alley. From the opposite door, Villeneuve was helping a woman to her feet, taking her bag. The hazy sodium light shone down on her, illuminating her face.
Booker froze, feeling his mouth go dry and his heart stutter to a standstill.
Estelle.
No. No, that couldn’t be her. She was in Paris, working for Radical Dynamics. Why would she be here? How could she possibly be involved in this?
Yet he knew. Even from here, even though they hadn’t seen each other in years, Booker knew it was her. He recognized her hair, shorter than he’d last seen it but still just as dark and curly; the curve of her jaw; the frames of her glasses, trendy as ever.
Estelle Kingston.
His eyes were no longer itchy; instead, they were watering as he stared. Villeneuve was guiding Estelle into the alley, towards the truck. She was going with him. Going with the smugglers. Going north, to Axum, to Tigray, to the warzone. The tall man followed behind her, Álvarez and Villeneuve bringing up the rear.
Booker wanted to leap out of his car, to shout, to run, to do something. But he couldn’t move. He could barely breathe. It was like his joints had locked up, his brain shutting down and diverting all power to process this impossibility, this paradox.
Estelle vanished from view, and soon the other three had as well. The group of skateboarders gathered up the large crates Villeneuve had taken from the back of their c
ar and disappeared into the night. A moment later a truck nosed its way out of the alley like a cautious dog, pausing as if to check for danger on the empty street. It started up again, slowly turning and pulling away from Booker, showing him its glaring taillights and the roll down door, firmly shut.
Booker blinked, and was able to breathe again. He drew a great gasp, heart suddenly pounding. He’d missed his chance. Álvarez and Villeneuve were in there, along with the third man -- and Estelle.
Estelle was in there.
The truck’s taillights were pinpoints in the distance. The truck came to a halt at a stoplight, then turned left.
Estelle is in there.
Booker started up his car. It took every ounce of restraint to not floor the accelerator.
Seventeen
The Road North
Amhara Region, Ethiopia
Addis Ababa to Axum was just short of a twenty hour drive on the most direct route. In the company of smugglers, whose livelihoods (and lives) depended on avoiding the most commonly-used roads, travel time would be closer to thirty.
It was not to be a comfortable thirty hours.
Rick, Kai, Estelle Kingston, and Berhanu Abraham were forced to share a tiny box of space in the back of the truck, squeezed between the rear wall of the cab and a barrier of stacked crates of ice cream that would, presumably, hide them from view should the truck be stopped and inspected. There must have been real ice cream in those crates, because the back of the truck was freezing. The small hidey-hole was lined with quilts, and they’d been provided a single blanket to share that was hardly big enough to cover Kai alone. Kai and Berhanu had agreed to let Estelle have the majority of the blanket. Rick had argued vehemently. She already wore a jacket, thermoregulating by the looks of it. But he was downvoted, and so had to make do with a thin corner and the shared body heat of the other two men.
“C-could have t-told us to dress-s warm,” Berhanu complained, fifteen minutes into the drive.
“We didn’t know,” Rick hissed through his teeth.
“If-f I had known what your t-t-transportation would entail,” Berhanu griped, but then he trailed off. It was the last time any of them spoke; doing so took too much effort in the cold.
At first, Rick tried to sleep, but he quickly gave up. For one thing, sleep was damn near impossible -- every time he seemed to be on the edge of unconsciousness, they’d hit a pothole or a rock or a turtle, and he’d jolt awake, and the ache in his back and legs and ass would seem to come awake too. This kept him in a foul mood for a while, but then he figured it was probably better to remain awake so that hypothermia couldn’t take him.
It was too dark to see anything, too loud and too cold to talk. The others could have died sometime during the drive and Rick never would have known it. He tried to distract himself by planning their next move, by imagining what it would be like to lay eyes on the Ark of the Covenant, but that soon proved too taxing for his brain. Instead, he listened to the sound of the truck, paid attention to the feel of the road, trying to gauge how far they’d come. Several times they stopped for what felt like minutes, muffled voices heard through the walls, during which nobody breathed, half-expecting the trailer to be thrown open and ransacked by soldiers. Then they started moving again, and the mundanity resumed.
Five hours into the ride, Rick could do little more than hug his backpack and shiver numbly.
I’m going to die in the back of an ice cream truck. The thought emerged sluggishly from the depths of his brain, like a bloated penguin carcass floating to the surface of the Arctic ocean. Those assholes are probably driving in circles, waiting for us to kick the bucket so they can steal our stuff. God damned thieves…
He wasn’t aware of falling asleep until he woke up. What had woken him was a sudden silence and stillness. The truck had stopped moving again. Rick tried to sit up, and his entire body protested loudly. Everything from his lower back down felt like it was stuck full of fiery needles.
From the darkness came Estelle’s voice, sounding like she was teetering on the edge of a coma. “A-are we there?”
“Can’t be,” Rick croaked. His throat was bone-dry and his stomach was growling sourly. He checked his wristband and saw that about eight hours had passed, vanishing into the featureless black mush of his brain. “Can’t be.”
But they had stopped, of that he was certain.
There came a squeal of hinges, the door of the cab opening. Rick heard feet hitting the ground, muffled voices and the groans of people stretching. Footsteps travelled leisurely towards the back of the truck, and then the door was rolled up with a clatter. Bright light filtered through the cracks between the crates, enough to reveal just how miserable all four of them looked. Berhanu’s suit was ruffled, and he appeared to have aged several decades per hour.
“You alive back there?” a voice called from the other side of the crates, sounding perfectly jovial.
“F-f-f,” Rick said. He was trying to tell the smuggler to fuck off, but his mouth wasn’t working correctly.
He heard the smuggler chuckle, and then begin to shift the crates aside. Soon a hole was opened in the barrier, allowing a full blast of sunlight into the truck, along with a tantalizing breath of warm air.
The smuggler stood before the opening, silhouetted from behind. “Out,” he said.
Nobody questioned the order. The smugglers could have been preparing to execute them, and Rick wouldn’t have cared. He led the exodus, limbs protesting loudly and sharply, and practically fell on his face as he climbed down from the trailer. The warmth of the dirt road and the sun on the back of his neck had never felt half so sweet.
He could hear the smugglers talking and laughing, probably at his expense. Berhanu sounded like he was giving thanks to God. All Rick wanted to do was fall asleep right here; instead, he forced himself to sit up. Standing felt like a herculean task, so he remained on his knees, squinting to take in their surroundings.
They had stopped in the middle of nowhere. He knew the highlands of Ethiopia to be rugged and rural, no cities or settlements within sight. Craggy peaks, steep cliffs dense with trees, and narrow valleys strewn with rocks. Here, however, the landscape had flattened; plains stretched away on all sides, rolling up to meet hazy foothills in the distance. Perhaps a mile to the left was a small lake, its water as still and blue as a gemstone. It all would have been quite beautiful, if Rick hadn’t been preoccupied with more pressing matters.
“Good place to dump a couple bodies.” Kai spoke as if continuing a conversation, kneeling beside Rick, voice low enough for only the two of them to hear. Ice clung to his beard, rapidly melting.
All three of the smugglers were armed. They took their time stretching and spitting, and tiger-stripes went to take a leak on the other side of the road. It didn’t feel like a preamble to murder, but that didn’t really mean anything.
Both Rick and Kai still had their pistols. Three against two; not terrible odds, even if Rick was still feeling too sluggish to aim properly. Deciding he didn’t want to die in the dirt, he got shakily to his feet.
“What’s happening?” Estelle asked, as Kai helped her up. Her hair was a flat mess, and there was frost melting on her glasses.
It was one of the smugglers -- the driver -- who answered. “This is where you get out. Military checkpoints up ahead. Won’t get through with you in the back.”
“What?” Berhanu was also on his feet, doing his best to neaten his rumpled suit. “But I thought you were taking us all the way to Axum? What is this?” he demanded, turning to Rick.
Rick forced a placating smile. “I’ll handle it,” he said, then turned to the smuggler and lowered his voice. “What the fuck is this? We paid you for transport to Axum.”
The smuggler could not have looked less concerned if he had been asleep. “We never said we would take you all the way. And you have only paid half.”
Rick barked a sharp laugh. “And if you think you’ll be getting the other half --”
There w
as a snap of twigs underfoot as tiger-stripes returned from his relief excursion. The man rested one hand easily on the butt of his pistol. Rifleman had his own weapon relaxed over his shoulder. Both were eyeing Rick with friendly smiles and steely eyes.
“I do not think you are in any position to renege on our deal,” the driver told him in low tones.
“This wasn’t the deal.”
“Is there a problem?” Kai asked, coming over to Rick’s side. Estelle and Berhanu were hovering by the truck uncertainly, as if considering taking refuge back inside.
“Your partner,” the smuggler told him, “is being unreasonable.”
Rick bit back his anger, addressing Kai instead. “This is as far as they’re willing to go.”
Kai turned his eyes to the smuggler, but his body remained at an angle, and Rick knew he was keeping both rifleman and tiger-stripes in his peripheral vision as well. His hand was near his pistol, but not touching it. Not yet.
“That’s not what we paid you for,” Kai told the smuggler, his tone dangerously reasonable.
The driver had lit a cigarette, and he took a long drag before answering. “Relax, farenj. You will get to Axum.”
“But you won’t take us,” Rick said.
“As I said, we cannot.”
“Bullshit. You get goods to and from Tigray, those kids told us.”
“We don’t,” the driver said. He pointed with his cigarette, off the road and towards the distant foothills. “Train tracks are three kilometers that way. We bring the cargo. Train picks it up and brings it the rest of the way north.”
Rick squinted out over the rolling plains and towards the low-hanging sun. He couldn’t make out a railroad from here. It was possible that there was one hiding behind a slight ridge that looked to be about three kilometers away. “If the train goes all the way there, then why bother with the truck?”
A Covenant of Thieves Page 28