The Wonders (22 page)

When they climbed into the van, Christos and Yuri took the seats with their backs to the driver while Leon and Minh sat on the bench seat facing the sliding door. Kathryn took the single seat at the back. The driver called back that they should help themselves to drinks from the cabinet, but no one took up the offer.

“Just get us there,” Rhona said.

In a dip in the dunes to the west, four more four-wheel drives were parked in a line. Men in white thobe and headdress with gold jewelry glinting in the morning sunlight and others in colored robes stood around smoking cigarettes and talking. Two westerners in jeans and shirts moved around the vehicles, shifting boxes from one car to another, passing out drinks.

Finally, the convoy took off. As the cars wound in their ungainly serpent through the dunes, Leon experienced the first symptoms of panic. Each jolt of the vehicle jarred his bones. Fear was forcing his respiration into fast shallow breaths that left him even more breathless. His hand clutched at his chest, over the hole covered by his vest and shirt. The vehicle was soon thumping violently over the sand and tossing the passengers into the air above their seats.

Leon was too shocked and afraid to speak. He could imagine his blood pouring into his unguarded heart, swelling the artificial tubes fit to bursting. Each jolt sent him witheringly cold followed by flashes of burning heat as he waited with dread for blood to come spurting from a broken vessel. He wanted to scream, but his voice was gone, as if his full energy was concentrated on keeping his heart intact. Minh gripped the safety handle on the ceiling and swung herself around to face him. She began to unbutton his shirt. As she reached the fourth button
down, the van jerked forward and her hand accidentally pushed against Leon's chest.

“That's it,” she shouted. “Stop the car.” Her hand stayed steady on his chest, warm and reassuring.

Rhona twisted around, gripping the shoulder of her seat. “You okay?”

“Leon can't tolerate this kind of lurching and bumping. As his accountable physician I will not take responsibility for his health if we continue to bounce around. It's extremely dangerous.”

When the van had slid to a halt at the base of a dune, Minh eased Leon's shirt off his shoulders and unzipped his protective vest. She pulled a tiny flashlight from her medical bag and peered into his chest. He grasped her knee and held it as he stared at the roof of the vehicle.

“It's okay. Nothing's moved.” She snapped off the flashlight and fitted it into its pocket in the medical bag. “Leave your shirt off. I want to keep my eye on you.”

They set off again, this time traveling at a reasonable pace along the ridge of a single dune, rather than rolling over one dune after another like a boat cresting heavy seas. Kathryn had withdrawn inside her veil. Yuri and Christos leaned against each other and stared out the window at the endless waves of sand. Minh pulled her head scarf across her shoulders and gazed through the opposite window. She was holding Leon's hand. She had told him to squeeze if he felt anything was wrong.

“Don't worry, Leon.” Rhona swiveled to talk over the headrest of her seat. “We can stop anytime. Let us know what's happening. Any pain, anything.”

“I wish we hadn't come. How much further?” Kathryn's voice was muffled by her veil, which was now wrapped three times around her face, as if she could erase herself by concealment.

“Only another mile, honey, to a camp that's already set up. Don't worry. Everything is under control. We do our show and then we leave. Immediately.”

What Kathryn meant to people who saw her for the first time and how they reacted was never predictable but was always from the gut, beyond reason. As many people became wrathful as entranced. Some spectators surprised themselves by hissing. Minh had told Leon that when they discussed such practical matters—yes, we will perform here; no, there will be no mood lighting; yes, Kathryn will appear but for only three minutes—she longed to hold Kathryn, to pull her close and protect her, even though Kathryn could only bear the lightest of touches.

The van was skimming smoothly along the lip of a low dune when the left-hand side of the vehicle punched up like a rickety toy spring and Kathryn shot out of her seat and slammed into Christos. The next few moments were a storm of noise and light and rolling and tumbling and connecting with metal and flesh and boxes and glass. And pain.

Nothing more. No sound except the hiss of the desert sand against the windows. The driver hung by his seat belt and dripped blood onto the gearshift. Hiss, hiss, and the pat, pat of drips of blood. Was Leon the only one awake and listening? The roar of an engine accelerating over a dune. Car doors opening. Still the ominous hiss of that relentless sand.

Near Leon's window, guttural voices arguing.

Inside the vehicle, Rhona's voice, a weak whistle. “Is everyone okay?”

The hot smell of urine filled the van before dissipating into the other acrid fumes.

“Kathryn? Leon? Please, everyone, say something to me.” Rhona's voice sounded like it had sand in it.

Murmurs answered her. Leon was reaching to touch Minh's
face. Behind Yuri's head, sand slid up against the window like water, as if the van was sinking into a parched lake.

Shouting outside. The driver's door opened upward. Now that Leon had oriented himself he could see that the van had fallen on its side and he lay supine along the side bench seat. Heaped into a pile at the end of the seat like tossed-out clothes were Yuri, Christos and Kathryn, all awake and staring at him. Beside him lay Minh.

“Are you all right, Minh?” He stretched out a hand and stroked her cheek. There was a heavy weight on his leg, warm and suddenly wet, and he jerked spontaneously trying to shake it off.

A white-clad body reached into the vehicle and unclipped the driver's seat belt, causing the driver to collapse onto Rhona below him. Rhona sobbed.

Minh lifted her head.

“I'm okay,” she said, struggling to extricate herself. “Nothing broken. You, darling? Everyone else?”

In the front, the men were lifting the driver out. His legs cracked against the door and his scruffy leather moccasin flipped off his left foot and tumbled to rest beside Leon's head. He gagged at the stink of it.

It felt like hours but it had only been minutes since they rolled. Minh finally wrestled aside the bag that was pinning her down. She looked first into Leon's heart, then into his face. When Leon nodded that he felt okay, she picked her way gingerly across him to reach the tangle of bodies that was Kathryn, Christos and Yuri.

The driver was gone. Now the white-clad men with their beards and brown faces pushed in through the driver's door and took hold of Rhona.

“Get the others out first,” she said.

Men's grunts and shouts accompanied a heaving as they tried to open the door above Leon. Finally it gave with a metal scream and slid open. The inside of the car was doused with light and heat. Christos moaned.

The smallest man used his arms to swing into the cavity of the van. He lowered his feet carefully and ended up straddling the edge of a seat and some baggage. His robe brushed Leon's leg.

“Pass me that case.” Minh pointed to her medical case at the other end of the van.

The man shook his head, unable to follow.

“Case! Case!” She made an oblong shape in the air with her hands and pointed again, and he understood and picked his way over to pass the case to her.

Behind her Kathryn and Christos and Yuri were slowly unknotting as the toffee-smelling heat from outside oozed into the van.

Another two faces appeared above in the gap of the door. “We get doctor. Doctor come soon.”

Minh didn't answer. She tapped Yuri on the cheek with three fingers. “Can you hear me?”

“But it's my birthday tomorrow.” He was whispering, his lavender eyes with their blunt black lashes focused on the rising line of sand at the window.

Minh's hands traveled across Kathryn's body, pressing and tugging to make sure all parts were moving. Kathryn pushed her away.

“Look.” Kathryn reached under Christos. Her fingers came back smeared with blood.

Christos let out a weak cry.

“Stay still.” Minh lifted her face to the four heads now peering in through the open door above. “Ambulance. Helicopter. Helicopter ambulance now.”

C
HRISTOS HAD BEEN
airlifted to Los Angeles. Leon, Minh, Kathryn and Rhona flew home in a private jet. Their limousine was waiting for them at the airport.

As the gates to Overington swung open, Rhona wound down the window to speak to the guards. “Make sure the fence is secure, okay?”

“Anything you want, ma'am.” A square-faced man in boots, tight pants and a black T-shirt squatted so he was at eye level with Rhona's window while they waited for the metal gates to open fully. “We're here for you.”

As Rhona, then the others, stepped gingerly from the car, Kyle ran from the front door to greet them. He stopped short, unable to look away from Kathryn. “Thank god you're all right.”

The next morning Leon and Minh joined the others in the common room. The morning light cast their tired faces in an ivory pallor. All of them were bruised and tender. Minh's arm hung in a sling: the doctors had only discovered the cracked bone when the anesthesia of the shock wore off.

Rhona spoke first. “No one can explain exactly how we managed to run over an antipersonnel mine in a place where no mines have ever been laid. They say it could have been one that drifted over from Kuwait or the Saudi desert. I don't believe a word of it. Something bad was already going down with that desert trip. I felt it. Was it deliberate?”

“I felt it too,” Kathryn said. “But I always feel it.”

Behind Rhona stood Hap, head of security, in his usual stance. You could pick out the ex-military men around the property by that stance—legs so thick at the thighs that the knees didn't meet, arms hooped around to the back to keep the emphasis on the puffed-out chest, chin tucked in and neck missing.

Hap shook his head. It rotated like a mechanical device, no wobbling flab or floppy hair. “I don't know what they intended, ma'am, but that's a lesson learned. From now on, I travel everywhere with you.”

“They won't admit the bomb was for us. A drifting mine, my ass. I knew we should have had security with us.”

Hap shifted his weight, then settled again into the stance. “Actually, it most likely was an accident. I honestly do not think it was a bomb intended for you. There have been other incidents in that region due to abandoned munitions. Maybe meeting the Arabs, the desert, you know, since 9/11 a lot of people are uneasy . . .”

“I'm not like that,” Rhona protested. “I felt something was wrong, that's all. I'm not a racist!”

“I know from my other clients, ma'am, that fear seeps into you. You don't even know it's happening. People saying things, movies, the way they report stuff on the news. Then someone's wearing different clothes, sounding different, looking different. I'm just saying, that's all. Sometimes you don't realize what you're afraid of until you meet right up with it.”

That caused them all to pause. How many people out there were afraid of the Wonders? The religious fanatics' revulsion masked a terror of Kathryn, a woman whose only dangerous weapon was her tongue.

“But it's done and over, ma'am. We need to look ahead. Plan your security with new vigilance. The main thing is that you were out of our protection, and we can't allow that to happen again. If I had been on that trip, I would have traveled the route beforehand and checked out the location of the show.”

“Exactly. We have to be more careful. And that means”—Rhona pointed at Kathryn—“no more sneaky shopping trips, no slipping out to the movies with the staff. I know you've been good about keeping me in the loop, but they have to stop. You have to be protected, darling. There's nothing more to it.”

Kathryn frowned. She looked as if she was about to stamp her foot.

“Don't argue. I'm trying to look after you.”

Kyle joined in from the sofa where he was sitting and observing. “It would be dumb to be injured for the sake of a pretty pair of shoes. We can have the pretty shoes brought to you.”

“Oh, Kyle. It's not about the shoes.” Minh rolled her eyes. “I thought you were a people expert!”

“Thank you, Minh.” Kathryn lifted her head and sniffed. “You're right. It's about freedom. About not being trapped. Penned in, so to speak.” She laughed, lifted one foot and flexed her toes so that the slip-on snapped against her sole. “The shoes are a side benefit.”

Kyle shrugged. He was integral to the Wonders yet he was apart from them. When they performed, whether it was a show or an interview or a walk-through, he watched, often on a screen from thousands of miles away. He made notes. He goaded and seduced the media, he corrected the Wonders' answers, he gave
advice on their walks and their carriage, he wrote speeches. All the while, his surreptitious glance alighted on Kathryn whenever he thought no one could see, flitting off when anyone drew his attention.