Through Darkest Europe

by Harry Turtledove

  Khalid laughed out loud. “Ha!” He stabbed a triumphant forefinger at the Jew. “I told Annarita you’d say that! How do you like being so predictable?”

  “As long as it’s you and not the Aquinists doing the predicting, I don’t mind … too much.” The qualifier showed that Dawud still wasn’t overjoyed.

  Before Khalid could reply, their waiter came up and said, “Excuse me, but is one of you gentlemen Khalid al-Zarzisi?”

  “I am,” Khalid said, wondering what had gone wrong.

  “I have a telephone call for you, Signor, at the cashier’s station,” the waiter said. “If you will please come with me…”

  Come with him Khalid did, however little he wanted to. Telephone calls at odd hours, in his experience, were unlikely to be good news. Had a relative in the Maghrib died or been hurt? Or had Annarita changed her mind and not had the heart to tell him to his face? That didn’t seem like her, but you never knew for sure, not till the moment struck.

  He had to tip the waiter for bringing word he was wanted. He picked up the handset like a man taking hold of an adder. “Al-Zarzisi here,” he said harshly.

  “Buon giorno. This is Major Badoglio.” Sure enough, Khalid recognized the officer’s voice. Badoglio went on, “When I rang your room, no one answered. So I tried down here, and I had good luck. Can you and your friend come to the Ministry of Information as soon as is convenient?”

  “What’s up?” Khalid asked.

  “I’d rather discuss it in person, not over an unsecure line,” Badoglio said.

  That was reasonable. Khalid muttered under his breath all the same. “We’ll be there shortly,” he said, and hung up.

  “What’s gone wrong now?” Dawud asked when he got back to the table.

  “Just what I was thinking,” Khalid answered. “Giacomo wants to see us right away.” The waiter hovered behind him. Major Badoglio might well mean something to the man. Giacomo was less likely to. No guarantees, of course, but you did what you could.

  “Oh, he does, does he?” Dawud gulped his coffee and stuffed half a roll into his mouth. Blurrily, he inquired, “Did he say why?”

  “He didn’t want to, not over the telephone.” Khalid drained his cup, too. He needed coffee more than food.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were going through security at the Ministry of Information. The men there knew who they were; they’d checked them any number of times. They were as careful as if they’d never set eyes on the Maghribis before. Italy might lie outside of civilization’s mainstream, but bureaucratic routine had found a home here.

  Major Badoglio met them just inside the security checkpoint. “Ciao, amici,” he said. “Come back to my office with me, and I’ll tell you what I know.” Even here, in a place that was supposed to be secure, he didn’t want to say too much. After Captain Salgari, he had good reason for caution, too.

  After Dawud had closed the door behind them, Khalid said, “Well?”

  “Well, gentlemen, Fabio Lancelotti has disappeared—fled,” Badoglio said in portentous tones that, unfortunately, held no portent for Khalid. Seeing as much, the major explained: “He is—was—the first assistant to the Minister of the Interior.”

  “Oh-ho!” Dawud saw right away where that was going. He was a beat ahead of Khalid, in fact. “So when he heard Salgari’d sung before he met the firing squad, he believed it, did he?”

  “That seems to be the way to bet,” Major Badoglio answered. “And it’s the way to bet not least because Cardinal Svetozar Boroevic has also vanished off the face of the earth, or at least from the Vatican.”

  “Cardinal who?” Khalid said. “What kind of name is that?”

  “Cardinal Boroevic,” Badoglio repeated. “He’s a Croat. Their principality is on the other side of the Adriatic. The Croats are close kin to the Serbs in the Seljuk domain. Only don’t tell them that, or the Serbs, either. They hate each other.”

  Who in Europe doesn’t hate his neighbors, especially when they’re related to him? Khalid wondered. Seeing no chance of getting a meaningful answer to that, he contented himself with asking, “And what does—or rather, did—Cardinal, uh, Boroevic do in the Vatican?”

  “Among other things, he was second-in-command over Pope Marcellus’ guards.” Major Badoglio eyed the Maghribis, then nodded in somber approval. “I see this doesn’t amaze you.”

  “If you’d told me he was the Pope’s chief gardener, that would have amazed me,” Dawud said.

  “Are these two … officials traveling separately or together?” Khalid asked.

  “We don’t know.” Badoglio sounded unhappy at admitting that, and well he might. Less happily still, he went on, “If they had false papers, they could have flown out of Rome to, well, anywhere in the world. Or they could have driven over the border to France or the Swiss cantons or one of the German states or even Croatia.”

  “They could be hiding inside Italy, too,” Khalid said. “It’s not as if the Aquinists don’t still have friends here.”

  “I could wish you were wrong,” Badoglio said. “But if I were either one of them, I’d want to get out of the country if I had any chance at all. Believe me, they won’t enjoy themselves if Grand Duke Lorenzo gets his hands on them.”

  Khalid did believe him. No legal framework limited the kind of revenge Lorenzo could take if he caught the man who’d planted the serving girl who’d blown herself up—and Cosimo with her. Svetozar Boroevic might not have done anything to the Grand Duke himself, but Lorenzo also wouldn’t love anyone who’d compromised the moderate Pope’s safety.

  “Without them—” Dawud broke off, as if wondering how optimistic he dared to be. He continued like a man shoving in money in a big dice game: “Without them, Lorenzo may be able to get the upper hand on the Aquinists, at least for a while.”

  “Sometimes buying time is the most important thing you can do,” Khalid said. “People see that the fanatics are only stirring up trouble—they aren’t fixing anything or making anything better. That’s when their support starts slipping.”

  “That’s when we hope their support starts slipping,” Dawud put in. He couldn’t stay very optimistic very long. He’d spent too long as an investigator and seen too much optimism come to nothing.

  “Giving the people a chance to see that Lorenzo has Italy in his grasp, the way his father did before him, can only help him,” Major Badoglio said. He nodded to Khalid. “From what he told me, planting the rumor was your idea. You had a good one there.”

  “Someone else would have thought of it if I hadn’t,” the Maghribi replied uneasily. He’d been raised to think modesty a virtue. One more thing that made him feel out of place in Italy, where people tooted their own horns as loud as they could.

  “Someone else might have thought of it if you hadn’t,” Dawud said. “If his Supreme Highness feels like giving you the credit, take it.”

  Badoglio nodded. “Good advice!”

  Was it? Khalid didn’t care much one way or the other. Yes, Lorenzo was a better bargain than Aquinist fanatics running Italy would have been. But the Grand Duke wasn’t his overlord, for which he thanked the God in Whom he indifferently believed. His main wish was for things to calm down enough so Lorenzo would send him and Dawud home. Then he could get on with his own life and see what kind of new one he could build with Annarita.

  As if pickpocketing his thought, the Italian major said, “And I hear you’re kidnapping Cosimo’s assistant. Congratulations! I hope the two of you are happy together.”

  “Grazie,” Khalid said. “I hope we are, too. That’s what you can do—hope and try your best.”

  “She’ll get along better in the Maghrib, I think,” Badoglio said. “Women who’re that sharp make men here nervous. They’re more used to it on your side of the sea, aren’t they?”

  “Yes.” Khalid hoped he was right. His countrymen wouldn’t scorn Annarita’s talents because she was a woman. Because she was a Christian woman, an Italian woman? That might be a different story. He hope
d it wouldn’t, but it might.

  He didn’t plan to say anything about that to Annarita. Why borrow trouble? The Maghribis might just respect what she could do, the same as they would for a man born in Tunis. They prided themselves on judging a person for his or her abilities rather than his or her origins. Sometimes they did the latter anyhow, though. Not always. Only sometimes.

  * * *

  “His Supreme Highness has announced that the state of emergency declared for Italy is being relaxed.” The Italian newsman sounded as proud as if he’d given the order himself instead of reading what Lorenzo had decreed. “Curfew hours will be shortened. Most travel restrictions will be lifted. According to the Grand Duke, this reflects our progress in the struggle against Aquinist fanaticism and foreign invasion.”

  The television screen switched from the studio to a prisoner-of-war camp somewhere in the north of Italy: the watery light told Khalid this was nowhere close to the Mediterranean. Glum-looking men, many of them blond and pale-eyed, mooched around inside the barbed wire. Some wore tattered camouflage coveralls; more had on equally frayed European civilian clothes. Faces stubbly or shaggily bearded made the prisoners look even more unkempt than they would have otherwise. Several men sported bandaged wounds.

  By contrast, the Italian soldiers guarding the captives were clean shaven except for some neat mustaches or chin whiskers. Not a one that the camera showed had so much as a missing toggle on his uniform. Their assault rifles gleamed with machine oil and purpose. And, most important of all, they were outside the barbed wire, while the prisoners languished within.

  “Once people from beyond our borders learn that we can and must tend to our own business, full peace will return to our beloved fatherland,” the newsman declared.

  “I wonder what he thinks when he isn’t mouthing words off the prompting machine,” Khalid said to Annarita.

  “I wonder if he thinks when he isn’t mouthing words off it,” she answered. That was another good question. Some of the things Khalid had seen on Maghribi television—when the news crew had to ad-lib in the face of a breaking story, for instance—made him have his doubts, too.

  But that wasn’t the first thing on his mind right now. “I hope you haven’t had any trouble with your passport and your emigration documents.”

  “No.” Annarita’s head was on his shoulder. He felt her shake it. “Everything’s gone much more smoothly than I dreamt it would. I know our clerks can make a hash of things. I ought to—Cosimo used to complain about it all the time. Not with me, though.”

  “Good,” Khalid said. “Lorenzo promised me anyone who gave you any trouble would end up envying what happens to Aquinists. People seem to think he wasn’t kidding.”

  “I’m sure he wasn’t,” she answered. “He won’t be sorry to see me go—not even a little. I’m taking Cosimo’s secrets with me, and I won’t spill them here.”

  “That might be part of it, but he does owe me something, too,” Khalid said. “So does Umar ibn Abd-al-Aziz, as a matter of fact.”

  She laughed. “No wonder everything’s so easy on that end, then! I thought the Maghribis would figure any Italian was an Aquinist until she could prove she wasn’t. And I thought whom you knew was less important than what you knew on your side of the Mediterranean.” Her classical Arabic was more precise and grammatical than a native speaker’s would have been.

  “Who you know counts for a lot everywhere.” Khalid hardly noticed breaking the rule she followed; if she hadn’t followed it, he wouldn’t have noticed at all. He went on, “It may matter less in the Maghrib than it does here, but it matters, all right.”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised,” Annarita said, more to herself than to Khalid. “Anyone would think there were human beings on the far side of the sea, not the always rich, always happy demigods who enjoy pointing their fingers at the foolish things the mortals here do.”

  There were people in the Maghrib who looked at Europe the way visitors to the zoo looked at the monkey house. They found the antics here, both political and religious, funnier than anything in the cinema. The difference was, monkeys didn’t think you ought to believe the way they did. And monkeys hardly ever reached for assault rifles to make you believe the way they did.

  “Oh, we’re human beings, all right,” Khalid said. “We can be just as stupid as anyone else. We aren’t always stupid the same ways people here are, but so what? Quarreling about ideology and about the economy instead of theology? It’s like eating peaches instead of pears.”

  She hugged him. “I like the way you look at things.”

  “Well, good, but I was only getting started,” he replied. “In all the little things, the things people do, not governments or religions, we are stupid the same ways in the Maghrib. Men cheat on women. Women cheat on men. Somebody gets drunk and slugs somebody else—or shoots somebody else. Sometimes somebody’s just mean and doesn’t need to get drunk first. People lie. They steal. We have police. We need them.”

  “How did you get to be an investigator, anyway?” Annarita asked.

  “I’d graduated from the madrasa. I’d studied literature, mostly, but I didn’t want to teach and I’m not a good enough writer to make a living at that. My Uncle Masud was an investigator for the city of Tunis. He knew some people, and—”

  “Ha!” She poked him in the ribs.

  “Well, he did,” Khalid said. “He’s dead now, but he helped me get started. I turned out not to be bad at it. I’ll never get rich enough to support four wives, but—”

  Annarita poked him again. “You’d better not!”

  “Hardly anybody does, these days. Rich men buy big cars and houses and boats instead to show off how much they’ve made, and keep concubines on the side.”

  “You’d better not do that, either,” she said darkly.

  “If you’re happy where you are, there’s not much point. I expect I will be.” Khalid kissed her. Again, he seemed to have found the right answer, or at least part of it. He went on, “Where was I? Oh—the other thing is, every once in a while I end up doing something worthwhile, not just going through the motions. In a lot of jobs, I couldn’t say that. And I meet interesting people.” He kissed her some more.

  “How do you mean that?” she asked after a while.

  “I don’t know. How would you like me to mean it?”

  By all the signs, she liked the way he meant it fine. When they got around to noticing the television again, the news was over. A quiz show was on instead, with a host who cracked rapid-fire jokes in a dialect Khalid had trouble following. His assistant, a statuesque young woman, looked alluring even when covered from head to toe.

  “Is she distracting you?” Annarita asked.

  “I wasn’t distracted,” he replied. “I was just noticing how you can do, um, interesting things in spite of the customs here.”

  “Is that what you were noticing?”

  “Of course,” Khalid said, as innocently as he could. “I noticed you a little while ago, and you were wearing quite a bit less than she is. You still are, as a matter of fact.” He set a hand on her bare hip.

  “So you noticed that, did you?”

  “Dear, if I don’t notice you, they can wrap me in a shroud and shovel dirt over me, because I’ll be dead. And if I look at other pretty girls once in a while, who cares where you get your appetite as long as you eat at home?”

  “Hmm. I’m not sure I like that.” Annarita thought about it for a few seconds. Then she nodded. “I suppose I can put up with it. I suppose I’ll have to. As far as I can see, men are going to stare at women, and you can either put up with it or go out of your mind. That’s one point to the women’s clothes we wear here: they make men stare less.”

  “Or just use our imaginations more,” Khalid said. Annarita made a face at him, but then she laughed. He cupped her breast in his hand. She purred. He went on, “I don’t need to use my imagination now. I’ve got the real thing here with me. If that doesn’t make me the luckiest man in the world,
I don’t know who would be.”

  “Flattery will get you somewhere. Oh, wait.” She paused. “It already did, didn’t it?” This time, they laughed together.

  XVIII

  Khalid and Dawud walked down an Italian street not far from their hotel. Khalid couldn’t see any soldiers. The air didn’t stink of smoke. No nearby gunshots made him dive for his life—or stole it.

  The locals were taking advantage of the peace and quiet. Open doors invited customers into shops and eateries and taverns. WELCOME! signs shouted in big letters. SALE! they screamed in even bigger ones.

  Most of the Aquinists’ broadsheets were torn down. Few people dared sneak out at night to paste up new ones. By contrast, Grand Duke Lorenzo’s young, handsome face stared at passersby from every wall and post and fence. THE GRAND DUKE PROTECTS HIS PEOPLE! was his latest slogan.

  “It’s quieted down,” Khalid remarked.

  “It has, hasn’t it?” Dawud agreed. “A good thing, too, or this country might have fallen to pieces. If the fanatics grabbed control here, right across the narrow sea…” He shook his head. “That wouldn’t have been good at all.”

  “No, it wouldn’t.” Khalid tried to see in his mind what might have sprung from such a disaster. “We probably would have had to invade to clear them out, either by ourselves or maybe with Egypt. Either way, can you imagine how the rest of the European countries would have screamed?”

  Dawud threw back his head and screamed himself. A couple of Italians eyed him in alarm and edged away. “About like that,” he said. “Or maybe even louder. Want me to try again?”

  “No, don’t bother,” Khalid said quickly.

  “Oh, be that way.” Dawud sounded sulky. “But all the Europeans would have screeched about how we violated Italy’s sovereignty and how we didn’t respect them and on and on. Now they won’t get the chance. I bet some of them are disappointed, too.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. You’re right, though—they won’t get the chance,” Khalid said. “Instead, we get the chance to go home.”