By the time we reached the fields outside Bethlehem, I had decided that Khalil's original suspicion towards Thayer must have sprung from a recognition of competition -- in loquacity. Our prisoner -- or guide -- or new best friend, as he seemed to think himself, chattered all the way out of the town. He seemed eager to avert our suspicions of him as a former agent of the Boss, yet I caught a sense that there was more to his ramblings than that: he liked us. He genuinely liked us, for whatever reason, and wanted to win our likings in return. So he regaled us with stories and trivia of the lands he knew. And he told us -- quite willingly, apparently trusting in my promise to protect him from the Boss's vengeance -- all he knew of the people he had worked with and the mysterious man they had worked for. He didn't know a great deal. Most of it we'd already heard from Achmed. But corroboration never hurts.
A good sense of direction ran very deep in his family, Khalil had told us at the start, and he proved this by bringing us swiftly and safely to the edge of Bethlehem. Its buildings fell away behind us; its fields stretched out ahead of us. Soon we reached the tree where we had left Cheriss.
She was no longer there. Thayer and I exchanged worried looks. It was, of course, possible she'd just taken up her watch from some other location. But she still wasn't answering the comlink.
So, until further notice, it was just the two of us -- and Khalil, though whether he would prove to be a help or a hindrance was yet to be seen. And Thayer was slowing. If Rouddim intended to play rough, we were in trouble.
"Here we are," Khalil beamed. "The fields where the shepherds keep their sheep. By night, yes? Isn't that the scripture? You see, I once had a job as a tour guide: I know these things, Christian scriptures and Hebrew alike; the tourists like to hear their own scriptures."
"And here we are, by night," Thayer said softly. "Without flocks, however, and apparently without angels." Steadying himself against a nearby tree, he brought up our electrobinoculars to scan the horizon.
"See anything?" I asked.
He shook his head. "Perhaps over that hill --"
A voice from behind us interrupted, "You're looking the wrong way." We turned to see Cim standing there, eyeing us warily, and pointing a blaster our way.
"What is this?" Thayer demanded of the weapon, holding himself very still.
"If you want to see Rouddim," Cim answered, "I will take you to him. But you will understand if we must be very careful. Not all who seek my associate are friends." He glanced suspiciously at Khalil. "Who is this man? I agreed to bring only the two of you."
I took a chance on honesty being the best policy. "He's our prisoner. Some of the people you're talking about, the ones looking for Rouddim, jumped us on the way out of town -- that in itself might convince you we mean your friend no harm. We took this one prisoner from that group. He'll return with us to be questioned."
"I do not like it," Cim frowned. "He must remain here."
"Do you really think that would be wise?" Thayer said. "I would not let this one out of our sight, my friend."
"I will be most silent, I assure you," Khalil said, peeking out from the refuge he had sought behind Thayer and me, "most confident. Keeping secrets runs very deep in my family. You will not even know I am there; I will utter not a word --"
"Shut up," Cim growled. "All right. I like the thought of him out of my sight even less than the thought of him in Rouddim's. But to be safe, if he goes with you, you must all leave your weapons with me."
The both of us bristled at this demand; Khalil looked downcast. "Surely there's no need --" I began, trying to be diplomatic.
"I will take no chances!" Cim shouted, then resumed his cool manner as quickly as this outburst had flared up. "In fact, I think you had better leave your weapons with me whether your prisoner accompanies us or not. We wouldn't want Rouddim to get the wrong idea," he smiled smugly, "about your intentions."
"Our intentions, if I'm not much mistaken," said Thayer, "will line up quite nicely with his, if we ever actually have the chance to speak to him. Look here, Cim, this is getting us nowhere --"
"You'll be going nowhere," said our adamant contact, "until you disarm."
Faced with his blaster and his relentlessness, and the urgency we felt to find his associate, we finally gave in, tossing our weapons over to him and then enduring Cim's frisking before he would trust that we were satisfactorily unarmed. At least, Khalil endured this very nervously; Thayer, very stoicly; and I, very little, because Thayer's glare and threatening stance when the man moved near me were enough to make even Cim limit himself to the most perfunctory of checks.
Cim walked behind us, still not trusting us out of his sight. We crossed the fields, keeping our distance from the actual shepherds and sheep we passed, and headed out into the hills. Our path ended at last, at a low overhang, forming a tiny cave in the side of one of the hills. Within the cave, flames danced on a small campfire, silhouetting two figures in front of it.
We had found Rouddim. And I gathered that we had arrived just in time.
I knew him from the picture in his dossier, though it wasn't until he looked up at Cim's greeting that I knew him for sure.
Her, I knew from the day we'd spent with her in Bethlehem and in Jerusalem. The riddle of Cheriss's disappearance was solved. Rouddim had her bound and gagged, and when we walked in on them, he was leering over her, and her night-blue eyes were glaring vibroblades at him.
"Cim!" Rouddim said. The expression of -- I thought at first lust, but on second thought, it was more like disgust, loathing -- that he had been turning on Cheriss gave way to one of welcome and anticipation.
And then he spotted Khalil. The loathing returned, mirrored by shock in Khalil's eyes, and then Rouddim sprang.
With our prisoner's hands still bound, it wasn't much of a fight, but I think the eager little man managed actually to get in one or two good bites to Rouddim 's ears and nose before Thayer and Cim wrested the merchant off of our would-be guide. I found myself, without quite knowing why, liking Khalil just a bit more for those bites.
How can I explain? I had watched Rouddim for less than a minute now, had heard him speak but one word, yet first impressions have an amazing force. I remembered my first impression of Cim, dangerous like Cassius -- and what I had seen of him since then had not done much to correct this impression.
My first thought of the seller of shields was that Rouddim himself had the look of cruelty in human form. I didn't like to think what he'd been planning to do to Cheriss before we arrived, and there was no question what he had meant to do to Khalil: the little guide would have been as good as dead, if not for Thayer and Cim's intervention. What was this man we'd come to bargain with? As Caesar with Cassius, I liked him not.
As Khalil whimpered in the background with the realization of what had nearly happened -- I bent to help him to his feet since his hands were still bound and it looked like it would take all of Thayer's and Cim's strength to hold Rouddim back -- Rouddim was shouting, "Wicked one! Have you come for me after all? Is this what your great master sends for me? You don't have a chance against me, Khalil, you snake, you dog --"
"Stop it!" I shouted back. (Khalil had grown on me more than I realized, I suppose.) "This man is no threat to you. In case you didn't notice, he's not even free to fight you. He's our prisoner. And as our prisoner, he is our responsibility, so I will thank you to leave him alone."
Rouddim looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. The disgust and hatred with which he had looked on Cheriss twisted his face once more, briefly -- and then he looked away, ignoring me entirely.
"You go back to your master," Rouddim snarled to Khalil. "You tell him that M' allim Rouddim lives -- to his hurt. I will fight him as long as I have breath. And I --"
"Rouddim," Cim interrupted gently. "He's not going anywhere. Khalil is not the one the Boss sent for you."
"Nor is he even the Boss's agent anymore," Thayer confirmed, hiding his anxiety from his voice yet telegraphing it to me in the crease of his brow. "We will take responsibility for him."
"You should at least listen to them, sayyid," Cim advised his friend.
Rouddim was nearly panting, catching his breath after his outburst. "Who are they?" he asked, not looking away from Khalil's cowering form.
"The buyers I told you about," Cim started.
"I know that, you idiot!" Rouddim shouted. "I want to know *who* they are. Who are they buying for? And why are they even here when there's no longer anything left to buy?"
"You have more that's of interest to us than the shield generator itself," Thayer answered. "And we have something that may be of interest to you."
He nodded to me and I fished the holoprojector out of my pocket -- Cim reached for his blaster, presumably thinking I had some weapon hidden that he'd missed. I activated the image of Eti's find, and silence fell. Rouddim and Cim watched the holo revolve, disbelief clear in their faces. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw Cheriss grinning behind the rag that gagged her. Nearly a year she 'd sought this man, only to have him catch her at the last minute, I realized: but now the tables were turned, and what she had hoped to get from him was now in our possession.
"You see?" Cim whispered.
"How did you get this?" Rouddim whispered.
I wondered if he meant the shield-piece itself or just the holo of it. Playing dumb, I assumed the latter. "Oh, we have a holocam back at the temp base. Not much of one -- it's slower than Internet dial-up -- but it works in a pinch. We like to inventory whatever evidence we get, y'know."
"Not the picture!" Rouddim growled, unappreciative of my jest. "Where is it, the thing in your picture? How did you get it?"
"It's with the rest of our group, in safekeeping. Don't worry, the Boss won't get it back. Not from us." At least I hoped Terra Group could live up to my boast.
"He must not." Rouddim looked alarmed. "If he did, then --"
"What?" Thayer prompted when the merchant fell silent. "What would happen? What does he plan for it?"
Suspicion crossed the man's hawkish features. "How do I know you are not from him? It would be like him, to send Khalil in bonds with you as a ruse. Perhaps even now this piece is in his hands, and he sends you with its image only to win my trust, to bring me back with you -- back to him, back for his vengeance."
"No," Thayer shook his head. "He is our enemy, too. You must believe this. But we do not know enough about him -- not even his name -- to fight him yet. We must know, if we are to stop him before he puts the shield to use -- and yet even there, we do not know how he means to use it."
Rouddim glanced from face to face (still stubbornly ignoring mine and Cheriss's, though. I was starting to wonder what had given the man such a deeply ingrained case of misogyny, as this seemed to be), then sighed deeply and said, "All right. I will trust you. If you are his spies, what more could you do to me than you have already done? And if you are what you say you are," his eyes glinted with fervor, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, "there may yet be time to stop him." He gestured us towards the back of the little cave. "Come, join me. There is much to be said."
~
We gathered around Rouddim's campfire, an eery sort of council. Cheriss he freed from her bonds when we claimed her as our ally. Khalil's hands remained tied, however, and Cim kept a blaster trained on him just outside the cave, out of earshot, lest the little man should prove to be the Boss's spy after all. When we were all settled, Rouddim began to speak.
"I was one of his first agents," he said, "the man you have heard called the Boss. You say that you do not even know his true name; neither do I. His people called him the Magician, for he displayed great powers to awe them. He let us call him that, never telling us any other name. I am sorry I cannot tell you more. But you will know him if ever you meet him. And you will pray that you never do.
"He is not of this world, that much I know; though not many of his servants are aware of this. But I was one of the first. He promised wealth, power, glory. He showed us wonders. Some thought him a prophet. Some obeyed him from fear. Others from greed or ambition. But all who joined him became bound to him. He knew our thoughts. He knew if we were disloyal. And if he knew one had betrayed him, or wished to betray him, his vengeance was swift.
"I was no traitor. I was unswerving in my devotion to his cause -- and to the profit he promised we should make from it. But when I learned what he really meant to do . . ."
Rouddim bowed his head. "I could not abide it. The shield he brought to Earth is a great thing, a powerful defense, and he would sell it to the Butcher of Baghdad." He looked up at us. "Do you know what that would mean?"
Thayer cocked his head, recognizing a rhetorical question and waiting for Rouddim to continue. I muttered: "Gives him a chance to upgrade to Butcher of Terra?" but Rouddim was still ignoring me. Annoying, but I was beginning to suspect that could have its advantages. Especially when one wants to mutter irreverences.
"My people are Kurdish," Rouddim stated simply. Thayer and I opened our mouths in silent "Ohs" of understanding; Cheriss frowned thoughtfully, I suppose searching her memory of Terran culture for the group Rouddim had cited. Our informant explained: "I saw my sisters, of all women the most virtuous, beheaded for the groundless charge of prostitution. My father, my brothers, my cousins, fell to the mustard gas. My entire village," his face contorted with pain, "is now as if it never existed. One brother -- one brother and I, because we were abroad, establishing his business in Paris -- we alone survived. And the Magician would give the man who did this the power to do so again, defended by this otherworldly shield from any retaliation, from any strike of justice. I could not abide it.
"So I broke with the Magician." Rouddim grinned suddenly, a feral, bestial smile. "He never saw it coming, not even in my thoughts, so quick were my actions. He had divided the shield into parts for transportation. As soon as all the parts reached Baghdad, the shield would be installed and he could begin his plans -- I do not know all that he planned, but I know that power was what he sought.
"Well, I sought revenge," Rouddim flared, "and I won it. I escaped from him, and I took one of the transport groups with me. He could not make the shield work without at least some of the components I had taken. To keep him from recovering what I took, I broke up my part of the shield into even more parts, and then I went to the black market, started selling them off, piece by piece, to buyers who believed what they were getting was the whole shield itself, to defend their countries, or that it was some other wonderful sort of technology available nowhere else on the earth." He snorted in amusement. "They served my purposes. For nearly a year I kept the Magician from reaching his goal."
"It was clever of you," Cheriss complimented him, but even then he ignored her. Frustrated, she looked to Thayer, and he spoke for us.
"It *was* clever," he said, "but it couldn't last forever, you know that."
"I know," said Rouddim calmly. "It has neared its end. It is nearer than you even realize." He spread his hands apologetically. "I have no more pieces left. Nothing more to sell. The Magician has stolen back many of them. That lying witch Tavira -- she who commands his military forces -- has stolen back many more. I thought, not long ago, she had turned too, had betrayed the Magician; she delivered one of the components from her own transport group to me, to let me sell it off, keep it away from him. But it was all a ruse. Things did not go well," his glare glanced on Cheriss and me in turn, suddenly; I wondered, did that explain his misogyny? A woman had fouled up his plans? Tavira herself perhaps? He continued, "and I was forced to flee with the component. Tavira had arranged a rendezvous; I fled there, hoping for safety behind the might of her troops. I fled into a trap."
He shrugged the memory away. "Cim and I escaped eventually, though not all my associates were so fortunate. We came here, home to Israel, because of the auction -- you know of the auction?" We nodded. "I had to stop it. Tavira had found me, so they knew my movements; I had to expect that they would be at the auction as well, to make sure the sale went in their favor," he chuckled wryly. "I was right. But I was too late. I arrived too late to call off the auction -- but not too late," he grinned, "to throw another wrench into their plans. I got to the component that was to be auctioned -- one of the more important pieces, from what I understand of the thing -- and I removed one piece of it. That piece that you say you have in safekeeping now. How it works, I do not know; but I know that without it, the shield will not work as it should. They won't have the control over it that they will need. Until I saw your picture of it, I was sure that the Magician had found it again by now, and that I had rushed back to Israel in vain. Either that, or he thought I still had it, and that was why his men hunted me so earnestly now."
"He knows you don't have it," I said anxiously. "In fact, he knows we do. His men were hunting us, too, just after we acquired it."
Rouddim condescended to nod in indication that he'd heard me, though he would not look at me. "He must not regain it."
"He will not," Thayer promised.
"But we can't hide it from him indefinitely," I said. "If we're going to truly end this threat, the shield -- the whole thing, every last piece of galactic technology you've sold all over Terra this year past -- has to be found, and it has to be either destroyed or sent back where it came from."
Rouddim laughed mirthlessly. "You are not without ambition, little woman."
"It has to be done," I repeated.
He nodded. "You are right. For my people -- this terrible alliance of the Magician and Iraq must not continue."
"Will you help us?" Thayer asked.
"How?"
"You know much about the Magician. We will need all the information we can get if we are to attack him in his stronghold -- and wherever the shield may be, that's sure to be his stronghold."
Rouddim nodded. "I will tell you what you need to know."