Chapter 16

Jason Pennigrew sighed with satisfaction.

"It's all right out of the Arabian Nights," he said. "Except, of course, for the ridiculous French techno-pop blasting from somebody's iPod speakers. This may be Asia, the real Asia, but the modern age had made some inroads, looks like."

"Hey," Tommy said. "We've got a whole wall to ourselves. Both floors."

"There's benefits to traveling with a bazillionaire," Trish observed, lying back and stretching on a genuine Bokhara carpet—rented from the Gypsy proprietors—that covered the floor of one of the stalls. The trio shared it with Annja and the cheerful, myopic Rabbi Levi, although the coolness they still showed Annja indicated it might be a temporary arrangement at best.

"But, how does he pay?" Tommy wondered aloud. "I mean, I doubt the Angry Moustache Gypsy Brothers take travelers checks, or will just, like, swipe his Visa plutonium card for him."

"I wouldn't be too sure about that," Trish said. "I don't know if Charlie would use plastic, though. I don't think he wants to leave that kind of paper trail."

"At any rate," Annja said, "we're probably better off not asking."

Jason gave her a puzzled frown. He'd seemed more pained than censorious, as if trying to understand her rather than condemn. But now things seemed to have changed.

"I don't get you, Annja," he said. "I thought you were one of us. Then you go all Rambo on those guys at the roadblock. And you sure seem to want to play the good German where our right-wing fundamentalist pals are concerned."

Annja took a very deep breath to calm herself before responding. "The right-wing fundamentalist pals are paying for this expedition," she said. "Chasing History's Monsters is paying for you to tag along. And they've hired me as an expert."

"Me, too," Levi said. He didn't seem to be interested in the political subtexts here, far less the cultural ones—neither impinged much on his personal solar system. But he seemed determined to show solidarity with Annja. Apparently he considered her a friend.

And what better reason is there? Annja thought appreciatively. One way or another, his support comforted her.

"Do you really think you should have taken the law into your own hands like that?" Trish asked.

Annja sighed. "It looked to me as if it was me or nobody."

"But you killed that man," Trish said.

"His friends had just shot down poor Mr. Atabeg in cold blood. His friends were trying their level best to kill Charlie, Leif and Larry. And he didn't look as if he'd boarded the bus to give us a language lesson in Kurdish. He had a gun and he looked ready to use it. I saw my chance to stop him. So I did."

The CHM trio passed tight-lipped, furrowed-brow looks all around.

"But, you don't seem…upset," Trish said tentatively.

"Why should I be? It's been hours since it happened. My heart rate's had plenty of time to settle," Annja said impatiently.

"I didn't mean that. I thought…shouldn't you be overcome by guilt for taking a human life?" Trish asked.

"Why should I feel guilty? I figured it was him or one of you. Or all of us. Why should I feel bad about the choice I made? I doubt he would have."

"Cops always have bad dreams when they shoot somebody," Tommy said solemnly. "They have to go through mad therapy."

"Some of them do," Annja said. "And they're all taught to say they are. But I've talked to plenty who haven't really been traumatized or anything like it."

"But…why not?" Trish asked.

Annja shook her head. "Listen. I may have nightmares tonight about what happened today."

They looked relieved. She was starting to fit the profile again.

"But I'll have nightmares about what could have happened if I didn't kill those men. If I'd missed. If they'd hurt or killed me. Or my friends. What they might have done to any survivors they captured."

She paused for a moment to let that sink in. She hoped they'd be able to understand the position she was in.

"But as for feeling bad about stopping somebody intent on doing something bad, intent on commiting murder—no. I don't feel remorse for that," she said plainly.

Trish's eyes glittered with tears. She shook her head. "Oh, Annja, you seemed like such a nice person. And now I'm afraid you might be some kind of sociopath or something."

"If you'd feel more comfortable I can go somewhere else. I'll find someplace else to room, too." She and Trish had accepted Charlie's offer to share a chamber upstairs for the night.

"No. No. I don't want to…abandon you," Trish said.

Don't want me to abandon you, Annja thought with a sudden stab of annoyance. She realized that Trish feared the other occupants of the caravanserai—including, most likely, some of the Young Wolves.

It must be so weird and unhappy to live like that, she thought. To require so much violence to protect your lifestyle, and to impose your views on others yet be so terrified of those who exerted violence on your behalf. For all that she disagreed with them on just about every point, philosophically, Annja had great respect for pacifists. But that was real pacifists. Not those who smugly felt themselves morally superior while relying on men with uniforms and guns to do their dirty work for them.

Still, she admitted to herself, we're not here to agree with each other. Nor to serve my bruised ego. She forced herself to smile.

"That's very good of you," she said to Trish. "Look, I appreciate your concern. And I just have to ask you, please, to accept that we're different people with some different outlooks."

Trish pressed her lips together. Annja guessed that for her part she was biting back on saying how glad she was that they were different.

"Okay," Trish said. "I—"

A figure loomed out of the courtyard darkness. Everybody tensed for a moment. Seeing it was Baron caused incomplete relaxation.

"Chow's on," he said. "Better hustle your butts if you want to eat."

"What is it?" Jason asked, standing and stretching like a big lean cat. "Meals Refused by Ethiopians?"

"Got it in one."

"Why use up our own supplies?" Annja asked. They might need their MREs to fuel them once they started their mountain-climing expedition. "I thought they sold food here," she said.

Baron shrugged. "We put heads together and decided we didn't have a high trust level in what the Gypsy Bros have on offer."

"So they're typical capitalists," Jason said, "selling tainted food to their customers."

Baron snorted laughter through his nose. "More like, the kind of food their usual patrons can afford, and are happy to eat, wouldn't settle too easily in tender Western tummies. Too many rat and insect parts per million. To these people, it's all just protein."

"There was an Indian mathematician who moved to Britain in the early twentieth century," said Robyn Wilfork, who had wandered over munching from his own MRE tray. "He starved to death because the British rice was lacking in just those proteins—the bug and rat ones. Too clean, you see. Not like Mama served back in Bombay."

"I think you're talking about Ramanujan," Levi said shyly. "Actually, he didn't starve to death, exactly. But he did suffer a severe protein deficiency that probably contributed to his death at the age of thirty-two."

Wilfork raised an eyebrow at him. "I'd think he and his area of expertise was somewhat different from yours."

The rabbi shrugged. "It's a nerd thing," he said.

"Hey," Tommy said, getting to his feet. "I'm a committed carnivore, I'm not gonna lie to you. So why make a big deal about it?"

"Yeah," Trish said. "I guess I trust the mystery meat in MREs over the rat bits."

"Always assuming the Meals Ready to Eat aren't made of rat parts themselves, you poor naive creature," Jason, said, laughing.

"Hey," Trish said, a little defensive. "At least they're sterile rat parts."

They walked off, following Baron to dinner like school children, bantering as they went. Wilfork gestured with the travel fork he'd taken from a pocket and unfolded. "A moment of your time, if you please, Annja."

"What is it?" she asked, staying behind.

"That Baron is an interesting man," Wilfork said, pointing after the furloughed security-company executive with his hobo tool. "With emphasis on man. Charlie's still an overgrown schoolboy. As am I, for that matter. Levi's a scholar, which is another thing altogether. And our muscular Christians—they may be of the age of majority, but they remain at core boys, with the happy feral fury of adolescence."

After a moment's silence, broken only by the tinkle of bells as a camel was led out through the eastern door and the tinny strains of Algerian hip-hop, Annja said, "So you were going to warn me about Baron."

Wilfork snorted a laugh. "Perceptive and tenacious! You're a formidable woman, Ms. Creed. Yes, indeed I was. Perhaps I'm wasting my breath."

"I appreciate the thought. I respect Baron. He seems to be good at his job. He's certainly the only thing that's got us this far. He may have kept us all alive."

With a little help from me, she thought. But she was just as happy that part wasn't widely known. "Otherwise I wouldn't associate with him if he were the last man on Earth."

"That's certainly decisive. Let us hope you never have cause to regret it."

"It's always a risk, isn't it, Mr. Wilfork? But isn't life risky?"

"An excellent point, my dear," Wilfork said. "'No one here gets out alive,' as the poet said."

* * *

THE CHASING HISTORY'S MONSTERS crew, Levi and Annja brought their food back to their stall. The topic of conversation was the other twenty or so guests of the caravanserai.

"Seriously," Annja said, "that's something about the developing world you really find out when you spend enough time there—often the most villainous-looking people turn out to be the sweetest, most honest, generous people you could ever hope to meet in your life."

"And you think those guys are like that?" Trish asked, looking skeptical.

"Well…no," Annja said, assessing the other guests and going on her gut feeling rather than judging by appearance alone.

"I'm going to keep my hands clamped firmly on anything I don't want to lose," Jason said grimly.

"If I did that I might look as if I was inviting attention, if you know what I mean," Trish said.

"Are you still worried?" Hamid asked. He was showing a distressing tendency to loom up suddenly next to private conversations. Of course, Annja realized it was possible the man was just lonely. "Do not be afraid. If anyone molests you, just cry out and the Gypsies will come and hit them over the head and throw them out in the snow," he said.

"Good to know," Jason said.

They finished eating their food. Annja had definitely had worse. Then again, she spent a lot of her time in some fairly severe parts of the world.

Shortly after eating they all decided they were ready to turn in. Jason, Tommy and Levi had decided to share the cell at the back of the stall where they'd been hanging out. Trish headed up the stairs. Annja stayed down to do some stretching in a shadowed area of the big courtyard where she hoped she wouldn't attract unwanted attention. The other occupants stayed within the scope of their own lamps—kerosene lanterns or battery-powered—and nobody seemed to notice her.

When she finished her workout she headed for the stairs at the corner of the yard. A voice suddenly called out. "Yo, Annja. Hold up."

She stopped and turned. A familiar bald-headed silhouette strode toward her at what had become an equally familiar thrusting gait.

"It seems like you've been avoiding me," Baron said. "What's up with that?"

"Avoiding you? I've been a bit busy to pay much attention to social interplay. I figured it was the same with you."

He laughed softly, with his jaws wide like a wolf. "Fair enough. Well played. But I think it's time we remedied that situation. Come up to my room with me. Relax a little. Let's get to know each other."

"I'm actually going to turn in now, Mr. Baron. In my own room. I'm in desperate need of a good night's sleep."

He stood for a moment with his hands in the pockets of his khaki trousers.

"If I won't take no for an answer, hypothetically, would you call the Gypsy Brothers to come hit me over the head?"

"What makes you think I'd need the Gypsy Brothers for that?" Annja said. "Good night, Mr. Baron," she said firmly. She turned her back on him and walked away.

* * *

BY NOON THE NEXT DAY, with the caravanserai already many rump-tendering and lower-back-knotting hours behind the swaying two-humped camels, the expedition had transferred themselves and their gear back to a collection of vehicles even more motley than the last. Evidently the Turkish army's zone of control had been successfully crossed. How Baron—or Hamid—knew that, Annja wasn't sure. She decided to sit on her curiosity. She didn't feel at all eager to talk to either man more than was strictly necessary, right now.

But once again she had to acknowledge their competence at what they did. Twice that day they'd encountered roadblocks by unmistakable peshmerga. In both cases Hamid got the party through with minimal dramatics, even if that didn't keep Annja's pulse from spiking both times.

And then in the late afternoon they rolled over a saddle between two jagged hills, ancient drifts of black lava now fanged and pitted, to see the mighty mountain thrust up into the sky before them, its snow-clad flanks shining silver and rose in the light of the declining sun.