Страница 29 из 124
He came to the first village at just past the two thousand mark. Unlike the village he’d passed through with the tribesmen on the previous day, this one hadn’t been burned. But it was abandoned. Food was rotting in the houses. Whoever had left here had bailed out so quickly they didn’t have time to take their food with him.
There were several small trails leading out of the village, but only one large trail heading south. He took a few sips of water, chose the large trail, and plunged on.
At the eight thousand mark, he reached another village. This one was larger than the last and seemed closer to civilization. There was no electricity, but there were lamps, gallon cans of kerosene, tire tracks in the ground. The tracks weren’t for a car, though. Something smaller, like an ATV. Gideon estimated that a couple hundred people had lived in the town, but the surrounding fields and houses had been burned to the ground.
What was going on around here? This was starting to look like a full-fledged war—a war accompanied by something resembling ethnic cleansing.
As he paused, he saw something red lying on the ground. A flower. A red flower. He reached down and picked it up.
It was a poppy. He surveyed the field. And then he saw it. Much of the field was burned. But not all. Opium poppies. Someone was growing opium up here.
There was no time to think about what this meant—if it meant anything at all. He ran.
The trail had widened as it left the burned village and had parallel ruts—presumably formed by the wheels of regular ATV traffic. Though it was wider than the trail he’d been ru
By the time he passed ten thousand, Gideon’s body started rebelling. At home, with a good pair of ru
But he didn’t stop. The heat was not too bad here in the highlands—but he knew he was operating on a water deficit. He wouldn’t last much longer without water. When he reached fifteen thousand, he finally stopped to drain the canteen. He leaned against a tree. Next thing he knew, he was sitting, staring blearily up into the dark canopy of the jungle. For a moment he couldn’t remember where he was. A monkey appeared, stared curiously down at him, then leapt to another branch, screamed once, disappeared back into the dim distance. Gideon tried to force himself to his feet, but his body kept coming up with reasons not to.
He closed his eyes and thought back to the day when his father and mother had died. That’s who I’m here for, he thought. Whoever my brother has become, whatever he’s become, I’m here for him. He pictured his brother sitting on the front steps of the house, that terrible empty expression in his eyes.
And then Gideed ¡€†on was on his feet, pressing on into the jungle. Occasionally he passed through a stream. It was all he could do not to stop, lie down in the stream, and suck the water into his mouth.
He knew there was a point where dysentery was less of a danger than immediate dehydration. But he kept telling himself that he hadn’t reached that point quite yet.
The sun was higher in the trees now. He felt himself getting more and more light-headed, less and less clear in his thinking.
The trail he’d been on had been going due south for a while. There was no trick to navigating it. It simply headed south. But suddenly the trail split.
He stopped. Which way? He looked up, trying to determine by using the sun which way was south. But the sun was high in the sky now, and it was harder to tell east from west. Both trails were equally rutted. There were no signs, no marks, nothing to indicate where they were heading.
He realized after a while that he had been standing, staring up in the air for a long time. How long, he wasn’t sure. His mouth felt like a bag of sand.
Somewhere in the back of his mind a voice said, Okay, this is it. Time to find water.
But where?
Earlier it seemed like he’d been splashing through a stream every five minutes. He looked around. No streams were visible anywhere. He knew that if he just pressed on, he’d find one. And yet . . .
And yet neither his mind nor his body seemed capable of moving. He couldn’t make up his mind. Which way? The trail on the left or the trail on the right? He stared up at the sun. A shaft of light pierced the leaf and plunged into his eyes, blinding him momentarily. He realized vaguely he’d pushed himself too far, let his body dry out too much. He closed his eyes.
How far had he come? Gideon wondered. Was he even close to Kampung Naga? He realized he had stopped counting strides a long time ago. How long was a long time? Five minutes? Five hours? He really wasn’t sure.
Gideon stood, swaying, eyes closed, waiting to fall.
It was just a matter of time before his legs gave out, he thought. Just a matter of time.
But he didn’t fall. Instead, he smelled something.
Smoke.
A vague signal penetrated his consciousness. Smoke. Smoke equaled people. People equaled water.
Opening his eyes, he saw the leaves stirring in a bush near his face. The wind was pushing them to the right. Which meant the smoke was coming from the east. If he took the trail on the left, that would lead him to the fire.
He swayed, almost losing his balance, before he was ru
As he stumbled forward, Gideon’s mind drifted, going back to the last time he’d seen his brother. Politics. That’s what they’d fought over.
What could be more absurd than a fight over politics? A discussion—even a heated one?—sure, nothinHe ¡€†g wrong with a couple of brothers having a few sharp words over political differences. But for a pair of grown men, brothers, to sever their relationship over a difference of political opinions? It was crazy. And if Gideon faced the issue honestly, it was his fault.
It had happened a little more than seven years ago. At the time Gideon was still on the Princeton faculty, teaching at the Woodrow Wilson School of International Relations. But he was frequently in New York for work he did with the UN. Tillman had called late one afternoon saying that he was passing through New York before heading off on what he implied was some sort of covert operation. He said he wanted to talk.
Gideon had recently been offered a permanent fellowship at the UN, a dream job that allowed him to stay on the Princeton faculty while being dispatched as a special mediator to various conflict areas throughout the world. At the time it seemed as if he had reached the pi
Gideon had joined the Princeton Club on a whim and rarely ever attended the wood-paneled Forty-third Street clubhouse. But when the call had come from Tillman, Gideon had wanted to show that all the years of pe
Gideon had arrived late—his meeting at the UN had run long—and Tillman was waiting in the lobby with a scowl on his face. “That asshole over there has come up to me at least five times to ask if he can help me,” Tillman said acidly, pointing at a supercilious man behind the reception desk. “Do I have a sign on my back that says ‘Not Princeton Material’ or something?”