The Seven Keys of Balabad Read online

  Bahauddin smiled at the handsome young man standing before him. He had so much of his father in him. He placed his hand gently on Agarullah's shoulder.

  “You need not worry yourselves about me,” Bahauddin sighed. “My time has passed. I have accomplished all I wanted to accomplish in this world.”

  Tears welled up in Agarullah's eyes as he stared at the old man before him.

  “Come, come, Your Majesty,” said Bahauddin. “You must hurry. And anyway, the foreigners have not got their hands on me yet. Perhaps we will meet again on some happier day.”

  The prince nodded solemnly.

  “Remember,” said Bahauddin. “You must travel far, but you must never lose touch entirely. Each of you should know only the location of yourselves and your next younger brother. He in turn will know how to find the next in line. Agarullah, the eldest, will be responsible for keeping in touch with the king's forces. When you reach your destinations, send out a messenger so that the others knows you have made it. But be careful whom you pick.”

  Agarullah nodded.

  The system was simple but safe—it would allow the brothers to warn each other of danger or to regroup when the time was right—but make it nearly impossible for the keys to fall into the wrong hands.

  “You must always know where and how to find your brothers, until the day your father calls you back,” Bahauddin continued. “I hope that day will not be long. A year, maybe two. It is only a matter of time.”

  Agarullah pulled open a clasp on the chain and handed each of his brothers an iron key. One by one, the seven princes pulled the hoods of their robes over their heads. The heirs of Agamon held their hands together in a tight circle.

  “Long live Arachosia.”

  “Long live Arachosia,” the princes chanted in unison.

  “Long live the Brotherhood,” whispered Bahauddin Shah.

  ap on nearly any suntanned shoulder at Bondi Beach and ask the person attached to it about Amir “Buzz” Kagani and it's more than likely you'll be standing there for a while. Everybody who's anybody on Sydney's most famous beach could reel off a list of his exploits: winner of four straight Australian surfing championships, and the only man ever to perform a front-side air reverse and a lay-back snap in competition blindfolded. Basically, one gnarly dude.

  He was also the proud owner of Buzz's Boards, one of the top surf shops on Campbell Parade, the long strip of restaurants, stores, and tourist hangouts just over the road from the white- sand beach.

  But there was one thing that next to nobody on Bondi Beach knew about him, for Buzz Kagani was not just a great surfer. He also happened to be of royal blood, a direct descendant of an ancient Baladi king.

  The Kaganis had come to Australia in the 1860s to work on the camel train between Oodnadatta and Alice Springs, a four- hundred-mile stretch of desert so rugged that even the hearty Australians couldn't hack it by themselves. By the time cars and roads made the camel train obsolete, there was really no reason for the Kaganis to leave, and slowly, over the generations, they became less and less connected to their Baladi culture. A century and a half later, Buzz was about as Australian as they came.

  He had worked hard to keep fit when he was competing at the top levels. Even now, in his late thirties, he cut a fine figure when he walked along the beach, soaking up the sun and the adoration of those who remembered his glory days. It's not that Buzz wasn't proud of his Baladi heritage. It's just that it seemed so far off. So remote. A curiosity and nothing more.

  Buzz was getting caught up on inventory at his corner shop, trying to figure out which surfboards he would need to order more of before the tourists arrived for the high season in a few months’ time.

  Buzz glanced at his watch. It was two o'clock and he'd had only a handful of customers all day. He looked out the window. The sky was blue and the sun was shining bright overhead. That was one of the great things about Australia. Its winters were better than most countries’ summers.

  “Oh, why not?” Buzz thought. “I'll just duck out for an hour.”

  He trotted to the shop's small changing room, stripped down to his swimming trunks, and slipped on a wet suit.

  It was too cold to surf without one during the winter months. But for real pros like Buzz, this was the best time of year to catch some waves, perhaps the only time you could surf at Bondi Beach without crashing into some amateur out for the first time.

  Buzz grabbed his board from behind the counter and tucked it under his arm. He taped a sign on the front window that read BACK IN AN HOUR, MATE, stepped out into the cool afternoon air, and locked the glass door behind him.

  Five minutes later, he was paddling out into the heavy surf, as happy as Larry.

  At that same instant, two young men turned the corner of Lamrock Avenue onto Campbell Parade. One of them was tall and thin, with a long neck and a bulging Adam's apple. The other was slightly shorter, with a tuft of blond hair cut into a Mohawk. They were both dressed in jeans, untucked Hawaiian shirts, and sunglasses, and they each had suntan lotion smeared over their noses.

  Their walk was slow and confident, just two buddies out for a stroll. There was absolutely nothing about the men that would have distinguished them from the other beachgoers, except perhaps for the fact that neither of them had any sort of a tan at all. They were as pale as ghosts.

  The men stopped in front of Buzz's Boards for a moment and pressed themselves up against the front door, pretending to peer inside. It would have been nearly impossible for a passerby to notice the tiny glass cutter in the palm of the shorter man's hand.

  With the skill of a surgeon, he cut a small round circle in the glass, just big enough to put a fist in. Then he reached inside and unlocked the door.

  Some of the surfboards in Buzz Kagani's shop were worth thousands of dollars, but the men weren't at all interested in them. They broke open the cash register and emptied the money onto the floor. They tore down the posters that showed Buzz in competition. They smashed the lock on the filing cabinet and rifled through the folders inside. They sent the water cooler tumbling to the ground.

  “Nothing,” the shorter man grumbled.

  “It's got to be here somewhere,” said the other.

  The men turned their attention to a long white surfboard mounted high on the wall behind the front counter. Buzz had used the board to win the 1994 Australian Championships, his first victory in national competition, and it was extremely dear to him.

  The men ripped the board off the wall and threw it to the floor.

  Sure enough, there was a long rectangular crack on the back, filled in with white putty so that it nearly matched the color of the board.

  The shorter man used the metal handle of the glass cutter to bash out the hardened putty, revealing an opening that had clearly been made intentionally. He shook the board up and down. Something metallic rattled inside, and the man reached in to grab it.

  “Jackpot,” said the taller man with a smile.

  “Let's get out of here,” said the other, unzipping a black leather pouch he wore around his waist and slipping the key inside.

  liver's cell phone hummed to life at seven a.m, waking him from a terrible nightmare. In the dream, he was a soldier in King Agamon's army, but was betrayed and cornered in an alleyway as an invading army closed in, their weapons drawn. The strange thing about the dream was that it took place in Brooklyn, not Balabad, and the invaders were all pizza delivery boys.

  It was very disturbing, to say the least.

  Oliver was not what you would call a morning person, even after a good night's sleep. This morning, he felt like he'd been sat on by a hippopotamus. He rolled over and picked up the phone with a groan.

  “Uh-huh,” he croaked.

  “Something has happened,” whispered the voice on the other end of the line. “Something very bad.”

  It was Zee, and he sounded worried.

  “What?” Oliver asked.

  “Can you get over here quickly? I've sent someone to
pick you up.”

  Two minutes later, Oliver was pulling a blue T-shirt over his head. He snatched his Yankees cap off the top of the bureau, then rushed downstairs, grabbing his sneakers on the way.

  There wasn't even time to wake his parents and tell them where he was going, and Raheem wouldn't start work for another hour, so Oliver scribbled a hurried note and left it on the kitchen table.

  MOM AND DAD, GONE TO ZEE'S. BACK LATER! LOVE, OL

  Oliver ran out into the street just as the ul- Hazais’ silver Mercedes turned the corner. He climbed into the front seat, and was surprised to see the man behind the wheel wasn't Hassan. Instead, it was Sher Aga, the bearded old man who normally swept the ul- Hazais’ front porch and did other odd jobs around the house.

  He was about as far from smiling as a human being could be.

  “What's going on?” Oliver asked. “Where's Hassan?”

  Sher Aga glanced over at Oliver nervously.

  “Hassan is a very bad man,” he said, wagging his finger in the air. “Very, very, very bad.”

  Oliver waited for an explanation, but the old man didn't offer any. Instead, he turned to face the road, squinted his eyes, and hunched his white beard over the steering wheel, trying as hard as he could to concentrate on the act of driving.

  The moment the car pulled onto Zee's street, it was clear that something was very wrong. There were four young policemen standing outside the front gate in khaki uniforms that were all a size too big for them, and a serious-looking captain walking back and forth on the pavement, talking into a cell phone and scratching at a few days’ growth of stubble.

  Sher Aga honked the horn, the guards swung open the gate, and the car lurched into the driveway.

  Inside, the ul- Hazai compound was swarming with activity. Several men in brown shalwar kameez talked to each other intently in the garden. These must have been government officials, Oliver thought.

  As Sher Aga led Oliver out of the car, the officials stared over at them warily. The old man put his hands on Oliver's shoulders and spoke softly in Baladi. Oliver could make out Zee's name several times, and he thought he heard the Baladi word for “friend.” After a few minutes, the men were satisfied that it was all right for Oliver to pass. They nodded their heads sharply and gestured toward the open front door.

  When Oliver stepped inside, it was not immediately clear what all the commotion was about. The ul- Hazais’ house looked the same as it always did, with the same mix of wealth and decay, the same musty smell of a museum. The oil paintings of Zee's ancestors stared down from the walls as calmly as ever. Not a single chair appeared out of place.

  If not for the two armed guards standing on either side of the closed study door, and the tight, raised voice of Zee's mother, it could have been just another day.

  Oliver found Mrs. ul- Hazai pacing back and forth in the kitchen, one hand on her hip and the other clutching a cordless phone. She alternated between English and Baladi, so it was hard for Oliver to make out exactly what she was talking about, but she was definitely angry.

  “If they find that alyahuli, I swear to you, if I get my hands on him, they will need a jalamalim to hold me back,” she screamed. “I will tear him limb from limb.”

  Zee's father was considerably more subdued. He was sitting on an overstuffed sofa in the living room, talking to a large man with a black notebook, brown tinted glasses, and several oversized gold rings.

  “How could I be so stupid?” he moaned, grabbing his head in both hands. “How could I let this happen?”

  Oliver thought it was probably best under the circumstances not to say hello. Instead, he ran upstairs to look for Zee. He found him sitting on the edge of his bed, his eyes on the floor and his hand clutching the side of his neck. He had rubbed the skin raw from worry.

  “Are you okay?” Oliver asked, taking a seat next to him.

  “Not really,” Zee replied without looking up. “We were robbed last night.”

  “Robbed!” Oliver gasped. “But how in the world did they get in?”

  In addition to the tall iron gate that protected the ul-Hazais’ house, one of the family's staff usually kept watch on a wooden bed called a charpoy just outside the front door. There was no way somebody could have sneaked past him.

  “It was Hassan who let them in,” Zee mumbled, his voice soft but filled with anger. With his index finger, Zee gently twirled the thin links of his gold chain, which disappeared beneath his loose- fitting kameez. “After thirty years with my family, this is how he betrays us.”

  Oliver could hardly believe it. The roly-poly Hassan, who had brought them tea in the garden and driven them to the buzkashi match. A traitor!

  “Are you sure?” Oliver whispered.

  “It certainly looks that way,” said Zee, lowering his hand from his neck and raising his gaze to meet Oliver's. “He has disappeared. We've got people hunting all over town for him, but I doubt we'll ever see him again.”

  “That's terrible,” said Oliver. “Why would he do this?”

  “Some people will do anything for money, I guess,” said Zee.

  The ul- Hazais’ house was full of beautiful carpets, and Zee's mother always wore expensive jewelry. Mr. ul- Hazai had a collection of eighteenth- century swords and muskets that Oliver's mother said should have been in a museum.

  Suddenly, a terrible thought crossed Oliver's mind. He held Zee's shoulder and looked into his eyes.

  “Dude, they didn't take your PlayStation, did they?” he whispered.

  Zee shook his head.

  “What about the iPod?”

  “Nope,” said Zee. “In fact, they didn't take anything at all.”

  “Nothing?” said Oliver.

  “Nothing,” said Zee, leaning in and dropping his voice down low.

  Oliver was confused.

  “Why would somebody go through all the trouble of breaking into your house, then leave without stealing a single thing?” he asked.

  “Oliver, they weren't after the television or the Play Station or anything like that,” Zee said. “They were after something very specific, and I think I know what it was.”

  “What?” Oliver whispered.

  Zee glanced over Oliver's shoulder at the bedroom door. Then suddenly, he reached back and unclasped the chain around his neck, drawing it out slowly from under his shirt.

  “They were looking for this,” he said, holding the necklace out between them.

  Dangling from the chain was a long iron skeleton key, the likes of which Oliver had never seen before.

  “here in the world did you get that?” Oliver W v gasped.

  He took the key out of Zee's hand and turned it over in his own, staring at the narrow eyes of the twisting serpents etched into the bow.

  There was no mistaking the fact the key was old. Very, very old.

  Zee got up and closed his bedroom door, then returned to Oliver's side.

  “You remember I told you that I heard my father promising to guard something with his life?” he said. “Well, I'm pretty sure this is what he was talking about. This is what the thieves came to steal.”

  “Holy cow!” said Oliver. “But. … how did you end up with it?”

  “That's the part that's a little tricky,” said Zee, pulling at his collar nervously. “I guess you could say I stole it before it could be stolen.”

  “You stole this from your father?” said Oliver. He couldn't believe his ears. Zee would be grounded for a century if Mr. ul- Hazai ever found out, that was for certain.

  “I didn't mean to,” said Zee defensively. “It just sort of happened.”

  “Go on,” said Oliver.

  “What can I say? I'm a curious guy,” said Zee. “Ever since I heard my father talking about the Brotherhood, I've been trying to find out more. He goes into his study practically every night, and he talks on the phone to people.”

  “What people?” asked Oliver.

  “I don't know exactly,” Zee replied. “He always has the door shut,
and there's only so much you can see through the keyhole.”

  “You were spying on your dad?” Oliver whispered.

  “Not spying!” said Zee. “I was just looking out for him.”

  “Oh man, you are going to be in so much trouble,” Oliver said, laughing nervously. Zee ignored him.

  “The other night, I was passing by the study and the door was slightly open, so I peered through the crack,” said Zee. “My father was standing on a chair next to this really big bookshelf at the far end of the room. He had a round wooden box in his hand, and he was reaching up to put it on the very top shelf. I was scared he might see me, so I decided I'd come back later to find out what it was.

  “When my father and mother went out to dinner last night and after everyone else had gone to bed, I crept downstairs and sneaked into the study. I reached up onto the shelf and pulled the box out. Inside was this key. I brought the key over to my father's desk and held it under the light. I was just getting my first good look at it when I heard my parents’ car pulling up.”

  “What did you do?” said Oliver.

  “What could I do?” said Zee. “There was no time to put the key back. I just managed to switch off the lights and run upstairs before they came in. I lay in bed for ages trying to figure out how I would get the key back before my dad noticed, and I must have fallen asleep. The next thing I knew, it was the morning and there was lots of shouting, and you know the rest.”

  “So the thieves broke in after your parents came home?” asked Oliver.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said Zee. “They were very quiet so as not to wake anybody, but they turned my father's study completely upside down. They pulled all the books off the shelf and emptied the drawers from my father's desk onto the floor. They pulled up the carpets and turned the sofa upside down. They even took the pictures off the walls.

  “I'm absolutely convinced they were looking for this,” Zee continued, holding the key in the palm of his hand. “This must be what my father was promising to keep safe.”

  “Do you think the burglars in the other break- ins were also after keys like this?” asked Oliver.