Irene at Large

Chapter One WHEN TWO STRONG MEN... Near Sangbur, Afghanistan:July 25, 1880 In the very lap of Asia lies a land so fierce and desolateif not undefendedthat were the demons of every faith to collaborate in creating a Hell that would prostrate Christian, Hebrew and Moslem alike in united terror, its name would remain...Afghanistan. Stretching horizontally across the neck of the Indian subcontinent like a hangman's noose, Afghanistan bridges Persia on the west and Tibet and China on the east; British India on the south; and to the norththe great outstretched Russian bearclaw. Searing in summer and frigid in winter, this unholy landscape huddles behind the scimitar curves of two great mountain rangesthe Himalayas and Karakorum on the east, and on the west the six hundred ridged miles of the Hindu Kush. Wherever men of adventure and a martial bent gather, the Hindu Kush is spoken of in awed tones. To the timid home-bound soul, it is enough to say that the phrase translates as "dead Hindu." No wonder is it that neither India nor Russia has extended its borders to meet across this dread wasteland. Nor is it any wonder that in the closing decades of the nineteenth century the two great nations of Russia and Britain should nervously dart closer to armed conflict there, like two dogs fighting over the same hideous bone. Possession and advantageous position are the only prizes of what has been called the Great Game between two strong empires. The bone itself is worthless, and bitter gnawing at that. This is Tartary, ancient road of merchants and conquerors, the no-man's-land separating the northern frontiers of IndiaKashmir and the Kushand the southern fringes of RussiaTashkent and fabled Samarkand. A lonely wasteland to the unobservant eye, the arid vastness of Afghanistan supports dozens of warring tribes, united only in their devotion to freedom from foreign meddling and their willingness to wreak havoc on interlopers. The traveler, and woe to anyone foolish enough to go solitary into these bleak acres, is never as alone as he may thinkor as he may be allowed to think, for a time. Thus, should a wheeling vulture spy a human form cast lengthwise in a notch atop a bleak ridge, he will not swoop closer to investigate unless he is especially hungry. Such culinary booty is common after the bandits have made their usual forays. Every abandoned traveler is assured of a final, grisly welcome somewhere. But the lone man visible only to the airborne vulture on this particular summer's day was not lost, or mad, or abandoned. He was present for a purpose, and so was the telescopic spyglass pressed to one eye, its brass carefully darkened so no unnatural twinkle should alert any lurking marauders. Even a spyglass could barely penetrate the jagged profiles of distance-blued mountain ranges and the tiny camel caravan trickling down a steep incline like a broken string of amber beads. Both men and the tough, two-humped beasts native to these forbidding steppes seemed cloaked in the sere shades of the desolate region, hardly more animate than the darker patches of thornbushes and other scrubby vegetation that punctuate the frozen waves of sand and rock. The caravan was too immeasurably distant to alarm the watcher, but he rolled over suddenly, aware of the vulture's scant shadow, and turned a dark face to the blazing blue sky. Summer spread its searing, fawn-colored tent over Afghanistan and the heat was horrific, even under the billowing shade of a burnoose. In an instant, the man collapsed his instrument and tucked it into the leather kit bag belted at his waist beneath the flowing robes. From the bag he pulled something that glinted in the hollow of his hand, a pocket watch, which heDouglas, Carole Nelson is the author of 'Irene at Large' with ISBN 9780812517026 and ISBN 0812517024.