City of Jasmine (23 page)

“It’s nothing like the old days. To begin with, back then I didn’t know how to fly a plane and you weren’t dead.”

He laughed again, but the joke was on me. It was like the old days, much more than I liked to remember. There had only been a handful of weeks before he had changed and the beautiful idyll was over, but every night before that had ended just like this—with the pair of us staring into a fire, dreaming.

“I’ve almost got the knack of it now,” I said finally. “I can almost remember you without hating myself for being such a fool.”

He shook his head. “You were never that, Evie. You were young and in love and that’s a recipe for blindness. You saw what you wanted to.”

“I saw a man who had so much potential, so much strength. All you needed was a little polishing to be really great.”

His lips curved in a mocking smile. “And look at me now.”

“Yes, not so much polished as ground down to nothing. You should have had a hero’s death and lived on as nothing but a sweet memory instead of this,” I said, flicking a glance from his tousled hair to his scuffed boots. “I suppose when I go back to Damascus I’ll have a good wet weep over you.”

“Don’t bother,” he said, his tone amused. “I assure you I’m not worth it.”

“Oh, now you’re being flip again, but I mean it. It’s absolutely heart-wrenching to think of you like this, probably broke and rotting away out here. I’m beginning to think it’s only the grossest sort of fluke you even found that Cross,” I said, warming to my theme. “You won’t have a legacy at all, Gabriel, except as a footnote, an explorer who died before he did anything of real note.”

“What a lovely picture you paint,” he said sounding marginally less amused.

“Well, it’s true. You didn’t summit Masherbrum, after all. You
almost
did. You didn’t find the source of the Nile. You
almost
did. You didn’t find Machu Picchu. You
almost
did. It’s the story of your life, and no one ever remembers the folks who almost did things.”

“Not true,” he returned brightly. “Plenty of folks remember Napoleon. He almost won Waterloo.”

“That isn’t the same and you know it. He conquered Europe first. You never conquered anything.”

“Not even you,” he said, his gaze fixed on the fire. “I have a fine catalogue of failures, my dear, and you have kept perfect account of them. But the greatest failure of my life is you.”

He levered himself up off the ground and walked quietly away. I wrapped my arms around my knees and stared into the fire until my heart stopped jumping. He had always had that effect on me. My pulse always raced when he was near. It was more than a little unsettling that after five years apart, he could still do it with a flick of his eye.

Fourteen

I went later to look in on Herr Doktor and found him awake, his eyes dreamily unfocused, but his faculties sharp.

“How are you feeling?”

“I have been better,” he said with a small smile. “There were wars, you know. Many of them, and I was a good Uhlan.”

“Uhlans? Those are Prussian cavalry fellows, aren’t they?”

“Were.” The word was simple but carried all the weight of the world with it.

I settled myself next to him and poured out a tin cup of water. I held his head and he took a few sips. “I am sorry,” I told him.

“For what? That the water tastes of camel? Pah. It is what happens in the desert, child.”

“No. For the war. I mean, you started it, of course. One doesn’t like to be indelicate, but it was down to Germany getting all ruffled up. But I am sorry it happened. So many lives lost and for what? Germany’s crushed now, monarchies toppled like toy bricks, entire cities destroyed and millions of men who either never came home or will never be the same. It’s something we all ought to be sorry for, don’t you think?”

His eyes were shrewd. “You are a rare woman, Frau Starke. Few victors ever think of how the weight of their victory burdens the conquered.”

“It’s always been that way, hasn’t it? Here we are in the middle of a desert war in the same desert people have been fighting over for thousands of years. It’s madness.”

“Then why do you not go home?” he asked simply.

I started to answer, but he shook his head. “No,
gnädige Frau.
Do not give me the easy answer. Give me the real one.”

I sighed. “I don’t know. Well, I do know, but I wish I didn’t. The truth is, I feel quite sorry for Gabriel.”

His silvery white brows rose in little tufts. “A man seldom welcomes pity from the woman he loves.”

“Loved,” I corrected. “It’s terribly complicated, but the short version is that I blame myself. Make no mistake,” I warned, “I blame Gabriel plenty, too, but I have to take at least half the responsibility for the way he’s turned out.”

“And why is this?”

“Because I let him leave me when I ought to have fought for him. I think it may have been his one chance at real happiness and I took it from him. He turned to a...well, let’s just say a life of bad choices, I suspect.”

“How could you have anticipated such a thing?” he asked gently.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I was a child myself, really. But Gabriel was always so full of energy, so much larger than life. He seemed driven at times to do the things that were most impossible.” I shook myself briskly. “Now, why don’t you tell me exactly how much Miss Green is paying you to retrieve the Cross from us.”

The smile faltered and in its place a sheepish flush brightened his cheeks. He spluttered and fumed a few minutes until I held up a hand. “That’s quite enough. You’re going to tug those stitches out if you aren’t very careful. You might as well tell me, you know. I’ve already figured it out, anyway.”

“You have not,” he said, his jaw set mulishly. “This is a trick on an old man to make him tell things he ought not to—things you do
not
know.”

“Feathers. I think Miss Green knows exactly what the treasure is, and I think she sent you to get it. I’ve had time to think out here, and I don’t believe she is concerned for Gabriel at all. I think she wants the Cross. She’s desperate for a great find, the sort that will establish her reputation once and for all.” His expression was stubborn, but I went on, supplying the broad strokes. “I think Daoud told her about the Cross, but she wasn’t able to offer him as much money as the Hungarians, and since Daoud is a mercenary soul, he chose to throw in his lot with them. Realising she’d been betrayed, Miss Green turned to her old flame to do the dirty work for her and sent you out after the Cross. Which,” I finished, “isn’t very nice at all. She’s rather more spry than you are. She ought to have come after the Cross herself like any modern and independent woman would. Her thinking is painfully Victorian.”

Herr Doktor didn’t just splutter then. He positively
howled
his outrage. He was fussing at me in German so I understood about one word in fifty, but when he trotted out the word
blamage,
I held up my hand again.

“That’s quite enough. Really, you will burst those stitches and I don’t know that I would trust Gabriel’s hands to be quite steady a second time. The fellows have been entertaining themselves for some time now and I suspect Gabriel is halfway to being tight.” I rose and dusted off my hands. “I’m leaving the water for you. Make sure you drink plenty. It wouldn’t do to get dehydrated out here. It would be a pity to leave you behind.”

He was still shouting when I left him.

* * *

No sooner had I emerged from the tent than Gabriel strode up carrying a length of flatbread heaped with dried fruit, a few nuts and something that looked like an old shoe.

“What is this?” I poked at it a little.

“A sort of dried meat.”

“It looks like leather,” I told him.

“Tastes like it, too, but it will stop you being too hungry. What’s Herr Doktor fussed about?”

I shrugged and nibbled a piece of the dried meat to avoid telling him. There seemed little point in going into the details of Herr Doktor’s thwarted romance with Gethsemane Green. The poor man had little enough dignity left as it was. There was no need to make him a laughingstock.

“He isn’t our friend,” Gabriel said sharply.

I jerked. “I do wish you wouldn’t do that. It’s rude to read another person’s thoughts.”

“Hardly clairvoyance when what you’re thinking is writ large all over your face,” he returned with a bland smile. “You’ve just rowed with him about leaving us and discovered for yourself what I told you all along—that he is not to be trusted.”

“You trusted him well enough when he turned up in the middle of nowhere with a car,” I pointed out.

“No, I used him to get us the resources we needed.”

I rolled my eyes heavenward. “If you were so successful, we would have been left with the car.”

“Be glad we weren’t,” he said, his expression grim. “Apparently that’s what caught the eye of Daoud and his dangerous friends.”

“How do you know?”

He nodded his head towards the low fire where Sheikh Hamid and his men were gathered. “Rashid did a bit of sniffing around and met up with a cousin of his who told him that a band of Bedouin from the south had followed a car along the track from Palmyra.”

“Daoud,” I murmured.

“That means the good doctor was telling the truth. Daoud is still hanging about. And we have to assume he’s coming for us.”

* * *

In the morning, in the grey still hours before the sun has risen but after the black cloak of night had slipped off the edge of the world, Gabriel shoved me awake. “Drink this,” he ordered, pushing a cup of steaming liquid into my hands.

I sniffed. “What is this?”

“White coffee. Hot water flavoured with almonds and sweetened. Makes a nice change from their wretched habit of putting cardamom in the tea. Drink up and come with me. We’ve got a council of war on.”

He was exaggerating only slightly. The men had gathered around the fire, stoking it just enough to boil their drinks and talking with serious expressions.

“What’s the trouble?” I asked Gabriel.

“Rashid met with his cousin again this morning. The cousin’s village is a little distance away, a few hours by camel. He said they’ve been disturbed for the last day by two aeroplanes flying overhead.”

I shrugged. “Surely that can’t be so odd. This desert was crawling with planes during the war. The villagers must be used to it.”

He gave me a patient look. “The planes that flew over during the war were just as likely to drop bombs. These people are a trifle touchy about anything that flies and they’re quite happy to shoot at anything that does. These two were flying a little high for that. Their rifles didn’t have the range to touch them. But the curious thing is that they were flying search patterns.”

“Search patterns?”

“They’re looking for something out here,” he said, his jaw set.

“The Cross,” I breathed. “What if that’s how Countess Thurzó has arranged to get the Cross out of the desert? It’s brilliant. She wouldn’t have to go to Damascus at all! She could head right to Turkey or Baghdad with the money already in her pocket.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Baghdad is under British control, remember? We’ve been through this. She would have better odds with the French, I think.”

“Except for one thing,” I reminded him. “French control is teetering. With Faisal declaring independence and the government slipping into Arab hands, the last place Countess Thurzó would want to be is Damascus. She’d want to go quietly, and what better way than by flying over the border into Mesopotamia or Turkey?”

Gabriel rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Not exactly a subtle entrance, but you could be right. It is possible that the arrangements were already made and they’re hanging about because the countess is lost in the desert.”

“Of course! If the planes are still flying, then the countess hasn’t made contact yet,” I told him, reasoning it out as I spoke. “That means she still has the Cross. We’ll get it yet,” I promised him.

He sighed and put a hand to my shoulder. “Evie, it might be time to let it go. Hamid and his men can see us safely to the Damascus road—hell, they’ll take us all the way to the city if we want. Or they’ll escort us to Baghdad, which sounds a damn sight safer at this point.”

I shrugged off his hand, stepping closer until we were toe-to-toe. “Have you forgot that my Aunt Dove is in Damascus? What sort of cad are you that you would leave a defenceless old woman in a city that could fall any day?”

He groaned. “God, I did forget. Still, we could have Hamid send men to Damascus with a message to put her on the first train to Baghdad, or Palestine even. They’d get her out faster than we could.”

I waved an airy hand. “Don’t be stupid. Damascus isn’t going to fall. They have a king in Faisal but if there’s one thing I know about the fellow, he’s
nice.
He isn’t going to throw the French out completely, and he isn’t going to let anything happen to foreigners.”

He fisted his hands at his sides as if clenching them were the only thing preventing him from fitting them around my neck. “You just called me a cad for even thinking of leaving your aunt there and now that’s precisely what you’re suggesting.”

“I would back Aunt Dove against a revolution any day. She’s been through fourteen, you know. I just wanted to remind you that there are factors to consider besides what is most convenient for you.”

“Convenient?” His nostrils flared like a bull’s. “Do you think any of this has been bloody convenient for me?”

I shrugged. “Oh, don’t be such a bear. I know you got whipped and you’re still a little upset that I shot you, don’t deny it. But I have priorities, too, Gabriel. And not just Aunt Dove. Wally should be in Damascus with the
Jolly Roger
by now, and I have to consider them, as well.”

“Of course you do,” he said.

“How ever do you get your upper lip to curl like that? It’s the most wonderful sneer. Do you practise in the mirror?”

“For God’s sake, Evie, if you make one more joke—”

“Really, Gabriel,” I said seriously. “All this time I’ve been annoyed with you for making a joke of everything, but now I see it’s marvelously effective—almost as effective as your sneer. Now, you must teach me how to do it. I’d like to be able to raise one eyebrow, as well. I bet you can do that, too.”

“I remember this mood,” he said dangerously. “It’s no use talking to you when you’re like this.”

“Like what? Oh, I know you think it’s foolish, but I can’t shake the feeling that everything’s going to be all right in the end.”

“You
always
think everything is going to be all right in the end.”

I blinked at him. “Well, isn’t it?”

His mouth went slack. “Is it? Evie, I’ve been officially dead for five years. Our marriage ended on a steamer in Shanghai. I haven’t been with another woman since. Do you know what that does to a man’s insides? I have been in this bloody desert killing myself to make one single discovery that I can leave as a legacy to show that I actually did something with my life, and when I finally do discover it, I manage to put you in danger, get whipped, chased and shot at as well as kil—” He choked himself off abruptly but I scarcely noticed.

“You haven’t been with another woman? Not since me?”

“You sound incredulous,” he said with a nasty, clipped quality to his voice. “May I presume you’ve not been quite so assiduous in maintaining your own marital fidelity?”

“Well, since I thought I was a widow, there wasn’t any marital fidelity to maintain, was there?” I gave him a cheerful smile that concealed much. “You really ought to rectify that situation. You’re quite right. It isn’t healthy for a man’s insides. Perhaps you can find a nice girl in Damascus. I hear they have quite good prostitutes there.”

His mouth went from slack to hanging fully open. He closed it with a snap that must have rattled his teeth.

“Now,” I said briskly, “what is Hamid’s plan?”

“Hamid insists upon going to the aid of Aysha and Rashid’s people. Hamid feels it would be a disgrace not to support them. His rifles are longer range. He thinks he can shoot at least one of the planes down and perhaps both,
inshallah.
”

“Does Hamid know that the planes are most likely not after the Bedu at all?”

He hesitated. “Hamid is a trifle intractable on the subject of aeroplanes. I tried to explain that they were most likely just searching the desert for oil surveys or something equally innocuous, but he thinks they’re French reconnaissance after Bedouin rebels. I couldn’t reassure him completely without explaining about the Cross, so I went along with it.”

Just then the sheikh beckoned to us.

“I hear some planes have been spotted to the east,” I said. At this half a dozen men broke out in fervent Arabic, and I caught one word repeated several times.
Saqr.

“What does that mean—
saqr?
” I asked Gabriel. “I’ve heard the word before.”