Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

Outside the MAC Doland’s in Khorog.

“We’re a half day behind schedule and losing daylight now,” Davila said, as they huddled over creased paper maps Parviz had spread on the floor of the van’s cargo bay. “So, the question is how to make up some time here, get to our contact in Ishkashim.”

“Uh-huh,” John said, a little vaguely. He was preoccupied. He’d kept an eye out for that boy who’d prevented John’s being fleeced by the counter guy inside the restaurant but hadn’t spotted him. He worried for the kid. The bluff guy with the taqiyya who’d been ready to go toe-to-toe with Davila seemed like the type of man who wouldn’t mind taking his frustrations out on a kid.

Plus, there was something about the boy…something he’d not mentioned to Davila because there’d been no time…that troubled him even more.

In fact, seeing the kid was a little like Scrooge being visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, minus the happy ending. For Scrooge, the whole thing had been a dream.

For John, the memories were nightmares.

All those boys. The look on all those kids’ faces, the way relief had relaxed the tightness around their eyes, the lines around their mouths. The way their mouths had wobbled into tentative grins and then smiles so wide, their teeth gleamed in the light from their flashlights and lanterns.

But he remembered this, too, that odd vibration they’d all felt at the same moment. A shifting and shivering of the earth under their feet, as if the rock had turned, for an instant, to gelatin. Then had come a sound, very faint, a sort of mutter.

That was when Roni grabbed his arm. Oh, my God, John, that sound. Her eyes were wide as headlamps, and the face that looked back at him in the light of his lantern was bleached to the color of old bone. Oh, my God, John, that sound. It’s…

“Hey, Earth to Worthy.” Davila snapped his fingers in front of John’s nose. “Anybody home?”

“Uh…” Blinking away from his memories, he forced himself to focus on the here and now. Parviz swore that his maps, which he’d used throughout their journey, were more detailed than anything on their phones. The maps were vintage, with Cyrillic characters and stars and circles and tiny notes penciled in what John thought was Tajik. “Maybe we’re still all right,” he said to Davila. “Our contact in Is hkashim is supposed to hang around for another day and a half.”

“No, no.” Parviz was filling the driver’s side gas tank from a fuel can. “Have big problem. Much bigger. Huge. ”

The driver was doing a pretty good imitation of Julia Roberts, though John doubted the guy had ever seen Pretty Woman. “Like what?”

“Border problem. Big problem. When go pee, other driver say Taliban close border Ishkashim.”

“What?” Davila scowled. “What do you mean, closed ? Why?”

“Why Taliban do anything?” Withdrawing the jerry can’s spout, Parviz capped the tank, screwed on the gas cap, and shut the flap. “Taliban want close, border close. Taliban no need reason. They say security.”

Or maybe the border was closed because they got a whiff of us. John swapped a look with Davila; read that the other man was thinking the same. “What do you think?”

“I dunno. You do have to wonder why now.” Davila ran a hand through his hair and blew out. “Parviz, is there another way across the border?”

“Yes.” Reaching past, Parviz slotted the empty jerry can behind a bungee cord on one side of the van then straightened, studied the map a quick moment then pinned the map to the cargo bay with a grimy finger. “This only open crossing.”

“Shin Khan Bandar?” John’s gaze ticked back and forth between the two crossings. “That’s pretty far west of here. Almost in a direct line with Kabul.”

“Yeah, don’t much like that.” Davila’s scowl deepened. “How many hours away is that?”

Parviz’s eyes rolled heavenward as if for inspiration as he calculated. “Half day? Twelve, thirteen hour.”

“In other words, and given the condition of the roads,” Davila said, “another full day.”

“But only if we do that. Switching up plans now only makes sense if you assume that whoever’s meeting us knows Ishkashim is closed to border traffic. I wouldn’t make that assumption,” John said. “Would you?”

Davila, still frowning: “No.”

“Exactly. Now, we have clear instructions about Ishkashim, not this other place.” When Parviz opened his mouth to protest, John held up a hand. “I’m not saying that what you were told isn’t accurate, but it’s weird, don’t you think. Coming now , especially when we’re only, what…another half day at the most before we get there?”

“What do you mean, weird?”

“Think, Davila. You didn’t get any messages, right? No flares? No one’s waving us off? Our bat phones haven’t so much as burped. Instead of changing plans without knowing what our contact’s doing, doesn’t it make more sense to call in? That’s why we’ve got these phones in the first place. Worst case scenario, we hang out until someone comes up with a contingency plan.”

He watched Davila think about that then move his head in a slow nod. “Gotta agree. Makes sense,” Davila said, sliding a hand into his right front pants pocket. “Okay, I’ll call in. Take two?—”

“What?” John asked when Davila went rigid. “What is it?”

“My…” Davila dipped a hand into the cargo pocket on his right leg and then checked both pockets on the left. Checked his back pockets. “Son of a?—”

“No.” One look at Davila, and a spike of alarm skewered his gut. Oh crap, oh crap. He started slapping his pockets, pulling them inside out. He saw, at once, that the cargo flaps on both trouser legs were open. “Oh, my God, the big guy was right when he said the kid was a pickpocket. He was right .”

And he’d been played. However correct he might be about what the child was, that didn’t change the fact that he’d been played.

“Must’ve happened when we were distracted, when the big guy came up and started throwing his weight around. Probably part of the con.” Davila’s jaw hardened. “He gets in our faces, and the kid picks our?—”

“Oh, no !” Parviz wailed. “Me no got phone neither!” Stricken, their driver clapped his hands over his head. “This bad, this very bad !”

“Tell me about it.” He stopped trying to find what wasn’t there. Have to think what to do now. “The only thing the kid didn’t get were my passports and the visas.” He’d zipped everything, including his American passport, into an inner pocket of his parka.

“Same here,” Davila said.

“I sorry!” Parviz was still wailing: “I should have known. I so slow pee, I get talk, I sorry…”

“It’s not your fault,” John said. The driver was giving him a headache. “I was the one who started talking to the kid.”

“Yeah, played us for a couple of dumb tourists,” Davila said. “The question is, what do we do now?”

“Fresh out of ideas, man. Turn back?”

“After coming all this way? We’re so close to the border, we could practically spit across it.”

“Except it’s the wrong border crossing.” But he saw Davila’s point. “What if we double back, go to the embassy in Dushanbe? We’ve still got our…” John almost said real. He’d never been anyone but Mr. Child to Parviz; Davila was Mr. King. He still had this sneaking suspicion that, when Ustinov had mentioned those two novels, Die Trying and Desperation , respectively, the Russian had been trying to tell them something, but heck if he knew what.

“We’ve still got our passports,” he amended. “We could probably get a couple phone calls out. Worst case scenario, we buy a cell.” Then he almost slapped his forehead, Homer Simpson-style. “Davila, we’re in a town . Everybody and his brother has cell phones. There’s got to be some place to buy one. ”

“Well…” Davila made a face. “A fresh cell won’t help.”

“What are you talking about? Why not?”

“Special software,” Davila said. “Plus, a VPN that we can’t download. I can’t even chance calling Helen.”

Which meant they were right back where they started. “So, what do we do? Just go on and hope our contact’s still at Ishkashim and not at this other border crossing?”

He watched Davila think about that. “Yeah,” Davila said, finally. “What other choice is there? There was no chatter in my messages, no alerts. My sat didn’t so much as burp, unless...”

“What?”

“Unless the border closed, like, a couple hours ago,” Davila said. “Parviz, did the guy you met say when this happened?”

“No, no.” Parviz shook his head. “Only say Ishkashim no good.”

“And you think this is true? Good information?”

“It no bad,” Parviz said. “It right.”

“You don’t know that,” John said.

“Could be a rumor,” Davila added. “Without more proof, I think we must assume that nothing has changed. So, we go to Ishkashim. Worst case scenario, we’re turned away.”

“Well, whatever we’re going to do, we better decide fast,” John said, checking his watch. “We’re losing… ”

“What?” Davila said when he didn’t finish.

“This.” John held up his wrist. “The kid didn’t take the watch. He didn’t take yours either. Yeah, they’re just your basic G-Shocks, so not a Rolex or anything, but they keep time, and they’re solar.”

“They’re also not on bracelets,” Davila pointed out. “Not easy to get off. Either the kid figured the watch wasn’t worth the trouble, or Parviz got back too soon…we’ll never know.”

“Taking a risk, though.” When Davila only frowned, John continued, “That we didn’t have watches that could track the phones.”

“A mystery that will remain a mystery.” Davila dismissed the rest with a wave of his hand. “Time is one thing we don’t have. So, we need a plan here. Parviz, on your maps…you know of any back ways, shortcuts, anything that can get us to Ishkashim by tonight?”

The driver shook his head. “Too many village in way. Many, many village south side Tavildara. Have slow down.”

This tallied. On the drive down into Khorog after the Tavildara Pass, John had spied footpaths and the Lilliputian figures of herdsmen leading small caravans of yaks or donkeys laden with bundles strung out along the mountains like worry beads.

“But…wait.” Parviz pursed his lips. “Let think.” They waited while Parviz scowled down at his map. “Yes, we maybe go east and around…yes, yes…” Mutter ing, Parviz squinted, almost said something, shook his head then let out a short, victorious bark.

“ Ah! ” He jabbed with an index finger. “Yes, yes ! This road we go.”

The road, John saw, was a blue squiggle meandering into the higher elevations before turning south and then west. Midway along the route, a wavy blue symbol floated to one side. “What’s that?”

“Hot springs. Go bath? Yes?” Parviz said. “Many tourists go.”

“A hot springs?” John said at the same time that Davila said, “Get out. In Tajikistan?”

“Sure. Why for not?” Parviz gave one of his all-purpose shrugs. “Tourists go. Pay dollar, pay euro, worth more than Tajik somoni. But most peoples living here.” He stirred air with a hand. “They go winter when no snow. Nice place get warm, take bath. Pay somoni, but better than no money.”

John and Davila looked at one another and then Davila said to Parviz, “If there are tourists and locals, if there some kind of bath house? Do they have buildings? Do people just walk, or are there roads or paths that aren’t on the map?”

“And power,” John put in. “What about that?”

“Paths. No other road. Also have buildings.” Parviz made a face. “No power winter. Only generator. Hot springs close. No tourists in winter. Too hard get fuel that is no…” Parviz blew a raspberry. “Tourists no like smell what come from yak.”

“What?” Davila asked .

“He’s mean they use yak poop for fuel,” John said. “We’re in a mountainous desert, remember? There’s virtually no snow at the highest elevations, not like the Alps, and the only vegetation we’ve seen so far has always been along the rivers. So, I bet having the air around your Turkish bath stink is kind of bad for business.”

“I’ll bet. Way back, before I made Ranger, this sergeant tagged me for burn shitter duty.” Davila made a face. “Thought the smell was going to kill me. As it was, I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth for days.”

“No Turkish bath,” Parviz said, offended. “This Tajik bath. No Turks. And smell go away.”

“After a year.” Davila paused. “Maybe.”

Parviz opened his mouth to offer a rebuttal, but John cut in. “Guys, focus. Parviz, you’re absolutely sure that only locals go to the hot spring in winter?”

“Yes, and only sometime, when no snow, no ice.” Parviz rocked his hand: maybe yes, maybe no. “Why for us worth take chance.”

John and Davila looked at one another, and then Davila shrugged. “Better than another night in the back of the van.”

As they clambered back inside, John said, “Parviz, you’re not going to fill up the other tank?”

The driver shook his head. “We only use one tank. We good.”

“Oh.” He frowned. “How come you didn’t just switch to the second tank? I mean, it’s your van, you know what you’re doing, but…I thought that was why the thing has two tanks to begin with and you’ve got extra cans of gas in the back.”

“I always this way,” Parviz said. “Better safe than sorry, yes? And you see. Road no bad now and springs very nice.”

“If you don’t mind getting into hot water,” Davila said.

Later, John would think, Truer words.