Authors: Raymond Khoury
At least, he thought with a trace of solace—at least she was safe now.
MIA SAT ON A RICKETY CHAIR in the smoke-filled room. She sipped from a glass of water as the wiry old man with bloodstained arms finished dressing Abu Barzan’s wound.
The antiques dealer had guided her through the back streets of the ancient town to the house of another of his contacts. Despite their occasional fratricidal tussles, the Kurds all shared a hated common enemy and helped each other out when it came to keeping out of the clutches of the MIT, the Turkish intelligence service—the local variant of the
mukhabarat
.
Three other men were in the room, all locals, all smoking. They were arguing vociferously among themselves and with Abu Barzan, in Kurdish. Mia couldn’t understand what they were saying, but they were clearly angry about what had happened. One of their own had been killed, after all, as well as Abu Barzan’s nephew, and the debate was clearly on as to what the repercussions—and potential reprisals—could be.
The doctor finished his work and left the room, taking the others with him and leaving Mia alone with Abu Barzan. A leaden silence hung between them as the wisps of smoke thinned out and vanished,
then
Abu Barzan turned to her.
“You still have the book,” he observed. It sat squarely on the table, in front of her.
She nodded, lost in her thoughts.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” She’d pondered that question while the doctor had been working on Abu Barzan’s wound and hadn’t reached a conclusion. “I can’t go to my embassy. I don’t know who to trust anymore.” She told him about what had happened in
Beirut
and about Evelyn’s kidnapping. He flushed angrily when she filled him in on what she knew about the hakeem. Saddam had already used nerve gas on the Kurds. They weren’t exactly his chosen people. It was quite possible—likely, even—that he’d gleefully culled the hakeem’s guinea pigs from their ranks.
She told him about Corben, but avoided mentioning what
Kirkwood
had told her on the roof, merely painting him as a UN official who was trying to help.
She was still grinding that one over herself.
A skeptical expression crossed his sagging face.
“This UN man.
The one who was buying this”—pointing a thick finger at the codex—“you trust him?”
The comment surprised Mia, then she remembered seeing
Kirkwood
handing him the silver attaché case. It all fell into place. “He was your buyer all along, wasn’t he?”
Abu Barzan nodded.
“Six hundred thousand dollars.
Gone.”
He heaved a desolate sigh.
Mia’s brow furrowed as her thoughts drifted back to Corben. At the back of her mind, something was clamoring for attention, and she couldn’t quite put a finger on it. She remembered seeing Corben carrying the attaché case, but something didn’t fit. He’d been alone. No backup, no SEAL team, no Turkish forces assisting him—and they were our allies, after all.
He was operating on his own.
A rogue agent.
A tremor of concern rattled through her.
Kirkwood
. Corben had him. And if there was any chance of getting her mom back, it was with him.
She tried to imagine what Corben’s next move would be. Evelyn didn’t matter to
him, that
much was obvious. He’d killed the hakeem’s men, which wasn’t exactly the best “let’s get together” signal if the intention had been to make contact with him.
Corben was following his own, personal agenda.
Which meant that he’d be going after it.
And that meant he’d be headed for one specific place.
“Do you want to get your money back?” she asked Abu Barzan, her voice alight with hope.
Abu Barzan raised his eyes to her, a dour and confused expression on his face.
“Can you get us across the border?” she added, breathless.
T
he sun had arced into a hazy, midafternoon sky as the Land Cruiser crossed into
Iraq
.
Corben had pulled over at a makeshift fruit stand on the road out of Idil, close to the border, and picked up a couple of bottles of water and some bananas for him and his prisoner. He’d untied Kirkwood—having secured his right wrist to the handle in the passenger door to make sure he didn’t try to bail—and they’d both relieved themselves by the side of the road. He’d then driven past the long line of empty fuel trucks and buses waiting to cross into
Iraq
and pulled up at the Turkish border post. The loutish and overzealous soldier manning it was quickly subjugated by a more accommodating officer, who, his eyes flickering at the sight of several months’ salary being dangled before him, had generously kicked in a map of the region before allowing them to leave his country.
Corben and
Kirkwood
had then driven across the barbed-wired no-man’s-land that separated the two frontiers. The bleak strip was even more desolate than the flatlands it separated. A couple of hundred yards later, they’d reached the Iraqi border post, where a guard in flimsy camouflage fatigues had also gleefully pocketed a small roll of bills and hastily waved them through.
Corben stopped at a gas station just outside Zakho, once he was sure that his border bribe hadn’t backfired on him and that no one was following them. He filled the car and checked the map for Nerva Zhori. His eyes had trouble locating it, but after a twinge of concern, he finally spotted the small village, marked by the tiniest of letters, tucked away in the mountains, almost straddling the Turkish border.
They’d have to drive south to Dahuk, then turn left and head northeast, past Al Amadiyya and into the highlands. He checked the car’s clock and looked up at the sun’s level and ran a quick mental calculation. Barring any major holdups, he thought they might just be able to make it before sundown.
He folded up the map, slid a glance at
Kirkwood
, and hit the gas pedal.
FROM THE LUMPY BACKSEAT of the old Peugeot, Mia watched the flat, rocky, mind-numbingly barren landscape unfurl outside her open window. Not a tree was in sight; instead, a row of anorexic electricity poles lined the narrow road, the wires linking them sagging lethargically. They reminded her of the telegraph lines of the Wild West, which was fitting, she thought, given the day—days, in fact—she’d had so far.
Abu Barzan was seated next to her, wheezing heavily between deep drags off a Marlboro. Two other men that she’d met at the doctor’s
house,
were in the front of the car. She’d lost count of how many cigarettes Abu Barzan and his buddies had lit up during the journey. A dark patch stained his trouser leg, blood having seeped through the bandage, but it wasn’t getting any bigger. The doctor in
Diyarbakir
seemed to have done a good job, but then, given the unrest in the region, he probably had some practice.
Despite Abu Barzan’s wound, they’d decided to leave
Diyarbakir
and drive off immediately. Their route would be longer than the one Mia and Abu Barzan assumed Corben would be taking. They couldn’t risk crossing the official border at Zakho, not with Abu Barzan’s bullet wound. Mia didn’t have her passport either; she’d left her bag in the Land Cruiser. They also didn’t know if Corben had gotten the contacts he surely had within the Turkish intelligence service to tighten the border crossing behind him, just in case. Instead, they would drive fifty miles farther east, along the main road that skirted the border, until they reached the base of the Chiyā-ē Linik
mountains
. They’d be smuggled into
Iraq
from there.
They crossed a couple of small, breeze-block border towns before the steppes gave way to undulating foothills. An imposing mountain range rose in the distance, and before long, the road got windy and ascended rapidly, the tired car listing and straining under the effort.
The sun had disappeared behind the peaks towering over them by the time they turned off the main road to head south through a narrow valley. A small river coursed through it, and the Peugeot bounced down a gravelly path alongside it for a couple of miles before the road petered out in a small clearing where four dour-faced men were waiting for them.
They’d brought mules—loaded with gear, and, Mia noticed with a tinge of gratitude, saddled—and were armed with Kalashnikov submachine guns and rifles.
The driver cut the engine. Mia climbed out and watched as the men helped Abu Barzan out of the car. They exchanged hearty kisses to each others’ cheeks, coupled with big, backslapping bear hugs, and impassionedly bemoaned Abu Barzan’s gunshot. Once the intense ritual was over, Abu Barzan turned to Mia.
“We go now,” he simply stated, inviting her to the fly-infested mule that waited lazily by his side.
She glanced up at the daunting mountains bearing down on them and nodded.
CORBEN VEERED OFF the main road ten miles past Al Amadiyya and onto a winding dirt trail that headed north. The four-wheeled drivetrain of the Land Cruiser was getting a real workout, groaning in protest as the SUV struggled up the mountain along what wasn’t much more than a mule path.
“Abu Barzan said it was a ‘Yazidi’ village,” Corben recalled as he wrestled with the wheel, trying to avoid the larger rocks in their way. “You know much about them?”
“Only that they’re devil worshippers,”
Kirkwood
mentioned casually, with a wry smile.
“Good to know.” Corben shrugged.
It was a common misconception, but one that, right now, watching the annoyance across Corben’s face, gave
Kirkwood
a modicum of pleasure.
More accurately, the Yazidis, also known as the Cult of Angels, were a small, peaceful sect who had resisted Islam for centuries. Their religion, which included Zoroastrian, Manichean, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic elements, was claimed to be the oldest on earth. They rejected the concepts of sin, the devil, and hell and believed in purification and redemption through metempsychosis—the transmigration of souls—and, yes, they did worship Satan, only as a fallen angel who had repented, been pardoned by God, and had been reinstated in heaven as the chief of all angels. Saddam had a particular loathing for the Yazidis. He’d nurtured the
devil worshipper
tag, using it to carve a fault line between them and the Kurds. After the first Gulf war, during his revenge attacks on the Kurds, Yazidi villages were brutally raided and sacked. Men were executed, their own families made to pay for the bullets used in the killings.
The landscape grew progressively
more lush
, more closely resembling the densely forested mountains farther north. As the Land Cruiser labored up the steep trail, the temperature also dropped markedly. Sunset was less than an hour away by the time they spotted thin spires of smoke rising into the early-evening sky. Soon after, the bare village came into focus.
Corben parked the SUV on a small shoulder just off the rocky trail. He pocketed a small wad of hundred-dollar bills, tucked his handgun behind him under his belt, and glanced over to
Kirkwood
.
“Help me do this,” he reminded
Kirkwood
, “and I’ll help you get Evelyn out, you have my word on that.”
Kirkwood
didn’t seem mollified. “It’s not like I have much of a choice, is it?”
“You want this too,” Corben reiterated. “Let’s find it. We can figure out the rest later.”
Kirkwood
shrugged and nodded. Corben knew
Kirkwood
was right in that he didn’t have much of a choice. He also knew the lure of what they might find in that village was pretty hard to resist.
He freed
Kirkwood
’s wrist, and they headed into the village.
Nerva Zhori was a small, forgotten settlement, nestling safely in a cleft in the steep mountainside. Low stone walls, interrupted by the occasional rusty metal gate, lined both sides of the central, dusty alley; behind small courtyards littered with wheelbarrows and building material, low mudbrick houses squatted among scattered poplar trees, one side of them backing up against the rising mountain, the other looking down at the drop of the hill and the forest below. Mud was the material of choice in these mountains; even the reed roofs were covered by a thick blanket of dried earth. A few pickup trucks, old and weathered, dotted the lane. A row of ducks waddled across the lane while cows and horses grazed in wild fields behind the houses, picking at patches of tall grass in the otherwise barren soil. The harvests were long gone, and the harsh mountain winter was approaching.
As the two men advanced into the village, a few local faces stared at them. A couple of children and an old woman stopped what they were doing to watch them pass. They didn’t get many visitors up here, but the Yazidis were known for their mild, accepting manners and their hospitality. The two men acknowledged their hosts with small, friendly nods that were cautiously returned. Corben studied the faces of the villagers who eyed them somewhat nervously, then picked out a young boy.
“Do you speak English?” he asked.
The youth shook his head.
“Aawiz itkallam maa il mokhtar”
—I need to talk to the chief—Corben told him, hoping the boy understood some Arabic. The Yazidis were Kurds and spoke the northern, Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish. He assisted the translation by reaching out to the boy’s hand and stuffing a hundred-dollar bill in it, reiterating,
“Mokhtar.”
The youth hesitated,
then
nodded apprehensively. He stuffed the bill in the back pocket of his pants,
then
gestured for them to follow him.
Corben gave
Kirkwood
a triumphant nod and followed their local guide.
A BURNING SENSATION blazed across Mia’s back and legs as the silent convoy snaked its way up the winding trail. They’d mounted the
mules
hours earlier, and despite trudging on without a respite, she didn’t feel they were getting any closer.
They’d come across rifle-bearing shepherds, guarding their flocks of sheep and goats from roaming packs of wolves and hyenas—the thought of which only added to her discomfort—and armed smugglers who led cigarette-laden donkeys up the mountain, acknowledging each other’s presence with grunts and vigilant, silent stares.
The mountains were riddled with trails, and it was impossible for the authorities on either side to cover all of them, so they had simply given up. The border was porous, but getting across required a level of commitment and fitness that Mia was only just beginning to understand.
The landscape around them was markedly different from the flat wastelands they’d left behind. Deep valleys filled with rushing water cleaved through the dramatic ranges that towered above them. Pistachio forests and clusters of tall poplars dotted the otherwise inhospitable terrain, all of it crisscrossed by a maze of hidden paths.
“How much further?”
Mia asked.
Abu Barzan conveyed her question to one of his men,
then
replied, “One hour.
Maybe more.”
Mia breathed out despondently, then steeled herself and straightened up. She soldiered on, driven by the anger at being deceived, the need to find out the truth about her father, and the desperate need to rescue her mother.
THE BOY LED CORBEN and
Kirkwood
past a battered
Toyota
pickup and into a dusty front yard. The low house that nestled against the hill was no different from any of the others. Not exactly
The boy pushed it open and announced their presence. A gruff voice bellowed out from deeper in the house. The boy took off his shoes and placed them alongside other, tattered shoes. Corben followed suit, as did
Kirkwood
.
Corben cast a glance across the house as they made their way past a small kitchen and through a doorway into a low-ceiling corridor. His eyes dropped to the floor as he reached the door to another room, and as he stepped in, something that didn’t fit registered at the threshold of his consciousness. Faint traces of bootprints were on the tiled floor just inside the room. He tensed up subconsciously, but it was too late. A shaft of hard steel was prodding him in the back.
Before he could turn, he spotted the slim, familiar figure, sitting cross-legged in the faint light, his silvery hair slicked back, watching him with ice-cold, detached eyes. He was seated on the floor—there was no furniture in the room, nothing but cushions scattered around its perimeter—and had his small medical bag by his side. He still had the needle in his hand. Beside him was a heavily armed bruiser whose thick arms were clasped on the shoulders of a terrified-looking local. Corben guessed it had to be the mokhtar. The man was sweating profusely and rubbing his forearm.