“You brought him, then,” he said to Mahmoud.
“She has earned the right,” Mahmoud replied evenly. His deliberate use of the feminine verb ending was reinforced by the optional pronoun, to force Ali into a recognition of my identity, and my presence. The disgusted look on Ali’s face did not change, but he said no more, merely ladled us each a mug of soup from the pot. It was hot and tasted of meat and onions, and I was quite certain Ali had not cooked it.
“Thank you, Mahmoud,” I said. When my cup was empty, Ali filled it again with soup, laid a piece of flat bread on top, and carried it to the leather flap that served as a door. He knelt down to put it on the stones outside, and came back to the fire. A moment later we heard a faint scrape of shoe-leather on stone as the man out there picked it up and returned to his guard. Ali took out his knife and explored the point with his thumb.
“Ali,” Mahmoud chided. Ali flung his hands wide.
“Good,” he snarled. “Beautiful.” He stood up, stabbed the knife back into his belt, and began to kick dust over the coals. “I am infinitely happy. Let us go.” He snatched up a pack from the floor, grabbed a rifle from where it leant against the wall, and pushed past us out the door flap. Mahmoud picked up the second rifle and another pack and followed. I trailed in their wake, stumbling awkwardly down the rock-strewn hillside, trying to keep the bobbing kuffiyah ahead of me in sight.
I smelt the horses before I saw them. Five horses, all dark and each bearing only the padded cloth that Arabs often use as a saddle. Ali and Mahmoud were already mounted. Mahmoud threw me a set of reins, which I was relieved to find were attached to a proper bridle rather than the plain halter many Arabs used, and I struggled to mount the rangy horse (which laid his ears back and looked as if he would rather bite me than carry me) without benefit of pommel or block. The third man leapt without effort onto the back of one of the two remaining horses and kicked it to the head of the small column. My own mount determinedly followed his mates, with me in disarray on the saddle pad, struggling to get my heel across his back.
Once upright, my eyes were drawn to the riderless horse behind Ali, and I was struck by an illogical but powerful feeling of relief, as if the very presence of a spare horse warranted the eventual addition of its missing rider. My spirits rose a fraction.
We rode hard, at a pace across the uneven hillside that would have had me quaking in terror under normal circumstances, but now seemed merely part and parcel of the whole mad enterprise. An hour later the sky was lit with a faraway flash, and a rumble soon blended with the beat of our cantering hoofs. The storm stayed far to the north of us and added a nightmare quality to our journey, dazzle followed by blindness, but even at that distance, the thunder and the slight breeze served to conceal some of the noise we were making. A passage I had laboriously translated from the small Koran Mahmoud had given me ran through my mind: “It is He who causes the lightning to flash around you, filling you with fear and hope as He gathers together the heavy clouds.”
Our guide, or guard, slowed us to a trot that jarred my aching skull even more horribly than the canter had done. I was riding blindly now, hoping the headstrong animal under me would not carry me off a cliff, and soon we slowed to a walk, and then stopped.
I clung, panting, to the edge of the saddle pad, unaware of anything but the need not to fall off.
Mahmoud’s voice came from a place near my knee. “Take and drink.” I held out my hand, groped for his, came back with an unstoppered phial, and held it up to my lips. It was the same mixture, tasting of herbs and honey and drugs, that Rahel had given me back at the inn, and it worked as well as it had before. My head slowly cleared. I gradually became aware of the three men moving purposefully around the horses. Their dark robes rendered them nearly invisible in the last light of the fading moon, and I was startled when one of them—the stranger—appeared beside me and bent to pick up my horse’s hoof. The abrupt change of the animal’s stance would have had me off, had my fingers not already been entwined in the animal’s mane. I clung on, my brain struggling to work out what they were doing, until it came to me: The horses’ hoofs were to be muffled. We must be near our goal. Near Holmes.
The moon went in soon after that, and the breeze died away. We rode slowly down what seemed a remarkably flat and uneventful track for a mile or two, after which we dismounted and walked another mile. It was black as a cave, and utterly silent. Even the jackals were asleep.
My horse stopped before I did, and then I felt hands on the reins, pulling them from my grasp. I followed the sound of the animals moving off, and the rattle of a bush being dragged, and then Mahmoud was whispering in my ear.
“Can you see?”
“Very little,” I whispered back, slightly ashamed. My night vision has never been good.
“Nor I,” Mahmoud admitted, to my astonishment. “Ali will lead.”
We followed the younger man up a hill, through an orchard, beneath a wall, and I realised that I could see the shape of the stones against the sky. Dawn was not far off. An owl swooped over; the night was so still, I could hear the bird’s feathers parting the air.
“There is an inner room,” Ali breathed at us. “It will be guarded. Does… she… understand?” His deliberate use of the correct pronoun echoed his earlier disdain and doubt. Mahmoud answered before I could.
“Amir understands that hesitation may mean disaster. He will do what needs to be done.”
I wished I shared his confidence. I began to sweat, despite the cold air, and my stomach turned to rock.
There was a locked gate; Ali opened it. Beyond it lay a garden, and a stout wooden door. Ali unlocked that. Inside, the building smelt of stone and woodworm and something as heavy as incense but not incense; I decided later it had to be hashish. The corridor was long and bare, and the whisper of our clothing was a harsh susurration against the hard rock walls. Ali’s feet were bare and damp, and came up from the stones with minute sucking noises. Mahmoud’s stomach growled once. The corridor seemed endless.
Once we heard voices, unintelligible echoes a long way off, fading as soon as they had begun. A minute later we passed a door from which came the sound of a man snoring. When we had eased past it, Ali picked up our pace, past doors, a window, three more corners, down a flight of stairs, and then he stopped.
“Stay here.” I heard his feet pad away damply down the stones. After a minute they came back. “Clear,” he breathed. ”But we must bring the guard out.”
“Amir,” whispered Mahmoud, “take off your turban. Quickly. Your hair—loose it. Put away your spectacles. And give me your abayya. Now, you must call the guard out.”
“Me? How on earth—”
“Hurry! We must have the door open. The guard will not open it for Ali or me, and if we try to force the lock he will raise an alarm. You must bring him out, Amir. Your Holmes is in there,” he added.
As he had known it must, that knowledge steadied me. I straightened my shoulders and arranged my thoughts, then paused with my knuckles above the wood.
“What would he call his superior? The leader?”
“Try ‘commandant,’ ” suggested Ali. I had hoped for more surety than that, but it would have to do. I started to bring my knuckles down on the door, paused again to unbutton a few of the fastenings on the neck of my shiftlike robe. I was very uncertain as to technique, to say nothing of ability to carry it off: one thing my training with Holmes had not included was the art of seduction.