Hale made a mental note to find out later who had ordered the Turk guards to leave their post. "And the Shihab stone, the iron meteorite?"
"We placed your stone high up in the Ahora Gorge late this afternoon, sir-it's been scored, incised, so as to fragment widely, and it's got two Lewes bombs tucked under it, delayed-action charges ready to be set. We were going to bring up the war-surplus Anderson bomb shelter, but there's clearly no time for that now-we'll leave it here." He nodded beyond the jeeps, and Hale noticed out in the dark field the curved corrugated-steel roof, like an American-frontier covered wagon, that had been such a familiar sight in the bombed lots of London four years ago.>"Yes." Hale wondered if the man wanted it; and he supposed he could have it, once a helicopter had safely arrived in the level field Theodora had described on the village's north slope.
"You will need it, not. From the roof we can see Agri Dag and the Russian border-the Turks have set up torches along the border, poles as tall as three men, wrapped in dry grass, each with a bottle of fuel in a box at the base. My men are out below the mountain and along the border now, on horseback, and when the Russians arrive at the mountain my men will light all the Turks' torches, the whole length of the border." He laughed merrily.
Hale recalled that Agri Dag was the Turkish name of Mount Ararat. "The radio will summon me-or the arrival of a helicopter, here, will!-to go to the mountain," said Hale, "before the Russians arrive." He took a sip of the coffee-it was very good, hot and strong and thick with grounds, and the smells of cardamom and onions from some farther room were reminding him that he hadn't eaten more than a sandwich today. "They won't be starting for a day or so yet."
"Russians don't know what they think themselves, so how can you know? I have spoons, and forks. You will dine with me?"
"I-yes, I would be honored."
"The honey is not such as to make you ill, of course," said the Khan, stepping back. The two men behind him now carried out into the center of the room a round copper tray barely big enough for the dozen earthenware platters on it. They crouched to set it down on the carpeted dirt floor, and then Hale followed the Khan's example and sat down cross-legged on the floor on the opposite side of the tray, on which he saw mutton kebabs and roasted quail and spinach and bowls of yogurt. And he did see a jar of honey.
"I'm sure the honey's wonderful," he said. A flat piece of peasant bread and a silver fork and tablespoon lay on the tray in front of him, and when he saw the Khan using his own spoon to ladle food onto a similar piece of bread, Hale began doing the same.
The Khan was squinting at Hale across the crowded, steaming tray. "In England people do not suffer from the honey fits," he observed. "Bad headaches, then fall down like a dead man, and wake again healthy as a horse when the night comes. Even up here in the mountains it is uncommon-once when I was a child the children all got ill of it, and some of the men went down to the hills to search out the plant the bees had made the honey from. Those men are still alive today, black-haired and fathering sons! Even we children who only ate the honey are all still alive. This is what year?"
Hale swallowed a mouthful of roasted lamb. "This is 1948," he said.
"I was already a young man of fighting age when your Light Brigade charged against the Russian guns at Balaklava. I was there, at Sevastopol."
Hale realized that his mouth was open, and he shut it. The Battle of Balaklava had happened...ninety-four years ago. He remembered Claude Cassagnac's question to Elena, in the Paris cellar in 1941: Thistles, flowers-plants; did Maly ever talk about such things with you, my dear? And he realized dizzily that he believed what this Kurd chieftan was telling him. "What-plant," he asked hoarsely, "did the bees make the honey from?"
"Ah!" said the Khan, raising his white eybrows. "You thought I was thanking you for the rifles!" He laughed. "And I do! But six years ago your Theodora caused the English in Iraq to put out King Nebuchadnezzar's fire in the mountains. The Magians, the fire-worshippers, they were dispersed from their monastery there, and so the angels on Agri Dag were left without their beacon and their human allies. And now the Russians have a man with them who they believe can get the angels to open the gates of their city." He set down a quail breast to clap his hands. "You will meet my wife."
Hale controlled his surprise. The Kurds, like the Bedu, were Sunni Moslems, and they nearly never introduced their wives or daughters to newly met Westerners.
A black-haired woman in baggy blue trousers stepped into the room from the inner doorway, and Hale didn't look squarely at her until his host had caught his eye and nodded toward her.
She was dark-eyed and stocky-her hairline was hidden by a row of gold coins that hung on fine chains from a braided cap, and the buttons on her short woolen jacket were mother-of-pearl. She returned Hale's gaze impassively.
"Sabry also was one of the children who ate the honey," said Siamand Khan. "Show Hale Beg the back of your jacket," he said to her.
The woman turned around, and Hale saw gold embroidery that traced a complicated figure, with loops at the sides and curled, drooping S-shapes at the top; and after a moment he recognized it as the stylized image of a flowering plant.
"It is an old, old design among my people," said the Khan softly. "It is the amomon." He waved at his wife, and she bowed and withdrew into the farther room.
"Is it a...thistle," said Hale carefully.
"You have heard of it."
"I think so, just a little-a Hungarian Communist is supposed to have known about it. Uh, and the Russian secret service killed him."
"Some of the Russians want it, but are afraid of it; the secret police, the Cheka, are just afraid of it. When the angels die," the Khan said quietly, glancing toward the cloth-covered windows, "they go down to the house of darkness, whence none return, where their food is clay, and they are clothed like birds in garments of feathers."
Hale shivered, for he had heard of this ancient Hell only three months ago, from the half-petrified king of Wabar.
"But," the Khan went on, "their strength they cannot take with them to a place of such weakness, and so the strength disperses-but only their own kind can use it. Some of the angels, when they were thrown down from Heaven at the beginning of the world, became this plant, the amomon. These are very much asleep, ordinarily, bulbs that lie under the ground no livelier than rocks-but when the strength of killed angels washes over them, they sprout, and bloom." He bared his white teeth in a smile. "And the bees make the poisoned honey from their blooms, and we follow the bees, and we harvest them."
"That," said Hale, nodding with comprehension, "is our gift to you. If we succeed, we will be causing the amomon to bloom."
"If you succeed in killing the angels on Agri Dag, dispersing their strength," said Siamand Khan, "come back to my village in the spring. Our Yezidi priests will prepare a salad for you that will let you teach horsemanship to the grandchildren of your grandchildren, as I have done."
Hale remembered Theodora telling him last night about the SDECE team at Dogubayezit. If I succeed, he thought, I will come back-and I will bring Elena with me.
"And I have a gift for you, Hale Beg," said the Khan. "A fragment of a ghost-"
Someone shouted outside the window, and the Khan stood up all at once, simply by straightening his legs. He looked down at Hale. "The torches are lit. The Russians are moving."