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"Why would he lead you to believe that?" Mammalian repeated. The man's hands were clenched into fists on the table. "And why would he nevertheless give you my correct name?"
"Well, since it turns out you were a real person, I suppose I needed your correct name to put through the SIS paper-work consistently," said Hale. "As to why he let me believe you were a fiction, invented to fool the SIS-I don't know. I suppose so that I'd know as little as possible, if the SIS or the KGB were to question me."
It chilled him now, in this disorienting 1963, to realize that he had been hiding from both services, in 1948. And he was even more of a fugitive from both now.
"But he deluded you," Mammalian said, "and freed me, so that the Russian Ararat operation could take place. You weren't to know that he wanted the operation to happen, wanted your men to run into opposition! Perhaps he was working for the KGB! Perhaps he is still!"
"No, that wasn't it." Hale rubbed his hands over his face. "He did want the Russians to awaken the djinn, but I'm sure he didn't know about your...about the ambush you set up for us." Set up with Philby's help, he thought. "Theodora believed that our Shihab meteorite couldn't kill the djinn until they had...opened their gates to your party, and in that way become vulnerable to our attack. The possibility of effective opposition from-you-was a regrettable necessity."
Mammalian was nodding, but skeptically. "That was and is true, that about the opened gates. Even buckshot bounces off, when the gates are closed. But I wonder if he is still deluding you-I wonder if he stage-managed it so that you would kill those two men last week in England and predictably flee to Kuwait, where we would predictably approach you."
Hale's chest was cold, for Mammalian was getting far too close to the truth-and he forced himself to frown as if at a difficult chess problem. "You think he's running me now?"
Mammalian laughed softly. "And perhaps for the KGB! I don't accuse you of dishonesty, my friend. I'm confident that if he is running you now, it is without your knowledge. I will certainly make sure that your Shihab stone is ground to powder and sifted into the sea! And even so, I may advise that we abort the operation. What did you learn from the Kurds?"
Hale's mouth was dry at the thought that the operation might be canceled, that he might not get a chance to avenge the men he had led to their deaths on that wild night fourteen years ago-in spite of what he had told Mammalian earlier this evening, he did want vrej, vengeance-but he forced a laugh. "How could he have had me followed-"
"That is my worry, Andrew. What did you learn from the Kurds?"
Hale wished for hot coffee, but didn't dare ask for it directly after a hard question; he had learned about Cassagnac's precious amomon thistle from the Kurds, and he was sure that Theodora did not want him telling this Rabkrin agent anything at all about the amomon.
"First I went to the train crossing at the border. Let me tell it in order. Guy Burgess was there, with Philby."
"Ah! I was there too, but hidden in the undercarriage of the baggage car." Mammalian topped up their glasses with the clear liquor and clouded it with splashes of water.
The railway line that crossed the border by Kizilçakçak had been the only train crossing along the entire eastern Soviet border; the rails had been laid for the old Russian five-foot gauge, and the nineteenth-century locomotive that traversed it twice a week ran from Kars to a station only three miles into the Soviet territory, after which it retraced the route in reverse, with the locomotive pushing from behind.
The train had come chuffing up from the west on that chilly spring Wednesday morning, white smoke billowing up out of its Victorian smokestack and trailing away over the three cars it pulled, and it screeched to a steaming halt on the Turkish side of the iron bridge that marked the frontier-the tall barbed-wire fence stretched away to north and south on either side, strung down the center of a broad strip of dirt that was kept plowed to show the footprints of anyone who might cross.>Hale laughed. "They do sound like Bedu," he said, correcting Theodora's pronunciation.
"'Half-devil and half-child,'" said Theodora, quoting Kipling. "Today is Tuesday-you'll have a day or so to go hiking with the Khan, and he'll explain the mountains to you, and Ararat in particular. The big picture. Do listen to him. By Thursday your meteor stone should be in place-you certainly did choose a heavy one, didn't you?-with its explosives attached and an Anderson bomb shelter set up nearby, and then you'll be helicoptered to the plain below Ararat, where you'll brief the commandos who'll be going up with you-demolition experts from the war-good men, hard to surprise."
"When is the Russian team going to arrive?"
"No sooner than Friday night, it seems. Ankara Station has been keeping track of a train that's been moving south from Moscow, with clearances south all the way to Erivan on the Turkish border-it's in Stalingrad now, bound south through Rostov and Tbilisi. Two known Rabkrin directors are aboard, as well as two renegade Catholic priests, ex-Jesuits-and there's a prominent Marconi radio mast over one of the boxcars that happens to be in the shape of an ankh."
Hale shivered in the chilly wind. "That does sound like the right lot."
"You and your commandos will be waiting for them. And when this Russian team arrives on the mountain, and has 'opened the gates,' as you put it, of your djinn colony, you will detonate your, your exorcism." He peered at Hale. "In your proposal, you said you plan to summon them, down to where your meteor is. How do you plan to do that?"
"Blood," said Hale, trying to speak lightly. "Medical supply blood, a couple of bags of it. The Magians in the Hejaz mountains use fresh blood to call the creatures down for their worship, from out of the sky, and in Berlin the Arab ship was full of freshly dismembered bodies."
"Lovely," said Theodora quietly. "Well!-And once that little chore is over, back you'll go to your Kuwait haunts."
"Nothing to it," said Hale.
"I think it's a good plan," said Theodora. "If it works, we'll be able to put paid to Declare, and you can subside wholly into SIS. Face the challenging new postwar world, instead of grubbing about in-" He spread one hand, reluctant as always to refer to the supernatural.
"Devoutly to be wished," said Hale, nodding-but he was remembering the effort of dragging an ankh through the attention field of a djinn, as if the ankh were a scepter; and he remembered the shudder of awe at the sight of the angels bowing before him, or breaking-Sin by pride, and you sin as the angels!-and he wondered what secrets the king of Wabar might have been able to tell him. What castles in the clouds...!
"But in the meantime!" said Theodora, "there is a SDECE team in a hotel in Dogubayezit, roughly fourteen miles southwest of Ararat. You remember that the French secret service was in Berlin too, three years ago. God knows what their sources are-perhaps some other fugitive like our poor Volkov walked into a French embassy somewhere, and got a better reception-but I assume they too are aware of the imminent Russian expedition on the mountain. One of their team is a woman-"
Hale just nodded, keeping his eyes on the dirt road.
"-probably the Ceniza-Bendiga woman"-Theodora went on, and Hale could peripherally see that the old man was looking at him-"of fond memory. If you should meet her...try to stop the SDECE from interfering on Ararat, delay them at least, and try to find out what they know, what their source is. And tell her-she won't believe you, I suppose, but just for style-you can tell her the cover story about the fictitious Armenians you're supposed to be running, tell her just as much as Philby knows. The orders and the names and biographical details of the Armenians are in your room. Learn them, even though you won't be revealing them. Live your cover, right?"
"I'll fill out the orders," Hale said dutifully, "and learn their names and backgrounds..."
Hale was jolted out of his memories by a name that he had just recalled. He blinked around his room in the Normandy Hotel in Beirut -the sea beyond the fluttering white window curtains was indistinguishable from the night sky now, and the spools of the wire recorder were still slowly revolving. Hale gulped some of the soapy arak, and he wondered how many times Mammalian might have refilled the glass while Hale was lost in reminiscences-and how many times he might have changed the wire spools. The night breeze was chilly, and this strange new 1963 seemed like a year from a science fiction story.
