A Hologram for the King (26 page)

They walked a hundred yards to a cluster of boulders, low and smooth, and Yousef draped himself over one. Alan followed suit, and they both pointed their rifles at the pen below. They had a clear shot. The owner had left a floodlight on — this had not deterred the wolves before, the men had said — and there was little wind, so it was a shot he could make if the wolf was moving slowly and predictably. Alan didn't have much experience leading a target, but without any obstacles, in a spotlit open pen, he thought he could at least get a piece of the animal.

He watched as the rest of the hunting party spread itself out around
the perimeter of the pen. He counted nine shooters, including the young cousins. Should a wolf penetrate the perimeter, there would be plenty of guns ready to put it down.

Alan did not want to kill any animal. He dreaded the moment when the wolf, hit by a bullet, would jerk, stagger about, and, immobilized, be filled with lead. He dreaded hearing its labored breathing as they stood around it, waiting for it to die. But it seemed unlikely that any animal, however stupid or desperate, would enter the pen under these circumstances, with so many people nearby, such bright light. Then again, Alan knew nothing about hunting, about wolf hunting, about wolf hunting in the mountains of central Saudi Arabia.

Alan's father had taught him to shoot, or at least had brought him along hunting a few times. He didn't teach him much. When Alan was ten, he handed him an antique Winchester .22 rifle and had said, Do as I do. Ron was using a .45 semiautomatic rifle, and Alan had followed behind him. When Ron lifted his rifle Alan had lifted his, too. Eventually Ron taught him to breathe into the shot, to keep the rifle as close to the body, to the cheek, as possible. But Alan didn't take to it the way Ron had hoped, and after those first few times, that was that.

Across the valley, another pair of headlights appeared as a blue sunrise beyond the ridge's ragged silhouette. Alan looked to Yousef. Yousef shrugged. —This is a big event here. Everyone wants to be part of it. This is like Christmas. Yousef considered this for a second. Maybe not like Christmas.

Alan looked into the pen and saw nothing. The sheep were safe under their corrugated roof, and the wolf still hadn't dared to cross the
stage. Yousef lowered his rifle and rubbed his shoulder and neck.

He looked to Alan. —Hey, how's your neck?

—Fine. Sore.

Alan watched as Yousef, smiling, took in the sight of Alan draped over the rock, poised to shoot.

—Were you ever in the army? he asked.

—No, I told you.

—You said you weren't in the CIA.

—I wasn't in the army, either. My dad was.

—And he fought?

—He did. In World War II.

Yousef made an impressed sound. —Where?

The mythology of the World War II vet dictates that they don't like to talk about the war, but Ron never hesitated. Anything could get him going. An Italian accent in any TV show started him in about the two Mussolini soldiers — he didn't call them Italian, for, he said, true Italians didn't follow or fight for that maniac — he'd killed, or helped kill. The sight of a nurse triggered stories of the German nurses he'd known, the British ones aboard his ship home, the Polish one he'd known quite intimately. That story he began telling after Alan's mother died. Ron had really become a strong dose in his old age, hadn't he? But there were these stories, better stories than Alan had or would ever have, stories that began with any injury, stories prompted by hearing Schubert, Wagner, by documentaries on the History Channel.

Alan told Yousef the best part, that his father had been captured by the Nazis, imprisoned at Muhlberg, and when the Soviets overran the region, they expected to be freed, but were not. They had a feeling that
Stalin was bargaining for the prisoners somehow, that he was holding them while he weighed his options. Ron and his bunkmate knew something was amiss, and though their orders were to stay put, to be patient and respect the process, they wanted out of there. They wanted to be home. So one night they stole a pair of Soviet bicycles, sped to the fences, found a hole, snuck through, and rode off through the German countryside.

Yousef was loving all this.

—Ah, that's why you went into bicycles, he said.

—How do you mean?

—Because your father escaped on a bike.

Alan spent a moment with that. —Huh, he said, finally. I'd never made that connection.

Yousef didn't believe him. To have never drawn the line from his father's escape aboard a bicycle, the only vehicle that would have taken him so quietly and so quickly?
Was
there a connection? Alan didn't attempt to parse it all.

—But you didn't want to join the army?

—No.

—Why? No good wars?

—Exactly.

—But you would have fought in World War II?

—I wouldn't have had a choice.

—What if you had?

—A choice?

—Yes.

—I would have gone. I would have tried to avoid the Pacific.

—And if you were young now?

—Would I join? No.

—Why? Still no good wars?

—Why all these questions, Yousef? You thinking of joining the army?

—Maybe. I'd like to be a pilot.

—Well, don't.

—Why not?

—Because you should just get back to college and finish. You have a great brain. Stay safe, go to college, give yourself options.

—But there's no options here. I told you that.

—So leave.

—I could leave.

—Then leave.

—But it would be better to stay here, and have things be different. They lay in silence for a while. Yousef turned to him.

—Alan, would you fight for us?

—Who?

—People like me, in Saudi.

—Fight for you how?

—Like you guys fought for the Iraqis. Or what you said you were fighting for. To give them
opportunities
.

—You mean would I fight personally?

—Yes.

—Maybe. As a young man, I would have.

—Would anyone else?

—Yousef, this is nuts. No one's invading Saudi Arabia.

—I know. I'm just curious. Just about individuals.

—You want to know if individual Americans would come here to
fight alongside you?

—Exactly.

—I don't know. Probably. I think we have a lot of people willing to fight to support the people who are trying to be free. Americans like a cause. And they don't think too much about it.

Alan laughed at his joke. Yousef did not.

—So if I start a democratic revolution here, you would support me?

—Is this your plan?

—No. I'm just asking. Would you?

—Of course.

—How?

—I don't know.

—You would send troops?

—Me personally?

—You know what I mean. The U.S.

—Send troops? No chance.

—Air support?

—No, no.

—Shock and awe.

—Here? No way.

—Advisors of some kind, maybe. Spies?

—Here in Saudi? There are plenty already.

—What about personally? Would you personally come to support me?

—Yes, Alan said.

—That was quick.

—Well, I'm sure.

—With your twenty-two-caliber rifle.

—Exactly.

Yousef smiled. —Good, good. When I start the revolution, I'll at least have you on my side.

—You would.

—You're crazy. Yousef shook his head, grinning, and went back to his rifle, positioning himself again to be ready. Then he turned again to Alan.

—You know I was kidding, right?

—About what?

—About wanting the U.S. to invade our country.

Alan didn't know what to say. Yousef was still grinning.

—You're so ready to believe it! It's kind of funny, don't you think?

—I don't know if it's funny, Alan said. I'm sorry. I didn't know you were kidding.

—It's okay. I'm still happy you'd bring your twenty-two to fight with me. Even if I'm not about to start a revolution.

They went back to watching the valley below, but Alan was shaken. Yousef had been lighthearted during his questions, but there was something very serious and very sad under his smile, and Alan knew what it was. It was the knowledge that there would be no fighting, and there would be no struggle, no stand taken, and that the two of them, because they were not lacking materially, because despite injustices in their countries they were the recipients of preposterous bounty, would likely do nothing. They were content, they had won. The fighting would be done by others, elsewhere.

Down below, movement. Alan lifted his rifle and pressed his cheek to the smooth wood. But it was one of the sheep. Somehow it had gotten
loose, and now wanted to rejoin its brethren in the shelter. Alan had it in his sights, and a good part of him wanted to shoot that sheep. He harbored no ill will toward the animal, and he'd get in trouble for shooting it, but then again, he had a gun and had been waiting for forty minutes. Just waiting, watching. If he shot it, it would be something that had happened. The gun wants to be fired. The waiting must end.

A wind swept through the valley and up toward the ridge where they all gathered. A fine dust swirled about, making it difficult to see, but Alan felt that with the wind came the strange but absolute certainty that he would kill the wolf.

He was not one for premonitions, and had never felt any sense of destiny about himself, but now, with his cheek pressed against the cold wood of the rifle, he was sure he would pull the trigger that would send the bullet through the heart of the wolf. He was so sure that he felt a wonderful calm, a calm that allowed a smile to overtake his face.

This will be good, he thought. It will be good to be the one to see and shoot the wolf. To shoot a wolf in the mountains of Saudi Arabia will be something. The man who pulls the trigger will have done something.

He waited this way, content and certain, for some time, even as voices approached from behind him. He didn't look back, but it seemed that some of the other hunters had given up their posts and were either settling in here to wait for the animal or had come to collect Yousef and Alan. But as if intuiting that Alan was locked in, that he knew something they did not, they kept their distance. Amid the steady wind their
voices were distant and, to Alan, irrelevant.

What would they do when he shot the animal? They would shake his hand, pound his chest with their palms. They would all say that they knew it would be him. The second they saw him, they knew he would be the one to get it done.

Suddenly, movement below. A figure swept into his sights. It was large, dark, quick. Alan's finger touched his trigger. His barrel was steady. The figure emerged, and Alan saw the head of a wolf.

It was time.

He breathed out and squeezed the trigger. The rifle sent the bullet into the night with a low pop and Alan knew that he would be the shooter. He would be the killer.

Then he saw a head. A mess of black hair. It was not the wolf. It was a boy. The shepherd. He'd emerged from the shelter to lead the sheep inside. There was a fraction of a second wherein Alan knew that the bullet might hit the boy, might kill the boy.

He waited. The boy was looking up to them, following the sound of the gun, and Alan waited to see him jerk back or fall.

But the boy did not fall. He was not hit. He waved.

As Alan's heart hammered, he lifted the rifle from his cheek and set it down on the rock beside him. He didn't want to see the boy anymore, and didn't want the boy to see him, so he turned away, his back to the valley. And then he saw the men.

Yousef was there, and the young cousins, and the man who asked him if he ate the animal or ate the man, and the man who he had told
he was with the CIA. They were all standing, their guns at their side. They had all seen Alan shoot his rifle at the shepherd boy, and no one seemed surprised.

Yousef sat with Alan on the ride home, in the cab of the truck. They said nothing until they reached the fortress and went inside.

—You should sleep for a while, Yousef said.

He led Alan to his room.

—I'm sorry, Alan said.

—I'll have a car drive you back in the morning.

—Fine.

—Good night, Yousef said, and closed the door.

Alan did not sleep. He tried to calm his thoughts, but everything came back to what he'd almost done. Because he hadn't done anything, for years or ever, he had almost done this. Because he had no stories of valor, he had almost done this. Because the efforts he'd made toward creating something like a legacy had failed, he had almost done this.