The Crisis (56 page)

“One of our agents met with him, before he went nuclear on us. A homegrown charismatic. May be tied to al Qaeda, maybe not. Bottom line's the same.” Ahearn waited out a pause, then went on. “I just met with a possibly cooperating faction leader. I don't like him. But the Agency does.”

“I can't feed you any more assets, Corny. Tie a bow on this pig and kiss it good-bye. I need everybody ready to move when the whistle blows in Iraq. Tamp down the insurgency. Hand over to local leaders. The next game's not going to be against bandits with AKs.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

“Love that salty lingo, Corny. Have a good battle.” Leache signed off.

Ahearn set the handset back. He scratched the stubs of his missing fingers again, looking at the tabletop. Sighed, checked his boots, then his blouse. Wiped the ever-present dust out of the corners of his eyes with his thumb, straightened his back, and strode out.

G
RÁINNE woke as she had every night since they'd captured her: with a moment of disorientation, of hope it'd all been a bad dream.

It never was.

They'd moved her from place to place, from hand to hand. Not really abusing her, as she'd first feared, but not taking great care of her, either.

She pushed back the torn blanket and stretched, looking around the campsite as dawn cracked the world open like a raw egg.

After the men at the roadblock pulled her out of the Rover she'd never seen it again. They'd kept her overnight at a campfire, surrounded by baaing sheep, the occasional distant bark of shepherd dogs. The next morning, after a long argument she couldn't follow—and which earned her a swift backhand to the mouth the one time she'd tried to speak up—they'd marched several miles from the road and turned her over to another group traveling by camel. They'd given her to the women, who after much critical discussion and pulling of her hair stripped off her boots and clothes down to her underwear, threw a stinking black wool robe over her, tied a black scarf over her hair, retied her hands, and hoisted her onto one of the camels.

Two days of torment followed. The beast's rolling gait made her sicker than she'd ever been on any boat. Her thighs bled from rubbed-raw sores big as her palms. The only disinfectant she had was her own urine, since they left her on the animal even when they stopped to rest. From time to time helicopters hurtled overhead as she watched helplessly, unable even to wave. And what would a wave mean, from a black-clad sack?

She remembered a story, or was it a movie, about a professor captured by a desert tribe. They'd cut out his tongue, dressed him in hammered-out tin cans, and forced him to dance and caper, the tribe's fool, until he lost his mind.

Weaving in the heat for hour after hour, fading with thirst, she toppled off and came to facedown in the sand. They hoisted her again and lashed her on. With hands bound tightly behind her, legs tied to the wooden saddle, she became the professor, mutilated, helpless, carried deep into a savage land. Was that what they planned? Or something even worse, passed from tribe to tribe to rape and torture as some horrible prize?

They were headed southwest, by the sun. Toward Sudan? There was still slavery there, Arabs kidnaping black Christians and Animists, backed by the Islamic government. Even humanitarian workers had been “disappeared.” What would she be worth?

One thing was certain: wherever she ended up, she'd never be allowed to leave alive. She cursed her foolishness. Efrain had warned her not to leave the camp without an armed escort.

The heat increased, the ravines danced, the rocks sang. A tinny jingle grew in her ears day by day, till it became louder than her breathing, louder than the pain from blood- and lymph-weeping thighs, raw-chafed wrists. A blue Bonneville convertible pulled up alongside her, with three blond starlets calling up, sipping champagne from flutes. Next came a horned, copper-plated being, from some ancient bestiary; then a cone-spired blue-and-terra-cotta temple, twisting upward like a ziggurat, in the wastes. She blinked through furious tears at swarms of flies that bit and bit at the edges of her eyes. With hands tied, she was powerless to stop them.

Finally she rode unconscious, slumping, held on only by the rope. And knew nothing until she was dragged down and forced to drink muddy water from skins, then pushed into a stinking stable as dusk fell on another day in Hell.

One by one, others joined her, a trickle that grew into a stream. Women, mostly, but not all. Aid workers, nuns from the far west, nurses. A French aid worker smeared a bit of antibiotic salve where it would do Gráinne the most good. The detritus of war, some crazy with disorientation and fear, sobbing under their black tents. Others—the nuns, principally—seemed composed, as if this was exactly what they'd expected someday, just part of the job. They prayed together and over the days many aid workers joined them.

The procession grew into a migration, with camels, donkeys, even a cart the guards used to haul water and captives who'd grown too weak. By then Gráinne was off the camel and walking. The guards treated them more like slaves each passing day. Each evening their captors found an overhanging scarp, a cave, an abandoned hut or village sheep pen they could all huddle in. They seemed to fear the open sky.

She tried to speak to the Ashaari women, establish a bond. But the women and children inflicted cruel, painful tricks on the captives, throwing their food in the fire, giving them lice-ridden blankets. One old woman slapped them and pinched their ears, sneaked up behind and burned their necks with brands from the fire. Gráinne suspected she was insane, but that didn't make it hurt less, or dilute the hate in the sodding cow's bleary old eyes. The men—there was always a guard not far away—just called encouragement, or laughed.

 

SHE dragged a stinking black wool sleeve across festering eyes, uncertain of what she saw. But it was true. Just now, no one was around. None of the women. None of the guards. Not even the kids.

A hiss. She whipped her head round so fast she almost keeled over. The French nurse, Frédérique Trézéguet. They'd slept together to stay warm, and memorized the addresses of each other's parents. She looked almost like an Arab woman, small and bent in dark clothes.

They'd realized it at the same moment. For the first time in days, no one was holding a gun on them. From down the ravine came voices: ecstatic shouting.

“
Que'est-que ce'st que ça?
What's going on?”

“
Pas d'idée
. No idea,” Gráinne muttered, glancing around the night camp. No other captives were awake. Exhausted, they huddled under thin blankets. “But they're not watching.”

Their eyes met, and in the nurse's she saw hope and fear. She was beautiful, or must've been, in a delicate dark style. “D'you know where we are? Can we escape?”

“I don't know. Maybe.”

They'd crossed a road the day before. At a guess, fifteen kilometers back. Too far, in their condition, under the blazing sun, without water.

The answer of course was not to hike it in the sun. They'd have to hide, till the caravan pressed on. Then make their way to the road in the dark, and persuade, threaten, or bribe whomever they ran into to let the army know about them.

Not a great chance. But better than whatever lay at the end of this trail.

All this flashed past more quickly than anything had for days. But Trézéguet must have thought she was hesitating. She stood with fists clenched.
“Viens avec moi?”

“Fuck, yes.” She scrambled out of the blanket, ran a step or two, then stopped. Not only did her thighs feel like they were on fire, but she needed that blanket.

They climbed the side of the ravine, torn feet slipping on rocks and scree. She poked her head up cautiously.

Her heart sank. Beyond lay undulating desert, dotted in the quiet sunrise with rounded purple humpings of sand like surfacing whales. To the south, mountains; to the west, mountains, but more distant. She oriented by the sun. Pointed, and they began running, or, rather, shambling.

After they passed the first patch of loose sand, she looked back to see their tracks. She cursed and headed for gravel, but the damage was done.

The men caught them before they'd hobbled a mile. Perhaps they'd left the captives unguarded on purpose, to see which would run. They swung off the camels and pushed them down in the sand. They beat them with large sticks, then began tearing at their clothes. She screamed, but the stick made her quiet. She almost wasn't conscious of the rape.

As the men took turns, Frédérique bit one. They beat her again, so hard that when they pulled her up and let her go she tumbled down like a broken mannequin. Her eyes were rolled up into what was left of her skull. Her black hair was clotted with blood. They dragged her back to the ravine and made the other captives bury her.

The next day they tied Gráinne on the camel again.

 

THIS continued for days. Finally, far from the last road, the camels nodded to a halt and drifted one by one, as if knowing they were home, down into a black scar in the white hardpan; a jumbled ravine dotted with ruins. Something about its shape pulled at her memory, but not enough to unravel the skein. She was pulled down one last time, her ropes unknotted. The cloth was jerked from her head, and her captors recoiled as her red hair tumbled out.

She took a deep breath of light, of air. Then had to squat, whimpering as the scabbing on her raw thighs cracked open. At the bruises from the beatings and what was probably a cracked rib, a stabbing that made her gasp each time she leaned. Her eyes itched so badly she wanted to claw them out of her head. Fluid ran from them, thick and stinking.

They lay in a cavern with light glimmering in under an overhang. Less a ravine than a chain of linked sinkholes. She lay examining the sunbeams that flickered as people walked by the entrance, throwing queer writhing shadows on the back wall. Listening to the coo of doves.

There'd been water here once. Most likely still was, in water holes, maybe too in deeper caves, level on level of sinkholes, chambers, worming passages like the intestines of the earth. The piles of karst, broken and eroded limestone, at the back of the cave told her that. The rock
around her was dolomite. Over many ages the rain had slowly eaten it away. The striations on the walls told of alternating wet and dry periods, dating back probably twenty, thirty thousand years. She saw no stalactites, but there would be, deep in some secret chamber sunk in the fathomless dark.

They gave them corn mush and alkaline-tasting water. Her stomach hurt, but she made herself eat and drink it all.

 

THE next day she woke with mind empty. She thought fleetingly of the mad professor and of Efrain. Of her mother, her husband, Frédérique. Her eyes were gummed shut. After she worked through the anguish of opening them—it felt like tearing open a scabbed-over wound—she looked around for the professor. It took a while to remember: he wasn't there. The caravan had led him off jangling and cavorting, his tin armor sparkling. Really, some of his antics had been so funny. She'd miss his company.

Away with the fairies again, O'Shea?

Breakfast was mush and a cupful of dirty water.

The captives sat or lay all morning. She crept to the mouth of the cavern, blinking in the painful light; then retreated. From time to time the guards came and took someone away. No one came back. Once they heard far-off shots.

She sat uncaring. She wished only they'd hurry up and get to whatever scheme they had for her. Maybe they'd let her drink a little more water before they shot her. She giggled, making the other captives glance her way. Water was all she wanted now. While there were billions of liters deep beneath her, beneath them all.

She remembered and tried to straighten. To retrieve her mind from wandering. She had to tell someone about the water. Above all, whatever happened to her, she had to live to do that.

They came for her a little after midday. Led her stumbling, a hand tented over her eyes, up a rocky trail. They stopped by a blue plastic jerrijug, the kind the nomads had left lined up as they waited for the Seabees to finish drilling. They made motions; wash your face, your hands. She obeyed, slurping a furtive palmful under the guise of rinsing her mouth. The guard pulled the black cloth over her head and led her down again, into a depression dotted with tents. An ancient collapsed sinkhole. Goats stood about, ridiculously small, watching her hobble past with insolent eyes. The guard shouted and pushed her head down.

They halted. The guard said something dismissive, and pushed her forward.

She raised her eyes to an extraordinary gaze. Black, burning eyes above
a tangled beard with something strange in it. No; the jaw itself was swollen, shockingly so. Realizing she was staring, she dropped her eyes.

Silence. A mechanical click. Then a hand waved at a camp stool. Someone said, in accented but well-educated English, “You may sit.”

The stool was rickety, but when she hobbled over and let herself down it felt lovely. She sighed, then raised her eyes again.

The man looked as if he'd once been tall, but huddled now in the shadow of a tent flap he didn't seem so. The most shocking thing was that grotesque facial distortion, disfiguring, worse than a goiter. In back a small desk with the legs sawed off stood on a threadbare green-and-scarlet carpet in a Walled Garden pattern. At it sat a neatly groomed chubby man in Arab robes. And to her right, another, focusing a video camera.

“Your name.” The cultured voice came from the robed man. The one with the misshapen face didn't speak, only gazed at her.

“Dr. Gráinne O'Shea.”

“A doctor?”

“Of hydrology. Yes.”

“Would you be willing to examine this man's jaw?”

“Hydrology is a geological specialty. I'm not a physician. There was a nurse with us, but she—was raped and killed.”