The Scorpion’s Bite (8 page)

Chapter Seventeen

In the cool of the morning at first light, Lily, Klaus, and Ibrahim loaded the Jeep outside the fort before they went out into the desert for a day’s reconnaissance.

Klaus continued to pontificate on Ibrahim’s virtues, emphasizing that the Ruwalla knew of caves and archaeological sites that couldn’t be found without his help.

Ibrahim leaned on his rifle, glaring at the fort. He had refused to spend the night inside.

“Was Lawrence’s headquarters,” he said. “Lawrence lied.” He shook his head, spit on the ground. “Lawrence and his friend, al Khatan. Both betrayed us.”

“Lawrence wasn’t all bad,” Lily said, feeling obliged to defend a fellow archaeologist. “He understood the Bedouin, lived among you.”

“A donkey’s a donkey, even if he’s raised among horses. He made promises he didn’t keep.”

“He tried,” she said.

Gideon brought out a box filled with bread, hard-boiled eggs, cucumbers, tomatoes, and a jar of feta cheese floating in oil. He set it down beside the jugs of cooled, boiled water, and went back into the fort for more supplies.

Ibrahim hitched the hem of his abaya over his shoulder, rested the carton on it and started toward the Jeep, with his dog sniffing and haunting his footsteps. He dropped the box into the back of the Jeep with a thud, pushed the dog away with his foot, and went back for the water. Lily cringed as the dog whimpered, crept away and lay down on its side in the dirt beyond the Jeep.

Gideon emerged again, grinning this time, carrying a watermelon.

“Where’d you get that?” Lily asked.

“From the icebox in the Legion kitchen.”

“You stole it?”

“I only borrowed it.”

“So when we finish eating it we’ll give it back?”

“Some day, I will buy a bigger and better watermelon and dedicate it to the icebox at Azraq.”

“Even if it takes forty years?”

“Exactly so,” Gideon said, handing off the melon to Ibrahim.

Ibrahim reached for the melon with a smile, thumped it, dumped it on top of the box of food, and climbed into the back of the Jeep.

“Careful, you’ll break the water jugs,” Lily said.

She rearranged the box and then turned back to Ibrahim to pick up the threads of their old conversation, curious about what he said about Lawrence and Gertrude Bell.

“You don’t approve of Gertrude Bell?” she asked.

“She wished to be called al Khatun, the Lady,” Ibrahim’s nostrils quivered in anger. “She sailed around the desert from tent to tent with a train of camels loaded with chests of linen and silver and dishes, and a bathtub, in fancy dresses and flowered hats, throwing baksheesh to sheiks and camel-drivers. Like a queen.”

“I thought all the Bedouin liked her.”

“They liked her baksheesh. What can you say of a woman who acts like a man? She was a foolish piece of noise, always talking, always giving orders, a man-woman donkey.” He shrugged and wiped his hands together in a gesture of dismissal. “She was in love with Faisal,” he added, and Lily was surprised. “Made him king of Iraq.”

“Faisal? Grandfather of the present king? Gertrude Bell and Faisal had an affair?”

“
Laa
.” He shook his head and clicked his tongue against his teeth. “No affair. She was too ugly. And I think, what I think, Faisal was in love with Lawrence, and Lawrence was in love with him.”

“A
ménage à trois
?”

“What’s that?”

“Never mind,” Lily said.

“Faisal put up with el Khatan because she was Lawrence’s friend,” Ibrahim said. “And because she made him King of Iraq.” He rubbed at his face and shook his head again, this time in disgust. “Why Iraq? He was stranger. He was from the Hejaz.”

He twitched his head. “Now Iraq is ruled by a useless child.”

Lily remembered the picture of the curly haired Faisal, looking sad and frightened next to his confident cousin Hussein.

Gideon came out of the fort, carrying two canvas water bags that he hung on either side of the Jeep.

“Ready to go?” He turned to Klaus. “Got your camera, your film?”

They clambered into the loaded Jeep. As Gideon drove out of the fort compound, the dog chased after them, tangling with the wheels, snapping, barking. Gideon gunned the motor, sped away, and left the dog in a wake of whirling dust.

***

Jalil caught up with them by late morning.

The day was heating up. They had paused and rested in the shade of the Jeep, eating chunks of the watermelon, sucking the sweet, sticky juice, letting it run down their chins.

Awadh, the older Bdoul from Petra, was with Jalil. Both rode fine Arabian steeds, shining chestnuts, sleek and proud.

Jalil dismounted. “Brought you a new guide.” He indicated the Bdoul.

Awadh’s face was vibrant with smiles as he told Lily his new horse was called Ghalib, named for a great warrior.

Ibrahim stood, his hand resting on the hilt of the gaudy dagger at his waist. “He knows nothing. He’s an old man.”

“He knows a great deal because he’s an old man,” Jalil said.

Awadh, still beaming, gave a modest nod of his head. “I was with Lawrence.”

Ibrahim looked ready to spring at him.

“We can use both,” Klaus said. “The more the merrier. I’ve hired Ibrahim. He’s Ruwalla, knows this part of the desert.”

Jalil nodded. “
Ahlen we Sahlen
, Welcome in peace.” He spoke to Ibrahim, but he looked worried.

“Suleimon is dead,” Jalil told them. “And there’s been infiltration from Syria. This morning, a Syrian raid at the saltpans. They came for the salt, stole flocks. Killed two men of Suleimon’s
khamsa
.”

Lily envisioned tribal warfare raging across the desert. “They killed Suleimon?”

“No, no. Heart attack. The tumult of the raid. He was ancient. He’s been sick. His men were distracted.”

“We were guests for dinner in Suleimon’s tent just yesterday.” Lily pictured the old sheik who bent over her, squinting at her through clouded eyes. “It’s sad.”

“We can’t count on Suleimon’s men now.” Jalil looked north. “Their camp is in confusion.” He nodded and took a few shallow breaths as if he were sniffing the air. “That’s not all. Umm al Quttein was attacked.”

“Who attacked? Same raiders?” Gideon asked. “What did they attack?”

“Umm al Quttein is on the south slope of Jebel Druze, just this side of the Syrian border. It’s an Arab Legion post, just a few kilometers from pumping station H5. A contingent of Syrians, Germans, Vichy French, and a force of Druze cavalry.” He looked north again. “Vichy French officers led the attack.”

“H5?” Gideon asked. “On the Kirkuk-Haifa pipeline?”

Jalil nodded. “They’re after sabotage. If they blow up the pipeline…”

It was beginning to make sense to Lily now, this wandering through the desert from site to site, even the accidental meeting with Suleimon’s encampment.

Jalil paused, wary, watching a man on a camel ride toward them, waving, his cloak flapping as he came over the ridge.

When the man drew closer, Jalil relaxed. “It’s Hamud.
Hamdulillah
. May Allah be praised.”

Lily gave Hamud a broad smile. “Welcome back. We missed you.”

“I thought that whoever the scorpion bites will reach the grave,” Klaus said.

“And so I shall,” Hamud said, dismounting and couching his camel. “Someday. But not yet.”

“Even if it takes forty years?” Lily asked.

“Or more.
Inshallah
. If Allah is willing.”

“To what do you owe your good fortune?” Jalil asked, “
Ma’ah hadas
?”

“My people have a cure for the bite.” Hamud spread out his hand and extended his fingers.

“First.” He pressed down his index finger. “To break the spell of the scorpion, a friend slaughters a neighbor’s goat.

“Second.” He pressed down his middle finger. “The friend puts the goat innards into the water to wash the bite.

“Then,” he turned down the next finger. “The friend digs a grave.”

Taking in his breath somberly for a dramatic pause, he looked at each of them in turn. “He carried me to the grave. In a few minutes, he carried me out, and quickly, quickly, put the innards of the goat in my place.

“And the poison was passed to the goat.” He opened his hand and flung out his arm, as if to toss away an evil spell. “The spell of the scorpion was broken.” He clapped his hands together. “I lived.”

“
Hamdulillah
,” said Lily.

Jalil nodded in agreement. “
Hamdulillah
,
”
he said, and moved toward his horse. “But for now, we must get back to Azraq, check on H5 and make preparations to attack T3.”

“What’s T3?” Lily asked.

“A pumping station on the pipeline through Syria from Mosel. Feeds oil to the Vichy French and the Germans.”

“That means,” Gideon said, “that we have to extend our archaeological survey as far north as Palmyra. It’s never been adequately excavated.”

“Palmyra?” Lily said. “It’s in Syria.”

“In an oasis in the Great Syrian Desert, on a flat plain covered with desert pavement.” He smiled, shrugged and said to Lily, “It’s just north of T3.”

“The Syrians call it Tadmor,” Jalil added. “There’s nothing there now, except for a small fort for the French Foreign Legion and the Syrian Camel Corp. That, and a few ugly houses.”

Palmyra, Bride of the Desert, an oasis on the road to the riches of the Far East. Zenobia defeated the Romans as queen of Palmyra, one of a long line of fabulous warrior queens that intrigued Lily. Zenobia rode into battle fearless and passionate, hair flowing, breast exposed. Lily sometimes associated the ancient Greek myths of the Amazons with this tradition of warrior queens.

Palmyra was near the T3 pumping station of the pipeline that led through Syria. It made sense. They were here because of the pipelines, one that led through Trans-Jordan to Haifa that supplied the British with oil, the other that ran through Nazi controlled Syria and supplied the Axis.

But there was more to it than that. They kept moving toward Iraq, the Iraq governed by a child who had inherited the throne through the machinations of the romantic, manipulative British heiress, al Khatun.

Iraq oil held the balance that fed the campaigns of the British and the Axis. And the linchpin was a sad-eyed child.

Rashid Ali was in exile in Berlin, Glubb had said. But suppose he was in Syria?

Lily put her hand on Gideon’s arm. “I’ll go with you, of course.”

“It could be dangerous.”

“I’ll watch your back.”

“I don’t know.” Gideon smiled and shook his head. “You don’t have a very good track record watching people’s backs. Eastbourne in Tel el Kurnub, Drury in Tangier, both killed. If it happens a third time, you’ve established a trend.”

“We’d better get going,” Jalil helped them pack up, mounted his horse, and led the motley procession as it turned back to Azraq, with Jalil and Awadh on horseback, Hamud on his camel, and the others in the Jeep.

At the fort, Gideon parked and started toward the gate, then bent down to pick up something from the ground.

“What is it?” Lily asked.

“Looks like Qasim’s knife.” He held out a knife with a tooled black leather handle and sheath. “How did it get here? He had it with him in Wadi Rum.”

Lily shuddered. “Whoever killed Qasim and took his knife is with us, here in Azraq.”

The others arrived one by one and busied themselves watering and hobbling the animals, hitching the horses, couching the camel.

Ibrahim watched them trudge inside. “Lies beget lies,” he said. “Betrayal begets betrayal.”

In the morning, he was gone. The rusted shotgun with the broken barrel from World War I and the training rifle Jalil had brought for Lily were gone with him.

Chapter Eighteen

Today it was just the three of them on their way to check on the pumping station at H5. They were prepared for the day like Boy Scouts, with canteens filled, canvas water bags hanging from the sides of the Jeep, sandwiches in a cooler in the back.

Gideon drove east between the black lava hills along the Haifa-Baghdad road, with Lily in the passenger seat. Great lava boulders lined the road, hulking sentinels of an ancient volcanic eruption.

Jalil sprawled in the back of the Jeep, gripping a large pair of field glasses like a new toy, taking them from the case, raising them to scan the flint-strewn plain and putting them back.

“Seven times magnification.” Jalil patted the binocular case affectionately. “Bausch and Lomb, best make.”

He handed Lily the field glasses. “Take a look.”

She held them up to adjust the focus. The heavy binoculars banged against her cheek when the Jeep hit a bump, and she focused again.

She held the rubber cups of the field glasses tight against her face, scanning the horizon, watching the dust swirling in their wake, and following the base of the low hills rising on either side.

She spotted the slight dip in the hillside, covered with a slab of basalt.

“Over there.” She pointed. “Looks like a cave.”

Gideon left the track to turn the Jeep in the direction she was pointing. “Over where?”

She lowered the binoculars. “Keep going straight.” The road was rougher now. “You’re going in the right direction.”

She bounced off the seat, and down again. “For God sake, slow down.”

“I see it now,” Gideon said.

“What do you see?” Jalil said.

Gideon pointed. “See that piece of basalt against the hill?”

“Yes. So?”

“Could be the entrance to a cave. Could be used to store arms.”

Lily got out as soon as they reached the cave. “Smells more like garbage.” She pulled the basalt rock away from the small cave entrance.

Inside, the stench was overwhelming.

“Good God! It’s Ibrahim’s dog.” Two steps led down from the entrance. The dog, covered with bugs and slithering maggots, lay half on the edge of the bottom step.

“The training rifle and old shotgun he stole are on the floor of the cave. I better go in.”

She lowered herself to shimmy inside the entrance.

“You sure you can so this?” Gideon asked.

She sensed he meant her panic when she was trapped in the cave before they got to Azraq, and was mortified.

“It won’t happen again. Not this time, anyway.”

“What won’t?”

Lily looked over her shoulder at him, smiled, and slid warily into the cave, avoiding the dog, keeping her eyes on the rifle and shotgun. For a moment, she glanced toward the dog, gagged, and turned away. It won’t happen again, she told herself.

She reached the floor and carefully lifted the shotgun through the entrance to Gideon outside, then reached for the rifle, ready to crawl up the steps. Holding the gun in both hands, she stretched up toward the entrance, pushed the butt of the rifle through, and lost her balance.

She landed on the soft, half putrefied flesh of the dog.

Creatures moved along her arm, crawled along her neck, crept inside her shirt. She leaped up the steps, scrambled through the opening, and came out screaming.

She ripped off her shirt and stomped on it, slapping insects and maggots off her arms. Still screaming, she wriggled out of her slacks and stomped on them with her feet, hearing the crunch of the insects, stamping, shouting, “Go away, go away, go away.”

Brushing her arms and legs again, she paused to lift the stone with both hands and heave it onto the clothes and quivering vermin on the ground. She jumped on it and collapsed, cross-legged, on the ground, weeping.

Gideon brought a canteen and spilled water over her hands. “Here.” He handed her the canteen.

She poured the water over her head and down her shoulders, rubbing at her arms and legs, brushing more insects into the dust. They crawled out of the sun. “What are those things?”

“Maggots?”

“The other things, those dark, hairy bugs.”

“Dermestids. They’re beetles. Some people call them cemetery beetles.” He went back to the jeep and fished for a towel. “They clean up putrefying flesh.”

“They were eating the dog?”

“They eat carrion. Keep our cemeteries tidy and hygienic.”

“If cemeteries are such healthy places,” Lily mumbled, “why aren’t the dead out playing tennis?”

She rubbed herself vigorously with the towel, shook it out, rubbed and shook again. “They could eat me.” She stood up. “I could go to sleep tonight and in the morning I could wake up dead, nothing but a skeleton.”

“They only eat decaying flesh.”

She flicked off the last insect that she could find, then jumped up and down, shaking, to make strays fall away. “For all I know, I might be decaying.”

Gideon looked her figure up and down with a sly smile. “I don’t think so.” He handed her a fresh shirt and slacks that he had retrieved from the Jeep. “And neither do the Bedouin watching from beyond the ridge.”

Jalil stood discreetly with his back turned to her. But beyond him, Lily made out a pair of faint shadows with billowing cloaks at the top of the hill.