She could become less conspicuous by turning off the lights, but then Ismet might not be able to find his way back.
Thoughts of the Turkish assassins sent her digging for her pistol. It had flown forward in the crash and ended up in the footwell. She clipped the holster to her belt. Her search had revealed some of the food they’d plundered from the Gulfstream, and so she made herself some sandwiches with the cheeses and cold cuts and ate them.
She decided that if she saw or heard a car coming, she’d turn off the lights, run into the desert, and hide. If it was Ismet, she’d emerge. If it wasn’t, she’d wait for the newcomers to leave.
The cabin was pleasantly warm. She unzipped her leather jacket and reclined the seat. Pain throbbed in her forearms. The desert stretched ahead of her in the headlights, featureless, monotonous. Dagmar closed her eyes.
She must have slept, because she came awake suddenly to the sound of metal on metal. She looked around wildly, clutched at the pistol, and threw the door open. She jumped onto the sand, hand still on the pistol, her head swiveling madly as she tried to make out where the sound was coming from.
“Dagmar, it’s me.” Ismet’s voice.
She sagged with the release of terror. She stepped away from the Niva and saw two large moving shapes looming against the Milky Way. A sound like an enormous belch sounded in the air. In sheer astonishment she beheld a pair of Bactrian camels, their breath steaming in the air.
“This is Ulugbek,” Ismet said from atop the camel on the right. “I found him at his sheep camp. His brother is away with the truck, so we rented these instead.”
From out of the darkness she saw Ulugbek’s smile under a dark mustache. “Assalomu alaykum!” he called.
“Gunaydin,” she ventured, not knowing if the Turkish greeting would translate or not.
Ulugbek kicked one leg over the front hump of his camel and dropped to the sand. He wore boots and a parka with a MontBell label. He approached Ismet’s camel, gave it a series of clucks and commands, and compelled it to kneel. Ismet dismounted awkwardly, staggered on the sand, and recovered.
Ulugbek approached Dagmar and gave her a warm, extended hug. “Hayirli tong!” he said cheerfully. He smelled pleasantly enough of strong tobacco. At a loss for what to do, she patted him on the back.
Ulugbek hugged her twice more, then set to work. The camels were already wearing leather harnesses-that’s what Dagmar had heard jingling-and Ulugbek hooked them to nylon towing straps, which he then attached to the Niva’s rear bumper. The camels farted and belched. Dagmar and Ismet watched, both shivering in the cold.
“We and the black hats are in a low-speed chase,” Dagmar said. “We’re moving at camel speed.”
“Camels can go pretty fast,” Ismet said. “I just found out.”
Ulugbek gestured for someone to get into the Niva. Dagmar did so and put the four-by-four into reverse. Ulugbek gave a yell and began hitting the camels with a stick. The animals lurched forward into the harnesses, Dagmar gunned the engine, and the Niva rocked back. Red sand flew from the wheels.
It didn’t work; the Niva was still hung on the sand. But Ulugbek had thought ahead and strapped a shovel to his saddle. More sand flew as he dug sand from beneath the Niva, and then the camels were driven forward again.
Still the Niva didn’t move. Ulugbek was indomitable: he shifted more sand, then geed up the camels a third time. The Niva lurched backward, then hung. Ulugbek applied himself to the shovel, and more sand flew.
The eastern horizon was turning pale before the Niva finally came free. Ulugbek unhooked the tow straps, then came to Dagmar’s door. Dagmar opened the door, and Ulugbek stepped forward and embraced her.
More hugs were in order, apparently. Dagmar submitted with a good grace despite the fact that Ulugbek’s efforts at digging had left him covered in sand and sweat. Ismet tipped Ulugbek a can of caviar and then waved farewell as Dagmar gunned the engine and sped in the direction of Chechak.
Ismet sagged in his seat. “My god,” he said. “I never want to ride a camel again.”
“Was it painful?”
“It was too far above the ground,” Ismet said. “I was afraid I’d fall off and break an arm.”
When the rising sun at last blazed above the horizon, it showed a dark blotch on the watermelon red sands, a black oasis lying under chalky sandstone mesa. A cluster of receiver dishes and a cell phone tower stood atop the bluff.
“We’re there,” Dagmar said.
Ismet looked at the new world and yawned.
“Should I open a can of caviar?”
“That might be a little premature. Have a pear.”
The oasis grew closer. Houses of mud brick lined roads of sand. There was a general store with gas pumps out front, a coffeehouse, a tiny mosque with a metal dome that looked prefabricated, and several obese dogs lying in the early morning sunshine.
Dagmar slowed as she came into the town. Her GPS said that they had arrived. Wind blew the Niva’s rooster tail of dust over the car, and she peered through the ruddy dust. The town’s two commercial businesses both seemed closed. No one was yet on the streets.
In the sudden silence, she heard a tinkling waterfall sound. She wondered if it was wind chimes or perhaps a fountain.
She tried to phone Uruisamoglu for directions, but the cell network was down.
“God damn it!” she said.
“Go to the mosque,” Ismet said.
As she drove to the mosque she discovered the source of the tinkling sound: goats’ bells, each tuned to a different note. The herd passed in front of her, urged on by an elderly man in felt boots and an olive green Russian army anorak trimmed with rabbit fur.
More elderly men were found at the mosque, where the dawn service had just ended. They stood in their white skullcaps, carrying their beads and talking with one another. Ismet got out of the Niva, approached, and had a lengthy conversation. He got back in the Niva and gestured toward the bluffs.
“Slash is only in the most obvious place for an IT guy,” he said.
Dagmar looked up at the antenna that reared above the town.
“Right,” she said, and put the Niva in gear.
“How is your Uzbek, by the way?” she asked.
“Nonexistent,” Ismet said. “Uzbek is about as close to modern Turkish as German is to English.”
“You managed to talk to them, though. And Ulugbek.”
“We found a few words in common.”
“Whoah!” They had come to the edge of town, and Dagmar braked at the prow of a strange duck-billed vehicle looming around the corner of a mud wall. The other machine didn’t move, and Dagmar realized it was just parked there.
She slowly pulled ahead and saw that she had been startled by a battered old armored vehicle with eight huge tires, its steel flanks studded with little portholes. The original olive drab paint had flaked off it, and it was now spattered with rust, like an old boulder that had been scabbed with fungus.
“Lots of old Soviet military gear lying around the provinces,” Ismet said.
“There are license plates on it,” she said. “Someone must drive the thing.”
The armored vehicle was set up to pull what looked like a long homemade trailer, with a lot of old pipe stacked on it.
“Maybe the owner digs wells,” Ismet said.
The Niva descended into a gulch behind the town, then climbed up the other side. Ahead Dagmar saw a two-rut road running past the face of the bluffs, weaving between boulders that had been eroded from above and tumbled down the slope. They came around one craggy rock and saw that a new road had been blazed up the face of the bluffs. She shifted the vehicle into four-wheel drive, cranked the wheel over, and the Niva began to lurch upward.
As they came around a curve they had a view of the oasis and the desert below.