Meridian - A Novel In Time (The Meridian Series) Page 20

  “Ayez eh? Rayeh feen?”

  Nordhausen turned slowly and saw a scraggly, bearded man behind him, his head swathed in henna cloth with a simple black circlet at the crown. The dim light revealed dull gleam of metal, and Nordhausen saw that a pistol was aimed at his belly. The professor eyed the gun with some trepidation.

  “No need for that,” he said. “I mean you no harm. I’m lost, that’s all.”

  “Ismack eh? Shoe betiimal?” The man squinted at him in the dark, still guarded as he approached the professor and extended his other arm towards him. He fingered the sash at Nordhausen’s waist and searched cautiously, his dark eyes watching the professor’s every move. Nordhausen stayed very still, understanding that the man wanted to make a cursory search to see if he was armed.

  “I mean no harm,” he said again. “I’m lost, you see. Just trying to reach help and get to a telephone. Is there a telephone nearby, or perhaps a radio? Do you have a vehicle with you?”

  The man gestured that he should be silent, and Nordhausen waited, frustrated that he could not make himself understood. The local was looking him over very closely, suspicion growing in his eyes as he leaned in to have a closer look at Nordhausen’s face.

  “Eh dah?” The man seemed confused by Nordhausen’s appearance, and the professor realized the idea of masquerading as an Arab had some definite liabilities. He decided to try and use sign language, cautiously placing his open palms on his chest as he spoke again.

  “I’m an American,” he started, indicating himself. “A scientist from Lawrence Labs in Berkeley; here on a mission.” That wasn’t helpful, he thought, but the man stepped back, his head cocked to one side.

  “Aurens?” The tone of his voice carried a note of excitement.

  Nordhausen did not catch the implications of the man’s reply at first, and he tried again. “A-mer-i-can,” he sounded out the word, patting his chest. “Lost.”

  The stranger eyed him suspiciously again, gesturing at his belt line. “Eftah,” he said, waving the pistol in his hand.

  Nordhausen saw that he wanted him to open his robes. Cautious fellow, he thought, but he undid the sash and let the gown fall open, feeling a bit silly to be standing there in wet khaki trousers and a British officer’s uniform from the First World War. How will this help my story if I manage to get to the authorities? It occurred to him that Americans may not be particularly welcome here. The chaos of the Middle East in recent years had built up a tremendous resentment among common Muslims against the West, and America in particular. Most of the population of the region would be Jordanian Palestinians, and they were not very well disposed to foreigners. Old news stories of Western reporters and missionaries taken as hostages and brutally murdered came to mind, and he was suddenly very afraid, and angry again that no one had told him he would remain at the spatial coordinates of the drop site when they shifted home.

  The man had a very different reaction to Nordhausen’s uniform, however. He stooped to have a closer look, noting the thick belt at Nordhausen’s waist, and the high, leather army boots.

  “English?” The word was badly spoken, but Nordhausen understood it. He was momentarily taken by surprise. How would he come to that assessment, he wondered?

  “Sadiq, English.” The man smiled at him and Nordhausen saw that he was missing one tooth. “Sadiq Aurens?”

  Nordhausen caught the hint of a name the second time the man spoke the word. His mind whirled for a moment, remembering what Maeve had said about coming across local Arabs in the desert. It couldn’t be so, he thought, his eyes searching the horizon. The rain had stopped and the clouds parted to reveal a crescent moon in the sky, low on the horizon. It suddenly occurred to him that he should be seeing the glow of urban centers on the horizon as well. Even if he was in the desert, the light from major cities like Amman and others would still be visible, but all was pitch black.

  “Good God,” he breathed. “What’s happened? Where am I?”

  The stranger gave him an odd look. “Sadiq Aurens?”

  The moon was wrong. It was full the night they went through the Arch. Something went wrong on the retraction! That thought jarred his thinking for a moment until he remembered what Paul had said about Kelly on the watch. ‘He’ll see what’s happened and make adjustments.’ What has Kelly done?

  “Taa’la maei,” the man gestured toward the distant camp fire. He no longer brandished the gun but he was nonetheless insistent that the professor start moving as he indicated. Nordhausen started walking, and the man fell in at his side, just slightly behind, chattering away as they went. The professor didn’t understand anything he was saying, but occasionally the word ‘English’ or ‘Aurens’ would come through again. It dawned on him, with a sinking feeling, that he had not reached his own time after all. Kelly botched the retraction, he thought at first, but upon consideration he realized this was probably not the case. He made his adjustment, Nordhausen concluded. He made one last attempt at getting us to the right temporal coordinates. If he was anywhere close, I’m still nearly a hundred years in the past! The stranger didn’t react to the word American, but he immediately recognized my uniform as English. And he called me Aurens. He can’t possibly think I’m Lawrence of Arabia.

  “Oh God,” Nordhausen breathed. Kelly had moved them forward in time to the right coordinates. He wasn’t home, as he first thought. He was back in the middle of the First World War. How did this happen? Paul said there were only two chances for retraction—one triggered to the target date, and the other some kind of fail-safe system they had programmed. Kelly must have used up one of his trump cards to get them back on target. The mission was on, then. He had an Arab in with him mouthing the word Aurens and the whole thing was still on. But would he ever make it home?

  A sensation of real anxiety enfolded him as he realized the weight of the operation was descending heavily on his shoulders again. He wasn’t home. Now he had to figure out just exactly where he was. He had to find the rail line, and discover what day it was. He had to pick the right train and decide what to do about it. Paul said he and Maeve had the whole thing figured out, but they never had time to go over it with him. Oh God, he thought. I have to unravel all this mischief and save the world after all. I have to find Paul’s little Pushpin and figure out what to do. It was imperative. He whispered a silent invocation to any deity who would hear him, and hoped he would get it all right.

  MERIDIAN

  Part VI

  Chance Meetings

  “The nature of the Universe

  loves nothing so much

  as to change the things which are,

  and to make new things like them”

  Marcus Aurelius: Meditations IV

  “By wondrous accident perchance

  may one grope out a needle in a load of hay…”

  John Taylor: A Kicksy Winsey VII

  16

  Hejaz Railway - November, 1917

  Paul was wishing he was somewhere else. The leather thongs that bound his wrists were tight and painful, and the stern regard of the Turkish Colonel was beginning to unnerve him. At least he had put away the knife, though Paul did not hold out much hope for himself in this situation. The man had obviously concluded he was a spy, and he knew that a lengthy interrogation was probably in order for him now.

  The Colonel took a long drag on his cigarette, studying Paul closely. “Not English, you say? You are certainly not an Arab. What mischief are you up to in the night? What are you doing here?”

  Paul looked at him, unwilling to speak, but he could see that it would only be a matter of time if he resisted this man’s questions—and very painful time at that. He resolved to answer him, hoping to thread his way through the interrogation without saying anything too damaging. Perhaps he could plead that he was a non-combatant and invoke the Geneva convention as a shield. Then he realized that the convention had not even been adopted until well after this war. He would be at the mercy of this man, no matter what he decided.

/>   “I am an American,” he began cautiously, “a writer.”

  The Colonel eyed him with suspicion. “You are wearing a British uniform.”

  “It was necessary,” said Paul. “The British insisted.”

  “They insisted? How very much like them.” The Colonel stood up, leaning close to Paul and studying his face and hands. “You are not a soldier,” he concluded. “That much is clear. Yet it does not take a soldier to be a spy. Why are you here?” The tone of his voice made it evident to Paul that he was not convinced. “Are you trying to make the world safe for democracy, as your President Wilson has said? There are no Americans in this region. Speak!”

  “No, I am not a soldier—only a writer. My government does not know I am here.”

  “Oh? And what do you think you will see here? There is nothing here but the desert, unless, of course, you are interested in our trains. The battle is a hundred miles from this place. I think you are a spy.”

  “I am not a spy, I write books, that’s all. You can see that I am unarmed.”

  The Colonel regarded him in silence, his cigarette building a long ash as it burned. He took another drag, his eyes narrowing above the red glow of the cigarette tip in the darkness of the room.

  Paul hoped the man could see that he was not a soldier. Can’t he tell by my accent that I’m not English? He probably thinks I was sent here by the British, though, and he’ll want to get at the reason soon enough. “You know I can have you shot without a second thought for concealing that British uniform beneath these robes. Who do you think you are fooling?”

  Paul did not answer.

  “Yes, you are fooling no one. The British are fools, just as you are to come here. Perhaps you are one of the men the British have sent to incite these Arabs, yes? You were wandering near the rail lines, and the Arabs have been a nuisance. I think you were planning some mischief here, American. Yes—you are an American. I can make mischief as well.” The warning in his eyes was apparent.

  His cigarette burned down to a nub and he let it fall to the floor, grinding the ash under his boot. “Perhaps,” he said, “I should give you something to write about. How did you come here?” The question was hard, whip like, and laden with the implication of a threat.

  Paul had to think fast. He needed a credible story, and his mind scoured through memories of the history to come up with something plausible. “I wanted to write,” he said haltingly. “Yes, I had to come in through a British controlled port, but my luggage was mishandled and I was given British kit in compensation.”

  “What port?” The question was sudden and sharp.

  “Cairo…And I came across Suez to try and reach the front.”

  “Oh? Where is the front?”

  Paul searched his recollection, desperate for a credible answer. He could quote chapter and verse when it came to events in the Second World War, but he had not given much study to the first. He equivocated. “With Allenby,” he said, buying time.

  “Allenby, yes I suppose there is a front here now, thanks to him. He had a surprise for us at Beersheba last week. He stole around our flank with his horse soldiers. He wants Jerusalem, but we will not give it to him so easily. Still, this does not explain your presence here.”

  “As I said,” Paul continued. “I came in through British lines, but I do not answer to them. I am here on my own. I write books, that is all—history books. I merely wished to see the war for myself. They would not give me permission to come here to the desert, but I snuck away, concealed in these Arab robes.”

  “You think me a fool? You come wandering through the night in the middle of a rain storm to study for your books? I do not believe you. I think you are watching the movements of our trains, and that you would tell everything you see here to the British if you could. Yes?”

  “I ran into trouble with the locals,” Paul groped for some way out of the situation. “I had to flee for my life. I knew there was a railroad to the west and so I started walking, hoping to find my way.”

  “Where? To Amman? To Damascus? You are very far from both for a man with only his two legs to take him about. Did you think you could beg passage on one of our trains—dressed like that?”

  The Colonel moved suddenly, striking Paul hard on the cheek with the back of his hand. Paul winced with the blow, wondering if it would not have been better to just keep silent.

  “That is for lying to me,” the Colonel said in a low voice. “The rest you will get in a moment or two. But first, I must assure myself that the tracks are clear ahead and that no other writers and reporters are lurking in the night.”

  He gave Paul a derisive glance and strode to the doorway, pulling it open and shouting orders at the guards outside his coach in Turkish. The men ran to respond, their boots crunching on the gravel bed of the rail line, receding into the distance as they went.

  “Now,” said the Colonel, turning back to Paul. “We are quite alone.”

  Paul did not like the sound of that, and was afraid that the man was going to strike him again—or worse. Perhaps he wanted to get rid of any witnesses, or perhaps he merely wished to savor the rest of his interrogation with some aberrant sense of privacy. Thankfully, the Colonel sat down at his desk, eying the coffee bag and taking it up to sample the aroma again.

  “Very good,” he said hefting the bag in his hand. “I have been missing my coffee for three nights now, so I will light an oil stove and try your beans before we continue. Perhaps,” he finished with a hint of sarcasm in his voice, “it will lighten my mood.” The smile the Colonel flashed at him gave Paul little comfort.

  He was some time, lighting a small oil stove and pouring water from a canteen into a dented tin pot. He took a moment to inspect Paul’s mess kit more closely, coming to silent conclusions about what he saw there, but saying nothing. Paul wondered how it was that the man spoke English. He chanced a question, knowing that he invited another sharp rebuke, but hoping to strike some accord with the man if he could.

  “You speak English very well,” he flattered. “Were you educated in the West?”

  The Colonel looked at him as though he had been interrupted by a discordant noise. But his eyes softened a bit and he answered. “Educated? I have been educated in many places. One must know his enemy if he is to fight him. Are you surprised I speak your language? Most British are when I first address them. Oh, the fun is in listening first, of course; listening to their idle chatter when they think me nothing more than an ignorant Muslim. The arrogance of the British is well known. They believe the rest of the world is here for their pleasure, and they have set themselves to meddling in the affairs of men in every quarter of the globe. They will learn. We will teach them.”

  The Colonel seemed to delight in lecturing Paul now, who was clearly a captive audience. “I suppose it was inevitable that we would end up fighting the British one day. I think the Young Turks have found war with England more to their liking. With the Russians things did not go so well. That was Enver Pasha’s fault. He was worried about the Armenians again, and the Caucasus. The British were building two ships for the Sultan’s Navy, but Mr. Churchill thought better of giving them to us when they were finished. I think he knew we must fight one day as well. It is a pity that Enver Pasha did not know it. The Germans were only too eager to give us ships, and he used them to shell the Russian base at Odessa so he could have his little war with the Russians. He thought he would become a general, you see, though he had never even commanded as much as a regiment before. When the Russians declared war on us he had a fatwa read to declare a holy war in reprisal. Then he thought to lead our Holy Army of Islam into the Caucasus against the Russians. That did not go so well for us, but the Russians believed they were in danger nonetheless. They begged your English friends to help them, and the British came to attack the Dardanelles. Now we have war on every border.”

  “You wear the Gallipoli Star,” said Paul eyeing the badge on the Colonel’s shirt. He realized that is was only called that in the West, a
nd corrected himself. “The Iron Crescent is a sign of bravery, yes?”

  The colonel gave him a sour look, but there was a hint of pride in his eyes. “You know it?” He thumbed the gilded star on his chest. “I fought with Mustapha Kemal at Sulva Bay. We taught the British their first lesson there. They had to learn again at the siege of Kut in Mesopotamia. That was a hard lesson. Do you know that they offered us two million pounds sterling for Townsend’s head? The English think they can buy what force of arms fails to deliver them in plunder. The have no honor in war. We should have run them out of Egypt long ago. If not for a few cackling chickens we might have done so! Yes, I was also with Djemal when he took 25,000 men across the Sinai on camels and tried to slip across the Suez. A few chickens gave us away in the dark that night. One of the squads had taken them along, against orders, because they grew tired of olives and biscuits. As we approached the canal the chickens got loose and alerted the British. So much for that adventure.” He sighed, grinding his coffee hard as he spoke, his voice laden with a note of discontent. “Now I am here, riding trains back and forth from Damascus to Amman and listening to Allenby’s guns. He may have stolen a march on us at Beersheba last week, but we will make him pay for the ground. Let him have Gaza, what is there?”

  Paul was surprised that the Colonel spoke so freely. The story about the abortive attempt to cross the Suez was as significant to him as it was amusing to the Colonel. Chickens! Everyone thinks the great events of history turn on the decisions of generals and statesmen, but it was just as likely that the real hinge of fate here was a loose clasp on a chicken coop. He saw the errant little thread of causality dangling from the story, an insignificant moment of disobedience by a hungry squad of soldiers that may have given the whole operation away. It was just such a moment that he was seeking now; perhaps on this very train. He desperately wanted to know what day it was, and gain some sense of his location. He watched the Colonel working at his coffee, and wondered if he dared say anything more. The Colonel was slowly grinding the coffee beans in the bottom of a metal cup. Paul knew it was dangerous, but he chanced another remark.