The Five Fakirs of Faizabad (24 page)

Instead, Hynkell said, “That’s all. What more could there be?” But then he pulled a face. “Except you, of course. Because they won’t let us in to Shamba-la, we’ve gotten nowhere with our mission, so far. But you might prove to be the next best thing in Himmler’s eyes. Yes. Why not? With a real genie in the bag, we might finally be able to go home. Always supposing that we could get you back to Germany safely. Away from this place and its peculiar influence, you might be rather harder to handle than you are now.”

“Hasn’t it occurred to you,” said John, “that Himmler might regard me and my flying carpet with no more enthusiasm than my own father did back in Lhasa? Especially when we fail to take off in Berlin.”

“I told you I didn’t believe that story.”

“And you think Himmler will believe yours?”

“Why not? It was him who sent us on this stupid expedition.”

“Good point,” agreed John.

By now John had formed the conclusion that Hynkell and his men really did believe that it was 1938, and as a result of this observation he had begun to form a theory of what might have happened to the Nazi expedition during its close proximity to Shamba-la. Back in Yellowstone National Park,
Rakshasas had told him that the place exerted a curious effect on time and arrested the aging process in people — not to mention the effect that Shamba-la was supposed to have on those like Groanin who were mortally wounded. It now seemed to John that perhaps it wasn’t just Shamba-la that arrested the aging process but the whole of the Kailash crater. He supposed these SS men were all of them at least a hundred years old, and yet none of them looked a day over forty.

Hynkell nodded. “Yes, I think I have a solution.”

“Have what?”

“The solution to the problem of how to handle you outside of the Kailash crater. How to get you back to Berlin.”

“Do tell,” said John.

“From what I read in the
Arabian Nights,
it always seemed to me that genies were creatures of their word,” said Hynkell. “Even evil genies. Once they swore to do something, they generally always did it.”

“And?”

“I want you to swear,” said Hynkell, “by all that you hold dear that you will not use your genie powers against us. That you will accompany us back to Germany. If you do that I’ll release your pet wolf unharmed. Agreed?”

Now John was of the opinion that giving his word to a Nazi didn’t really count, especially when the word was given under duress, and agreed with alacrity, thinking that he might recover his djinn power as soon as he could sit in front of a fire and warm up again.

“Agreed,” he said.

But the Nazi wasn’t about to let the boy off with swearing an oath quite so lightly.

“I want to hear you swear it on the life of your mother and your father,” he said. “Say, ‘I wish that they might die a terrible death if I ever break this oath.’”

John hesitated. This was different. This was
wishing,
and John knew better than to wish things lightly, especially when it involved the lives of others. He thought of Groanin’s mortally injured body back in Yellowstone and then he thought of his mother and his father. He loved them all but, forced to choose, he realized he owed his parents life itself and discovered that he would always choose them.

“Swear that you will accompany us to Berlin and grant Reichsführer Himmler and Adolf Hitler three wishes,” said Hynkell. “Swear it or I will order my men to roast your pet wolf alive. And I’ll make you watch. Believe me, my men won’t hesitate. It’s been ages since they ate fresh meat.”

John nodded his agreement; without his djinn power he had little choice. “I swear it,” he said sullenly, and consoled himself of what he was going to do to these Nazi thugs when finally he reached Berlin.

“Say, ‘I wish that my mother and father will die a terrible death if I break this oath.’”

“I wish that my mother and father will die a terrible death if I break this oath,” he said.

The Nazi smiled. “Excellent. I’ll tell my men to prepare to leave for home immediately. You’ve no idea how eager they are to return to their wives and families. I think it’s fair to say that you’ve made their day.”

“Delighted,” growled John, already plotting his revenge.

Once Hynkell and his men discovered that Hitler and Himmler were long dead, John decided he could consider himself free from his oath and turn them all into a colony of ants. A colony he would take great pleasure in stamping on while wearing one of their jackboots. Forever.

F
lying east-southeast at a speed of almost three hundred miles per hour, Nimrod steered a perfect course through clear Eurasian skies, crossing several countries and seas that Philippa had only ever read about in the newspapers or in her geography textbooks: Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, and the Black Sea. Somewhere over the Russian steppes, every vestige of cloud vanished and, as the sun increased its fiery intensity, Philippa basked lazily in the heat and warmed her djinn blood like some idle government official in a play by Anton Chekhov. A lingering concern for her brother, John, and Mr. Groanin stopped Philippa from feeling entirely at ease, however; she couldn’t help but think it strange that they hadn’t heard from them. She’d even tried sharing her concern with Nimrod, who told her that there were bigger fish to fry.

“We have to fix the world’s luck and quickly, Philippa,” he had said, “or else there will be a disaster, and I do mean
disaster. Chaos, anyway. When we’re on our way back from Shamba-la with some sort of solution to the world’s woes, we’ll talk about it again. Until then, try to relax. I need your mind rested and keen, my dear, for what may lie ahead.”

So Philippa lay back on the silken azure and stared up at the sun and marveled at her own being. After a while, she closed her eyes and then dozed quietly.

Even Mr. Swaraswati, who was less than enthusiastic about flying carpets, managed to relax a little, performing a series of yoga-meditation poses that left Moo speechless with admiration that a human being could twist and contort himself in such a fashion.

Mr. Burton smoked a water pipe through a rubber tube and lay on a bed of nails that he assured everyone was very comfortable but, oddly enough, no one else seemed inclined to try for themselves.

Silvio Prezzolini read an Italian newspaper, smoked cigarettes incessantly, combed his hair, drank small cups of coffee, and occasionally sang one of his favorite songs such as “Arrivederci Roma” or “Lo Vivo per Lei.” Moo, who was a big fan of Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, particularly enjoyed Silvio’s singing and told the Italian that she thought his voice was every bit as good as theirs. Silvio thanked her and felt very flattered by this comparison, as well he might have done.

Meanwhile, the sapphire-blue carpet behaved faultlessly, sliding straight and level through the air like an enormous fish slice, its silk thread shining brightly so that seen from the window of a passenger jet it would have resembled a
beautiful swimming pool on the French Côte d’Azur, or perhaps Palm Springs.

Things were going well; perhaps too well, for it cannot be denied that the djinn gave up flying carpets and took to flying whirlwinds of their own manufacture for several good reasons, only one of which was how these outmoded modes of supernatural transport performed in adverse weather conditions. They were about to discover another reason why flying carpets are not all that might be imagined by someone with, well … a lack of imagination.

It was over Kazakhstan that it happened. One minute they were enjoying perfect flying conditions and the next a large bird landed heavily in the center of the carpet and broke its neck.

“What the heck?” exclaimed Philippa.

“Bird strike,” said Nimrod. “Happens to planes, too. No cause for alarm because we don’t have any windshield to break or jet engines to fail.”

But when another bird hit the carpet and then another, Mr. Swaraswati turned pale. “Rama,” he said, which means “God.” “Rama.”

“It’s raining birds,” said Moo. And when several more birds killed themselves dive-bombing the carpet, she felt obliged to put up an umbrella.

“I think they’re pelicans,” observed Mr. Burton.

“What’s wrong with the birds?” exclaimed Mr. Swaraswati.

“Eees just like Alfred Hitchcock,” said Silvio. “They crazy.”

“Why are they attacking us?” said Moo.

The flying carpet shimmered in the sunshine as it gently undulated upon a current of air and suddenly Philippa guessed what was happening.

“They’re not attacking us,” she said as another bird crashed onto surface of the carpet like a small fighter plane, and expired in a mushroom cloud of blood and feathers. “I think they’re mistaking the blue carpet for the surface of the ocean. Seen from above, it moves like the sea. They’re not attacking us. They’re diving for fish.”

“Light my lamp, but you’re right,” said Nimrod. “Well, I’ve never seen that before. What an extraordinary …”

But this was the last thing he said as a split second later a diving bird struck him hard on the head and knocked him unconscious. The bird itself uttered a squawk of surprise and disappointment that the carpet was not made of water, staggered a few feet away from Nimrod’s body, and fell over the edge.

“Oh, Lord,” said Moo. “That’s torn it.”

Moo leaned across Nimrod, wiped some blood from his head with her handkerchief, and started to gently slap the djinn’s face; then she found some smelling salts in her handbag and waved them under Nimrod’s nostrils, all to no effect. The djinn remained quite insensible.

The flying carpet banked steeply like a damaged bomber and began a slow descent.

“We’re doomed,” moaned Mr. Swaraswati. “Doomed, I tell you. I should never have agreed to come on this thing. Not after what happened before.”

Not hesitating, Philippa took control of the flying carpet and tried to steer it carefully toward the ground. It seemed much heavier than she had expected, almost as if it was carrying a lot more weight than she had supposed. As soon as she had brought the carpet to a standstill on an arid plain in a valley surrounded by rugged peaks, she jumped up and went over to see how seriously her uncle had been injured.

“How is he?” she asked Moo.

“He’s still breathing, thank goodness,” said Moo.

Mr. Burton picked up one of the lifeless birds.
“Pelicanus crispus,”
he said. “The Dalmatian pelican. The largest of the pelicans. On average, it’s the world’s heaviest flying bird. Which means —” He hesitated. “Which means it’s jolly bad luck it landed on someone. Oddly enough they’re a symbol of self-sacrifice in medieval bestiaries.”

“These birds were certainly conforming to their image.” Philippa continued to look anxious.

“I’m sure he’ll come around in a minute or two, my dear,” said Moo, trying to reassure her.

But when after fifteen minutes, Nimrod remained unconscious, Moo shook her head and said, “I think he needs a doctor. Perhaps even an X-ray. He might have a fractured skull. That bird must have hit him a lot harder than we supposed.”

“I daren’t use djinn power to help him,” said Philippa. “Not without knowing precisely what’s wrong with him.”

“No, indeed,” agreed Moo. “I expect you’ve got to know what you’re wishing for when you wish it. Otherwise, you could end up doing more harm than good.”

“We’ve got company,” observed Silvio.

Philippa turned and looked where Silvio was now pointing and saw three figures who were squatting in the grass about forty feet from them; there was a man wearing a striped padded jacket, a small boy with a green padded jacket, and a woman with a large quilt bundled on her back and a very large turban on her head as if she had just washed her hair. Behind them were several odd-looking camels and a couple of tentlike dwellings.

Philippa waved at them, trying to appear friendly. “Hello,” she said. “Can you help us please? We need a doctor for our friend. He’s injured.”

The trio stayed put and gave no indication that they had understood what Philippa was saying.

“What language do they speak here?” she asked Moo.

“I’m not even sure where
here
is,” admitted Moo, and then shouted something in Russian because they had been flying over Russia, and Russian was a language that she knew well, being a KGB British spymaster.

The man stood up, snatched off his skullcap, and, bowing several times, came forward to greet them, speaking all the time in a language Philippa had never heard before. His face was weatherworn and vaguely Asian.

“That’s Kazakh he’s speaking,” said Moo. “I think we’re in West Kazakhstan, and luckily, I speak a bit of Kazakh as well as Russian. It seems we’re only a few miles from a town called Atyrau, where there’s a doctor. This chap says he’s willing to take us to the town on his camels but only because he’s afraid that we’re Cossack devils. For that reason alone —
I mean, in case anyone else mistakes us for Cossack devils — it might be an idea to leave the carpet here while we go into Atyrau. I should say it’s too heavy to carry, wouldn’t you?”

“Mr. Swaraswati could stay here and look after it,” said Philippa. “Couldn’t you, Mr. Swaraswati?”

“It would be a pleasure not to go anywhere except where I am now,” said the old fakir. “Especially if this involves my being very firmly on the ground.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” said Philippa.

“I’ll stay here with him,” volunteered Silvio. “To keep him company.”

“Me, too,” said Mr. Burton. “No sense in us all going to town.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Swaraswati.

The Kazakh, whose name was Mr. Bayuleev, wasn’t tall but he was very strong; he picked Nimrod up by himself, carried him to one of his Bactrian camels, and laid him across a saddle that sat between the beast’s two humps. Then, leaving his wife and child in a little leather igloo, Mr. Bayuleev traveled into Atyrau with Philippa and Moo, which was a distance of about two miles along a road that improved the nearer they got to the town.

Situated on the edge of the Caspian Sea at the delta of the Ural River, Atyrau is a largish fishing town with a nice new mosque and several high-rise buildings. The air is clear and the river is clean. Kazakhstan is a country that’s rapidly improving itself and becoming more affluent than when it was part of the old Soviet empire. Which is why everyone seemed friendly and kind, especially the doctor at the
local hospital, Dr. Bazayev, who had studied medicine in London.

By the time Dr. Bazayev had X-rayed Nimrod’s head and bandaged it (the doctor pronounced himself very impressed at the size of the Englishman’s skull and brain), the djinn had partly recovered and was sitting up on the edge of his hospital bed and asking what had happened to him.

The doctor left Nimrod with Philippa and Moo and went to attend to some other patients.

“I remember a bird landing on the carpet and not much else,” admitted Nimrod.

“You got hit by one of them,” said Philippa. “Mr. Burton said it was a pelican.”

“Ah, yes,” he said. “They were dive-bombing us because they mistook the blue carpet for a lake with fish in it.”

“That’s right,” said Philippa. “How are you feeling now?”

“My head feels like a hot-air balloon,” said Nimrod. “But I’ll be all right.”

Philippa looked relieved. “I was worried about you, Uncle Nimrod.”

“We both were,” admitted Moo. “We may have the Joseph Rock papers at our disposal, but neither of us really knows the way to Shamba-la. Let alone Tibet.”

“Yes.” Nimrod nodded. “There’s still a long way to go. About two thousand four hundred miles, to be exact. Tibet’s not called the roof of the world for nothing. You need a long ladder to get up there.”

“Mr. Swaraswati
will be
delighted,” said Moo. “To be flying again.”

Nimrod glanced around the room where he had been receiving treatment. “By the way,” he said. “Where
is
Mr. Swaraswati?”

“I left him where we landed,” explained Philippa. “With the flying carpet.”

“And where is that?” asked Nimrod.

“Well, we’re in Kazakhstan,” said Philippa. “And this is a town called Atyrau. So I guess you could say that we left them a couple of miles outside Atyrau. In a kind of valley. It’s all right. He’s with Mr. Burton and Mr. Prezzolini.”

“And who’s with them?” Nimrod sighed.

“Er, no one,” said Philippa.

“That was stupid, stupid, stupid. Haven’t I made it clear that Mr. Swaraswati is much too valuable to leave anywhere? The importance of what that man knows cannot be exaggerated.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Nimrod,” said Moo. “Philippa was only trying to help you. We thought you might be seriously injured. I might have known it would take more than a bird crashing onto your big head to knock some sense into it.”

“You’re right, of course,” said Nimrod. “Philippa, I’m sorry. It was churlish of me to complain. All the same, we’d better be getting back. It’ll be dark soon and we wouldn’t want to lose them, would we?”

Mr. Bayuleev took them back to the spot where they had landed and where Mr. Swaraswati and Mr. Burton and Mr. Prezzolini were waiting for them; but they were no longer seated on the blue carpet. They were standing up and waving their arms and looking thoroughly alarmed.

“The carpet has been stolen,” said Mr. Burton. “Just fifteen minutes ago. By local bandits. In my opinion they were Tatars.”

“There wasn’t much we could do to prevent them,” said Mr. Swaraswati.

“No, of course not,” said Nimrod. “Can’t be helped. These things happen.”

“You’re taking this very calmly,” observed Moo. “How are we going to travel to Tibet without that carpet?”

Nimrod frowned. “Am I? I certainly don’t mean to take it calmly.”

“They were armed with guns,” said Mr. Prezzolini. “They threatened to shoot us unless we gave them the carpet.”

“As a matter of fact, I’m not calm at all.” Nimrod shook his head. “Whatever gave you that idea? Because if there’s one thing I really hate, it’s a thief,” he said. “I get really angry about theft. If I wasn’t so tired I’d go after them myself and —” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I’d do. I’d probably do something terrible, if you really want to know. Something really awful. I’d give them what for, that’s what I’d do. That’s what thieves deserve.
Proper punishment.
Real punishment instead of the smack on the wrist that the law gives thieves these days.”

“To be fair, I think the punishment for thieves in Kazakhstan is a bit harder than it is in England,” said Moo.

“Well, it’s probably still too good for them,” grumbled Nimrod. “Whatever it is.” Nimrod snorted. “Thieves? I’d skin them alive.”