Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (76 page)

    
The gulley carved its way to within about
fifty feet of the road, at which point they scrambled up the side to a large,
jagged outcropping with chinks affording a view. The problem was the absence of
flat ground; in order to see, they had to lock their toes against the steeply
angled slope and lever up to position.

    
The first words Raszer was able to make out
were in English, from the mercenary leader: “ . . . think you can hold that
pass with twenty men, you’re both a martyr and a fool. I’ll be happy to prove
my point if you like . . . but why not let us take a look around? If it’s
clear, we’ll turn it back over to you. Or”—he turned and swept his arm across
his own company and its arsenal of fully automatic weaponry—“you can die
today.”

    
The Kurdish leader replied in carefully
measured English.

    
“No. We cannot stand against your guns. But
you cannot kill us, either. If you do, and then bring your men into the Buzul
pass, there will be three hundred more of us raining fire down on your heads.
By midday, you will be food for buzzards.”

    
“Don’t count on it, Mustafa,” the leader
sneered. “Another few hours, and the air strikes’ll clear those hills out for
us. Enjoy the last days of Kurdistania, friend, because by May 1, the ground
you piss on will belong to El Mirai, along with your whore wife and whore
daughters.” The CO spat and parked a hand on his gun.

    
There was no movement on the other side.
The Kurdish chief’s fighters were well trained, indeed, for they remained as
undemonstrative as he was and would have altered their posture only if he had.
“It is said that we hate in others what we most hate in ourselves.” He took a
quick count of the mercenaries. “I see thirty whores here. You make it
thirty-one. I’m sure you are the best paid whore of all.”

    
“You’ve got fifteen minutes to stand down,
and then we cut you to pieces.” The leader gave a nod to the man on his right,
and rifles were raised to hips.

    
Raszer watched the Kurdish commander battle
with himself, and saw his blue eyes flash. “My orders are not to die defending
the pass. Not today. Go ahead. We will not stop you. The snipers will pick you
off.” With that, he stepped aside.

    
With his attention squarely on the
unfolding scene, Raszer hadn’t noticed that Francesca was about to lose her
footing and was now clawing at the rock. In an effort to regain her purchase,
she involuntarily dislodged a stone the size of a grapefruit, which skittered
down the gulley wall and hit bottom with a sharp
clink
.

    
The
two adversaries turned, as did most of their men. Raszer quickly scanned the
rock formation for a hiding place. He worked his way over to Francesca, gave
her his hand, and helped her to a more solid foothold. She apologized with her
eyes, but he only put his finger to his lips and motioned to a small chimney in
the rock. Barely large enough for one grown man, it would be a squeeze with the
two of them. He got her in first, then wedged in beside her and pulled her down
until they had become one featureless form, unmoving, hardly breathing.

    
A few seconds later, the two commanders
arrived, each with a gunman at his back. They stood on the far side of the
outcropping and continued their argument while their deputies began to search
the area.

    
“Could have been a coyote,” said the
American. “Or one of those fucking opium peddlers.”

    
“A stone rolls every second in the
mountains,” the Kurdish captain replied.

    
The gunmen simultaneously stepped around
the rear of the outcropping, where Raszer and Francesca’s hiding place was in
plain sight but grayed down by shadow. Had the soldiers not been keeping an eye
on each other, they would surely have picked them out. Raszer buried his face
in Francesca’s hair. He felt her heart beating like a bird’s against his. One
of the gunmen—he could not tell which—approached. Raszer drew a single breath
and held it. There was an unforgiving pause. It sounded as though the Kurdish
leader had come around the west side of the rocks.

    
“Nothing here,” the American called out.
“But I don’t like what my nose tells me, so I’ve modified the plan. You save
face for today, Mustafa. You and your men fall back. After you’re out of sight,
we’ll do the same. It’s only a reprieve. In twenty-four hours, we’re coming in
with air cover.”

    
“I will believe that when I see it. Until
then, be assured that the Kurds in the Buzul will pay no more tribute to your
lord. And when we stop, the rest will soon follow. Even those jackals in Iran
who bow to you.” He shot a question to his scout.

    
“Like I said,” the merc said scornfully,
“enjoy it while it lasts.” A pause. “Let’s go.”

    
Raszer and Francesca waited a good ten
minutes, until both forces had begun to withdraw into the hills. Then they
extricated themselves and took a last look through the chinks. It was difficult
to countenance what they saw: From the roadway leading directly to the
fortress, two long black Lincolns had rolled down into the crossroads. The
driver of the first got out to consult with the men from Green River Security.
He removed his dark glasses and ran a finger across his blond mustache. Then he
muttered something Raszer couldn’t catch the whole of, but that concluded with
two words he did pick up: “Greenstreet. Motherfucker.” The episode had the
immersive mise-en-scène of a dream in which events are seen simultaneously from
all angles.

    
If Raszer needed evidence of Philby
Greenstreet’s wildest assertions, there it was. The driver, standing there in a
navy blue suit and tie, would have no trouble boarding a plane at LaGuardia.
This man looked like a Mormon.

    
“That
was way too close,” Dante said upon their return. “I hope it was worth it.”

    
“I think it was,” Raszer replied.

    
Ruthie was wide eyed. “I can’t believe they
didn’t see you.”

    
“I’m not sure the Kurd didn’t see us.”

    
“What’s going on, then?” Dante asked.

    
“I think we should talk to him,” Raszer
said calmly.

    
“Talk to who?”

    
“To the blue-eyed Kurd,” Raszer answered.
“I think we have common interests. Look, if I do get Katy out, it probably
won’t be tidy. It’ll require some kind of trick, and those always have short
fuses. We’re unarmed, and we’re going to need some protection to get her clear.
From what I heard down there, things around here are about to get noisy, and we
may be able to slip out under that cover.”

    
“Noisy how?” asked Dante.

    
“The Kurds in the Buzul are refusing to pay
the Old Man’s tribute. That’s not going to go down well.”

    
“It’s about time,” said Francesca.

    
“So I’m going to try and catch Blue Eyes
before he disappears into these hills.”

    
Francesca nodded. A moment later, Raszer
was gone with Shaykh Adi.

    
His
name was Dostam Ahmid Rahim, but to all in the Buzul Dagi, he was known as Mam:
Uncle. The moniker was more than honorary; he claimed to have no less than forty
nieces and nephews in these mountains—an impressive fact, given his age. He was
thirty or thirty-one—he’d forgotten which—but he’d already lived three lives
fighting Iraqis, Turks, and rival warlords. Raszer’s overture had been received
with raised guns and wary curiosity, the presence of Shaykh Adi at his side
attenuating the sense of threat.

    
Raszer liked the commander instantly. More
than once, he felt the urge to drop the charade, the French accent, the labored
English, the monkish docility. But he couldn’t, because once a ruse is
practiced, dropping it only makes its target feel like a fool, and then a
doubly cautious one.

    
Adi stretched between them as they sat by
the embers of the breakfast fire, drinking coffee thick as oil. Where the
operational details were concerned, Raszer told the leader everything he had in
mind, except exactly how he intended to bring Katy Endicott out. Even if he’d
known, it wasn’t germane to their discussion. What was critical was that once
he had her out, he be able to turn her over to an armed unit for escort to a
helicopter waiting in the nearby village of Hadad, a chopper that would
transport Katy, Ruthie, and the Fedeli back to the cars in Ispiria.

    
The unresolved detail was money. Raszer had
proposed that $5,000 from his personal account be wired to a bank his host
specified, as payment for the protection he and his men would provide. But Mam
would hear nothing of it. Conducting an innocent young woman to safety was a
mission of honor. To accept money would make his men no better than the whores
the Old Man employed. But beyond that lay a more personal matter of honor—and
vengeance.

    
One of Rahim’s nieces, a seventeen-year-old
from Cukurka, was believed to have been taken to El Mirai. Her abduction had
caused such great rage and shame among her kin that there was no guarantee they
would take her back. Still, Mam had sworn to her father that the rape would be
avenged. It was far bigger, he told Raszer, than one girl. Villages from here
to Diyarkabir were missing young women. The future mothers of Kurdistan were
being devalued. It was, the leader pointed out, a novel form of ethnic
cleansing, for no honorable Kurdish man would ever take one of these girls as
his wife.

    
In the end, Raszer accepted Mam’s pledge.
To have questioned it would have been a grievous insult. There was no guile in
the Kurdish leader’s mien. Beyond that, it was clear as his cobalt eyes that
his men would honor his agreement. Still, Raszer’s own sense of symmetry called
for a reciprocal gesture. He reached into his pack and brought out the fragment
of age-polished black stone that Henry Lee had stolen from the Old Man’s
mysterious recruiter and carried back to Los Angeles.

    
He set it on the woven blanket before Mam
Rahim and said, “In the eyes of the world, it may be of great worth or no worth
at all. But I believe that for our adversary, it has a special value. If what I
have been told is true, it is a fragment of the original
al-Hajar
al-Aswad
of
Mecca, the pilgrim’s stone of the Ka’ba. If it is needed to secure the girl’s
freedom, use it. If not, it will remain in your family’s possession forever.”

    
Mam Rahim picked up the stone, weighed it
on his palm, put it to his lips, and held it to the sky. He pressed his hands
in acceptance.

    
After discussing the logistics of the
escort, Raszer told the Kurd that he would need a few hours of “sanctuary” with
Katy after bringing her out, ideally in a safe location somewhere between El
Mirai and the village; at the least, Rahim could provide armed protection.
Raszer had to assume Katy’s psychic condition would be tenuous, maybe even
dissociative; he could not pluck her from one reality and drop her into another
without allowing her a period of decompression.

    
As Raszer prepared to leave, Mam Rahim
stood, holding the stone in one hand. He stooped to give Shaykh Adi a scratch,
then looked at Raszer and said, “If God had not chosen you for his army, Frère
Deleuze, you would have made a good soldier.”

    
Raszer shook his hand and said, “Only for a
cause like yours.”

    
As
he made his way back to his companions, Raszer felt for the first time in more
than a year that he’d earned back a measure of grace. This turned his thoughts
to Monica, and he decided that while he was on the high ground, he’d attempt
again to reach her. They hadn’t connected for twenty-four hours. He got through
for a scant three minutes before the signal dropped, but what she told him in
that time backed up his decision to entrust the black stone to his new ally.

    
“Don’t lose me, Raszer,” she said breathlessly.
“This is good. You asked to open a file on the Ka’ba stone. Well, I’ve been all
over it—mostly misses. But
this
is a
hit: We know the stone was an object of pilgrimage before Islam. We know the
legend is that it fell from heaven, outer space, whatever. We think it was
associated with the pre-Islamic triple goddess. Well, check this out: Around
928
ad
,
the Ka’ba stone was stolen from Mecca by a splinter Ismaili sect called the
Qarmatians, serious Muslim anarchists who said they lived in the resurrection
body. They took the stone to Bahrain and kept it for twenty-two years. When
they returned it, it was in pieces, and some pieces were missing. The stone
that’s in Mecca now is a patch job. But here’s the best part: There’s a theory
that the Qarmatians secretly worshipped Atargatis, the goddess on your coin,
only they worshipped her as Al’Uzza, the mother aspect of the triple goddess of
Mecca! And Al’Uzza links to Isis, who links to Inanna and Cybele, and all of
them inspired castration cults.” She paused. “So maybe that’s something?”