Bestiary

CHAPTER SIX

The car, a Mercedes-Benz limousine, looked like any other of its kind — long and black, gleaming and powerful. But this one had a secret: It was built to withstand almost any attack. Its entire chassis — posts, columns, door frames, roof — had been buttressed with high-hardened steel, reinforced fiberglass, and ballistic nylon; under the burgundy-carpeted floor lay a bomb-suppressor blanket. The tires were equipped with “run flat inserts”; the front and rear compartments housed satellite global phones, klaxons, and loudspeakers (to call for help, or to negotiate with terrorists if necessary); the windows had been transparently armored with a layer of dense ballistic glass, laminated to a sturdy inner spall shield of resilient polycarbonate. Overall, the car maintained a B-7 armor level, enough to survive even a concerted assault.

Mohammed al-Kalli always wanted only the best — especially after what had happened to his family in Iraq.

Even Saddam Hussein had thought twice about taking on the al-Kalli dynasty. Not only because of their inestimable wealth and influence, but also for a reason less rational, less plain. Saddam, like all Iraqis, had grown up hearing the stories, listening to the legends of the al-Kallis’ strange powers and even stranger possessions. As a youngster, he had listened no doubt to the warnings about what happened to bad children (the al-Kallis got them!), and to the tales of what befell anyone who crossed the family in any way. There were rumors of dungeons and torture chambers, of terrible rituals, deadly sacrifice, and, finally… of creatures beyond imagining.

For years, Saddam had bided his time, and he had even done a bit of business with the al-Kallis now and then. But eventually his avarice and his ego had gotten the better of him. Whether it was at Saddam’s express order or not, al-Kalli never knew. It could have been a lower-level functionary who sought to curry favor by perpetrating what his leader had only wished. But either way, a plan was put into action. A celebration was to be held at one of Saddam’s many palaces, and the al-Kallis were all invited. Mohammed had no desire to go, nor did his wife, his brothers, his children, but the invitation was more of an order than a request. So, in the interest of keeping the peace and observing the political realities, Mohammed had acceded.

The celebration was in honor of some trumped-up event in the grand and mythical history of Saddam’s family — as Mohammed recalled it, Saddam had traced his lineage back to Nebuchadnezzar, or maybe it was the Prophet himself — and the al-Kallis had dutifully come from their own various palaces and compounds. The event was expectedly lavish, sprawling over a dozen acres, with more than a thousand guests. There was a Western orchestra playing Beethoven and Wagner under one immense, air-conditioned tent, while in another Middle Eastern music, and a bevy of belly dancers (reputedly handpicked by Saddam’s son Uday) held sway.

At first, all went well. Mohammed, who’d been suffering from a stomach flu, had simply sipped club sodas, while his family, assembled on a special dais reserved for honored guests, had dined. But even then, something had struck Mohammed — the waiters who were serving at their table were not very efficient. They did not seem used to this kind of work; in fact, they looked more like soldiers. But then, he thought, perhaps all of Saddam’s staff looked like this.

It was only when his wife began to look pale, and dropped her soup spoon on the table, that Mohammed began to grasp what was happening. His younger brother had also stopped eating. His daughter suddenly gasped and groped for her water glass. The waiters stood, with napkins badly folded over their arms, around the rim of the tent. Mohammed stood up, took his son, Mehdi, who was sitting next to him, by the hand; fortunately, Mehdi never ate soup. One of the waiters stepped into his path, but when Mohammed said, “My son must use the bathroom,” the man stood aside. Mohammed saw him flash a look at one of his superiors, undoubtedly wondering what to do, but Mohammed was able to walk slowly, as if he had not a care in the world, out of the tent.

Once outside, he lifted his son, then just a child, into his arms and raced for the limousine that had brought them. The driver was smoking a cigarette and lounging in the shade, but when he saw them, he instinctively knew what to do. He leapt into the car, started the engine, and drove right over a potted palm to get onto the driveway again with the car pointed toward the main gates. Several people had to jump out of the way. The car jolted to a stop and al-Kalli and his son threw themselves into the backseat. They slammed the door, and the car hurtled off in a cloud of dust.

But by the time they had reached the main gates, the sentries had been notified, and as guests screamed and ducked for cover, the soldiers opened fire on the racing car. Mohammed ducked down, covering his son’s head with his hands, as the windows exploded; slivers of glass shot through the car. Bullets thudded, with the sound of hammer blows, into the doors. The driver swerved, keeping his head down, and the car drove straight into one of the sentries, who was thrown over the hood, his automatic weapon still firing in the air.

Once the car was beyond the gates, the driver sat back up — his hair was standing on end, Mohammed remembered — and asked what he should do. Mohammed told him to drive back to their own palace as fast as possible.

“What about… the others?” he asked.

But Mohammed knew there was nothing that could be done to save them. Whatever poison Saddam had administered would no doubt be lethal… and even if it wasn’t, what other recourse was there? To take them to a hospital in Mosul or Baghdad? They would never survive the trip, or the tender ministrations of the doctors there, who would assuredly be under their own orders from Saddam.

Mohammed got on the cell phone and instructed his staff to implement the plan that he had long held in reserve. The walls of the compound were fortified by his own militia, his helicopter was readied for immediate takeoff, and his most prized possessions — what was left of them — were loaded onto the waiting cargo trucks, to begin their own long journey out of Iraq. There was no time right now even to mourn. For that, he knew, he would have a lifetime…

His revenge, too, he knew would have to wait.

As the Mercedes now drove under the arched gateway into Bel-Air, Mohammed stared out the bulletproof window at the elaborate facades of the great houses they passed, the filigreed ironwork fences, the manicured hedges and expensive landscaping. (The drought warnings had not left Bel-Air any less green.) Up and up they went, on silent winding streets, with fewer and fewer cars — and then almost none — as they rose toward the top of the hills. Now there were no houses visible at all; just closed gates, occasionally with a guard in a lighted kiosk reading a magazine or listening to a radio. The road became darker and more silent the higher they went, until at the top of the crest it stopped altogether, at a lighted stone guardhouse; in addition to the sentry on duty there, a small sign, newly planted on the lawn, announced that any intrusion would bring an instant, armed response from the Silver Bear Security Service.

The gates swung open as the limousine drove through, up a long and winding drive, past an elaborate fountain modeled on the Trevi in Rome, under a canopy of towering elms, and into a porte cochere. Mehdi, who’d been dozing in the car, woke up.

“Go to bed,” his father said.

“Why? It’s not even nine o’clock.”

“You’re tired.”

“What are you going to do?”

“That’s none of your business.”

Mehdi smirked. “Don’t think I don’t know.”

“Go to bed.”

Jakob was holding open the rear door, and Mohammed got out. “You can put the car away; we’re in for the night.” And then, before turning away, he said, “Check on our guest, too.”

Jakob nodded.

It was a warm night, with a dry wind blowing. One of the peacocks, who roamed the grounds at will, cawed loudly. Al-Kalli took a flagstone pathway, carpeted with soft purple jacaranda blossoms, toward the rear of the estate. It was the largest single property in Bel-Air, twenty-five acres on a hilltop — and he had expanded it by another dozen acres or so by buying up the adjacent properties (for far more than even they were worth) and leveling the houses.

His own house — a massive affair of gray stone and timber, referred to by the real estate broker as the Castle — had originally been built by a silent film star, who’d used it, by all accounts, for wild orgies and bacchanals. When he had died in the middle of one — found floating in the pool, in fact, naked except for a dog leash around his neck — it had been purchased by an oil tycoon, who’d added on to the house even more. That’s when the ten-thousand-bottle wine cellar, the gazebo, and the stables had been built. Even now, one of the horses had his head hanging out the stable door, sniffing the night air.

Beyond the stables, past the wooden footbridge, lay the single greatest addition al-Kalli had made to the property — a vast riding ring and equestrian facility that had required him to get a dozen different permits from the zoning commission to erect. From a distance, it looked like a rusticated airplane hangar, with whitewashed board walls and a massive sloping roof, but up close it began to give a different impression. The windows were triple-paned and thermal-sealed; the barn doors weren’t wood at all, but galvanized steel with more locks than a bank vault and several security cameras mounted just above them, surveying the scene in all directions.

The doors magically unlocked as al-Kalli approached — he could hear the thunking sound they made, followed by the whir of the blowers — and as he entered, his black suit billowed briefly around him. Then the doors swung shut again, his suit subsided, and he was in the midst of his kingdom.

Or what he had been able to salvage of it.

At this hour, it was mostly quiet, except for the rustling of the bird. For him, an aerie had been constructed, high above what passed for the dirt-floored riding ring. All along the far wall, behind a shoulder-high, white tile barrier with iron bars that rose, improbably, another fifteen feet in the air, al-Kalli could hear, and smell, his creatures. There was the occasional yelp or howl as he passed by — they could sense he was there — but he had no desire to stop and observe them tonight. Tonight he had more urgent business, with the man — Rashid — who was waiting nervously, in a soiled white lab coat, at the far end of the facility.

“Is it no better?” al-Kalli asked.

Rashid swallowed hard. “No, sir, I cannot say so.”

Al-Kalli came to the farthest cage — a large pen easily a thousand feet square. The floor was dirt that looked as if it had been heavily raked, or pawed by something with powerful claws. A couple of small trees and bushes had been planted inside, around the lip of a private wading pool. Some bleached bones, snapped in half like twigs, lay on the ground. Although the air in the facility was changed constantly, there was still the unmistakable odor of a great beast here. An elephant, or a buffalo.

Al-Kalli looked through the bars. At first, it was difficult to see the creature. A kind of cave had been built in the back, from the same gray limestone that had once been used to build the main house. In the deepest recess of the cave, looking at first like nothing more than an immense black shadow, lay al-Kalli’s most treasured possession — more valuable even than the book he was going to entrust to that young woman at the Getty.

“Did he take the medicine?”

“No, you can see for yourself, sir.” Rashid pointed to an enormous joint of bloody meat that lay to one side of the cave entrance. “The medicine is inside it.”

Al-Kalli had no great faith in it, anyway, or, increasingly, in Rashid. Rashid’s forebears had, for time immemorial, tended to this bestiary; it was a job that was passed down, from one generation to the next, for as long as the al-Kalli family, too, had existed. And to that, there was no clear answer — the dynasty had gone on forever. It had fought the Crusaders, it had reveled in the gardens of Babylon, it had roamed in battle dress through the fertile crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. For all al-Kalli knew, it had plucked the fruit from the trees in the Garden of Eden.

And Rashid’s ancestors had been its most loyal and faithful retainers for all that time. To them alone had been confided the secrets of the bestiary; to their care, the animals had been entrusted. Rashid’s father had shared with him the ancient wisdom that his own father had shared with him, and his father before that. And the al-Kallis had then sent Rashid to a veterinary college in Cairo, to augment his knowledge with all the modern methods of animal care and husbandry.

But all of this, now, was proving to be of no avail. This beast, the last of its kind, was ailing. And Mohammed, to whom the legacy had been passed down, felt as if he were failing a thousand previous generations. He felt that the torch, which had burned so bright forever, was going to be extinguished on his watch. And with it, quite possibly, the power and wealth of the al-Kallis. Legend had always had it that the power of the family was inextricably tied to its strange inheritance. And though al-Kalli himself had been brought up in a secular world, schooled in England at Harrow and Sandhurst, he could no more shake this superstitious dread than a lapsed Catholic, at the moment of his death, could refuse absolution.

What was bred in the bone could never be taken from it.

“Has he eaten anything?” he asked Rashid.

“Not for days.”

“Get a goat.”

Rashid nodded his head and left. Al-Kalli brooded. What could be done? He could no more bring in an outside vet than he could have called a doctor in Iraq to care for his poisoned family. Once word of this got out, he would never be able to retain control. Once word got out, he would be found in violation of a hundred different codes, from the unauthorized importation of animals to the manifold lies on his immigration documents. His papers would be revoked; he and his son would be deported. And the bestiary? The bestiary, in the name of science, would be stolen.

The creatures would be dispersed, to God knew where, and the al-Kallis, too, would fade into history.

He could not let any of this happen.

Rashid returned, dragging a mottled gray goat by the horns.

Al-Kalli pressed the stainless steel release button, and the first of two gates slid open. Rashid dragged the goat into the small enclosure, left it there, and then scurried out again. Al-Kalli pressed the button one more time, the second gate slid back, and the goat was now left defenseless in the large pen.

Even if it hadn’t seen anything yet, the goat could tell that it was in grave danger. It raised its head, scenting the air anxiously, and kept its hindquarters backed up against the gate. The goat pawed the dirt, lowered its head, sniffed at the soil. In the gloom of the cave, al-Kalli could see the beast stir. The goat, perhaps catching something on the breeze, suddenly defecated in fear. The beast lifted its monstrous head. The goat bleated, and first pranced to the left, then the right. Then stood stock-still. Al-Kalli was looking straight into the beast’s eyes. They were a deep, smoldering yellow, overhung by a low crocodile-like brow.

“Eat,” al-Kalli urged him in a low voice.

The goat bleated again, and looked all around for any means of escape.

“Eat.”

The creature raised itself on its stubby front legs, but instead of lumbering out of its lair, it chose instead to turn — its haunches displayed the glistening scales of a reptile, tufted here and there with fur — and move farther into the shadows. Al-Kalli could hear it settling itself, out of sight, in the black recess of the cave.

It was not going to feed.

“You see,” Rashid said, timidly. “It is like it no longer wants to live.”

“It has to,” al-Kalli said, more to himself than Rashid. “It has to.”