by Alex Archer
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.
Chapter 17
"Tell me again," Jason Pennigrew called out over the howl of the wind, "why anybody thought it was a good idea to climb this damned mountain in the winter?"
"Language, Mr. Pennigrew," Josh Fairlie called back down over his shoulder.
They staggered through snow, both shin-deep on their bulky boots and blowing hard into their goggled faces, angling up the southwestern face of the great cinder cone. From the days before Ararat's being designated a restricted military zone by the Turkish army, the mountain had been a fairly popular climb for serious mountaineers. Some fairly well-established routes had been mapped.
But this expedition used none of them. The explanation was the terse word security, offered by Leif Baron.
"Christ's name, put a sock in it," Wilfork hissed at Jason and Josh from behind
Annja. "You want to bring the whole bloody mountain down around our ears?"
Fairlie turned away. Annja thought his cheeks burned pink beneath his goggles. It might have been from the frigid wind. For some reason he had no response to the New Zealander's blasphemy.
While there turned out to be no such thing as an extinct volcano, as geologists had long believed, Ararat had been dormant a long time in human terms, suggesting it might be likely to stay that way and behave itself while being climbed. Or alternatively, it was long overdue to blow up like the Death Star. Annja reckoned it was a half full, half empty scenario.
Fortunately she had more immediate considerations pressing on her. Being a cinder cone, Ararat had a fairly gentle, consistent slope, at least in its lower reaches. After five thousand feet or so the way became increasingly difficult. Or so Baron had assured them during their planning session in a little isolated building near the mountain's base, the size and shape of a boxcar and made of adobe, with a satellite dish on the roof, from which they'd launched their assault on the peak.
And then there were the glaciers. Especially the one on the west and northwest sides, at the edge of which, a little less than a mile and a half from the summit, the Anomaly lay like a half-submerged log.
But even on a clear path winding up the slope to the south the footing was tricky. Snow fresh-fallen on earlier layers of snow and ice provided uncertain footing at the best of times. Sometimes it also hid serious stumbling blocks or gaps. And the wind kept trying to push the climbers off the path, to send them rolling back down the long white slope.
Plus Levi and Annja, it seemed, were Team Awkward on this climb. Annja had done some climbing but wasn't truly trained or skilled at it. Levi had no experience whatsoever. It turned out the Young Wolves had all studied mountaineering techniques at the Rehoboam Christian Leadership Academy, possibly with an eye toward this very climb—although Annja had no doubt it was used also to foster more mundane survival and leadership skills as well. Charlie Bostitch, for all his unwieldiness, had apparently successfully completed the same course and knew what he was doing. So had Baron, of course, who'd also had mountain warfare training as a SEAL—which seemed bizarre to Annja, but she knew these days even marines got it, too. The Chasing History's Monsters team, unused as they may have been to combat zones, clearly were all experienced climbers. Annja had to give credit to Doug Morrell for choosing a trained crew for the job. Even Wilfork, as he said, "Did a spot of mountaineering in my misspent youth."
At midmorning they paused for a break at a relatively level spot. Jason took a panoramic shot of the surrounding landscape. Conveniently the snow had stopped falling.
The sun broke through the seemingly perpetual cloud cover to drop a beam of golden radiance on the neat black cone of the four-thousand-foot Little Ararat not far from the main peak to the southeast. To the north rose the Pontic Mountains. The Eastern Taurus range trailed away to the south.
Like many volcanoes Ararat was its own lord and master. It rose from the midst of a rising plain, largely lava shield. Around it lay terrain rumpled like a sheet on an unmade bed. Most of the landscape was covered in snow.
"It's really beautiful up here," Trish said, looking around in awe.
"Do not be fooled," Hamid said darkly. "For once the Turks do not lie. They call it the Mountain of Pain."
"That's reassuring," Jason said. "What do the Kurds call it?"
"Fiery Mountain," Hamid replied.
Wilfork sat, breathing heavily on his pack. "We're up a bloody volcano, are we?"
"Yes," Annja said. "It's a stratovolcano. Built up of many layers of activity."
"Activity. What a charming euphemism. I presume that means bloody great belching and fuming and emitting of molten lava?"
"Pretty much. But don't worry. It's been dormant for millennia. Well, unless you count an earthquake in 1840."
"Smashing," the journalist said. "So it might be due for another bloody great blast."
"Don't sweat that, Mr. Wilfork," Larry Taitt said. "The Lord won't let that happen to us."
"He knows we're doing His work," ex-marine Zach Thompson said ominously. "He's keeping a tight watch on us."
"No doubt," Wilfork said, rolling his eyes.
Hamid thrust an arm toward the north dramatically. "That way lies Armenia. On a clear day you can see its capital of Yerevan."
Tommy turned his camera that way. "I don't know," he said, blinking his free eye. "Looks pretty hazy up that way. Like smog or something."
"It is smog," said Baron, who was tramping tirelessly up the line checking gear and making sure everybody was holding up. He seemed totally relaxed and in his element. "Not many clear days up that way. That's the big city for you."
Hamid swept his arm around to the west. "There lies a part of Azerbaijan, cut off from the rest of the country by Armenia. And there, farther south, is Iran. And south of us—Iraq. And all of it belongs by right to the Kurds."
"I guess you'd get some argument from the Iranians and the Azerbaijanis," Jason said. He was filming the climbing party as Tommy shot the scenery. "Like you do from the Turks. But I guess the U.S. has you guys set up pretty good in northern Iraq, huh?"
Hamid's fierce brows knotted. "The Americans allow us to administer the north for them, so long as we help them fight in the south. But they prevent us from cleansing our land of the Arabs and Turcoman interlopers."
"Hey, if it were up to me, you'd have free rein to wipe the towel-heads off the map," Baron said. "The Arabs are just scum. You can have the Turcomans, too, for all I care."
"But your government stands aside and lets its allies the Turks shell and bomb our people in the north!" Hamid said angrily.
Baron shook his head. It glinted in the afternoon sunlight that managed to make it through the cloud layer. "Hey, big guy. Ease off. You're preaching to the choir here. But I don't make policy."
"I thought in your country, all Americans could make policy, through this democracy you try so hard to make everyone obey."
"A surprising number of Yanks suffer under that delusion, too," Wilfork said. Annja noted that his comment won him black looks both from the Young Wolves and the Chasing History's Monsters crew.
Frowning, Baron said, "Enough slacking off. Time to climb."
* * *
HAVING APPROACHED FROM the west—the Turkish side—they worked their way around the mountain's flank to the eastern side. And up. The slope on this side, with the smaller satellite cone on their right, was more gradual. They could gain a fair amount of altitude without any scaly vertical climbs with ropes and crampons.
Of course that meant the sun set early behind the mountain's bulk. As a blue twilight descended on them, while yellow-gray light still fell across the broken land to the east, they pitched their tents on a broad, level patch of ground. The quiet, red-haired Eli Holden passed out food. With his stalk neck and not much by way of a chin he tended to remind Annja of a carrot, although a carrot with jug-handle ears. His murky green eyes were neutral as stones passing over her as he handed her her meal pack.
"He's a real ball of fire," Jason said as Eli passed on.
"Bummer," Tommy said. "I got the chicken fajitas. Anybody want to trade?"
"No," a chorus of voices said. The chicken fajitas were legendarily bad.
They gathered into a circle. The tents gave some shelter from the wind, which had thankfully begun to die away as the sun set in the greater world beyond Ararat's bulk. Bostitch had insisted on taking full tents along, even though he'd warned them they might find themselves needing to pass at least one night hanging from a sheer precipice by bivouac bags. But he said, and Baron backed him, that they'd need as warm and comfortable a sleep as they could get every night on the great mountain.
There was no need for Annja or the Chasing History's Monsters crew to worry about the excess weight in their packs. The Young Wolves all toted massive packs and the bulk of the gear, without complaint and apparently with little deleterious effect. Annja
could hardly complain about a burden she wasn't, after all, being asked to bear.
And for all their weird notions, and for that matter the bone-crazy notion that underlaid this whole expedition, her employers seemed to have a firm grip on the essential things of this world. At least as far as the expedition went.
"It was always tough, growing up in the old man's shadow," Charlie was saying. Earlier he'd been strutting around like a bantam rooster, which he certainly didn't resemble in any other particular, cheeks glowing with pink patches of health. Now that bloom was gone, leaving gray cheeks that sagged. "I could never measure up. No matter what I did."
"I hear you," Baron said. "It was the same way with me. Nothing was good enough for my father. If I didn't do just what he said, just when he said it—" he made an openhanded sweeping gesture across the front of his body "—boom!"
