The Grave Robbers of Genghis Khan (8 page)

The professor laughed again.

“Serves her right,” said John.

“Which is why I have a microchip under the skin of my neck, so that I can satisfy even the most demanding of U.S. Immigration officials.”

“You mean like a dog,” said John.

“Woof, woof,” said the professor. “Exactly like a dog.”

John shrugged. “They treat everyone like a dog these days,” he said. “No matter what you look like.”

Nimrod was already presenting his credentials to the marine guard, and minutes later he and the four others were standing in front of the hydrofoil’s commanding officer, Captain Rock Delaware, and watching him read the top secret orders.

“You’ll note the signature on all those orders, Captain,” said Nimrod who, in his uniform, looked every inch a senior admiral.

“Your credentials are impeccable, sir,” said Captain Delaware.

“I’m glad you agree,” said Nimrod. “And you’re satisfied that you understand what you’re required to do?”

“Yes, sir. I’m to take you and these VIPs to wherever you want to go.”

Captain Delaware tried to restrain his curiosity, but it wasn’t every day his ship was commandeered by presidential order, not to mention a senior rear admiral who was accompanied by two children and two men, one of whom was wearing a black mask. Captain Delaware eyed the professor uncertainly.

“Which is — where, exactly? The orders don’t say.”

“All will be explained in due course,” said Nimrod. “For now you should make all speed to Cagliari, on the island of Sardinia. When we have refueled there, I’ll tell you the name of our final destination.”

“Yes, sir. Well then. I’ll convey you to some suitable quarters.”

“Thank you, Captain. You’ve been most understanding.”

“Is there anything else I could do for you and your party?”

“Yes, there is, Captain.” Nimrod looked at the others and shook his head. “I don’t know about them, but I’d love a cup of English breakfast tea.” And because he was still speaking “American,” he added: “With cream.”

G
uidonia is a smallish dump of a town east of the city of Rome.

It’s a depressing, ugly place, with a lot of unemployment and crime, and everywhere and on everything there is graffiti, which was an ancient Greek invention, but much copied by the Romans.

As Vito’s ice-cream van entered Guidonia, Groanin saw graffiti on the public buildings, on the hospital, on cars, on the bridges and overpasses, on the billboards, even on the coats of the local stray dogs. And he thought it was not unlikely that if he stayed still there for long enough he, too, would find himself adorned with a slogan or obscenity.

Some people like graffiti. Groanin wasn’t one of them. He thought that the so-called “artists” who spray painted their unsightly slogans and tags on walls — and more especially dogs — should be hurled into the River Tiber inside sacks filled with wildcats, which was a punishment beloved of the Romans, who, in Groanin’s opinion, knew a thing or
two about real punishments — unlike the kind of soft, smack-on-the-wrist sort of punishments that are handed out today. If you are going to have an empire that lasts for the better part of a millennium, then, in Groanin’s opinion, you need to ensure that folk behave themselves.

“Not much of a place is it?” he said. “I said, it’s not much of a place. And I thought Manchester was depressing.”

“I heard you the first time,” said Vito.

Vito had been to Guidonia before and knew his way around. They found Decebal and some of his gang grouped around an abandoned lime-green sofa at the opposite end of town.

Decebal, a handsome, dark-haired boy of fourteen, was easily distinguished by the electric-blue tracksuit he was wearing — the same electric-blue tracksuit he had been wearing on the Italian TV program about the boy and his mostly Romanian gang — and by the white SUV that was parked a short way away with a personalized license plate that read 8 DECIBLES. The plate was well named because all of the SUV’s doors were open, and loud, repetitive music of the kind that reminds most people of a distant antiaircraft bombardment was bruising the humid, early evening air.

Vito drew up alongside the SUV. “Keep an eye on the Englishman,” he told Toni. “I will go and speak to the kid.”

Decebal watched Vito suspiciously as he walked toward him and then spat onto the ground.

“Nobody ordered ice cream,” he said.

“I brought you something better,” said Vito. “An Englishman.”

“What do I want with an Englishman?” said Decebal.

“He’s rich,” said Vito. “And the person he works for is even richer.”

“Doing what, exactly?”

“He’s a butler.”

“So?”

“I was thinking that maybe you could hold him for ransom,” said Vito.

“Why not hold him for ransom yourself?” Decebal asked.

“Because kidnapping people isn’t my business. You, on the other hand, are good at it.”

Decebal nodded but negotiations continued for several minutes before a deal was finally struck and Vito came back to the ice-cream van and Groanin.

“Get your stuff,” Vito told Groanin. “These guys are going to look after the next stage of your journey.”

Groanin did as he was told but he wasn’t happy about it. In fact, he regarded young Decebal and his gang with deep suspicion. The butler might have had a superstrong right arm, but these young men were all carrying guns, and quite openly, too, as if they cared nothing for the law and the police. He’d tried very hard not to face up to the reality of his situation — that he was being kidnapped — but now he could hardly ignore it.

As Vito and Toni drove away in their ice-cream van with his bag of money, Groanin suddenly felt very scared and very alone.

“Just my luck,” he muttered to himself through gritted teeth. “Just my flipping luck. I leave Nimrod’s employment to avoid putting myself in danger and I end up getting myself
kidnapped. And kidnapped by a bunch of horrible kids, to boot.”

Decebal flicked away a cigarette, walked around Groanin like he was a baffling piece of sculpture, and shook his head. As he circled the Englishman, he made remarks in Romanian that seemed to greatly amuse his jeering gang of thugs.

“What’s that you’re saying?” demanded Groanin.

“You’re bald,” said Decebal. “And you’re fat.”

“And what of it?” said Groanin. “You cheeky young pup.”

“I thought people like you only existed in books and movies,” said Decebal, whose English was good. “English butlers.”

“It’s true that employment opportunities in domestic service are rather limited these days,” said Groanin. “However, there are still a few discerning gentlemen for whom a gentleman’s gentleman is considered the last word in gracious living.”

All of this made perfect sense to the young gangster for whom the idea of gracious living had become something of a holy grail. As well as owning an SUV, Decebal owned a large apartment in the only nice part of Guidonia, and it was full of elegant, antique furniture and many stolen works of Renaissance art. He also liked fine food, expensive clothes, and reading books. But the thing he most craved was to have a servant and a proper servant at that, with pin-striped trousers and a clean white shirt and a black tie. Someone to press his shirts and his suits without a crease, and run his bath at the correct temperature, and make him a perfect cup of tea — the way that butlers did in movies.

That would really be the icing on his cake and everyone
would know that he was the boss. All the really important people, like the multibillionaire hedge-fund dealer Rashleigh Khan, seemed to have a butler; and of those people only the most important of all employed an
English
butler.

“It might be fun to have an English butler,” said Decebal.

Groanin was horrified.

“And what would you want with an English butler, sunshine? Butlers are for people who appreciate the finer things in life. People who are prepared to pay to have someone iron their shirts without a crease, and run their baths at the correct temperature, and make a perfect cup of tea.” He shook his head. “A butler’s not for the likes of you, sonny.”

Decebal was shaking his head. “No, no, no. That’s exactly what I want.”

Groanin’s horror kept on increasing. “What do y
ou
want with a perfectly pressed shirt? Look at you, wearing a T-shirt and a tracksuit. I doubt you could tell the difference between a good cup of tea and a glass of ginger beer. And as for a bath, well, you don’t look like someone for whom a bath is that important. In short, you’re an ill-bred pleb. I, on the other hand, I am a gentleman’s gentleman. That means I only work for gentlemen, not scruffy-looking Herberts like you.”

It was perhaps fortunate that Decebal — who had a gun under the waistband of his tracksuit bottoms — had no idea of what a “pleb” or a “scruffy-looking Herbert” was; but he guessed the thrust of Groanin’s comments and might easily have proved the truth of Groanin’s intemperate words — that Decebal was no gentleman — by behaving in a most ungentlemanly manner: waving a gun in the butler’s face,
punching him on the nose, or even shooting him. But Decebal was intelligent and realized all of this himself, which was how he came to nod calmly and to agree. Besides, he liked Groanin’s spirit. No one ever spoke to him the way Groanin had spoken to him. Not even his father.

“Maybe you could help turn me into a gentleman,” he said. “Like this other English fellow, Professor Higgins in a film called
My Fair Lady
.”

“You’re joking,” said Groanin. “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. I could no more turn you into a gentleman than I could pop out of a lamp and grant you three wishes.”

Beginning to lose patience, Decebal pulled his gun on the butler.

“On the other hand, I could just shoot you,” he said.

Groanin smiled politely. “Since you put it like that, sir,” said Groanin. “Well, perhaps I could offer a few top tips, as it were: on how you might make a little more of yourself, sir. Some finesse, so to speak. Yes, sir, now I come to think of it, I might brush on a veneer of good manners and breeding onto that rough surface you call a character. Why not?”

“Good. We start now.”

“Excellent idea, sir. And if I might make an early suggestion, sir? The gun, sir. Please put it away. A gentleman never ever points a gun at his butler. Not even in America where they point guns at almost anything.”

Decebal lowered his weapon and Groanin breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank you, sir.”

F
ollowing a speedy but uneventful Mediterranean voyage, the U.S. Navy hydrofoil docked at the harbor in Nador, where a stretch Mercedes met Nimrod, the twins, Professor Sturloson, and Axel at the foot of the gangplank and drove them straight to Fez.

“We’re not staying in Nador, then,” observed the professor.

“There’s no time for sightseeing,” said Nimrod. “We need to get to Fez as quickly as possible.”

The fourth-largest city in Morocco, Fez was once the largest city in the world. Founded in
A.D.
789, the city is situated just below the most prominently northwest point in Africa — a sort of continental thumb that pokes up at the soft underbelly of Spanish Europe. It was full of narrow, winding streets, minarets, and strange smells, not all of them good. Men in long, striped cloth hoodies stood around on street corners, shouting at one another and gesticulating wildly, while the women seemed all but invisible.
Everywhere — spilling out of bars and shops, blasting out of open car windows — there was the infectious sound of Arabic music.

Nimrod told the driver, a sleepy-looking Moroccan named Mohammad, to drive them to the old medina of Fez and, arriving at a dome-shaped gate in a high white wall, they all got out of the car.

“From here we’ll have to walk,” said Nimrod. “You’ll soon see why.”

“It seems familiar,” said Philippa. “And yet I know this is my first time in Morocco.”

“That’s the curious thing about Fez,” said Nimrod. “It always feels like an old friend.”

“No, it’s stronger than that,” observed Philippa.

“You’re right,” said John. “It feels like I know the way.”

“Perhaps you were here in an another life,” suggested Nimrod.

And, of course, perhaps they had been, but that, as they say, is another story.

He led the way through the gate.

The twins considered themselves well traveled but the medina was like nothing they had encountered before. It was, thought Philippa, like stepping back into one of the seven journeys of Sinbad or, perhaps, the tales of Aladdin and Ali Baba. But Nimrod seemed to know the place like the back of his hand. He led them through a succession of streets — many of them too narrow for a car — and covered, shadowy alleys that were full of shopkeepers, tourists, chickens, and donkeys. Wonderful smells of spices and herbs
assailed their nostrils, while their ears were filled with sounds of music and commerce that had changed little in centuries.

After ten or fifteen minutes, they arrived in a dusty, plain little square in the darkest and most ancient part of the medina, where Nimrod approached a small and very old-looking wooden door. And there he addressed his companions. “This is it,” he said. “This is the place.”

“You mean this old wooden door?” asked the professor.

“It doesn’t much look like a rug emporium,” observed John. “It looks more like a prison.”

“Certainly somewhere very secret,” said Axel. “And not like any other carpet shop I’ve ever been to. In Jerusalem, they virtually drag you into the shop to make you buy one.”

“Yes,” said Nimrod. “I know some of those shops. But they’re rather more recent in origin than this place. This shop has been here for two thousand years. Mr. Barkhiya is the direct descendant of the vizier of King Solomon.”

“You mean the chap in the Bible?” asked the professor.

Nimrod nodded.

“What’s a vizier?” asked John. “No, wait, I think I know. It’s a high-ranking minister or advisor to an Arab king, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” said Nimrod. “When Solomon died, Mr. Barkhiya’s ancestors inherited the king’s famous flying carpet. Originally, this was an enormous carpet, sixty miles long and sixty miles wide, and when it flew, it was shaded from the sun by a canopy of birds. Thousands of djinn and people could ride upon it at any one time. On one occasion,
so the story goes, the wind became jealous of King Solomon and shook the carpet, and over forty thousand people fell to their deaths.”

“More than just a touch of wind, then,” quipped John.

“Over the years, the carpet has been cut up many times,” continued Nimrod, ignoring his young nephew. “Today all flying carpets are smaller pieces of that much larger one once owned by Solomon. Of course, in more recent times, flying on a carpet was deemed most unfashionable by us djinn. And over the last few decades, business has been slow for Mr. Barkhiya. But all of that is different now that we can no longer risk going anywhere by whirlwind. Which means that it may be hard to negotiate a fair price. So it would be better if you said as little as possible while I’m bargaining with him. Because it’s certain that Asaf will want something more than just money. Is that clear?”

The twins nodded. “Clear,” they said in unison.

“Clear,” added Axel and the professor for whom, in truth, nothing was clear at all. Each of them still half expected to wake up in his bed at home in Iceland thinking he’d just had a most peculiar dream.

The rug emporium was more like a church inside — a huge, echoing, dark Byzantine church with a circular marble floor and many brass lamps hanging from a very high ceiling. The vast floor was surrounded with a series of enormous pillars that were unusual in that they appeared to be made out of giant rolls of carpet: a blue silk carpet with a gold weft.

Nimrod clapped his hands loudly, and lifted a hand in salute as a man wearing a plain, white turban and silken white robes, who was seated cross-legged on a little square of blue carpet, floated across the floor toward them like a cloud in a little bit of sky.

“Peace be with you,” said Nimrod.

“And with you,” said the man. Dismounting the carpet, which stayed floating several inches above the ground, the man bowed gravely and said: “Let tall mountains and vast deserts tremble. Let great cities shudder and turn in fear of the mighty Nimrod. Welcome, esteemed sir. Since I last saw you, great djinn, I have often thought of you and wondered how long it would be before you would grace my humble establishment with your august presence once more. And I bless this day, since we now meet again.”

Philippa shuddered to look at the carpet seller. Mr. Barkhiya had the nose and eyes of an eagle, a large gap between his very white front teeth, and a long, shiny, black beard that was divided into two sharp points, like a pitchfork. He was not very tall but he carried himself like a man of enormous height, and his voice was as deep and almost as dramatic as that of a great actor.

“Permit me to introduce my nephew, John, and my niece, Philippa,” said Nimrod.

“I am and always will be your most humble servant,” said Mr. Barkhiya and bowed again. “May both of you continue to live happily until the very distant hour of your death.”

“You too,” said Philippa.

“Ditto,” said John.

“May I also present Professor Snorri Sturloson and Dr. Axel Heimskringla,” said Nimrod.

“The honor is all mine,” said Mr. Barkhiya.

“We’ve come about a carpet,” said Nimrod.

Mr. Barkhiya smiled as if such a thing was obvious. He bowed again and then lifted his arms to the ceiling as if someone up there was listening. “And when Solomon sat upon the carpet, he was caught up by the wind and sailed through the air so quickly that he breakfasted at Damascus and dined in Medina,” said Mr. Barkhiya. “And the wind followed Solomon’s commands.” The carpet seller grinned happily. “Of course you have come about carpets, my dear Nimrod. Why else would you be here? Just the one carpet, is it? I could perhaps let you have a discount for three. A very special price.”

While he talked, Mr. Barkhiya stroked one of the great blue carpet pillars, which rippled and undulated under his touch like a hide of some great beast. He nodded at John and Philippa. “Come, children, touch it.”

John and Philippa glanced at their uncle, who nodded his assent, and the twins stepped forward to rub their not particularly clean hands up and down the smooth surface of the carpet pillar.

“Is it not smooth?” Mr. Barkhiya asked John. “Is it not silky?” he asked Philippa. “Is it not marvelous?”

The twins nodded.

“Very,” said Philippa.

“It’s like something alive,” observed John.

“There’s a vibration in every fiber,” added Philippa. “I can feel the djinn power present in every fiber of the carpet.”

“Then truly you are both djinn,” said Mr. Barkhiya. “For only djinn like yourselves can feel this special vibration. I have never felt this sensation myself. I am merely the great carpet’s custodian. Not its master.”

“I suppose it’s handmade,” said the professor. “On one of those old carpet looms.”

“Oh, yes.” Mr. Barkhiya grinned his gap-toothed grin. “Handwoven by a thousand djinn. With one thread that was as long as eternity. Each knot of the carpet contains an uttered word of djinn power. What the djinn themselves call a focus word. Is it not so, Nimrod?”

“Quite so,” affirmed Nimrod.

“And this is where the power of flying comes from. From the djinn power over mathematics and physics and the great Golden Ratio and the secret meaning of 1.61803.”

“And is it easy to control?” asked Axel who, being an accomplished hang glider, thought he knew a thing or two about flying.

Mr. Barkhiya smiled his gap-toothed smile again. “I regret to inform you, Dr. Heinzkrinkle —”

“Heimskringla,” said Axel. “My name is Heimskringla.”

Mr. Barkhiya bowed politely. “I regret to inform you, Dr. Heimskringla, that no human being can fly one of these carpets. Many have perished in the attempt. Which is to say, they are dead. Only a djinn like Nimrod and, in time, these greatly gifted children may control such a carpet as this.
The tiny fragment of rug you saw me appear on earlier is as much as I am able to safely control myself. And even that is only because I was granted three wishes by another grateful customer.”

“You mean three wishes,” said Axel, “like in children’s stories?”

“Are they children’s stories?” Mr. Barkhiya looked at Nimrod and frowned. “Surely not. To have three wishes is surely more than any child would know what to do with.”

“Axel’s right,” explained Nimrod. “In places like Europe and America, it’s only children who believe in the idea of three wishes.”

“In Morocco,” said Mr. Barkhiya, “everyone believes in three wishes. Everyone dreams of releasing a djinn trapped for a thousand years inside a lamp or bottle and being handsomely rewarded for this humble service.”

Nimrod shivered. “Please,” he said. “Don’t mention that kind of thing. It gives me claustrophobia just thinking about it.” He rubbed his hands. “Talking of which. You haven’t yet mentioned your price, Asaf.”

“I will make a very special price for you, O great one. But for how many carpets? You have not said.”

“I think an extra large one for me,” said Nimrod, “and two juniors, one each for my nephew and my niece.”

“Three wishes,” said Mr. Barkhiya.

“That is fair.”

“From each of you.”

Nimrod shook his head. “No. That is too much.”

“Nevertheless, that is my price. Three for the large one. And three for each of the two smaller ones. One wish for me and one wish for each of my eight sons.”

“But nine wishes, Asaf,” said Nimrod. “We’ll be here all day.”

“It’s been a tough year what with the downturn in the economy and prices — don’t talk to me about prices. It’s not just carpets that are going up, it’s everything. Besides, these carpets are works of art and art has no price.”

Nimrod shook his head. “I tell you what I’ll do. We’ll take the large one now. In exchange for three wishes. But we’ll defer the collection of the two juniors. My niece and nephew can return on another occasion. And we can haggle about a proper price then.”

Mr. Barkhiya looked uncomfortable. “The thing is, Nimrod,” he said. “It’s not just European airspace that’s closed. North American and Central African airspace have also closed because of volcanic ash. And Southeast Asian airspace looks like it’s going to close as well. Very soon my carpets will be the only things flying. Which makes them more valuable.”

“But only djinn know how to fly them,” objected Nimrod.

“True,” admitted Mr. Barkhiya. “However, I now anticipate a much greater demand for my carpets than of old. I am informed that already there are others like you traveling from the four corners of the earth, to my humble shop here in Fez, in order to purchase one of these rare and inestimable carpets. You wouldn’t want these children of the lamp to be less than the birds of the air, would you?”

“Three wishes for the large size,” said Nimrod. “And three wishes in total for the two juniors. And that’s my last offer. After all, there’s a limit to how many people you can get on a junior.”

“Agreed. One wish now for me and one wish now for two of my eight sons.”

“And you will reserve two junior-sized carpets and my young relatives will return here to collect and pay for them when we are less pressed for time as we are now.”

“This is also agreed.”

Nimrod spat in his hand and shook hands with Mr. Barkhiya.

“One more thing,” said Nimrod. “I know you to be a religious man, Asaf. And a man of your word. So, you and the two sons who are to be granted a wish today must all state these wishes in advance and confine yourselves to wishing for them and only them, by all that’s holy to you. Is that agreed, also?”

Asaf grinned. “Don’t you trust me, O great one?”

Nimrod shook his head. “You’re only human, my friend. It’s been my experience that wishing for whatever your heart desires is more than any mundane can cope with. For we djinn are compelled to grant exactly what has been requested. And it is always wise to remember to be careful what you wish for just in case you get it.”

“True,” said Mr. Barkhiya. “For power of such greatness as yours, O mighty djinn, it is wise that you counsel caution. I am a simple man of the desert and I know how a wish can turn like the head of cobra and bite a man who wishes
foolishly. One time I was about to wish that I was ‘dead rich,’ as you English sometimes say. And it was my good fortune that I had explained this wish in advance to one of your tribe, Nimrod. A Marid. And not to an Ifrit or to a Ghul. Otherwise, my wish might easily have rendered me dead before I was rich.”