Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (58 page)

    
It had
to do with the strange tale Ruthie Endicott had spun when she’d returned Henry
Lee’s black rock to him on the night before Shams’ murder. It was a story his
research had at least partly prepared him for, but its implications were
explosive. Henry had filched the talisman from right under the nose of the
mysterious Black Sheikh after seeing it used to conjure a bit of chaos magick
in the tent outside Najaf—the tent where he and Johnny had sworn fealty to the
Old Man.

    
But it
wasn’t only the stone’s magical potency that Henry had risked losing his head
for. It was what the sheikh had revealed about its origins. If true, the
two-pound chunk of meteoric rock was more than a relic. It was a key to the
germination of Islam in something that didn’t resemble Islam at all. Something
that would shake every mosque from here to Amsterdam and make much of the
Islamist cause look like one enormous act of masculine overcompensation.

    
He
decided to check in with Monica, who was surely beside herself by now. It had
been forty-eight hours.

    
The
ionophone, which had at least a dozen features he’d never use, was fancier gear
than he liked to carry, but it did have one utility of great value, though to
access it he had to open a small plate on the backside and use a jeweler’s
screwdriver to adjust a tiny set screw. This effectively disabled the phone’s
GPS capability by scrambling the outgoing signal, a form of data encryption.

    
“What
the hell, Raszer?” Monica said. “I lost you over the Bering Strait, then I
picked you up again over the Caucasus. I had you as far as the Euphrates, and
now you’re off the grid again. That $2,000 transmitter in your ass doesn’t seem
to be working as advertised. How did you get there? None of the commercial
flights—”

    
He
explained as best he could.

    
“I don’t
like this,” she said flatly.

    
“I’m not
crazy about it either, but there you have it. I could have wandered around
southeastern Turkey for weeks and not gotten this close to Katy Endicott.”

    
“Yeah,
but at what price? You’ve made yourself part of someone else’s agenda.”

    
“How
else do we ever really get what we want?”

    
“What
can I do?” Monica asked. “I feel useless.”

    
“For one
thing, you can call in a favor with our guy at the DIA, and pinpoint American
and Turkish troop deployments
and
Kurdish separatist hot zones along the Turkey–Iraq border. I want to steer
clear of combat as best I can.”

    
“That’s
not going to be easy where you are.”

    
“I know.
Kurdistan isn’t even a real country, and it’s in a state of war with three of
them. Only in the New Age can you make war on a virtual nation.”

    
“Men
make war on their nightmares. Always have. What else?”

    
“Go back
into those threads you started on pre-Islamic cults. Let’s see if we can get an
inkling of where that black stone in the Ka’ba is supposed to have come from.”

    
“The one
that looks like a vulva?” she asked.

    
“Right.
According to Islamic legend, it was given to Abraham by the angel Gabriel.
There are feminist scholars—and others—who say it’s a meteorite used in pre-Islamic
worship and later co-opted. There’s a connection with
the Satanic Verses.
 
Go into the related etymology: Kubaba, Kybele,
and Koran. Qur’an. I remember something about Mohammed’s tribe being the
Quraysh, devotees of Q’re. Kore . . . the same one worshipped at Eleusis? Does
that make the Koran the word of Kore? And see if you can tie in a Syrian or
Nabataean goddess named Atargatis. That’s whose head is on the coin I found,
and reportedly she’s the mascot for the Old Man’s
fedayeen
, his most loyal soldiers.

    
“There’s
something really ancient at work here,” Raszer continued. “We need to look
again at how any of this could possibly relate to the deep history of the
Witnesses, to Henry Lee, to castration—to the whole idea of becoming a
‘virgin.’”

    
“Are you
going to tell me why the stone in the Ka’ba has anything to do with you . . .
or Katy Endicott? It’s in Mecca. You’re in Turkey.”

    
“Because
I’m betting it can be used to work some very powerful magic, and because—as
crazy as this sounds—it’s just possible that I have a piece of it, or at least
what someone thinks is a piece of it.”

    
“The
rock you lifted from the evidence room?”

    
“And
that—according to Ruthie—Henry Lee stole from the Black Sheikh.”

    
“Jesus.
Well, it makes sense they’d want it back. But I still don’t—”

    
“Look at
it this way. Suppose what you discovered about that conference in Damascus is
really the nightmare it seems to be: a movement of Christian and Islamic
fanatics and their proxies in government to trigger a series of catastrophes that
would usher in a rigidly masculinist theocracy, east and west. How much mojo
would that movement have if it were revealed that the foundations of Islam lie
in the worship of a castrating goddess? How much juice would Pat Robertson have
as a eunuch?”

    
“Before
I met you, Raszer, the world was a much simpler place.”

    
“Sorry,
sweetheart.”

    
“And
whose side is this ‘Old Man’ on?”

    
“Neither.
And both. He’s a broker. A profiteer. And probably a sorcerer.”

    
“Okay,”
she said. “I’m on it. And when will I hear—”

    
“As soon
as I’m settled with the Fedeli d’Amore, who seem to be the same guys Shams
referred to as running a hostel near old Harran. But I don’t know what to
expect. Not after being briefed by two CIA men who are both named Philby
Greenstreet.”

    
“Philby
Greenstreet?” Monica repeated.

    
“That’s
right.”

    
“Two
spooks with the same name?”

    
“Yeah.”

    
“Expect
double the fun, then. Or twice the trouble.”

    
Raszer awoke at 4:44
am
and, for
a few plummeting moments, had absolutely no idea where he was. A sharp, pinging
noise pricked his ears, and he realized he’d been stirred by the sound of
someone throwing pebbles at the French window. He swung out of bed, stretched
the deathlike sleep of long travel from his limbs, and went to the window, half
expecting to see a street urchin straight out of Dickens.

    
Dante
was not a boy, but he wasn’t quite a man, either. Twenty-two, twenty-three at
most, shaggy haired, round faced, and as saucer-eyed pretty as a Renoir child.
He had wound up and was getting ready to hurl the next pebble when he noticed
that Raszer had stepped through the window and onto the narrow balcony.

    
The
first light of a false dawn had begun to filter into the old city, painting
everything in a watercolor wash of palest blue. Even Dante’s fair skin looked
bluish.

    
“Frère
Deleuze?” the boy called up. There was a soft Scottish burr in his accent.

    
“
C’est moi
,” Raszer answered. “But
English is my second language.”

    
“That’s
good,” Dante said. “Because my French is crappy.”

    
“Did
they tell you why I’m here?”

    
“To find
a missing girl, right?”

    
“I need
to get to El Mirai. Can you help me?”

    
“If
anyone can,” replied the young man. “Are you ready to go? The Harran
dolmus
leaves the
otogar
in forty-five minutes. At Harran, my crew will come for us
in the pickup. It’s a thirty-minute ride to Suayb, and another twenty to
Sogmatar. We’d better get going. Big party tonight.”

    
“I’ll be
right down,” said Raszer. “But I didn’t bring my party dress.”

    
Quietly
and quickly, he repacked his things, then took a minute to compose a note of
thanks to Rashid al-Khidr, the latest of his guides on this, the strangest of
his journeys. He couldn’t be sure that he would ever see the man again. He
slipped the note under Rashid’s door and padded down the stairs into the cool
of the new day.

    
The sun broke over the distant hills as they were
entering the outskirts of Harran and sat like a half-exposed pewter dish for
what seemed a long time. By the time they reached the old town center, it had
risen fully, and the honeyed light it cast on the ancient beehive huts made
them look like marzipan. The huts—dozens of them—were constructed of mud brick,
without even the most rudimentary frame, and were entirely uniform in design.
Like desert igloos, they had been built straight up from the soil to their
pointed tops, and seemed so much a part of the landscape that it surprised
Raszer to see human forms emerge from them. Harran had been continuously
occupied for six thousand years. The huts were not quite that old, but they
might as well have been. The settlement had the look of Afghanistan in
Appalachia: rugged people with skin like tarnished brass instruments, and
children who seemed far too young for them, playing amid detritus: rusted
bicycles, ironing boards, and the odd piece of exercise gear.

    
“Is this
home?” Raszer asked his guide.

    
“Used to
be,” answered Dante. “Used to run the outfitting business out of two of the
beehives, side by side. But we outgrew them. Needed elbow room.” He paused.

    
 
“Abraham lived here,” Dante continued. “Before
he was called to Canaan. The Greeks came through. So did the Romans and the
Mongols. They all left it be. It’s a godly place. And the people are
good-hearted. But we didn’t quite fit in. You probably wouldn’t either.”

    
“What do
you know about me?” Raszer asked. “Besides the fact that my cover is a
French-Canadian monk.”

    
“That
you’re a private eye.”

    
“And
who’d you hear that from? Rashid? Or Philby Greenstreet?”

    
“Neither.
We heard it from Shams.”

    
Raszer
recalled Shams’ late-night emailing from the cyber café in Taos.

    
“So you
know—you knew—Shams. Did he live here for a while, too?”

    
“He
passed through. Stayed for a bit. He was righteous folk. A real baba.”

    
“A baba?”

    
“A guide. A gate. Comes from
bdb
. A portal to gnosis.”

    
“Yes, he
was that. Do you know . . . what happened? Back in Taos.”

    
“Word
got through. We held a vigil. But Shams will abide. It isn’t the first time
he’s died. Won’t be the last. That was just a meat puppet they killed in Taos.
Bastards. They’re big on display, big on the horror show, they are.”

    
“Who are
they trying to scare?” Raszer asked.

    
“Right
now, you.”

    
The
dolmus
pulled under a makeshift carport
next to a filling station and squealed to a stop. Dante gestured to a waiting
Toyota pickup. “There’s our ride.”

    
“How
many of you are there?” Raszer asked.

    
“You’ll
see soon enough. Let’s grab your gear and go. We’re staked out in Suayb, about
twenty kilometers north of here. We’ve gone, uh, underground.”

    
The driver, who introduced himself as Chrétien,
wore a red bandana over silky hair as long and unkempt as Dante’s. He was
taller, a few years older, and had the look of a natural leader, but Raszer saw
no overt acknowledgment of rank. Chrétien, despite his name, was not French,
but spoke English with the elongated vowels of a Dutchman. He was shirtless and
skinny and baked the color of bread crusts by the sun, and he goosed the
speedometer to sixty on roads that weren’t meant for more than forty.

    
He
glanced at Raszer’s pack, then at his boots, and nodded what seemed to be his
approval. “When they said you were from L.A.,” said Chrétien, “I thought you
might show up wearing Gucci loafers. Are you equipped to pack in for a week?”