CRO-MAGNON (62 page)

He shrugged. “Small group maybe. Bor hear ground high. Cold like Big Ice. Little valleys.”

“
What about food and wood?”

He shrugged his good shoulder. “Trees. Rivers. Animals. Plants.”

“
Then that’s where we’ll go.”

“
Hard for two people with kid,” he signed.

“
You’re the clan’s best hunter. You’ll have Fel to help. And I know plants.”

He nodded.

She hugged his good arm and peered into his broken-nosed face. “Do you feel up to a little
tegu?
You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

He stared, the puzzled look returning. “Gar think Leya just offer live with.”

“
I am.” In the flickering yellow light, she searched his eyes. “Isn’t
tegu
part of life?”

Now he looked astonished. “Leya be Gar’s mate?”

Unlacing her tunic, she took his good hand in hers and pressed it to her breast.

Chapter 27

In the gathering dusk, Simin led Calder, Blaine and Ayni across a ribbon of asphalt cracked and pitted by frost heaves and the military vehicles that occasionally patrolled the riverside villages. Calder had slept through the day except for the short time he had been otherwise engaged, and the Wakhi woman had fed them a delicious supper of deep-fried lamb dumplings, braised onions, and glazed carrots, topped off with honey-and-walnut fritters.

The moon, newly risen above the eastern mountaintops, cast a pale sheen over the dusting of snow along the Panj. Simin led them across the ruins of a stone dock that sat high above the water and must have been built, Calder thought, when the river was much higher.
Reviewing his hasty research on Pamir climatic history, he reckoned that would have been tens of thousands of years ago. He wondered who had built the dock and what for. The first evidence of boats anywhere in the world was . . .

Clambering over tumbled boulders, he tripped over a big chunk of crystalline quartz set among heavy river rocks. He managed to take the weight on the Neanderthal’s spear and scrambled after Blaine and Ayni into
a wood skiff.

That’s all I need,
he thought.
Twist my knee, not be able to walk, get us all killed
.

The boat was larger than Zinchenko’s, with homemade fishing gear in the stern instead of an outboard motor. With Calder and Blaine huddled in the bow and Ayni manning the oars, Simin pushed off and jumped aboard. As the Tajik broke a scrim of ice and rowed them across the dark river, his cousin spoke to him in what Calder thought was an admonishing voice. After she finished, Murzo replied in soothing tones, then turned toward his friends.

“
Simin is worried that by helping you two I am burning my boats.”

“
Bridges,” Calder said automatically. “I thought you were already in trouble with the military for killing those ‘friendly’ guerrillas.”

“
That is true. However, she thinks that if I simply quit my job, they will forget.”

“
Would they?”

“
Maybe. But the other guerrillas would not. And Delyanov—whose influence goes beyond the ministry of nature conservation—would know that I worked against him and this Salomon.”

Calder glanced at Simin, who was watching him and Blaine with a none-too-friendly air. He still felt muzzy from the
kumys
that Murzo had insisted they drink for quick energy. He knew that the Muslims of Central Asia did not consider fermented mare’s milk an alcoholic beverage. But he had found it stronger than most wine.

“
So, what’s your cousin’s problem?” He had never had a head for alcohol, and he realized belatedly that his tongue was loose.

“
She fears that you and Caitlin are using me,” Ayni said. “That after you are safe, you will forget your promise to take me to
Ameriko
.”

Blaine said, “Do you believe that, Murzo?”

“
No.”

“
I promise you that I will find a way to get you into the United States. If Rolf Mathiessen can’t get you a green card right away, you can work sub rosa until we complete the paperwork.”

Ayni looked bemused. “Under a rose?”

“
Secretly,” Caitlin said. “Even if Ian did stretch a point with Rolf about your helping with the prehistoric language, we both give you our word.”

Calder nodded, feeling slightly annoyed that Caitlin, after proposing a largely untested and rather presumptuous plan to regenerate the prehistoric people, would pooh-pooh his perfectly reasonable idea that Murzo might be of help in communicating with them.

Ayni turned back and spoke to Simin, who seemed to soften a bit. The group fell silent while he pulled hard on the oars, crabbing upstream in the brisk current.

Calder glanced past the stern at the moonlit Pamir skyline, then craned forward at the narrow tongue of Afghanistan called the Wakhan Corridor and beyond at the ghostly ramparts of the Hindu Kush in Pakistan. What archaeological treasures this area must hold, he thought. Although now the domain of insurgents, narco-traffickers, and poachers of rare butterflies and other endangered species, this corner of the world had witnessed centuries of transcontinental trade and millennia of invasions from East and West.

Traces of prehistoric camps unearthed by the International Hindu Kush expedition hinted that the land had been home to Cro-Magnon man and before him probably Neanderthals, and the bodies he and Caitlin had found in the frozen cave tended to confirm both notions. He wished the region were politically stable enough for him to mount an expedition before the ancient treasures were pulverized by twenty-first-century tanks and artillery. Watching the Afghan shore approach, he shook his head. In the present circumstances, he and his friends would have all they could do to get out of the area alive.

The skiff bumped the stony shore, and he balanced on the thwart and eased onto Afghan territory, favoring his right knee. With a breath of relief, he reached for the two sacks of frozen heads. The three of them were now technically beyond Evgenii Delyanov’s reach, though not Salomon’s. But they still faced a long trek through a trackless wilderness. Although Calder’s joints retained some residual soreness from yesterday’s swelling, they felt almost normal, and he hoped he could hold his own.

Simin and Murzo embraced as the two cousins said goodbye, perhaps forever. Calder felt a flash of sympathy for Simin’s daughter Farrin, who he’d sensed had developed a crush on her kissing cousin. The boat shoved off, and Ayni led them along a four-wheel-drive track. They passed a domed monument of crumbling stone that looked like a Buddhist
chorten,
and
Calder recalled that the area had once been under Han, and later Mongol, rule. Subsequently, the Hindus had taken over the countryside, and when the Arabs arrived the population had been driven into the mountains and slaughtered, hence one version of the origin of
Hindu Kush,
“Hindu killer.” He hoped the term would not also apply to them.

Hiking in darkness along the barren river bottom, they passed a few unidentifiable ancient structures and a collection of mud huts, where dogs sent up a mournful howl. Ayni picked up the pace, and they came to an intersecting trail toward the mountains. They skirted a series of domed masonry structures that Calder knew were tombs of forgotten soldiers. The frozen ground was sandy and, he was glad to see, almost devoid of snow

“
Murzo, are we crossing the route that Alexander the Great and Marco Polo used?”

“
That is hard to say, Ian.” Ayni spread his fingers. “The silk route, you know, had several branches. I have been told that the way through the Corridor was the main one. But it was only a collection of camel trails. Legend has it that they existed even in the time of the ancient ones.”

Calder felt chagrined. He had known there was no “road” like the northern route, but had forgotten. They trudged along, their boots scuffing against the rising ground. Ayni led them past a crumbling ruin that Calder tagged as a fort from Zoroastrian times, though it was just a guess. He sensed they were already past the remains of the silk route. At some point they had crossed the ancient ones’ footsteps. The valley began to close. Judging by the thinness of the air, Calder figured they were perhaps 9000 feet high. The slope canted ever upward until they were tramping through light snow.

Later, Ayni called a halt and in the sudden silence Calder heard the heavy beat of helicopter blades somewhere to the east. They scrambled toward a patch of saltbush, the only cover available in the barren terrain, but the sound faded.

There was only one likely reason, Calder thought, for a helicopter to be crossing the Wakhan Corridor, a few leagues beyond the edge of nowhere, in the middle of the night: Laszlo Salomon, not finding them in a
qishlaq,
had correctly reasoned that they would try to escape across Tajikistan’s southern border.

Two hours later, the terrain was steeper and the snow heavier, and Calder saw that the Hindu Kush—the Mountains of India—were more open than the Western Pamir. And, as Murzo had warned, snowier. In the distance, moonlight glinted off a high pass flanked by huge hanging masses of snow and ice.

He reflected that if Salomon’s helicopter overtook the three of them after sunup in that gray and white wilderness, there would be no way to combat the .50-caliber machine gun. Even at night, the Xenon searchlight could bathe them in a daylight glare.

Either way, they’d be fish in a barrel.

The unrelenting uphill slog on a gravel surface was taking a toll on his rickety knees and he wondered if he could make it to the top of the first pass. He could only wonder how many there would be after that. A strong wind kept whipping his breath away, and he guessed it was responsible for the relatively snow-free condition of the valley. If they became snowbound, he knew, they’d have to choose between turning back and joining the legions who had died in these killer mountains.

More than ever, in light of his new relationship with Caitlin, he felt a responsibility to see that they survived the expedition regardless of her determination to bring the prehistoric people back from the dead. He was tempted to suggest that they turn back and try to negotiate a settlement with Salomon. But in view of their experiences so far, he acknowledged that the “negotiations” would probably involve a machinegun. It seemed least risky to follow Ayni’s plan to try to reach the deserted Pakistani village of Totiraz Noku sometime tomorrow and hope that Rolf Mathiessen was waiting.

Snow began to cover the gravel. He found himself falling behind again. A dull ache had crept into his right knee, and he knew it was swelling. Jabbing the Neanderthal’s spear through the snow into the icy pebbles of the trail, he tried to step up his pace. Speed was their only hope, and his mushy knees were the limiting factor.

#

Murzo Ayni did not need to check his wristwatch to know it was near midnight when the party reached the halfway point between the Panz river and the high mountain pass that marked the border between the Afghan Corridor and Pakistan’s North-West Frontier province. Sniffing the frigid air, he estimated the altitude at close to 4000 meters. He worried about Calder’s bends, because he knew the way would get much higher before reaching the pass that would lead down to Totiraz Noku. Because of Ian’s condition, he did not think they were not far enough along, but he knew the anthropologist was doing his best.

Calling a halt, he unslung his rifle and set down the sacks of heads he had taken from Blaine, and the hikers flopped down on the first level spot since leaving the river. Recalling Simin’s reservations, Ayni wondered if he was risking his life and livelihood for a worthy enough cause. Privately, he thought the idea of regenerating prehistoric people was foolish. But he sensed that Caitlin would never abandon the ice-packed heads, even if they caused the three of them to be sitting birds—no, ducks—for Laszlo Salomon.

This woman’s idea will kill us all.

But he had made his decision. Rummaging in his pack, he brought out a cloth sack that Simin had given him and passed out a water skin and lumps of salted goat cheese
mixed with shredded mustard leaves and crushed pine nuts.

“
Be sure to drink plenty of water. The altitude will suck you dry and you will become exhausted.”

He watched Calder wolf his portion, then draw up his legs and begin to massage his knees.

Blaine said, “Can you go on, Ian?”

“
Depends. How far is the village?”

“
By morning we will be at the southern end of this border,” Ayni said. “We go down into a deep valley. If nothing holds us up, we should reach the
qishlaq
by noon tomorrow.”

“
That soon?” Calder waved a hand. “Nothing to it, then.”

Blaine said, “You could find a place to hide, Ian. Murzo and I could hike out and come back in Rolf’s helicopter.”

Ayni said, “We should consider that to be a last . . . last . . .”

“
Resort,” Calder said.

“
Yes.” He gestured at the blanket of snow that coated the ground. “Unless it snows or the wind increases, we will leave tracks. If Salomon spots them, he will follow.” He turned up his palm. “And you say he might . . .”