Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (50 page)

    
“You got
a gun, Shams?” Raszer asked.

    
“Keep a
.22 under the floor,” Shams replied, “for the occasional rabbit stew. But I’ve
got better. Follow the leader.”

    
Like a
salamander, he slithered across the floor without lifting his belly more than
an inch, rolled back the corners of six carpets one by one, released a catch,
and slid open a three-foot square hatch. It opened so quietly, Raszer thought,
that it must be on greased bearings. Shams turned, hailed them over, and then,
laying a finger aside his nose like Clement C. Moore’s Saint Nick, disappeared
down the hole headfirst.

    
The
crawl space beneath the yurt’s plank floor was far larger than was to be
expected, as Shams had scooped out a ton of earth, right down to bedrock, and
fortified the crumbling clay walls with one-by-six planks. A ten-year-old could
have stood upright, and Shams wasn’t a great deal bigger than that. He’d
installed ceramic drains for the rainy season and cut peepholes into the
platform, offering a wraparound view at ground level. Most critically, he’d
created an emergency exit, and Raszer now saw why nearly sixty degrees of the
yurt’s shell was flush with the concave rock face outside.

    
“The
Army taught you well,” he whispered to Shams.
  

    
“Hell,”
said Shams. “The Army taught me shit. I learned this from the Bedouin. They’re
always squirreling stuff away. There’s a glacier split in the rock, a tunnel
that runs about forty feet in and then opens into a crevasse. If we’re quick,
we can get up on top before they know we’ve left the building.” He grabbed his
.22 from where it sat propped against the wall and turned to Ruthie. “Your new
friend brings a lot of heat, princess.” He tore off the burlap curtain covering
the tunnel and motioned her in. “Ladies first. We’ll be right behind.”

    
No
sooner had she slipped in than there were boots hammering the floor above. Two
sets of boots, as far as Raszer could tell: one heavier, one lighter. Shams
urged him into the tunnel, but Raszer signaled a moment’s pause. Just ten
inches from his nose
 
there was an
eighth-of-an-inch gap between two of Shams’ floorboards, a place the rugs
didn’t quite cover. Through it, he could see that the fire had now burned
halfway down the cylindrical walls of the yurt. The arsonists did not speak,
but Raszer could see dark forms moving about in the dull glow above. He caught
a bit of a torso, and the stock of an automatic weapon, then a tantalizing
glimpse of a stocking-covered face.

    
One of
them squatted down and ran his fingers over the floorboards, obscuring Raszer’s
view.

    
They
hadn’t yet discovered the trap door. Only a matter of seconds. He felt Shams
tug at his sleeve.
Just give me one look
,
Raszer thought. The shape of a chin, the outline of a nose: anything I can log
into memory. Acrid smoke entered his lungs and he suppressed a cough. The
fingers retreated, leaving his view unobstructed for just long enough to see
the veiled eye of the assassin coming down to the crack, and for a few moments,
they were eyeball to eyeball and equally blind. Then he received communion,
from the intruder’s mouth to his.

    
Wintergreen.

    
The
scent of the aromatic oil overpowered most—but not all—others. The mouth held a
tongue and the tongue held its own bouquet, and the bouquet recalled flavors
he’d had in his own mouth only days before. At that instant, scent congealed
into certainty. The Syrian girl had become his pursuer. He hadn’t wanted to
believe it, had hoped that she could be turned and might lead him to the center
of the maze. He put his hand to the crack, pivoted, and followed Shams into the
tunnel.

    
On top
of the rock, thirty feet above, they hunkered down and watched the arsonists
creep away from the smoldering yurt and disappear over a ridge. Raszer kept the
rifle’s sight trained on their backs. When they were gone, Shams turned to
Raszer and said, “You sure you want to run The Gauntlet, man?”

    
Raszer
nodded. “Forgone conclusion, I’m afraid,” he said.

    
“I’ll
make arrangements, then. You just follow them. Allah be praised.”

“He took that pretty well,” said Raszer, then let
the scalding coffee poach his lips for a second. “I wouldn’t be so cool if
somebody’d just burned down my house.”

    
“Maybe
that’s why he lives in yurts,” Ruthie offered. “Shams doesn’t like to get
attached. He’ll hole up in town for a couple days and then build another one.”

    
It was
two in the morning, and cold. They were parked in a gravel lot outside an
all-night Internet café called Nocturno, out on the north edge of town, beyond
the Pueblo. Its proprietor was a lanky Tiwa half-breed called Lon who seemed to
know Shams pretty well, and its denizens were a motley collection of local
insomniacs. Shams had asked to be taken there so that he could “put out some
code” and “call in the 82nd Airborne,” both of which Raszer took as cryptic
references to whatever it was that would pave his own way into The Gauntlet as
a player on the Urfa route.

    
When
Raszer had queried him on it, Shams had replied, “Don’t ask, don’t tell. That
much, the Army
did
teach me.”

    
Today
was Good Friday, the beginning of the Easter vigil. One way or another, Raszer
intended to be on a plane by Saturday morning. The fact that he didn’t yet have
tickets purchased or a specific route mapped out was peculiar to his way of
doing things: He could move only as quickly as his knowledge allowed, and
knowledge had a way of trickling in like a slowly thawing creek.

    
He knew
now that he was bound for southeastern Turkey, possibly by way of Istanbul,
possibly via Athens. Monica had various contingency plans in place,
reservations held, outfitters and guide services contacted, but all of it might
have to go by the boards, depending on what Shams came back with.

    
“Well,”
said Raszer, “I expect he’ll be here for a while. I should make a report.
Although I’d hate to see the cops go rushing out after these guys with guns
blazing.”

    
“Wouldn’t
you like to see them dead?” Ruthie asked.

    
“Not
yet,” said Raszer. “Sometimes the man on your tail ends up being your guide. If you eliminate him, you’ve got no scent.”

    
“Do you
think they wanted to kill us . . . or just scare you off?”

    
“I
think,” Raszer said, “they wanted to terrorize us. The word
does
mean something. They won’t want to
kill me until they figure out what I know, and who I might’ve told. What do you
want to do, Ruthie? You look like you need sleep.”

    
“
Want
to and
have
to are two diff’rent things,” she replied. “I
want
to go to the Alley Cantina and do
about six tequila shooters. I
have
to
go home and help Angel prepare for his big day as Jesus. I promised my mother.
They come for him before sunrise. You know the story: Judas and the kiss and
all that. We have to witness, my mother ’n me. We have to pray with him. It
sucks, but it’s the least I can do for her. We’re the two Marys, the mother and
the whore. Shit. I’m really not down for this.”

    
“Okay,”
said Raszer, turning on the ignition. “I’ll take you home, and then I’ll swing
back here to see if Shams needs a lift. Where will he sleep?”
  

    
“Prob’ly
at the Pueblo. At Lon’s place. Shams is one of those people who finds a bed
wherever he is. That’s how he made it for three years over there.”

    
Raszer
aimed a finger at the dusty front window of the Internet café. “Is this where
you picked up your emails from Henry?” he asked.

    
“Yeah.”

    
“Does
the FBI know that?”

    
“Yeah,
but like I said, it didn’t get them anywhere.”

    
“Hmm,”
said Raszer. “That was then, this is now. Anyway, why don’t you run in there
and tell Shams I’m taking you home? And tell him he can crash in my room at the
inn if he needs a place.”

    
Ruthie
hopped out of the Jeep and strode into the café. Raszer blinked, because he saw
an afterimage of her movement trailing through the night air. The effect of
Shams’ brew was still with him.
Oh, yes,
time can be slowed
. He watched as she made small talk with Lon, poured
herself a cup of black coffee, and flirted with the local boys. She seemed in
no hurry, but neither was Raszer. Finally, she approached Shams and jingled the
bell on the tassel of his cap. He put an arm around her waist and with his free
hand scribbled out a note. He handed it to her and said something that made her
frown. She stepped back and shook her head, then leaned in to hug him.

    
A minute
later, she was back in the Jeep, handing Raszer the note.

    
“Bad
news?” Raszer asked.

    
Ruthie
stared stiffly out through the windshield.

    
“He said
there’s no way I can come with you,” she said in monotone.

    
“He’s
right,” said Raszer. “Nobody’s paying
you
to risk losing your tongue.”

    
“It’s
my
little sister they took. And
my
man they murdered.”
 

    
“And all
that would just get in the way,” Raszer said softly.

    
She lit
one of his cigarettes and shook out the match. “Whether you knew it or not,
mister, when you came through Taos, you came to pick me up. Now take me home,
would you?”

    
“Sure,”
said Raszer, dropping the gearshift into reverse. Before backing out, he paused
to open the note from Shams.

    
Be on the bridge over the Rio Grande gorge
at sunrise on Easter Sunday. Don’t ask. Just trust the Game. Remember—Harran.
The Fedeli d’Amore. El Mirai. Tell them Shams sent you.

    
Raszer gazed through the dust-flocked window of
Nocturno at the elfin survivor seated at a lamplit terminal in the rear, typing
in his “code” with two stubby fingers. When Shams looked up, Raszer nodded, and
Shams returned the nod. The look in his eyes said,
Vaya con Dios
; it gave Raszer a pang. After that, Shams continued
hammering away at the keyboard, sending out signals to the 82nd Airborne.

    
“All right, Ruthie,” said Raszer, pulling to a
stop in front of the trailer park’s gate. The sun was still moribund. She had
only a few hours to sleep, and so did he. “You’ve been delivered. Be a comfort
to Angel. It can’t be easy going on the cross. And thanks for everything you’ve
given me. I
will
bring your sister
home.”

    
“You
haven’t seen the last of me,” she said.

    
Raszer
held her stare for a moment, and then said: “No. I don’t expect I have.”

    
“My old
man was wrong about most things, but he was right about one of ’em: If I’d let
Katy be—if I’d never shown her my side of the street—she’d still be safe in
Azusa. She’d still be in the Little Flock. Bound for heaven.”

    
“Don’t
damn yourself too quickly.”

    
“Oh, I’m
damned, all right,” Ruthie replied. “That’s already settled. But I plan on
makin’ the most of it.”

    
“Why do
you think Emmett Parrish called Katy ‘the last pure thing’?”

    
“For one
thing ‘cause he was nuts about her. For another, ‘cause she was. Even when she
was bad she was good. Hell, she might be the only thing
worth
rescuing.”

    
Raszer
reached across her lap and opened the door for her. “You’d better get in
there,” he said. “It’ll be sunrise before you know it.” He paused. “I’m going
to do some climbing in those foothills in a few hours. What are the chances I
could get within observing distance of the ceremony?”

    
“You
could,” she said, “if you know where it’s at. They keep it a secret until they
leave the
morada
. That’s the little
adobe chapel at the end of Pima Road. The procession goes there. We—the women,
that is—stay outside while they beat themselves bloody. Then the
hermano mayor
—the top dog—he whispers
something to one of the old women. We walk alongside the men for a while; then
we break off ’n hike for, like, ten fuckin’ miles into the mountains till we
get to a place—usually a cliff or bluff or something—that overlooks the hill,
Calvary, where it all goes down.”