Riders of the Pale Horse (22 page)

“I can't wait.”

Ben entered and surveyed her progress in the office with a bemused expression. “I never thought so much could get done in such a little time.”

The room was neat and orderly. All forms and correspondence not filed away were ordered into neat stacks—pending, questions, awaiting response, and so forth. Fragrant desert blossoms sprouted from a mason jar on one of the filing cabinets. Allison pointed at her overflowing out box. “I just need you to look these over and sign them, and then I can get them in the mail.”

“Later,” he replied. “I want to take you into the desert this afternoon, and for that we need to make an early start.”

They stopped at several villages along the way, all cut from the same depressing mold. The houses were square and squat and flat roofed, all constructed of concrete blocks. The wealthier dwellings were encircled by concrete block fences topped with broken glass. Around every house, goats and camels and donkeys searched for meager shrubs. There were no trees. Children in filthy djellabas played in the dust. Everyone stopped to stare at the strangers. Ben flitted from house to house, then quickly returned, and they were off again. Every twenty minutes, Allison made note of their whereabouts.

They were inspected twice, once by blue-shirted policemen and once by the army. In both cases the uniformed men
spoke in gentle tones barely above a murmur. Fareed, Ben's driver, answered the same way. When Allison remarked on their almost effeminate voices, Ben replied simply, “It is the desert. Quiet breeds quiet.”

Beyond the third village, they passed through the final army checkpoint and left the highway. Soon the world consisted only of rock and sun and sand and wind.

They traveled a washboard road, and the ride was too noisy to permit talk. They rattled and bounced their way between steep-sided mountains, the surrounding desert ever changing and ever the same.

At a spot where one of the gnarled acacia trees grew large enough to offer shade, they stopped. “Time for a breather,” Ben said.

Allison got out, stretched her back, and gazed at a scene void of anything familiar. “You know,” she said quietly, “I've heard about this part of the world all my life, and even studied it, but I never imagined what it is really like.”

“I call this the land of thyme,” he said. “Do you know your Plato?”

She shook her head no, her thoughts filled with the sound of wind.

“ ‘Just as bees derive honey from thyme, the strongest and driest of herbs, so too does man gain great rewards from mastering the difficulties of this world.' ” He stood for a moment, sharing with her the vastness of their landscape, then turned back to the car. “We must be getting on.”

The mountain faces were nature's art boards, molded into fantastic dreamscapes and painted a thousand hues. Eagles called out their desert songs, as much at home in these empty reaches as the wind. Plants grew in scattered profusion, their twisted branches as white as bones.

“The rock is smoothed by sand, not water,” Ben told her at their next stop. He pointed up to a semicircular cave. “Bits of sand become trapped in hollows, and over thousands of years of wind the sand carves out caves. The Bedouins use
them as dwellings during the worst of storms, pushing their herds in before them.”

He led her around a spit of rock to where the mountains clenched in together. As they started into the cleft, Allison noticed a sweetness to the dry air. “What is that I smell?”

“Water. Even after just a few hours here, our senses become more attuned to its presence.” He pointed to where the passage was blocked by barbed wire. “Up ahead is a Bedouin spring. Rights to its use have been passed through the local Hawaitaat tribe for countless generations.”

He stopped before the remains of a fire and tested the ashes with his shoe. A plume of dust rose at his touch. “Stone cold. They haven't been here for days. All right, we must search elsewhere.”

“You don't know where they are?”

“Of course I do.” He waved an expansive arm, taking in the rocks and mountains and sky. “Somewhere out there.”

Beyond the narrow passage, the mountains opened into a vast yellow sea of sand. Rock islands pushed up at odd intervals. For some reason, their presence amplified her sense of aching emptiness.

The Land Rover lurched its way over a sand track of dips and curves and bumps. Fareed released his two-handed grip on the wheel long enough to turn on the radio. Arabic music filled the car. Allison continued her vigil out the windows and found the music to be in harmony with all that surrounded her.

They spotted the camels first.

At the sound of their approach, the animals sauntered over a ridge, vanishing from view. Fareed topped the slope and cut off the engine. In the sudden silence, Allison heard the bleating of goats and the shrill calls of children.

There were perhaps a dozen tents, each about thirty feet long and half as wide. A cluster of acacia trees marked the presence of water. A trio of old trucks was pulled up nearby.

“In twenty years this way of life may be gone forever,” Ben
said, leading her toward the camp on foot. “As the old generation dies off, more and more of the Bedouins are choosing to settle in permanent villages like the ones we just visited. It is a far easier life, but I for one will be sad to see this world disappear.”

Allison followed Ben into the central dwelling, where a toothless old man croaked a welcome and waved them in. Ben shook hands with a hawk-nosed younger man, whom he introduced as Mahmoud.

“He is the effective leader of the clan,” Ben explained, seating himself gracefully on the carpet-covered ground and motioning for Allison to join him. “His father rules in name only.”

At the center of the tent was a rectangular dugout lined with coals, over which rested a brass coffeepot. A woman entered, murmured greetings to Ben, knelt, and poured them thimble-size cups. Allison accepted hers and tried not to stare at the intricate tattoo that ran across the woman's forehead and down over the bridge of her nose, across her lips, and onto her chin. She was perhaps nineteen or twenty years old.

“Tradition requires you to accept three refills,” Ben murmured. “Shake your cup from side to side when you have had enough.”

The two Arab men wore the
kaffiyeh,
or checkered headdress, and western-style jackets over their robes. An interminable discussion ensued, all in Arabic. Allison sipped her coffee, watched the men talk as much with their hands as with their mouths, and took in her surroundings.

Around the tent's periphery were low cushions covered with soft carpets. Taller square cushions were set at intervals, upon which arms and bodies were leaned. The tent's interior was surprisingly cool.

Abruptly Ben stood and announced, “Time to begin.”

They made their way from tent to tent trailing an entourage of chattering children. With each woman and child patient, Allison stood in quiet attendance. When the sick person was
a man, she waited outside. As they walked through the camp, Ben told her quietly, “They have heard of new smugglers operating through the desert routes.”

“Smuggling what?” Allison stopped. “Going where?”

“Walk with me, please.” When she had caught up, he went on. “They can only find out so much without forcing dangerous attention their way. The smugglers and the local Bedouins live an uneasy truce. Those camels you see out there are nowadays kept more as signs of wealth than as a means of transport. The only time they are worked is when the Bedouins become competition for the smugglers. Camels are harder to track on radar than trucks and do not leave tire treads on sand. A full-grown camel can carry five or six televisions roped to each side.”

“That's what they think the new smugglers are carrying?” Allison asked. “Just televisions?”

Ben shook his head. “Not this time. Smugglers tend to specialize—one tribe takes radios and televisions and computers to Saudi Arabia, another carries Lebanese hashish to the wealthier Gulf states and sometimes for the West, and so on. But these new people are different. Mahmoud called them shadows, since he had not seen any of them, only signs of their passage. That and a strange rumor from other tribes.”

“What rumor?”

“Men,” he said, turning to face her full on. “The rumor he hears is that these newcomers are smuggling westerners into Iraq. Which troubles him, for what profit could there be in this, unless they are people intent on war?” Worriedly Ben rubbed the side of his face. “There have also been visits from strangers—Hamas, he thinks—fundamentalist terrorists who receive financing from the oil-rich states to the south. They have warned him to stay away from certain southern routes that have been his clan's property for generations. The only positive development from all this is that their threats have made Mahmoud so angry he is now willing openly to help us.”

“But what—”

“Enough for now,” he said, flipping up the tent flap. “We shall talk more back at the clinic.”

They had worked their way around perhaps half of the encampment when a shout stilled all activity.

Ben straightened over the woman he had been treating and rushed through the entrance. Allison followed him out. “What is it?”

Ben shushed her with a chopping motion. He stood poised as though sniffing the air. Allison looked around, saw that men stood still and alert by almost every tent.

Then she realized that the wind had died. In its place was a sense of breathless waiting. Again there was a shout, this time by a pair of voices. Allison followed their pointing arms, saw a white plume rise from the desert floor and spiral gently upwards. It looked like lazy smoke from some distant fire.

Then out of the distance there rose a low moan.

Immediately the camp exploded into action. Men and women raced for flocks and children, and frantically herded them toward tents and nearby caves. Ben shouted to Fareed, who ran toward the Land Rover.

Ben sprinted after Fareed, shouting to Allison, “We must hurry!”

“What's the matter?”

“Khamsin!”

“What?”

“Sandstorm. Be quick!” He skirted a pair of men hobbling camels made skittish by the panic. When they reached the vehicle, Fareed was pouring water from his canteen onto long cotton cloths.

Ben took one and handed it to Allison. “Take this.”

“What for?”

“Just in case. Climb in.”

Fareed ground the motor and started off. Nobody in the camp took time for even a glance in their direction.

Fareed geared up to a punishing speed. Allison grasped the
roof strap with both hands and hung on for dear life. Water from the damp rag trickled down her arms.

They were halfway back across the great yellow sea when she saw it. A ballooning cloud rose before them, the color of old ivory and fine as mist. It filled the valley from side to side. The cloud was topped by a yellow mountain ten times the height of the surrounding peaks, a solitary behemoth that shifted and molded and reformed in slow-motion grandeur.

Fareed stopped. Both he and Ben leaned forward and studied the cloud with a look of worry.

Finally Ben shook his head and pointed toward the nearest cliffs. “Jallah!”

Immediately Fareed wheeled the Land Rover around and caromed cross-country at speeds that had them bouncing around like Ping-Pong balls. Arriving at the cliff face, he pulled the vehicle as far into a shallow cave as he could, partially blocking them from the rising wind.

“Is your window rolled up tight?”

Allison checked. “Yes.”

“Wrap the cloth around your face,” Ben ordered. “Cover your mouth and nose and leave a fold free for your eyes.”

The wind rose to a shrieking pitch, buffeting their car. Then the dust cloud struck them, and Allison watched the world disappear.

13

The road away from the Chechen stronghold was little more than a goat track in places, but being on the downhill journey put them all in good spirits. They camped in a meadow an hour or two from the turnoff. When they continued their journey at dawn, Rogue announced that the Russians no longer needed to travel as hidden cargo. The news was received with vast relief.

As they descended into the southern Caucasus, all the world changed—birds, animals, trees, weather. Where the north had been dry and dusty and either overly hot or cold, the south was welcoming. They descended from the dead of winter into a balmy autumn of golden leaves and warm sunshine. The change was staggeringly sudden. In the space of a half day the world was transformed, and they with it. Birch and fir mounted the steep slopes in friendly welcome to the weary travelers. Wild tulips lined the paths of cheerful streams. Coats were shed, the grim squint through icy winds was lost, the ability to smile returned. For some.

“Now there will be trouble,” Yuri muttered when they stopped for a cold lunch of stale bread and goat's cheese and water that tasted of the metal container.