Riders of the Pale Horse

by T. Davis Bunn

  “I listen,” Wade said simply.

  “You listen and you hear with compassion,” the old man corrected. “It is a pity that others do not do the same.”

  The woman declared, “There is little in our house to eat.”

  When Wade translated, Robards replied, “Tell her we’ll eat from our stores, and we’ll leave her more food in return for lodging. Ask her if there is bread to be had in this village.”

  “For those with money,” she replied.

  Wade handed her a few rubles. “We have little cash, but we will pay for your hospitality with goods that can be easily traded as well as with food.”

  She nodded and then volunteered, “The next three villages are Georgian held, and they shoot anyone coming from this area. You will need to go south on a trail I can show you in the morning.”

  “For such information,” Wade replied, “we shall pay even more.”

  She handed the money to her daughter, who leapt up and ran out the door. She then turned and spoke sharply to her eldest son, who nodded and left without a word. She explained, “He will go and sleep in your trucks.”

  “I was planning to do that,” Robards said when Wade had translated.

  “Do so,” she replied. “But let him be there also. He has the eyes of a night bird and knows all who live here, who is foe and who friend. There are not many friends.”

  After the meal, the woman and her children retired to the back room, leaving the men sprawled about the drafty living chamber with its single flickering bulb. The three Russians smoked their foul-smelling papyrosi cigarettes, enjoying the moment’s relative freedom. Robards cast a glance at the wall’s open wound and declared, “This whole region’s a patchwork quilt of little wars.”

  Wade translated for the others, and there was no dissent. “It is the same story over much of the former Soviet Union,” Yuri said, speaking in Russian so all but Rogue could understand. “The local tribes have suffered much.”

  “Not to mention us Russians,” Ilya muttered.

  “The usurpers of ancient tribal lands have no rights,” Mikhail countered, but without heat.

  “I, a usurper?” Ilya snorted. “I was born in Estonia. My parents were forced there, given fifteen minutes to pack, shoved in a cattle car, and sent off on a voyage that lasted two weeks and almost killed my mother. I am the product of modern Russia, a man who belongs nowhere.”

  “The villagers have never been concerned with Tbilisi or Moscow or politics or the world,” Yuri said. “They live life on a different level. Their questions are simple: What is the price of bread? How will I heat my home this winter? Will there be medicine for my sick child?”

  Rogue demanded, “How has the military been handling the crisis?”

  Yuri looked at him with a cynic’s eye. “You wish to know if it would be possible to add product to your cargo of people?”

  “Not this trip,” Robards replied, unruffled by the man’s tone. “Maybe later, though. A little material, maybe. Something small enough to carry.”

  “Just go to the right gate and ask the right person,” Yuri replied bitterly. “The one with hunger in his eyes.”

  “I’ve heard things were bad,” Rogue said conversationally.

  “Listen, and I will tell you how bad,” Yuri’s voice was overlaid with venom. “For I was stationed at a military compound meant for collecting and holding nuclear weapons.”

  “Sounds like I’ve come to the right man,” Rogue said easily.

  “Families with cash bribe those sent to look for absent conscripts,” Yuri continued. “The officers responsible for rounding up draft dodgers put down one illness or another, because they too have hunger stalking their doorsteps. Those conscripts who do show up find there are no uniforms, no weapons for training, and little food. An admiral was imprisoned for starving naval conscripts to death, and his response was, how can I give what I myself do not have? Every base in Russia overflows with men brought in from former Soviet lands, and none of them have clearly assigned duties. It is chaos. Total chaos.”

  Yuri nodded to himself, his face etched deeply by the shadows of the room and the memories of what he fled. “You want to steal weapons-grade nuclear materials? Fine. Go to such a base, carry dollars, and seek out the hungry man.”

  Rogue chewed thoughtfully on his twig. “Sounds to me like a good time to get out.”

  “A normal country, that is all I seek,” Yuri replied.

  The next morning Wade accepted his cup of tea and hunk of breakfast bread from his unsmiling hostess and took it out to where Alexis stood by the cracked oak. The man looked more haggard than usual. When he was up close Wade asked him, “How are you feeling?”

  Startled, the man swung around, “Oh, it’s you. I did not hear you approach.”

  “Are you sick again?”

  “No, thanks to you,” Alexis gave his gentle, sad smile. “I simply found my sleep disturbed last night by your questions—and by ones rising within my own heart.”

  Wade sipped from his tea. “My whole life is full of unanswered questions and unsolved mysteries.”

  “Yes,” Alexis murmured, his eyes returning to the bomb-shattered tree. “Perhaps that is why I find it easy to speak with you, this honest sharing of doubt.”

  “It should be quite a change,” Wade offered tentatively, “working in the desert.”

  Alexis examined him. “You have visited the great northern steppes?”

  “No.”

  “In winter it is so cold that snow freezes hard and sharp as broken glass. The ground is like iron, the wind a knife that tears through your skin. There is nothing to see for hundreds of miles in every direction except snow and ice and more snow and more ice.” He returned his gaze to the damaged house. “I do not think the desert will be so great a change.”

  Wade hesitated, then quietly asked, “Where are you going, Alexis?”

  It was as though the man had been waiting for the question. There was not even a moment’s delay before he demanded, “Do you know the city of Aqaba?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I found it on a map just before my departure. It is in Jordan. We were intended to rendezvous there for transport to Baghdad. The guides who failed to meet us were to bring us to Tbilisi. From there transport was supposed to be a matter of buying a ticket to Jordan, then overland to our destination.”

  Wade stared at Alexis. “You are to go and build bombs for Iraq?”

  The man’s eyes were haunted, his reply without strength. “Iraq or Iran, Russia or America—what difference does it make so long as my wife and child are fed?”

  “You really don’t care?”

  “A flight to Amman via Istanbul,” Alexis replied, his voice echoing the doubts that plagued his gaze. “A night there, then down to Aqaba—just another Russian tourist taking in a few days by the sea. There is a group operating there, far from the listening ears and watchful eyes in Amman. They will transport me along desert ways to Iraq. Either that or a boat to Iran. Or so it appears.”

  “But do you really want to do this?” Wade pressed.

  “Yes,” Alexis replied. “And no.” The sadness in his eyes threatened to spill over. “This I have agreed to do; this I must do. There is no other way.”

  “Couldn’t you—”

  “No more questions,” Alexis interrupted. “Please. My head and heart are full to bursting.” He turned and walked away.

  Wade started at the sound of approaching footsteps, and turned to find Rogue towering over him. “What’d you say that got him so worked up?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Didn’t look like nothing to me.”

  “I just asked where he was going,” Wade said. “And why.”

  “He’s going where he’s going,” Robards answered. “That’s all you need to know, long as we get paid.”

  “Yes, I know you’re here for the money,” Wade accused. “But what about the casualties? What about all the pain and grief and hardship that happe
ns when bombs blow up and worlds end? What about cities blown apart and families torn up and little children starving or killed? Doesn’t that bother you even a little?”

  Robards inspected him with a strange mix of amusement and irritation. “What happened to the shy little guy I started this trip with?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Sure you do. You’re speaking up. Charting your own course. And it’s not one I care too much for either. You better keep your nose out of this business, Sport. We got too much riding on this to start digging around where we don’t belong.”

  The tone rankled deep. “I thought you said I was calling the shots here.”

  “Sure you are, long as you don’t start aiming to shoot yourself in the foot. Might end up shooting me as well.”

  “I don’t think that’s what I’m doing.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem.” Rogue changed course with, “Were you planning on giving medicines to the old lady to help pay for our stay?”

  “Yes.”

  Rogue shook his head. “Bad idea. It’d be leaving a clear trail for anybody who might be after us.”

  “She won’t tell anybody.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s a risk we don’t need to take. You’ve got cash left. At least enough for my second payment.”

  “Not much more than that.”

  “Go ahead and use it now,” Robards urged. “I’ll take my share in medicines. It’s safer.”

  For some reason he could not explain, Wade found himself resisting the idea. “I planned to keep the cash with us—for a crisis.”

  “Brother, if traveling through a war zone ain’t a crisis, I don’t know what is.”

  “I’m also planning to stop at every village with a doctor and leave supplies,” Wade said stubbornly.

  Robards inspected him, his face set in lines as hard as granite. “If you were a man under me—”

  “But I’m not,” Wade replied with a strength he did not feel. “Shouldn’t we be getting under way?”

  14

  Allison found it a delight to awaken. Mornings in the desert dawned cool and clear. The air was perfumed with smoke from cooking fires and mysterious spices. Allison brushed her teeth while gazing out her window and across the rooftops, where her little slice of sea joined with the cloudless sky.

  Downstairs, the delightful sense of strangeness continued long after she had learned the routine. The smiling cook handed over her usual glass of Nescaf;aae. Today Allison pointed to the blackened vase-shaped pot resting on the open flame. The cook beamed his approval and poured her a thimble-size cup of Arabic coffee.

  She sniffed the cup. Yes, there was a distinctive fragrance, just as she had smelled in the Bedouins’ coffee, something strange yet appealing.

  “Cardamom,” said a voice beside her. “We grind it up and spice our coffee with it.”

  Allison turned to find Ben’s wife, Leah, standing beside her.

  “Come sit with me,” Leah invited.

  She led Allison to the corner table. “All the staff are talking about how good you are at your work. Ben was so afraid that once you saw the state of your office you would change your mind and leave us.”

  “It was in pretty bad shape,” Allison agreed, wondering how much Leah knew of her true purpose in Aqaba. “Are you a nurse?”

  “No, I run a series of Bible study programs and mediate between our work and the local established Christian churches. I try to stay as far away from Ben’s clinic work as I can. This is the only way he will ever escape from his work.” She inspected Allison’s face. “Ben tells me you had quite a day yesterday.”

  The sandstorm. Allison had spent half the night hearing the wind howl through her dreams. “This whole place is like something out of a dream—it never stops surprising me.”

  Two hours waiting for the storm to pass, another hour digging themselves out of the drift, then three hours back. The road had disappeared in places under the drifting sands. Often they had been forced to get out and push the car while Fareed raced the engine and showered them with dust from the spinning wheels.

  “Yes, my country is that way,” Leah agreed. “Harsh and unyielding one moment, but then suddenly rain falls on the desert, and the land is transformed into paradise.”

  “That’s a word I would never have thought to use for here,” Allison said, and then stopped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I mean, I really think it’s beautiful.”

  Leah only smiled. “I think after your experience you deserve the afternoon off. Why don’t you meet me here at lunchtime, and I will try to show you a little of Jordan’s other face.”

  Fareed took the gulf road southward toward the Saudi border. Beyond the port area the road rose and fell along a slender plateau, lined on one side by jagged peaks and on the other by the Gulf of Aqaba.

  Leah possessed the calm tone of one who could ask almost anything and receive a truthful answer. “Do you mind working so far away from your world?”

  “Not at all.” Being so distant from the world she knew granted Allison a welcome opportunity to draw out aspects of her life and examine them in safety.

  As though reading her mind, Leah asked, “Do you have someone waiting for you back home?”

  “My boyfriend and I broke up a month before my departure.”

  Leah examined her. “Should I be sorry?”

  Allison turned her face toward the ocher hills. “Probably not,” she sighed.

  From the safety of these distant lands, it seemed to Allison that the men in her past were a little less than her. A little less bright, a little less witty, a little less successful. She was the driving force in the relationship. The men depended on her. But in order to reinforce their own masculinity, they spent time putting her down. As a result, even though she knew she had a lot going for her, she wound up being the weaker partner. She was the one who sat by the phone. She was the one who waited for hours when the guy was late, then accepted weak excuses for inexcusable behavior, only because she knew that was all she was going to get. She accommodated them. And tore herself down in the process.

  Leah took Allison’s diverted face as an answer and granted her silence. Allison found herself thinking once more about the last relationship, which had been with a sociology student at the University of Maryland. He had been in his seventh year of trying to complete his master’s and had worked for a roofing company in his spare time. She had liked him because he was cute and funny. Her best girlfriend had taken one look at him and proclaimed him the worst of a long string of losers.

  One night he called her up and said she had to come over, he needed to talk. This after almost three weeks of not being able to find him at all. Allison replied truthfully that she could not come, she had to work late on a project due the following day. Then the computer system went down unexpectedly, and she had the bright idea to go out and surprise him. She arrived with a bagful of Chinese takeout and a video. He answered in a state of borderline panic, and despite his best efforts to block her view she saw over his shoulder that another girl was draped on the couch.

  The next day during lunch Allison unloaded to her best girlfriend, who responded with something more than the standard pep talk. I’m so glad you’re finally rid of that jerk, she said. Why do you keep wasting your time on all of these losers? You’re bright, you’re beautiful, and you deserve better. Look what you’ve done in your career. You set a goal, and then you went for it. That’s exactly what you should do in your love life—set a goal and stick to it. Allison returned to work dry-eyed and determined to pick her men more carefully.

  And then came the offer to leave it all behind and fly off to London and places beyond. She did not hesitate for a moment.

  The question now was, what would she return to? What had she learned?

  A few miles later, a crescent-shaped beach emerged from the waters. They pulled in through a gate and started down toward the water’s edge, driving on the hard sand. Great metal parasols
sprouted from the sand every twenty yards or so. As the drove, Allison noticed that all of the other visitors were Arabs. Many had erected Bedouin-style tents using the parasol as a base. There were no sunbathers on the beach; people emerged from the shade to play in the water, then returned to their little camps.

  As they unloaded and set up camp under their own shelter, Leah explained, “It is unwise for women to come to such a public place without a male escort. Also, some of the fundamentalist police have begun to give women drivers a very hard time these days, if one happens to stop us. Now I take Fareed with me almost everywhere.”

  “Stuff like that really makes my blood boil,” Allison said.

  Leah did not disagree. “The problem is, nowadays many people are beginning to lump all Arabs together under the fundamentalist banner. This is very wrong, and it is very dangerous. Ben and I have many good Muslim friends, people for whom we have the deepest respect, whom we would trust with our lives. The fundamentalists are still a minority. But their numbers are growing, and the people they tend to attract are the vocal ones.”

  Allison settled herself down on a towel and began to rub sunscreen on her arms. The breeze was just strong enough to bring in a sweet coolness from the water. “The discontented,” she said.

  “Exactly. In most of the Arab world, the poor are trapped and held down by the system. These are stagnant societies, ruled by corrupt governments. The fundamentalists feed from this angry pool just as the Nazis did in Germany after the First World War. They set themselves up in the poorest quarters of the large cities and in the small villages that are struggling to survive.”

  Leah motioned toward Fareed, who sat leaning against the parasol’s center pole. “Fareed is from a Christian family, but his father named him after his closest friend, a Muslim. This is a living example of how our two cultures once coexisted.” She then asked the quiet man, “Would you tell our new friend what happened in your village?”

  The driver was a very compact man, his age more evident from his graying hair than from his strong unlined face. “I remember before twenty years,” he began, then stopped. “Please to excuse my English.”