The Seven Keys of Balabad Read online

  The man watched as the paramedics ran up the front steps of the town house. A moment later, they emerged carrying the moaning businessman on a stretcher.

  The man reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a black pouch containing the tools of the cat burglar's trade: a silver stethoscope, a dozen stainless- steel picks of varying shapes and sizes, and three small tension wrenches. They were beautiful and simple, and they had served him extremely well over the years.

  Tonight would be the biggest payoff of all. Some fool was willing to pay him half a million dollars to retrieve just one small item from the businessman's safe, an old key that could not possibly be worth a tenth of that value. For that price, he had not even demanded to know who the job was for.

  Five thousand bills with Benjamin Franklin's smirking face on them were employer enough for him. The man chuckled at the thought of his good fortune.

  Getting into the place would be a cinch. The old bachelor would surely have been too sick to remember to switch the alarm system on before he was taken away. As for the safe, which the man had been told was hidden behind a painting in the drawing room, well, there would be more than enough time to deal with that.

  The sirens sounded again, and the ambulance shot off into the night.

  The man slipped the black pouch back into the pocket of his trench coat, flipped up his collar, and emerged from the darkness. He walked quietly down the deserted street, an everyman in the night.

  ilas Finch grabbed his hamburger in both hands and took a juicy bite. Scarlett helped herself to a bit of spinach salad. Oliver stared straight ahead at the wall.

  The Finches were sitting around the kitchen table doing something they almost never got a chance to do: eat dinner together. Silas had gone down to one of the specialty shops in Balabad City that catered to foreigners and were filled with Western goodies like hamburger buns and Heinz ketchup and extra- cheesy nacho chips—things few Baladis would be caught dead eating, if they even knew what they were.

  “I have to hand it to Raheem,” said Scarlett. “These burgers are delicious.”

  Raheem worked for the Finch family as a cook, driver, guard, and just about everything else. He'd been taking care of the house when the Finches rented it, and somehow he'd never left, even though nobody remembered actually hiring him. When the Finches had arrived, Raheem cooked only Baladi dishes, but he was a fast learner and had quickly mastered hamburgers, hot dogs, spaghetti and meatballs, and even guacamole.

  “Finally, some time together as a family,” said Silas. He had put his cell phone on silent so that work wouldn't intrude on the family dinner. He was fighting the urge to run into the other room and check his e-mail every five minutes. Scarlett had been working at home since the museum had closed, and her art history books lay open on nearly every bit of empty counter in the kitchen. But she, too, was successfully resisting the urge to pop her head into one.

  “This burger is almost as good as at Big Nick's back in New York, right, Ol?” Silas said.

  Oliver looked at the hamburger on his plate. He pushed the French fries around feebly with his fork. He had sworn to Zee that he wouldn't breathe a word to his parents about the Brotherhood of Arachosia. But after the meeting with Mr. Haji that afternoon, he was beginning to feel that he was in over his head.

  Oliver could still see the look of fear that flashed across the carpet salesman's face at the mere mention of the Brotherhood, and the way the old man refused to let Zee finish his sentence.

  Why had Oliver made that stupid boast to Zee about being good with a secret?

  It's not that he had lied. It was more of a miscommuni-cation.

  What he'd meant to say when the two boys were sitting next to the ul- Hazais’ empty swimming pool was that he was good with little secrets.

  Normal secrets. Twelve- year- old- kid secrets. Secrets like “I copied my friend's homework last night,” or “I sort of think that girl is cute,” or “I didn't really step on second base when I hit that home run.” Oliver could keep those sorts of secrets locked away forever.

  But he'd never meant to imply that he was good with real secrets—the kind that involve important men taking urgent phone calls in the middle of the night, the kind that make old carpet salesmen lurch back in horror. He had particularly never meant to give the impression that he was good with secrets that brought warnings like “It's not safe here!” and desperate plans to meet one- eyed strangers on the outskirts of town.

  Those were big, frightening, important secrets, and Oliver wanted no part of them.

  “So what did you guys do today?” Silas asked.

  “We just had tea with Mr. Haji like we always do,” said Oliver. He wanted more than anything to tell his parents everything that had happened, but Zee was pretty much his only friend in the whole country, and he would probably never speak to Oliver again if he betrayed the ul- Hazai family honor.

  “Well, I had one of my best rabab lessons ever this morning. The Sufi says I will be ready to perform in front of an audience soon,” Scarlett said excitedly, her bracelets jangling against each other as she moved her hands in the air. “And then, you'll never guess who I went to see at lunch.”

  “Who?” said Silas.

  “None other than Hugo Schleim,” Scarlett replied breath lessly.

  “Who's Hugo Schleim?” Oliver asked.

  “Who's Hugo Schleim?” said Scarlett, holding her hands out in front of her like it was the silliest question she had ever heard. “He's only the chairman of the archaeology department at Röttanburg University, and one the world's foremost authorities on post- Parsavian artifacts. There was a reception at the Mandabak Hotel, where he is staying, and everyone from the museum was invited to hear him speak. There were loads of government officials there, too.”

  “Oh,” said Oliver. “Sorry.”

  “I studied Schleimian theory in graduate school, but I never thought I would actually meet him,” Scarlett continued breathlessly. “He's been overseeing an archaeological dig up north for the government, but unfortunately they didn't find anything interesting and have decided to abandon it. That's archaeology for you. Sometimes you dig and dig and nothing comes of it.”

  “Schleim?” said Silas. “Isn't he the guy who was in my story the other day? The guy who met with Aziz Aziz just before he disappeared?”

  “Could be,” said Scarlett. “Hugo Schleim meets with absolutely everyone.”

  “Oh, does he?” said Silas, raising his eyebrows. “So what was he like?”

  Scarlett hunched her shoulders and took a small bite of her hamburger.

  “To be honest, I was a little disappointed,” she said. “He was a bit too smooth for my taste. He gave each of the Baladi officials at the banquet a short bow, and then he kissed all the foreign ladies on the hand, like he was some sort of a prince or something. When he got to me, he kept his lips on my hand for like ten seconds. It gave me the creeps.”

  “Yuck,” said Oliver. “He sounds like a weirdo.”

  “That's what I thought,” said Scarlett. “But he certainly had the locals impressed. They were eating out of the palm of his hand.

  “Speaking of which,” she mumbled, scrunching up her nose. “I had almost forgotten, but he had quite the most horrible hands I have ever seen. They were pale and bony, and his fingers were as cold as death.”

  n alert vacationer strolling down the row of beach-side huts at Sandy Point, at the southernmost tip of St. Croix, would have spotted a curious sight, had he not been too distracted by the turquoise- green Caribbean waters.

  For lying in a row under the thatched wooden porch of the last hut on the beach was an unusual collection of footwear.

  It consisted of a single green flip- flop, an open- toed leather sandal, a gleaming white tennis shoe, and a black and blue scuba flipper, and all of them were left feet.

  A portly man in a floral bathing suit and reflective sunglasses rocked back and forth on a wide hammock inside the hut, a tiny pink umbrella sticking out
of the chilled strawberry smoothie in his hand.

  His other hand gripped a small cell phone, which he was using to make a very, very long-distance call.

  “How's it going, partner?” said Aziz Aziz. “No problems so far? All the addresses correct?”

  “Yes, yes,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. Even from ten thousand miles away, it had the same wheedling quality that had made Aziz Aziz slightly nervous since the very start of their business arrangement. “Gosht. Chicago. Hamburg. Everything was just as you said, Minister. We have a few loose ends to tie up, but things are proceeding on schedule.”

  “Good. Good. And my half of the money?” said Aziz Aziz. “You remember how I want it delivered?”

  There was a long silence on the other end of the line. The Baladi minister pulled himself up slightly in the hammock, and the underused muscles in his flabby tummy tensed uncomfortably.

  “Are you there?” said Aziz Aziz.

  “Of course,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. “We've been through all this before. The first payment into your Cayman Islands account, the second to Dubai.”

  “Excellent,” said Aziz Aziz. “Well, then, I'll just be waiting here for your call.”

  “Uh-huh,” said the voice distractedly.

  A waiter in Bermuda shorts and a white linen shirt appeared at the door, carrying a covered silver tray.

  “Morning, sir. Your breakfast,” he said, kicking off his sandals and leaving them at the door. Aziz Aziz watched greedily as the man laid the tray on a low table next to the hammock, whisking back the lid to reveal a plate of steaming pancakes topped with strawberries and maple syrup.

  “I think this is going to be a very prosperous collaboration, my friend,” said Aziz Aziz, dipping his index finger in the pool of golden syrup and licking it. “We're both going to be wealthy beyond imagination.”

  When there was no response, Aziz Aziz quickly added: “So I'll talk to you soo—”

  But by then the line had gone dead.

  Aziz Aziz put the cell phone down on the table and popped a strawberry into his mouth. As he lay back in his hammock, the soft beat of calypso music wafted in from the beach. The hammock groaned as it rocked gently back and forth, like a pendulum marking the slow passage of time.

  r. ul- Hazai's scuffed silver Mercedes backed into the Finches’ driveway at eleven a.m. the next morning, driven by the potbellied Hassan, the man who had brought them tea in the garden two days earlier. Zee was sitting alone in the backseat, staring straight ahead through his dark glasses.

  He leaned across the seat and pushed open the far door, and Oliver climbed in next to him.

  “A beautiful day for a game of buzkashi,” Zee said, gesturing toward the sky with his hand. It was as clear and blue as always.

  “Excellent,” Oliver replied, slapping Zee five. “By the way, I've been meaning to ask, how do you play this game? Is it at all like baseball?”

  “Oh no. Buzkashi is much more fun than baseball,” said Zee. “It's more like polo. Each player rides a horse, and there is a goal on either end of the field.”

  Oliver had never actually been to a polo match, but he'd seen pictures on TV and knew it was something very glamorous, not at all the sort of thing you'd expect in war-ravaged Balabad.

  “I didn't realize they played polo here,” he said. “I thought it was just for rich people. You know, something they play at fancy country clubs.”

  “Well, yeah. Polo is like that,” Zee conceded. “But the way we play it in Balabad is, ah, slightly different. We give it, you know, a little twist. It makes it much more exciting.”

  Hassan pulled the car over a speed bump at the front of the driveway and out into the potholed street.

  Oliver had tossed and turned the whole night thinking about the encounter with Mr. Haji and his warning that the shop wasn't safe. He had to admit he wasn't exactly gushing with excitement to meet the carpet salesman's giant friend, the one- eyed warrior known as Halabala.

  But he'd never seen a game of buzkashi before, and it was always fun to visit a new part of town. Plus they might actually learn something about the Brotherhood.

  Oliver settled into the backseat and stared out the window as Hassan sped them through the city. It was the usual mix of rusting yellow and black taxis, donkey- drawn fruit carts, and the gleaming white four- by- fours of diplomats and government officials, all weaving in and out of traffic like maniacs.

  Hassan sat calmly in the front seat, his elbows resting on his round belly and his fingers gripping the steering wheel. He jerked the wheel left or right anytime another car came near them. If a pedestrian was a little slow getting across the street, Hassan would slam his fist down on the horn until they leapt out of the way, but he would never, ever slow down.

  Soon they were on the crumbling road to Maiwar.

  The Mercedes slowed down on the edge of a large dirt field. No place in Balabad was entirely undamaged by war, but Maiwar was particularly devastated. It had been on the front lines during years of fighting, and virtually every wall of every building in sight had bullet and rocket holes in it. Families with nowhere else to go lived in the ruins, hanging their washing out of broken windows and cooking meals on gas burners set out on a window ledge or balcony.

  “Here we are, sir,” said Hassan, turning off the engine.

  Oliver glanced out of his window. Hundreds of men and boys stood ten deep around the buzkashi field. Oliver couldn't see past them, but he could hear the whinnying of horses and the thud of hooves in the distance, as well as the gruff shouts of the riders.

  It didn't look anything like a country club.

  “Zee, what exactly do you mean by a little twist?” Oliver asked.

  At that moment, a man thundered past the car on a snorting white horse, its saddle and tail decorated with brightly colored pom-poms. Behind him came another player wearing a tattered leather headpiece that looked like it had come straight off a World War I fighter pilot.

  Zee opened his door but didn't get out. He swiveled around in the seat to face Oliver.

  “We've made a few changes,” he said. “Just to make the game a little more … Baladi.”

  “Such as?” said Oliver.

  “Well, for a start,” said Zee, “instead of a ball we use a dead, bloated goat.”

  he sport of buzkashi has actually mellowed over the centuries. In the old days, the players on the losing team used to be executed, and even the winners weren't exactly pampered. The modern version, if you could call it that, was all in good fun.

  There was usually no killing at all…. except, of course, for the goat.

  Oliver and Zee wiggled their way through the crowd until they were standing in the front row, on the edge of a scrubby playing field. There was a dirty green flag stuck into the ground at either end, and at the far sideline, about thirty horsemen were pressed together in a tight pack.

  “Excuse me. Did you say ‘dead goat’?” Oliver asked, tugging at Zee's shirtsleeve.

  “Yeah, that's what makes the game so great,” said Zee. “To score a goal, a player has to grab the goat carcass and ride all the way across the field while the other team does whatever it can to make him drop it. Once the player with the goat gets to the other side, he has to ride in a circle around the flagpole and then drop the goat in the circular goal area for his team to get credit for a point.”

  Zee stood on his tiptoes and scanned the crowd.

  “How in the world are we going to find Halabala?” he said.

  “Why don't you just play baseball?” Oliver asked. “Or some other game that doesn't involve a dead animal?”

  Zee stared at Oliver through his shades.

  “Isn't a baseball made out of cowhide?” he asked. Oliver had never really thought about it, but he believed it probably was.

  “Well, in Balabad we just don't bother to get rid of the rest of the animal,” said Zee. “Now help me look. He's got to be here somewhere.”

  At that momen
t, a gray horse broke free of the pack and started to gallop straight across the field, kicking up a cloud of dust behind it. His turbanned rider was leaning so far over the side that it looked like he was going to fall off. T wenty- nine other horsemen followed hard on his heels, poking and prodding at him with their hands and kicking at him with their feet.

  A murmur of anticipation swept through the crowd as the horses drew nearer, and before long Oliver could feel the ground tremble beneath his feet.

  The lead rider held a black whip between his teeth and was clutching the horse's mane with his left hand. His right hand was gripping something large, dead, and floppy over the horse's side.

  “Oh … my… God!” Oliver said.

  “That's the goat,” whispered Zee.

  Okay, so Zee was right about buzkashi being more exciting than baseball. Oliver would have readily admitted that, but at the moment he was far more concerned by the fact that a stampede of horses was about twenty- five yards in front of him. They were closing fast, the veins on their necks bulging and their teeth clenched in wild exertion.

  Hoorah!!!!

  As the fans on either side of Oliver roared with excitement, it occurred to him that there was nothing at all standing between him and the pack of frothing animals.

  No railing. No stands. No nothing.

  They were coming right for him. Oliver reached for Zee, but his friend had gone to look for Halabala. He tried to move out of the way, but he was too scared to lift his feet.

  Just another few seconds and twenty tons of horse and man would thunder over him. Oliver's eyes widened. This was it. He was absolutely sure of it. Oliver held his hands up to cover his face and let out a stifled scream.

  At the last second, the lead horse reared up with a terrifying whinny. Its rider skillfully flicked the reins with his free hand, keeping a grip on the goat at the same time, and the horse shot off down the field toward the flagpole.