The address Hale had been given was a hotel, very nineteenth-century Russian-looking with its steep roof and narrow lamplit windows. Hale parked the Oldsmobile at the stone curb alongside a row of newly planted hawthorn trees, and when he stepped across the dirt strip and the flagstone sidewalk to push open the front door, he found Theodora in the hotel lobby, sitting placidly on a long wooden bench that ran along one wall.
An iron stove in a corner was filling the lobby with hot air and the scent of burning ox dung, and Hale closed the door behind him and began to unbutton his coat; but, “Let’s walk,” said Theodora, getting up from the bench and lifting an overcoat from beside him, and Hale sighed and turned up his collar.
He followed Theodora back out through the creaking lobby door and across the sidewalk, and even as the northwest wind from Russian Georgia found the gaps between his buttons, Hale knew better than to suggest they talk in the RAF car. The sun had set behind them, and Hale trudged down the center of the darkening cobblestone street beside the tall figure of Theodora, waiting for the older man to begin talking.
At last Theodora spoke. “The story for the SIS is that tomorrow morning you’re going to infiltrate some Armenians into the U.S.S.R. aboard the train that crosses the border by Kizilçakçak, thirty miles east of here. One of Biffy Dunderdale’s operations, supposedly, run out of Artillery Mansions rather than Broadway, so that Philby won’t expect to know the provenance. It’s not too implausible that SIS would try it; Philby has had no luck running Armenians over the border-his have all been caught and killed within sight of the barbed wire.”
“I daresay,” said Hale dryly.
“I don’t like him either, my dear, but hold your fire until you’ve got a clear shot. In any case, you won’t be stuffing Armenians into the train’s undercarriage tonight, so it’s academic. Tomorrow you’ll be at the border to watch the train go as if you had, and Philby will be along to observe-”
Hale almost tripped over a cobblestone. “Philby’s out here?”
“He will be by tomorrow morning. He’s Head of Station in Turkey, so of course he saw your orders; and of course he noted the inquiries you made to the Ankara desk last year, about Soviet activity around the Aras River. This present plan will go some way toward putting his mind at ease about those inquiries. Your story is that you and Dunderdale have been planning for months to put these Armenians across, so of course you wanted to know the lay of the land, right? In any case, directly after your tour of the border tomorrow, you’ll be moving south-secretly.”
“To Ararat,” said Hale. As soon as he had got his orders to fly to Erzurum, he had guessed that this was to be the execution of his plan for the Shihab meteorite, and he had to clench his jaws now to keep his teeth from chattering at the imminent prospect; but it wasn’t entirely fear that plucked at his tight nerves.
“Yes, indirectly,” said Theodora. “You’re to go by way of a Kurd village in the Armenian corner of Iran, so as to approach from the south, from the Agri district; these Kurds are like your precious Bedouins, they travel across borders virtually unregarded, and they’ve lived around the mountain for thousands of years.” Theodora laughed softly. “The Khan of the village is an ally of the Crown. During the war, his men gutted the local RAF depot, ready with their rifles and knives to go to war with the whole English tribe; of course the RAF simply sent bombers in to level their villages, and the Kurds took their sheep and goats and fled up into the mountains, waiting for English soldiers to march in and fight properly, with rifles. But we simply sent in more planes, and the Kurds had no palpable enemy to fight, and their women hated living in caves, and finally they sent an ultimatum to our headquarters-‘If you do not come down and fight like men, we will be forced to surrender.’ Well, the RAF permitted them to, and the Kurds have been staunch allies of ours ever since.”
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?”