Chapter 12

They passed their night in what Leif Baron called a "safe house" in Erzurum. It didn't look much like a house to Annja, nor strike her as especially safe, as flashlights held by her companions swept across and around it in the early evening gloom. It was a rambling ramshackle block of structures rising as high as three scary-leaning stories, thrown together of cinder blocks, bricks, wood, sheet metal, plywood, what seemed to be field stone and God knew what else. Random segments were painted a grim mustard-yellow. The whole thing was cheerless enough to be a prison, an effect heightened by its being surrounded by high chain-link fences topped with coils of razor wire.

"A gecekondu," Robyn Wilfork said with his usual assurance as they dismounted from the schoolbus, blinking in the unexpected brightness of afternoon sun shining through big breaks in the clouds and staring in consternation at their quarters for the night. "It means 'built overnight.' There is a loophole in Turkish law that forbids civic authorities from tearing down unauthorized structures if they are entirely built between sundown and sunup."

"Just the kind of place where I want to spend the night," Trish said, with her pack on her shoulder and a green ball cap on her head.

"Might be worse," Jason said. "Might be raining."

Annja looked reflexively upward. A few brave stars greeted her eyes. Only a few brushstrokes of cloud were visible. Rain did not seem to be in the offing. Nor, thankfully, did more snow. The air was cool, redolent of petroleum fractions and what she suspected was a nearby stockyard, but not cold. She thought again about conditions on Ararat with the early onset of winter weather and shivered anyway.

The gecekondu lay not far from the Euphrates, which the ragtag caravan had crossed at dusk. Levi said the headwaters weren't far from here. This was an industrial part of town, near another rail yard, and seemed mostly derelict at that. Certainly there were no other residential-looking structures in the area.

The Young Wolves set up portable generators to power lights inside; there was no electrical supply. Inside the walls were bare and whatever plumbing and wiring had existed had long since been ripped out by metal thieves or scavengers. There were pallets on the floors but they smelled, Trish remarked, as if generations of people had died on them. The newcomers inflated air mattresses, with which they were thankfully well supplied, and unrolled sleeping bags on them.

While this was going on, along with a certain amount of sweeping and waving things in the air in hopes of stirring it and cutting into the mustiness, and much grumbling, Larry and the Higgins twins were sent off in the lead car with Mr. Atabeg to forage for provisions.

"How come we have to skulk into this hole in the middle of post-Apocalypse urban nightmare number three, and then the Bible Scouts get sent off on their own without adult supervision?" asked Jason, fortunately out of earshot of the remaining Young Wolves. Baron and Bostitch had repaired with Wilfork and the rabbi to quarters on an upper story, presumably more sumptuous than what the ground floor offered. If you set aside the risk the floor might collapse under you. But, it occurred to Annja, if that happened the floor would collapse on them, so it was probably kind of a wash.

"I think they want to get them experience on their own in potentially hostile territory," Annja said. "Then again, they didn't tell me."

"What if they, like, screw up and bring whoever it is we're supposed to be hiding out from here down on top of our heads?" Tommy asked. He was disgruntled because Bostitch had forbidden them to take video of their current surroundings.

"My guess? That's good for at least three demerits each," Annja said.

After a short while Wilfork came down to step outside for a smoke. Annja happened to be outdoors in her shirtsleeves doing stretches to work out the day's kinks.

Wilfork noticed her as his large face, florid as always and looking puffier than usual, was underlit rather diabolically by his lighter. Puffing furiously he turned away, as if hoping somehow that if he couldn't see her, she wouldn't see him.

She marched up to him. "Hey, Wilfork," she said.

He turned around. "Ah, Annja. I didn't—"

"Save it. I wanted to know what was up with your sharp-shooting me on the bus today about trying to cut short potential conflict. Did I step on your shadow or something?"

For some reason he seemed to go a shade paler at that. "Be careful what you say," he said in a semicroak.

"Look. I'm not okay with what you said. I'm trying to prevent bloodshed on this expedition. At least among its own members."

"Surely you're overdramatizing."

"You think so? Really? We've got a bunch of militant, and in fact trained paramilitary and even military types, who are fervent right-wing Christian fundamentalists. Then we've got a contingent of equally militant lefty atheists, or at least scoffers, from Babylon itself—New York City. Throw in the sort of stresses you get even on a regular expedition—one where you're not actually on the run from the authorities, you know? And where your official contact doesn't explode in flames right in front of your eyes? And you've got a high-explosive mix with the stability of a speed freak at the wrong end of a three-week binge. What the hell were you thinking?"

He shook his head. "Really, I am sorry. I just have an impish impulse to stir things up."

"So you can report on it when it all blows? Are you that hard up for a story?"

"Well…hard up may not be too far off the mark."

"What do you mean?"

"This crisis journalism may not be a young man's game. But I somehow don't find it as easy as once I did. And I find it is my misfortune to grow old in a world that values youth over experience—and the bottom line above all. It's easy to look at a 'seasoned' journalist and see someone doing a job you could hire a fresh-faced journalism graduate to do for half the money."

"That's your excuse?"

"Very well. I confess it bothered me that you seemed to be successful in calming the waters. Lack of controversy makes for lack of interest in my chronicle. And then where's my bestseller?"

"So you're looking to hit one big score and then retire? That sounds like something from a caper movie."

"Well, thank you for so perceptively comparing me to a professional criminal."

"Sorry. I'm still a little hot over this. You of all people should know how nasty this could all get in a big hurry, given all that crisis experience you talk about. Don't imagine that journalistic detachment is going to keep it from getting all over you if it does blow up. And, by the way, my crew from New York are here as journalists, too, aren't they?"

"By a definition shockingly liberal even by my standards," Wilfork said.

"Which may say more, or maybe less, for your own prejudices than anything else. But think about this—if things really start to fly, do you think your status as direct employee of Charlie Bostitch will shield you? A reformed commie and alcoholic is not the sort of person the religiously enthusiastic are going to give too much slack to. Unless you out and out convert to their brand of muscular Christianity, which I doubt you have."

"Really, Annja. I'm sorry. I meant it as a joke. I see now that it was inappropriate, as the current cant phrase goes. I'll try not to do it again," Wilfork said.

He screwed his big pink face up in what was at least a good imitation of contrition. "I have to confess there's more at stake here than my final payday and its contribution to my retirement fund—which, yes, I must admit, does enter into my calculations. I—I still find myself drawn to the excitement. The sheer adventure. My age and avoirdupois notwithstanding."

"So kicks keep getting harder to find," Annja said. She regretted it the moment it left her mouth: she didn't mean to sound so witchy. She never intended to; and she didn't want to participate anymore in any kind of potentially destructive melodramas.

But instead of taking offense he nodded enthusiastically. "Precisely. I fear that along with my numerous other addictions, under better or worse control as they may be, I am also what's currently called an 'adrenaline junkie.' But I promise to try to restrict my…fixes to what our enterprise provides in the natural course of things, rather than trying to generate my own."

"Good," she said. "Because if I catch you causing actual danger to my people, or me, I'll totally kick your ass. That simple."

"You know," he said, "I believe you could, at that." But he said it with enough of a hint of a smirk to make her think he was simply humoring her.

Let him find out for himself, she thought furiously, if he really wants to so badly. Then, taking a deep abdominal breath, she forced herself to cool down.

Don't start pouring gasoline on the fire you're trying to put out, she told herself sternly.

"Ms. Creed, I bid you good evening."

"You, too," she said with a genuine smile.

* * *

AN HOUR LATER THE FORAGING PARTY came back bearing cardboard cartons filled with Turkish takeaway. They ate by the garish light of generator-powered trouble lamps, on folding tables set up in a one-story segment on one end of the gecekondu that seemed to have served as a garage. The smells of old accumulated grease and oil were far more appetizing than what pervaded the rest of the structure. The food was good, washed down with some kind of unearthly Turkish fruit drink and the inevitable bottled water.

Annja fended off several invitations from Bostitch to share the upper-floor accommodations. He seemed still elated at their action-movie escape from the hotel in Ankara, with spots of color glowing high upon his cheeks. Annja wondered if he might have fallen off the wagon again. His manner was jovially avuncular. It wasn't far from that to creepy uncle, though, and Annja was pleased when he didn't press the issue too hard.

"And keep in mind," Josh called to them as they and the Young Wolves headed for separate but adjoining compartments, "no lewd cohabitation."

It sounded to Annja as if the kid were trying a joke. "Hey, now," Jason said, sounding sharp. "I just had my heart set on lewd cohabiting. Just couldn't wait to get right on down to it."

Josh blinked. He seemed more puzzled and a little hurt than offended. Predictably Zach and a couple of the others growled, though, and seemed set to start woofing back.

"Jason, stop being a dick," Trish said.

Jason jerked around and shut his mouth. It surprised Annja to hear the blond woman speak up like that to one of her comrades. Annja had been thinking much the same thing. She had felt constrained mostly because it wasn't her style to call somebody a dick.

She didn't have any moral qualms about bad language, nothing like that. Nor even residual fear of the nuns with their ever-ready bars of startlingly corrosive soap. It was just that having devoted much of her life to the study of language, making herself fluent or at least conversant in the major Romance tongues, past as well as present, she should by God be able to come up with something better than to just call somebody a dick.

After all, mincing words wasn't her style, either.

With no further static the groups went their ways. Annja likewise refused an offer from the three CHM staffers to join them huddled in a corner of the room they had staked out as their own to share a pint of whiskey thoughtfully donated by Wilfork. They muttered about the way Leif Baron had told the Young Wolves to patrol the perimeter by two-hour watches, a pair at a time. They speculated in tones half scandalized and half fearful whether the sentinels were actually armed.

For her part Annja hoped they were. And she was glad there were guards. That was something she could say for Baron—she doubted anyone would slack off on his watch. She actually felt secure enough to sleep the whole night through. And no compunction about doing so—watch-standing wasn't her job.

* * *

THE NEXT DAY FOUND EVERYBODY semirested and grumpy. Not even Annja had been able to muster much enthusiasm for a breakfast of cold rice, ground lamb and pine nuts, wrapped in grape leaves and washed down with grape soda with an especially acrid bite to it, as if made with too much battery acid.

In a few hours the inevitable battered bus was jouncing and clattering down what was nominally a paved two-lane road through the broken terrain of the Ağri plateau, beneath an overcast sky that suggested their respite from snow was nearing a decisive end.

"Agri Province once was part of the ancient Kingdom of Urartu," Levi was telling an audience of Young Wolves. The Rehoboam Academy alums never seemed to know quite how to treat the rabbi. They listened attentively, with eyes wide, as if on the one hand not wanting to miss a drop of the wisdom he was imparting, and on the other fearing he'd at any moment start trying to seduce them into worshiping pagan idols. "Urartu is the source of the name Ararat."

"It might as well be mud, lads," Wilfork said with patently false heartiness from the seat ahead of Levi's. "Someone blew up a Turkish-Iranian natural gas pipeline hereabouts in August of 2006. Since then fighting between Kurd separatists and the Turkish army has escalated into open but unpublicized warfare."

"Good news is everywhere," Trish said.

Annja's cell phone rang.

Everyone turned and stared at her. Feeling conspicuous she took it out and flipped it open. "Hello?"

"Creed, this is Baron. Look alive. We might have a situation, here."

At the same time Tommy Wynock pointed out the front window and shouted, "Whoa! Roadblock!"