Riders of the Pale Horse (13 page)

Wade turned back to the elder and said, “I will come.”

In the course of a day, Wade found that his basic medical skills were enough to grant him entry into a secret, unseen world. Entire families, whole clans, traveled together in scores of trucks. Their tales came out in bits and pieces as he worked. They remained banded together through desperate need. Petrol and spare parts were often impossible to find. Bandits and thieves preyed along the length and breadth of the crumbling empire. Food was a constant problem.

Children were everywhere—silent, watchful, solemn-eyed, never far from an adult. Wade counted it a major accomplishment when he was able to make one smile.

He would be brought in for one problem and find a dozen others. A child with a lingering cough had pus-covered scabs on his legs. A young woman with a poorly set finger had infections in both eyes. Pains that would have crippled a Westerner were endured in silence; here there was no other choice. Wade offered what help he could, and for a time forgot all but the pleasure of giving, of helping, of performing the only act that brought him peace.

They spoke because he showed them the quiet patience of a good listener. They told him of a country that was falling apart at the seams. They described voyages over thousands of miles of empty wilderness, the convoy guards ever vigilant for bandits who nowadays hunted prey from horseback because of a lack of petrol. They talked of distant lands where the Siberian bears and leopards prowled around city perimeters at night and filled the air with their howls. They shared their fears, which were many, and their hopes, which were few, and dealt mostly with their children. Their gratitude was humbling in its intensity.

It was dark when Wade made his weary way back to the
trucks. Robards received him with open arms. “Got us a regular gold mine here.”

Wade dropped down beside the softly glowing stove. “Is there anything to eat?”

“Anything to eat, the man asks.” With a flourish Rogue swept back a canvas tarpaulin to expose a vast pile of wealth. “We've got smoked ham. We've got dried beef. Roast lamb, boiled lamb, lamb stew. Two Turkestan carpets. Motor oil. Caviar. Pity you're not a drinking man, on account of we got ourselves almost a case of vodka and some premium Russian champagne.”

“It's too much,” Wade protested. “These people don't have enough even to feed themselves.”

“They're traders,” Robards said, settling the canvas back into place. “Traders are the same all the world over—they hate nothing worse than an unpaid debt. Let these people say thanks the only way they know how.”

Before the meal was completed, a group of men appeared from the gathering shadows and demanded, “Is this the place of the healer?”

Wade raised his head from his plate and asked wearily, “Can it wait until morning?”

“Perhaps,” one of the men replied, coming into the lamplight. He was heavily armed and bore a deep cut running from forehead to chin. The eye that lay in the slashed path was matted shut. “But there is also a chance that he may not see another dawn.”

“Careful with this one,” Robards hummed with deceptive calm, his eyes remaining on the cup in his hands.

“He's got somebody who may be dying,” Wade replied.

“Man's gotta do what he's gotta do,” Robards said, his tone almost bored. “Take Mikhail with you for safety's sake.”

Wade thought it over, then declared, “One of your men must remain here until my return. And one of my own will accompany me.”

The man hesitated only a moment, then nodded. “It will be as you say.”

Their way took them far beyond the compound's periphery and into the gloom of a night untouched by public lights. Their flashlights bobbed and wove down litter-strewn paths. Twice they gave way to crowds of drunken men shouting obscenities and seeking trouble. Wade and Mikhail followed the example of their guide and stepped quietly into waiting shadows.

Their destination was a hovel that was part wooden shack, part well-patched tent. A surly voice challenged them as soon as their lights came into view. The guide shouted back and led Wade and Mikhail to where a trio of armed guards kept vigilant watch.

The guide motioned Wade through the low doorway. “In there. Your guard remains here.”

Wade hesitated until he heard a soft groan from within. He nodded to Mikhail and stepped through the door. The stench that greeted him almost drove him out again.

Wade took a gasping breath and forced himself forward. In the candlelight he saw a form curled on a makeshift bed of burlap matting. There was no furniture. The room's only light came from a sputtering candle. The stench came both from the body on the bed and from a bucket by the far wall. Two other men remained huddled in the far corner, watching him with the dull eyes of bone weariness.

Wade squatted down beside the inert form, gently eased the body over, and saw a young man with pale European features. He turned to the pair against the opposite wall. They too had fair features and watchful western eyes.

Wade asked, “Do you speak Russian?”

That brought a glint of humor. “What else would we be speaking?”

“What is wrong with this man?”

Instead of replying, the man cocked his head to one side and said softly in heavily accented yet understandable English,
“Could this truly be an American who has found his way here?”

The scarred man stepped through the doorway, and immediately the glimmer died in the other man's eyes. He lowered his head to his knees and went on in Russian, “He has food poisoning. You would too if—”

“You talk too much,” the guard hissed.

“How long has he been like this?” Wade demanded.

“Four days,” the guard replied, his eyes on the other man.

“He has not been able to eat or drink anything for two,” the man said to the floor by his feet.

The form on the bed shuddered, moaned, and made a retching sound. Then he subsided.

Wade turned to his satchel. He inserted a thermometer in the man's mouth, checked his pulse, took his blood pressure, fitted a stethoscope and checked lungs and heart. Then he reached for a pen and paper. As he wrote he said, “This man is extremely weak. I must set up an intravenous drip to get some fluids into him.” He tore off the sheet, handed it to the guard, said, “Have one of your men take this back to the truck and give it to my friend.”

“Your own man—”

“My man stays with me,” Wade replied firmly.

“They will never find your truck.”

“Then you must go yourself.”

The guard glowered at him, started to object. Wade cut him off with a strength he only found when working. “This man is very near death. I do not know if I can save him. Every moment is precious.”

The guard spat a bitter curse, then turned and stomped from the room. With electric swiftness, the man who had spoken in English leapt forward, swept up Wade's pen and paper, then returned to huddle in the far corner, his back now to the room. His companion sidled up closer to him and blocked his actions from view.

Outside the hovel the guard barked orders to his men, then
marched into the night. Another man, shorter but broader in girth with arms as thick as Wade's thighs, came up and filled the doorway.

Wade prepared one injection of antibiotics and another to stop the nausea. The man made no protest as the shots were administered. Wade turned to the guard and said, “I need water and a clean towel.”

The guard hesitated, then retreated a step. As soon as his motion carried him from the doorway, the other man was sliding silently across the floor toward him. But the guard had not left, rather simply told his companion what to bring. The man froze into his position beside Wade as the guard turned back around, then said in a tight voice, “Can you save my friend?”

“I will try,” Wade replied, his heart in his throat. “Will you help me strip and wash him?”

“Of course.” Together they rolled the inert form over, lifted off the sweat-stained clothes, then bathed the fever-heated body first with water and then with alcohol.

As they were finishing and covering the man with the cleanest of the blankets, the scarred guard pounded up the path. There was a moment's confusion at the door. Clearly the burly guard did not wish to enter too far into the room's fetid depths. As the two men traded places, the Russian slipped the square of paper from the folds of his clothes and into Wade's palm. Wade pocketed the paper with the speed of one handling a live coal.

He set up the drip, taped the needle into place, hung the plastic bag from a nail in the wooden part of the wall, and adjusted the flow. He set two additional pouches beside the Russian and said, “You must change the drip when the level reaches here. Just turn this handle so, take off the empty pouch and replace it with a full one.”

“I will do as you say,” the man replied, his eyes never leaving Wade's face. They shouted a mute appeal.

“And bathe him once more with the alcohol,” Wade said, packing up his satchel, wanting nothing more than to be away.

The guard demanded, “Will he live?”

“I will return at dawn,” Wade replied. “By then we should know.”

Robards listened with the stillness of a hunting cat as Wade described the scene. He then rose and with casual ease checked their periphery. “All clear. The old man's on point guard. Let's see the note.”

Wade plucked the slip of paper from his pocket. It was in Russian. He translated, “We were to be delivered to new guides here. They were supposed to pay the men who have brought us this far. They never arrived. We are being held for ransom, but there is now no way for money to reach us here. Save us. We will pay and pay well. Otherwise we shall die.”

Robards pulled at his lip. “You say they didn't look like locals?”

“Definitely not. They were Russian. At least the one who talked with me was.”

“Did he sound educated?”

“We didn't talk that much. But his Russian was proper. And he spoke at least a little English.” Wade reread the paper. “Who do you think they are?”

“Hard to say. The question is, what do you want to do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Still your show, Sport. Long as you're paying for the dance, you call the tune.”

Wade examined him. “I just don't understand you.”

Rogue smiled. “You're still trying to fit me into some little cubbyhole, aren't you? Still thinking that a man who lives like I do can't be bound by anything as slim as his word.”

“I've never met anybody like you in my entire life,” Wade replied. “So I don't know what to expect.”

“Yeah, well, that makes two of us.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You're only the second religious boyo I've ever met who hasn't made it his primary objective to stuff the meaning of life down my throat.”

“Maybe it's because I don't understand it all that well myself,” Wade confessed.

“That's not the way I see it,” Rogue contradicted. “I've seen you working with sick people. You know. You just don't feel like you've got to use a megaphone to get the message across.”

Wade hung his head, both embarrassed and pleased by the man's words.

“Okay, back to the subject at hand. Like I say, I offered you my services. If I understand you correctly, you want to take up my offer.”

“I do,” Wade confirmed. “Very much.”

“Right. So that leaves us with three questions. First, where are we headed? And second, do we take these joes with us? We can dicker over payment once we figure the first two out.”

“You think you can free them?”

“We,” Rogue corrected. “Probably. But let's stick to the ifs and the wheres just now and leave the hows for later.”

“I think I want to go to Georgia and see if I can find the Red Cross survivors,” Wade said slowly.

“I kinda figured that,” Robards said. “Well, forward looks about as safe as backward from this point. I've checked the map. We're about as close to halfway as we can get.”