The Shield of Darius Read online

  “Oftob,” Ben said. “That’s what you’re supposed to use to wash your hand after you wipe yourself. We’ve got two sitting on the mantle over the fireplace in the study at home.”

  “Hmmm,” Jim mused. “Guess I’ve been using it for the right thing.”

  “What do you know about where we are?” Ben asked.

  “You’ve already seen about as much as I have.” Jim waved with his free arm toward a high window in the wall opposite the door that Ben hadn’t noticed. The bottom half was painted black, and where the top pane was clear, thick wire mesh covered the outside. “If you climb up on a stool, you can see out. We’re at the back of the building on the second floor, looks like, and there’s an alley down below. Across the way, there’s a courtyard that looks like it must be the back of somebody’s house. Sometimes a woman comes out all wrapped in one of them black sheet-type things, or sometimes she just has on a black dress. Old lady. All bent over. She washes dishes and hangs out clothes. Never seen any men out there, but some must live in the house, guessing from what she hangs out. I’m figuring some place in I-raq or Afghanistan or someplace like that.”

  “Maybe,” Ben said. “But we might still be in Europe. Most of the big cities have sections that are so much like Kabul or Baghdad you wouldn’t know the difference unless you could get out and walk around.”

  “Why all the time to get us here, then?”

  “Maybe we were just kept somewhere for a week before bringing us here. ‘Til people stopped looking for us. How would they ship us halfway around the world without someone knowing about it? But you’re right. This sure seems like the Middle East.”

  Jim stopped walking and looked down at him curiously. “You decided that just from looking at this room?”

  “Smell. I can smell it. It’s like seeing Mount Fuji or the Eiffel Tower. You don’t have to see anything else to know where you are. And the clothes and shoes. The brass pitcher in the bathroom. These smash-backed slippers. Middle East.”

  “I take it you’ve been there before – or here, if that’s where we are.”

  “We lived in Tehran for three years.”

  “In I-ran? Recently? Maybe that has something to do with why you’re here. They may think I’m someone else…someone who’s lived in one of these places.”

  Ben again took up the slow walk around the room. “This was over thirty years ago. Just before the Embassy hostage crisis. I was in high school and we came back to the States when I was sixteen.”

  “What were you doing there? Maybe that has something to do with this?”

  “My father was working for the government information service trying to help them set up library systems.”

  “Maybe he was doing something else. CIA or something.”

  It was Ben’s turn to chuckle, and it felt good against his shrunken stomach. “You don’t know my father. He wouldn’t have allowed himself to do anything like that. He really loved the place.”

  They walked silently for several minutes.

  “Your nose has a good memory, if you can tell after thirty years,” Jim Cannon said finally.

  “It’s like eating anchovies. You taste them once, then years later and you know exactly what they are.”

  “Your nose tell one country from another?”

  Ben allowed another chuckle. “I was just thinking when I woke up that I was in a part of Leeds – northern England – a couple of months ago that smelled just like this. It’s full of Pakistanis. We could be anywhere. Even Chicago. And if we’re in the Middle East, we could be anywhere between Kabul and Cairo. That close enough for you?”

  “I don’t know one place from another. Cairo – that’s Egypt. And I’ve heard about Kabul, of course… from the war news. But don’t know for sure exactly where it is. But Chicago? Hell, I don’t think we’re in Chicago.”

  Ben didn’t answer. He didn’t believe they were in Chicago either. They had completed two circuits of the room and Ben eased himself back onto the bed, with Jim taking the closest of the two stools.

  “What do you know about the others in here?”

  Jim frowned absently toward the door. “I heard the woman a long time ago. She was sort of wailing during the night, somewhere below me. Now and then I hear them come past the door and I think I hear them open doors further along. But the room’s pretty sound-proof and you can hear more of what’s going on outside than you can in the hall. In fact, one of the bad things is that sometimes they can be right at the door and you don’t hear them till the bolt snaps. Most the time I hear them coming, but the halls have carpet.”

  “Have you tried to let anyone know you’re here? Rap on the walls or pipes or anything?”

  “I used to. Nothing came back. I don’t think anyone’s close to us on either side. If there are many in here, they must be spread out.”

  Ben shook his head slowly, organizing his own picture from Jim’s description. “You say you hear more from outside. From the traffic, it sounds like we’re in a pretty big city. Do you ever hear other outside noises that could tell you anything? Planes going over? Anything like that?”

  “Nothing I can think of. Sirens sometimes. They’d have to be pretty close for me to hear them though. I don’t hear as well as I used to anyway.”

  “Hmmm,” Ben grunted, thinking that if he had been here eighteen months, he would have figured out where he was by now.

  “But why? It’s the why that doesn’t make any sense to me,” he said. “I was conked on the head, just like you. But I was in England, of all places. Now if I’d been walking down the street in Basra…or if I were an important person of some kind. But I don’t have any value as a hostage….”

  “You don’t! Hell, I’m just a truck driver. Well, I got a little fleet of them now, but basically I’m still your plain old trucker. My company runs logs to mills along the Pacific Coast. We do alright, but I’m not much of a prize. Anyway, I’m not so sure we’re hostages. I’ve been here all this time and haven’t been asked once to write a note or make a statement. They haven’t taken any pictures, and as far as I know, they aren’t trying to trade me for anything. It’s like I’m just being kept. And they take pretty good care of me. Brought me medicine when I had the runs so bad, and one of these French magazines to look at every now and then. Least I think they’re French. But there’s no sign I’m being used to bargain with. My family must think I just vanished from the face of the earth.”

  For the first time since his hazy reaction when Jim mentioned hearing the woman, Ben thought about his family.

  “Good Lord, what’ll Kate be thinking! I left my wife and two kids in a ruined castle in Dorset. They can’t have any idea what happened to me.” The remaining fuzziness in Ben’s head collapsed suddenly into a solid mass, clearing his head but dropping with sickening force to join the other lump in his stomach. He swallowed hard and dropped his head into his hands, rocking slowing from side to side.

  “This can’t be real! Getting whacked on the head must have….” Jim’s hand on his shoulder and the snap of the bolt being drawn back on the outside of the door confirmed that it was real.

  “Dinner time,” Jim said quietly and helped Ben back to his feet. The door swung open and a man entered the room carrying a wide brass tray, a Kalashnikov slung loosely on a strap across his back. Behind him, two others in olive drab military uniform framed the doorway with automatic weapons pointed into the room. All had swarthy complexions, and the man carrying the tray showed a two week growth of stubble. His face was expressionless and showed no surprise at seeing Ben awake and on his feet. He placed the tray on the bare table, and began to leave the room.

  “What’s going on here?” Ben demanded, struggling to keep his voice steady.

  The guard ignored him and proceeded to pull the door closed behind him.

  “Awg…” Ben caught himself before he finished the word, slurring it to a groaning cough. He had begun to say agha, ‘mister’, thinking that the Persian word might be close enough to Arabic
to force a surprised response from the guard. Mistake, he decided. Better keep things like that to himself until he knew more about where he was and why.

  “No use getting on those guys,” Jim muttered. “They never say anything. Act like you’re not even here.” He helped Ben to the other stool and the two sat studying the tray in silence. It was a menu Ben remembered from years before; a pot of tea with two handleless cups, large bowl of rice, side dishes of strongly spiced savory meats, a bowl of whole cucumbers and along the side of the tray, thin slices of a sweet, green-fruited melon.

  “Kharboozay” Ben said.

  Jim looked up with a start and Ben realized his cellmate was praying.

  “Sorry. The melon. It’s kharboozay.”

  “What’s kharboozay?”

  “A Persian melon, but it grows all over the Middle East. I don’t know what kharboozay means, but the kids in Tehran used to say it meant ‘donkey’s ass.’”

  “Now, there’s a useful bit of information,” Jim chuckled, obviously enjoying someone to talk to. “But I like the stuff.” He cut a slice free with the blunted knife on the tray and held it up. “Kind of like honeydew, but sweeter and better. They’ve been bringing it in for the past couple of weeks.”

  “I’m surprised they give us a knife,” Ben muttered.

  “It has to be on the tray where they can see it when they open the door. Plus, what are we going to do with it? Take on all three of them?”

  “Couldn’t slit our wrists,” Ben smiled. “Too dull.”

  Jim cut another chunk of melon. “And I’m not much of one for giving up,” he said. “Especially when I don’t know what I’m giving up for. You feeling like slitting your wrists?”

  “Not yet.” Ben picked up one of the bowls of meat.

  The bolt suddenly slapped back in the door and Jim jumped from his seat, knocking the stool over behind him.

  “Something’s wrong!,” he hissed. “They shouldn’t be back this quick.”

  Two armed guards again covered the doorway, accompanied by an older man with thick dark hair and a heavy mustache. He wore a loose-fitting navy suit with a broad gray stripe, and stood menacingly in the open doorway studying the prisoners, then stepped stiffly into the room. A wide green band around his right sleeve just below the shoulder held a circular patch that looked like an ancient bronze shield.

  “Mr. Sager, I hope you are well.” He spoke with the same musky accent Ben had heard from the woman in the woods below Sherborne.

  Ben didn’t respond, but stood from the stool and backed toward his bed.

  “You will be our guest here for the next several months. How long will depend on many things that I cannot determine.”

  “Where are we?” Ben asked, his tone less insistent than it had been with the guard.

  “That is of no importance to you. All you have to worry about is this room. You will be taken care of.”

  “We at least have the right to know why we are being held,” Ben pressured.

  The man smiled thinly. “There is only one thing you need to know, Mr. Sager.” He nodded sharply at the guards who, before either prisoner could react, stepped forward and grabbed Jim by both arms, slamming him with a dull thud against the blank section of wall beside the bathroom door. As Ben watched in frozen horror, the other guard slammed the butt of his rifle into the big trucker’s stomach, doubling him with a gasping cry. Grasping his hair, they jerked him upright and pressed his shaking body against the white surface. Methodically the civilian opened his suit jacket, drew out a heavy automatic pistol, pulled a round into the chamber, and thrust the barrel hard into Jim’s gaping mouth.

  “You will do what you are told and you will not attempt to escape. Is that understood?” Jim Cannon closed his eyes and gasped for breath around the blue steel of the barrel.

  “We understand,” Ben said quickly.

  The man nodded and slowly withdrew the pistol. “Be sure that you do.”

  As suddenly as they had come, the men left the room, snapping the outside bolt behind them.

  FIVE

  Computers and acronyms. Christopher Falen generally had little time for either. But this latest little mystery, what he called the DWAT file, was forcing him to become intimate with both. His distaste for computers stemmed from an obsession with personal privacy and a disposition to rely on his own intuition. On hunches. Too much data could misdirect a reliable hunch, and cost a lot of time. Plus, he hadn’t grown up with computers like this new generation. Hell, he could remember when he saw his first Apple II-e! He must have been about thirty.

  His aversion to acronyms had developed while he was a Forward Air Controller – a FAC – in Vietnam in the early 70s, back when he had been Eddie Warren.

  It was the kind of cynical ‘somebody’s getting screwed’ thinking that this DWAT case inspired that always reminded Falen that he had once been Eddie Warren. In fact, if Warren hadn’t been such a cynical son of a bitch in Nam, Chris Falen would never have come into existence.

  “Damn it, Warren,” his squadron commander would bark, slamming a pile of newly transmitted complaints from Saigon down on his desk. “You’ve got to learn to follow orders. Or at least have the goddamn decency to pretend to. We send you up there along the trail and who the hell knows what you’re going to do? You called in three strikes yesterday on targets that haven’t even been filed, let alone cleared.”

  Eddie would hunch forward in his jungle green Nomex flight suit and shrug. “Shit, Major. What difference does it make if we break the rules at my level or at their’s? We’re all lyin’ sons-a-bitches. FACs aren’t even officially flying missions over the trail in Laos and I can tell from the talk coming out of Washington that we’ll be pulling out by the end of the year. You give me this crap from HQ MAJCOM SEAPAC DIPSHIT that’s full of double talk and expect me to make something out of it. Charlie doesn’t know about your damned orders and he doesn’t care about the damn border. He just runs those convoys down the trail and I find them and get them blown to hell.”

  “I’m not complaining about that, Eddie. You’re a damn good FAC. But you know the game. Each day you’ve got to call in target coordinates that are in-country – on the Nam side of the border so we can get them cleared through channels. When they’re approved, those are the ones we use for the next day’s strikes. No in-country coordinates; no strikes. The media people are all over our asses about going into Laos and about random bombings. The brass want pre-approved targets. All anyone wants you to do is play the damn game! That’ll make everybody happy.”

  It didn’t make Eddie happy and he refused to play the game. Each day he guided his twin-engined 0-2 fifty feet above the thick jungle canopy across the border into Laos along the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail, the major Viet Cong supply route from North Vietnam into the south. The plane was a military conversion of the Cessna 337 Skymaster, with modified door and front fuselage windows to improve downward visibility. Its job was to fly low, spot the enemy, call in strikes, and get the hell out of the way.

  By the time Eddie Warren reached Vietnam, his squadron of forward air controllers was regularly flying into Laos, spotting VC targets and calling in Navy and Air Force F-4s to turn them into flaming rubble. But the U.S. was insisting that it was not conducting operations in Laos and orders were to select target coordinates on the Vietnam side of the border. When a strike was called in, it was to be reported as having been at one of those in-country locations.

  But Eddie refused to create coordinates. It wasn’t that it took much time. Hell, all he had to do was close his eyes, poke his pencil onto his chart and jot down a few numbers. The brass didn’t give a damn where it was as long as it fell on the Vietnamese side of the line. It was more a matter of refusing to feel used. If the big shots were going to cheat, they could damn well do it without his help. Eddie wasn’t principled – just obstinate. And his bullheadedness was more than the guys who were authorized to lie could stand.

  On orders from Saigon, the Major shipped him off
to Da Nang where for the next six months he flew a desk, analyzing aerial photographs of the border area until HQ learned he was still leaking information on unapproved targets to strike squadrons at Khe Sanh. Before shipping him back to Washington, Colonel Phil Corson, the senior Air Force Defense Intelligence Officer in South Vietnam, called him in for a final butt chewing.

  “Damn it, lieutenant. You were a great FAC and you’re doing a bang up job of analysis work, but we can’t have you trying to win this war your own way. Why do you make it so goddamn hard on yourself?”

  “You aren’t running this war worth a rat’s ass, Colonel. We’re getting our asses wiped and I can tell we’re thinking of pulling out. Let’s get on with it and quit screwing around with this ‘game’ shit, or get the hell out all together. War’s not only hell, Colonel. War’s war. When are we going to get serious about it and quit kissing media ass?”

  The Colonel was just impressed enough with Eddie’s attitude to get him shipped back to another desk deep in the bowels of the Pentagon where they still had him watching the trail. He poured over miles of aerial footage and watched convoy after convoy work its way south unmolested. He hated the Pentagon. He hated the hallways that went round and round without going anywhere. He hated the red tape. Shit loads of red tape that crushed even the simplest request under its stinking weight. The war was going down the shitter with a giant sucking sound, and he was just sitting on his ass with one hand on the flusher.