The Old Boys (54 page)

Urbane as ever, Kevin said, “I don’t know why you thought you needed us, Horace.” He waved a hand at the pillar of fire, the pall of smoke to the north, then indicated the captive on the rock. “You’re a one-man action movie.”

He was standing upright now as if all need for concealment had vanished and he had nothing to fear from the swarm of armed desperadoes who were buzzing around the camp. He was carrying Ibn Awad’s oxygen tank. Gently, even tenderly, he adjusted the mask over the old man’s nose and mouth, then turned the valve. Ibn Awad inhaled convulsively for a full minute, then began to breath normally again. Kevin patted him on the arm.

The air stirred. A quarter of a mile away Ibn Awad’s tent inhaled the breeze then blew it out and hung slack. Still no one had gone inside to check on Ibn Awad. Suddenly something clicked, the pieces came together, and it dawned on me that there was a reason for this. Ibn Awad
didn’t
have anything to fear. He had been a captive. The men I had killed had been his captors, not his bodyguards—Kevin’s men, not his. The old schizo had been gazing on me so benignly because he thought I had rescued him.

I said, “Kevin, what exactly are you up to?”

“Fulfilling my mission,” he said.

“I see. Do you have my cousins in your custody?”

“Not exactly. But they’re alive and well and I have no interest in them. Others do.”

“Others? What others?”

He nodded toward the camp. “Those fellows over there. They’re Turkmen and I think they’re going to expect to be paid a ransom.”

“A ransom?”

“I’m
afraid so. And compensation for their two friends whose throats Tarik cut before we got to him and saved him from Turkoman revenge, which is not, I assure you, a pretty sight.”

“These Turkomen are with you?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Kevin said. “Let’s say we’re working together. It’s our policy to work with the locals. That’s primarily what our fellows were doing in Turkmenistan, finding locals to work with. They cleaned out the camp and took Ibn Awad prisoner. I think they’ll want payment for the two Turkmen you zapped.”

“What sort of ransom did
you
pay them?”

“They get everything but the airplane and Ibn Awad,” Kevin said. “That’s why they’re so happy, firing into the air and so forth.”

Ecstatic might have been a better word, judging by the amount of ammunition that was still being fired into the wild blue yonder.

I said, “Frankly, Kevin, I’m at sixes and sevens. If your Turkmen friends get everything but Ibn Awad, who gets Ibn Awad?”

Kevin’s smile turned apologetic. “We do.”

“‘We’ is not you and me, I gather.”

He shook his head.

“Then you and who?”

“I’m not allowed to say. But the old fellow will have a good home.”

My gorge was rising. It was late in the day for games. The beast I had been the night before was awakening again and I was mightily tempted just to shoot Ibn Awad and put an end to his story. However, I had other people to think about and I knew that I’d be dead myself before I took my finger off the trigger if I actually did what my reptile brain was now instructing me to do.

Nevertheless I pressed the muzzle of my Kalashnikov against Ibn Awad’s heart. In the most pleasant tone of voice I could muster, I said, “I noticed that Captain Khaldun has joined the party.”

Kevin seemed surprised. “You’ve met?”

“Is Captain Khaldun on loan from Kalash el Khatar?”

“Gosh,
what a lot of little details you know, Horace. The answer is yes. Ibn Awad’s pilot wasn’t deemed reliable as a getaway driver.”

“Is this another example of working with the locals, or do you and Kalash go back farther than that?”

Kevin had stopped looking me straight in the eyes and was now smiling upward as though waiting for advice he knew could never come. He sighed audibly.

“Look,” he said. “The objectives of this operation were to destroy Ibn Awad’s bombs and eliminate him as a threat to mankind. Thanks mainly to you and your pals, these things have been accomplished. What difference does it make what the auspices are or who gets Ibn Awad?”

“So you’re going to give me the credit and take Ibn Awad as your share?”

Kevin said, “Something like that. Horace, will you please stop poking your weapon into the prisoner’s body?”

“You want him alive.”

“Of course I do. What good is he to anyone dead?”

“What good is he alive? What are you going to do with him? All questions about him have been answered. There’d be no point in hooking him up to a battery and making him talk because he’d just thank Allah for the agony.”

“Nothing like that is going to happen. Now please, Horace, it’s time for all of us to get out of here. I can’t believe the Uzbek army isn’t here already.”

“If interrogation isn’t part of the plan,” I said, “what is? Are you going to sell him to Kalash, or what?”

Kevin ignored these impassioned questions. His eyes were fixed on Ibn Awad, who could not have been more serene or more disinterested in his own situation if he had just taken a whole bottle of Valium.

Kevin said, “He really is insane, isn’t he?”

“Either that or he’s achieved union with the ineffable and God and his angels really do talk to him,” I replied. “In either case,
sweet and harmless as he seems, I’m not prepared to turn him loose on the world again unless I know the details. To whom are you planning to deliver him?”

Actually I had no intention of turning the old man loose no matter what Kevin said. He had too much money, too much hatred for the Great Satan, too much faith in the idea that life on Earth was transitory and without value except as an opportunity to wipe out false religions. However, I was beginning to see a pattern. This whole thing had started with Kalash. Was it now ending with Kalash?

The muzzle of my gun was still pressed against Ibn Awad’s chest. Kevin was beginning to look positively unfriendly. He said, “You know, they always warned us about getting mixed up with formers.”

“Getting mixed up with what?”

“Former operatives. Old Boys. People like you. Now I know why. You geezers are dangerous.”

I got out my telephone and speed-dialed Kalash’s number. If he was as closely involved in this as I suspected, he would be waiting for a call.

And so he was. He answered the phone himself. And recognized my voice.

“Ah, Horace. The weather is filthy in Paris. How is it in Uzbekistan?”

“Overcast.”

“So I’ve heard. What a fellow you are, Horace.”

“I’m standing here with our mutual friend Kevin and your cousin.”

“Is anyone pointing a gun at you?”

“Not yet. But I am pointing a gun at Ibn Awad.”

“Then you’re in an ambiguous position and so am I. May I speak to Kevin?”

“No.”

“I see. Then why are you calling? What do you want?”

“Reassurance. What exactly are your plans for your relative?”

“I
told you. An island in the sun where he can pray in peace. Somehow I’ve gotten the idea from past events that that’s not a solution that would appeal to you.”

“I don’t have the resources to keep him happy and healthy in that kind of assisted living facility.”

“Of course you don’t. On the other hand I have a family obligation, you know. Don’t want to flunk the orals on Judgment Day.”

I had one more question, the only one that mattered. I expected a truthful answer. Kalash was unlikely to lie to someone as lowly as me. It was beneath him. Not only was I his profound inferior in every way that mattered—even my scrap-metal soul, if I had one, was worth far less than his golden one—but he also must have expected that I would be dead in a matter of seconds. I was almost as certain of this outcome as he was, but I was dying of curiosity. Years of my life had been crossed out by my connection to Ibn Awad. What was left of it was hardly worth worrying about.

I said, “Once you have your cousin, you have control of his wealth, correct?”

“I suppose I would have some sort of fiduciary responsibility, yes.”

He was talking about billions of dollars. Ibn Awad still controlled the wealth of his entire country with its huge oil reserves. Although I was a good one to talk, the idea of placing such wealth in the hands of a man who seemed to be a complete cynic made the blood run cold. Not because Kalash actually cared about nothing but because in some hidden part of himself he must care about something very much indeed to keep it such a secret. And in the age of terror, in an age when two versions of the same god were wrestling with each other in the minds of the zealots of two civilizations, what else could he care about but the same mission that obsessed Ibn Awad? This wasn’t a simple case of swapping one bad risk for another. Kalash was more dangerous than Ibn Awad because he was five times as intelligent and absolutely sane. He would get the job done, and quickly, efficiently, remorselessly.

I
could never let him get his hands on the money.

I said, “Hold on a moment, will you? I want to ask Kevin a question.” To Kevin I said, “Will you give me the Christophers, all four of them, if I let Ibn Awad live?”

Kevin shrugged. “That’s fine by me.”

“No. You have to guarantee it. I’ll walk Ibn Awad to the plane. Paul and Zarah and Lori and Tarik must be on the tarmac, waiting for us. You must get us away from the Turkmen and get us across the frontier into Kazakhstan.”

Kevin nodded. “That’s a lot of ‘musts,’” he said. “But okay.”

I spoke into the telephone. “Did you hear all that?”

“Every word,” Kalash said. “Of course you can have the Christophers. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to old Paul. But I must have the Amphora Scroll.”

“That’s the price?”

“That and my poor cousin, safe and sound, yes.”

“I must have your promise.”

“You trust me to keep it? I’m touched.”

I said, “Do we have a deal or not?”

“Done,” Kalash said. “Go in peace.”

It was a short walk to the airstrip, but Kevin had been muttering into his headset and by the time we got there the Christophers awaited. They looked the same, except for Tarik, who had one arm in a sling. To my surprise Zarah held the hooded Saker falcon on her arm. When Ibn Awad saw her uncovered face and unbound hair he turned his head away and spat, eyes glittering with righteous anger and disgust. Kevin, too, noticed Zarah, but reacted in a more Christian manner. I thought that his eyes might drop out of his head, and it must be said that she made a striking composition with the wind blowing her hair across her face and the huge alabaster bird gripping her slim forearm with its talons and the whirling demons and noise and smoke of chaos all about.

Captain Khaldun was already in the cockpit. The door of the plane was open, the ramp in place. Ibn Awad’s outraged reaction to Zarah’s harlotry had lasted only a moment. He shrank back into the passive old duffer he had been all morning. It was strange how utterly harmless he looked in his muslin robes and black turban and bare feet. His head was slightly cocked, as if he could hear things that the rest of us could not. He wore a slight smile. If it was voices he heard they must have been soothing ones.

Kevin said, “Shall we get him aboard?”

“Are you going with him?”

“Nope.
I’m leaving with the fellow that brung me. Wasn’t that the deal?”

“What about Ibn Awad?”

“Minders have been provided. A doctor and a male nurse. Ibn Awad seems to know them.”

“The doctor’s name?”

“Mubarak.”

I laughed. Kevin gave me a sharp look. What else did I know now that I wasn’t supposed to know? It was time to load Ibn Awad onto the plane. At this last minute I was loath to do so. Thirty bearded Turkmen fingered their weapons and watched my every move, looking theatrically grim. There was no way to be sure of what might happen to the Christophers and me after I let Ibn Awad go, especially after my grenades did their work on the left engine of the jet. Whatever they might do, it was unlikely to be friendly and pleasant. Kevin’s men, who were making a point of standing well apart from me and my friends, were our best if not our only hope of getting out of this alive and with all our body parts still attached. Yet I still didn’t even know what the native language of Kevin’s men might be—or Kevin’s either, if it came right down to it.

“Time to load him aboard,” Kevin said. “But first, you and I have some unfinished business.”

His tone was heavy with meaning. Paul gave me a look. So did Zarah. I saw no sign of the Amphora Scroll, but then Lori had never carried it in plain sight.

I beckoned to Paul and handed him my Kalashnikov. While he covered Ibn Awad, I walked over to Lori, who was standing somewhat apart from the others. Tarik moved closer as if to protect her even from me. I did not blame him. The air quivered with tension, Turkmen stood in a ring around us, Kevin’s intentions could not be guessed, confusion reigned. Lori seemed almost as oblivious to it all as Ibn Awad.

Talking to Lori was an echoless experience at the best of times. She simply absorbed whatever you said into the deep silence that
seemed to be at the center of her being. I explained about the Amphora Scroll, that Kalash wanted it and that we had to put it on the plane or probably die, in which case it would be taken from her dead body.