Declare

The Khan's house was a two-story structure, a wooden framework filled in with alternating sections of mud brick and rough stone; the windows were dimly lamplit squares of cloth set back in rectangles of stone coping.

Hale took off his shoes, and then was led in his stocking feet through a shadowy hallway to a broad stone-walled room that was brightly lit by a paraffin lamp hung on a chain from a ceiling beam. The dirt floor was almost entirely covered with expensive-looking red-and-purple rugs, and Hale's host stood up from a European upholstered chair and strode forward across the floor.

Howkar Zeid was pouring coffee into tiny cups at an ornate black table in the corner, but Hale was looking warily at his host.

The Khan was dressed in a dark Western business suit and a knitted cap, with an orange silk scarf around his neck instead of a necktie; and Hale thought that even dressed this way he would have alarmed pedestrians in London or Paris, for the haggard brown face behind the white moustache was ferocious even in cheerful greeting, and the man moved on the balls of his feet with his big hands out to the sides, as if ready at any moment to spring into violent action.

Siamand Khan shook Hale's hand like an American, strongly and vigorously.

"My friend!" exclaimed the Khan in English as he released Hale's hand. His voice was a gravelly tenor. "Thank you for what you bring us!" He took a cup of coffee from Howkar Zeid and handed it to Hale with a bow.

Theodora had mentioned having sent a gift of rifles on ahead. "You're welcome," Hale said, bowing himself as he took the tiny cup.

"This is a radio!" the man observed, pointing at Hale's valise. Two moustached men in vests like Hale's and caps like the Khan's had stepped into the room from an interior doorway.

"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."