Declare

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 super-natural.
    “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?”
    “I’ll fill out the orders,” Hale said dutifully, “and learn their names and backgrounds…”
    * * *
    Hale was jolted out of his memories by a name that he had just recalled. He blinked around his room in the Normandy Hotel in Beirut—the sea beyond the fluttering white window curtains was indistinguishable from the night sky now, and