Looking for the Mahdi

by N Lee Wood

  The decrepit puddle-jumper wobbled its way to a spinecrunching landing at Nok Kuzlat in the middle of the afternoon. It was unbelievably hot, the white glare of the sun boring down with an almost perceptible weight. My clothes began clinging with sweat to my skin. I had also somehow managed to forget about the smell since I was last here. Now the exotic perfume of the Middle East came back in a pungent assault: a mix of dust, urine and gasoline.

  We debarked in the middle of the runway, filed past a surprised-looking pilot and down a rickety ladder pushed up against the side of the aircraft. The two dour-looking men holding the ladder in place didn’t seem too concerned we might slip and break our necks. Halton, I, and seven other businessmen of various nationalities clambered down cautiously and trekked across the airfield into Khuruchabja’s quaint version of Customs. The terminal wasn’t much more than a mud-and-concrete imitation of a Quonset hut, shaped much like the ovens the locals cook their flat bread in and with about the same internal temperature.

  “Welcome back to the ass-end of the universe,” I muttered to myself. The last time I’d left Khuruchabja I hadn’t any intention of ever returning.

  We avoided baggage claim, as the Nok Kuzlat International Airport didn’t have one. Since Halton and I were carrying only two small suitcases and the PortaNet, we quickly passed our fellow passengers struggling along with their four and five suitcases, various duty-free bags and chicken crates, since the Nok Kuzlat International Airport didn’t have baggage carts, either.

  First stop in the cigarette-hazed terminal was Passport Control. The hostile child with a submachine gun slung over his shoulder glared at us from behind his glassless window.

  “Fha’rmâan wah veesah,” he demanded curtly.

  We handed him our passport cards, along with the thick sheaf of our Khuruchabjani visas. The visas were absolutely essential, as the passport reader had apparently been out of service for the past decade. He took his sweet time thumbing through the visas, checking our names against those in a book the size of the Manhattan Yellow Pages. After appropriating several sheets with holoflats stapled to them, along with a 25-écu note sandwiched between them, he liberally garnished the remaining documents with a big rubber stamp, obliterating any vital information with beautifully ornate Arabic calligraphy. Finally he waved us through to Customs.

  One thing Khuruchabja Customs is, if slow and primitive, is thorough. Their passport reader might be defunct, but their metal detector and X-ray machines were functional to the point of lethal radiation. If they believed I looked too suspect, they could decide to check to see whether I was using my asshole as an extra luggage compartment. Of course, once I’d dropped my drawers, I could use the opportunity to kiss my sweet feminine ass goodbye. A few of our fellow travelers were jerked out of line and expertly frisked, then marched off under armed guard to God knows where, just to make the rest of us paranoid. But for the most part, Khuruchabja officials make a great show out of inspecting foreign journalists’ equipment with minute care while leaving our bodies alone.

  “Please give me your wallets, open all luggage and lay it out on the counter,” the surly kid with a razor-thin mustache said in Markundi, then, eyeing our Western clothes suspiciously, repeated in English, “Money. Bag put here, open now. J’ahkzhil! Quick!”

  By now I was sweating with nerves and heat, and tried blathering a few friendly words of Markundi to impress the kid with my gallantry in learning his language. I’d forgotten a lot of the finer points of Markundi and it showed. His lip curled in derisive humor as he rifled through our wallets, toting up my écus. The Khuruchabjans counted hard currency to make sure visitors exchanged their money at the government’s official rip-off rate rather than on the street at the black market’s more realistic value. Every purchase we made thereafter had better come with a receipt, and any discrepancy found in the total on the way out would be severely penalized. He jotted down a figure before handing our wallets back, minus his inspection fee. No receipt for that, of course.

  He turned his attention to my small suitcase, rifling through it and confiscating my after-shave (I might want to drink it), my two ballpoint pens (I might stab someone with them), pried the pinhead-sized ion battery out of my watch (I might use it to make a bomb), and my cigarettes (he liked the brand). Then he pointed at the PortaNet. “Put that up here, too. Open it.”

  Halton squinted at the kid quizzically for a moment, and smiled skeptically. “Puridehz?” he said, in strangely accented Markundi. The kid blinked rapidly in surprise, and grinned back, indecisive. “You are from Puridehz, aren’t you? I thought so…”

  They babbled about cafés and streets in some northern town I had no idea existed, and the kid scribbled an address for his uncle’s place we ever got to Puridehz look up the family and say hello from him stuck in the goddamned army for another two years miss his mom’s cooking looking forward insha’allah God willing to going home The kid piled everything back into my suitcase without much more than a cursory look, barely glanced at Halton’s before turning to scowl at the man shuffling behind us, and we were through. We walked through the glass gates toward the gaggle of taxi drivers waiting to descend on us.

  “That was slick,” I said to Halton under my breath. “Thought you’d never been outside Langley.”

  “Get it out of books,” he said, and we were swamped in the deluge of unwashed humanity clamoring for our business.

  The airport was conveniently located some ten miles outside the city limits, and Nok Kuzlat, shimmering whitely off on the flat horizon, is much too far to walk to find a hotel. There is no train or bus service. The unsuspecting Western traveler arriving in Khuruchabja’s capital city suddenly finds himself at the tender mercies of grinning dark-skinned men with unshaven faces under a mound of checkered yardage wrapped around their heads.

  “Taxi? You maybe want taxi?” they whisper as conspiratorially as if they had dirty postcards or stolen watches under their qaftans. “My taxi very good, very cheap, get you there quick.” Then there’s the calculated confusion as one claimant declares the other a fraud and a cheat, trust only him, with the insulted party objecting strenuously with words or fists, whichever he’s in the mood for. Finally, one or another wrestles the helpless luggage away, tries to make a twenty-yard-line dash with it for his taxi and stuff it into his trunk without being tackled, which apparently scores the touchdown. It doesn’t matter which one in the end; they’re all identical run-down junkers barely able to clatter along over spine-snapping potholes, and the fares equally extravagant.

  Our driver, a wizened old man of around thirty-five named Samat, declared himself the victor as he pitched my captive suitcase and Halton’s HoloPak into his trunk, slammed down the lid and jumped up to sit on it, grinning ear to ear. I’d managed to keep hold of the PortaNet, getting my shoulder wrenched for the effort, and we got into Samat’s fifteen-year-old Ford Suzuki, on our way to the Nok Kuzlat Grand Imperial Hotel on Hajara Boulevard.

  The seats had been covered with a frayed Persian carpet which hid but didn’t do much else for the vast amount of torn and missing foam padding underneath. The antique air conditioner wheezed and moaned vigorously, barely making a dent in the temperature. It wasn’t that far from the city suburbs, and we plunged into the midst of narrow, crooked streets, bisected at impossible angles by other narrow, crooked streets. Samat negotiated them with enthusiastic breakneck speed, barely missing innocent pedestrians attempting to use the same thoroughfares, since sidewalks seemed entirely lacking.

  I hadn’t been in Nok Kuzlat in more than a decade, and at that time bombs and fires had done a lot to alter the city’s ambience. Also, to a certain extent, the outskirts of Nok Kuzlat looked pretty much like any other slum area that accretes itself along the perimeters of more prosperous city centers in this area of the world. It was a strange mixture of modem opulence and primordial misery: new holosets flickering in the windows of decrepit tin-roofed shacks; an electric toilet abandoned in an alleyway next to rabbit-warre
n apartment blocks with an open sewer trickling past the front doors; children running in the dusty streets half naked, playing with the broken pieces of technological wonders cast off by their rich city cousins; an old, bent woman completely covered in embroidered red wool, flicking a switch at a half-dozen skipping goats as she herded them past a man dressed in a Western business suit and kaffiyeh talking into his remote PC modem.

  I wasn’t paying much attention to our route, since I’ve long accepted the theory that taxi drivers will always take you far out of your way, the longest possible circuit in order to confuse you into paying four times more than you should. The bleak slums and devastated apartment buildings all looked pretty much the same; it wasn’t like I knew Nok Kuzlat like the back of my hand.

  But I did notice when Halton began glancing out the window and into Samat’s rearview mirror, his eyes alert and wary as he studied our friendly taxi driver chattering away in some incomprehensible Markundi accent.

  “What is it?” I demanded in English. He didn’t have time to answer before Samat slammed on the brakes and turned around to lean across the seat, black teeth grinning over an antique but quite deadly fletchette pistol pointed at us. Dust-blurred forms of men moved in to block the light outside the windows. “Ah, shit,” I said, disgusted. “This is really getting ridiculous…”

  The doors were yanked open, and we were invited to accompany our new friends into the cool, dark sanctuary of a bombed-out building conveniently located right on that very street. Samat sped off in a squeal of balding tires and rooster-tail of dust, probably a real taxi driver on his way back to the airport to see if he could find another group of kidnappers willing to pay big money for stupid infidels.

  Inside the building, my eyes adjusted to the gloom. It looked like it might have once been a café, but had the distinct reek of having been uninhabited for some time. Pigeons cooed unseen in the shadows overhead. The largest of the five men had his arm crooked around Halton’s neck and an Israeli-made Eclipse pistol pressed firmly against his head. Halton wasn’t resisting. Two others had me pinned between them by either arm, and the remaining two were busy dumping our clothes and equipment in a jumble onto a floor splattered with pigeon crap.

  A puff of smoke wafted across the shaft of light filtering down from a hole in the wall far above us, and I made out the vague silhouette of someone seated behind a small table, smoking a cigarette. All of a sudden, I really wanted one, too.

  “You know, you people should think about hiring a new scriptwriter for this shit,” I said to the shadow. “I’ve seen old TV reruns with more originality—”

  “Shut up,” the shadow said in a husky woman’s voice. She was definitely not a native Anglophone, but her accent was very pretty. My escorts decided to lift me off my feet for emphasis, making my shoulder sockets ache.

  Finally the two men rooting through the remains of our luggage sat back on their heels. “It’s not here,” one said in Markundi.

  “Perhaps one of them has concealed it upon his body,” the woman said in her lilting English.

  The man who’d spoken turned to stare at me; a stiletto materialized in his hand, snipping the air. He smiled thinly. “Perhaps we should look,” he said. Right. Sure. Always pick on the littlest guy first.

  Clichéd or not, this had not been part of the original plan. I had a sinking feeling I knew what they were looking for. The man with the knife stepped closer to me. He seemed like an ordinary kind of guy, not what you’d think of as a villainous Snydley Whiplash twirling his mustache. No bulging biceps, no rotting teeth, no livid scar etched across his evil face. Just your everyday working type.

  Do you know that if you kick a woman in the crotch as if she had balls, the resulting physiological incapacitation is very similar? Well, okay, maybe not exactly the same, but when he kicked me with a steel-reinforced boot, I heard the bones in my pubis go crunch. I don’t know if it hurt as bad as it might have had I been a man, but it was bad enough, believe me.

  My escorts allowed me to drop to my knees on the dirty floor, where I clutched my injured parts, moaning. Then the guy who’d kicked me did a little dance step and kicked me again, neat and square with his toe in the solar plexus, sending me sprawling. Someone had studied his anatomy diligently in school. He got in a couple of extraneous blows to the head and neck, more for general pain than for disabling any potential defense, before I was jerked up and spun around to fall in the arms of one of his friends. I hung there like a drunk, completely paralyzed as agony shuddered through me.

  They tore my shirt as they dragged my pants down around my wobbling knees, laughing. I got spun around to face the guy with the knife again. He appeared indistinct through my tears.

  “It’s a woman,” someone gasped, and I was ignominiously dropped on the floor on my bare ass. Once let go of, I promptly curled up into a fetal position, trying to do nothing more strenuous than whimper piteously.

  Things happened pretty fast after that, none of which had to do with me. A snap, a strangled scream, another crack, and the guy holding Halton fell down with his neck broken. The Eclipse pistol spit twice and two more went flying like disjointed rag dolls tossed aside. From the floor, I watched the shadow at the table start to stand. A second Eclipse spat-spat as Halton flowed—I can’t think of any other way to put it—from one side of the room to the other. The fourth man with the gun died, little pieces of his chest puffing out of his shirt. The man with the knife threw it at Halton and died before it was halfway through its flight. When it reached its target, the target had long gone. The knife thunked solidly into a wall, quivering. Startled birds fluttered high above us.

  It had taken only a few seconds. Five men lay motionless on the floor. The woman was standing up now and took a single step into the column of dusty light, illuminating her like a theatrical stage light. She had an Eclipse as well, this one pointed at me.

  Halton froze, his gun trained on her.

  She was beautiful in the way only Arab women can be, breath-stealingly beautiful, golden-skinned, almond eyes, black hair down to her waist. A tiny glint of a gold stud in both perfectly curved ears. Expensively tailored Western dress that hugged a flawless figure. She stared at Halton, and spoke in Markundi, her tone one of awe and helpless frustration.

  “Yah’ malahjinn.”

  The hand on the gun pointed at me wavered, her finger tightening fractionally against the trigger.

  He shot her.

  She fell down, and that was it, really.

  Halton stood looking at the woman’s body for just a second more, still holding the Eclipse at the ready with one hand bracing his wrist, dust motes filtering down over them both in the glimmer of sunshine. Maybe he was admiring her, even dead. Maybe he just wanted to make sure she was dead.

  It was suddenly very quiet, kinda pretty, even, except that I hurt a whole lot. Then Halton was kneeling next to me, his Eclipse clattering to the floor. The faint, acrid tang of its burnt explosive bit the air.

  “Kay Bee…” He reached out to grasp my shoulders to help me sit up, then hesitated with his hands inches from me, his face genuinely anguished.

  I grabbed hold of the front of his shirt, struggled to pull myself up. He gripped me by my elbows, and I could feel him trembling. I looked him straight in the eye, then vomited all over his immaculately shined shoes.

  I sure was spending a lot of time puking up airplane food on this goddamned trip.

  SEVEN

  * * *

  Somehow, Halton got our stuff back into the suitcases, and, somehow, he got us a ride to the Grand Imperial, and, somehow, he got me past the front desk and up into the room. I could barely walk, every step making the inside of my thighs scream all by themselves.

  He laid me out on the closest bed and peeled my clothes off gingerly, careful to avoid touching my bare skin. I honestly couldn’t have cared less at that point. I had several large bruises beginning to swell and darken, the worst of which was between my legs. He found an ice machine somewhere,
and when he laid crushed ice wrapped in a wet washcloth against my injured crotch, I had to fight not to shriek in agony. He dragged a chair up next to the bed and sat motionless, his hands resting lightly in his lap, getting up once in a while to change the ice pack, or dab gently at the oozing cuts congealing on my forehead and chin.

  I think I slept. Sort of. I’d open my eyes, not like I was waking up, but I wouldn’t know where the hell I was. I’d move, the pain would shoot up my torso, and I’d see Halton’s impassive eyes watching me in the gloom.

  I heard the faint noise of traffic, aware there was more of it than there had been before. I realized dumbly that the night had passed, and blinked open gummy eyelids. Halton still sat in the chair by the bed, his head bent slightly, eyes shut. He was breathing regularly, sound asleep. Hmm. So that’s how he kept his shirts from wrinkling.

  I only moved my head a fraction on the pillow, and he opened his eyes instantly, alert and gauging me critically.

  “Water?” I croaked out, my lips cracked from mouthbreathing all night in hot, dry air. My tongue was parched and fuzzy, and I couldn’t work up enough spit to wet my lips.

  Wordless, he got up and ran tap water into a plastic tumbler, imitation cut crystal with the hotel’s ornate crest embossed in scratched and faded gilt. When he bent to lift it to my mouth, I said peevishly, “I can hold it, just help me sit up, will you?”

  He did, conscientiously not touching my nude body any more than necessary while trying not to be obvious about it. My hands still shook badly, and I spilled some water down my chin, wiping it away with the back of my hand. It felt wonderfully cool.