“The animals in my care exist nowhere else. They have not existed for eons, if you believe the standard wisdom.” He snorted. “If you believe the standard wisdom, most of them have never existed at all.”
Carter began, for the first time, to question al-Kalli’s sanity, and his own safety. Was he taking a moonlight stroll, with two hired thugs in a golf cart not far off, in the company of a lunatic billionaire?
Even if al-Kalli sensed his doubts, he went on as if he knew they would eventually be silenced. The animals had been carefully tended to, and bred, in the desert palaces his family owned not only in present-day Iraq, but in other remote regions of the Middle East—“most notably the Empty Quarter, as it is known, of the Sahara Desert.” But with all the geopolitical changes in the region, “and of course the rise of Saddam Hussein, the situation gradually became untenable.” The al-Kalli family had forged an unholy truce with the dictator that had held for many years, but in the end, Saddam’s greed and lust for ultimate and unchallenged power had led to its unraveling. Without providing much in the way of detail, al-Kalli alluded to a catastrophe inflicted on his family, and a sudden, costly exodus. “What I was able to save of the bestiary, I saved. But you will soon see for yourself.”
“Why?” Carter asked. “Why me?”
“Because who else on earth could understand, could appreciate, such a miracle?”
Carter was flattered, but still unsure what to make of any of this.
“But first,” Al-Kalli said, “I know I have to convince you that I’m not mad.”
Carter saw no point in protesting.
“I know what you’re thinking, and I would think so, too.” He dropped the cigarette butt on the gravel and ground it underfoot. “So, shall I prove my case?”
Carter glanced over at Jakob and Captain Greer, who were conferring in front of the doors to the hangar — or zoo, Carter suddenly thought — and considered his options. He could refuse, but what kind of a position would that leave him in? Al-Kalli would consider his own position already compromised, and might now regard Carter as a potential threat. And it certainly wouldn’t help out Beth, whose access to
Al-Kalli waited, and in the distance Carter could hear the screeching cry of one of the peacocks. Maybe that was it — maybe al-Kalli thought peacocks were phoenixes. Maybe he had a crocodile in his zoo and thought it was a sphinx. Maybe he had a snow white horse and called it a unicorn. Maybe all of this was some long-inculcated family delusion, and all Carter would have to do, once he’d passed through those sealed doors, was feign astonishment and swear a bond of eternal secrecy. How hard could that be?
And, if he were perfectly honest with himself, it would satisfy his own gnawing desire to know the truth. It was like some fairy tale now. What
“Okay, you’re on,” Carter said with a lightheartedness he did not feel.
Al-Kalli nodded in the direction of Jakob and Greer, and as he walked Carter toward the facility, the doors swung smoothly open, just as if someone had indeed muttered “Open, Sesame.”
As Carter passed inside, powerful blowers overhead made his clothes flutter around his body; his hair felt like a thousand fingers were mussing it all at once. The air being expelled had the strong odor of musk and fur and dung on it. And the moment they were all inside, the doors swung shut again.
Jakob and Greer stood off to one side, as Carter took it all in. Al-Kalli, right behind him, whispered, “Not a word — even to your wife — of what you see here tonight.”
Right now, Carter was just taking in the sheer size and scope of the place. The ceiling had to be a hundred feet high, and hanging just below it was a straw-covered aerie on a heavy chain. It was shaped like a huge shallow bowl, and it was swaying now, as if something had just launched itself from the perch. Carter scanned the roofline and though he saw nothing, he heard the grating cry of a swooping bird. He whirled around, just in time to see a red and gold blur, with a wingspan twice as great as a condor’s, soaring over his head.
It was like no other bird he had ever seen — and al-Kalli could tell as much, from nothing more than the stunned look on Carter’s face.
“There’s more,” he said confidingly.
Carter was still gazing up as al-Kalli guided him toward the western wall. Carter glanced at the two guards. Jakob appeared alert but unperturbed. Captain Greer, on the other hand, looked even jumpier than ever. Hadn’t he told Carter that he’d only been working for al-Kalli for twenty-eight hours? If that was true, then all of this was nearly as new and shocking to him as it was to Carter.
All along this side of the building there was a shoulder-high concrete wall, painted white and surmounted by iron bars that rose at least another ten or twelve feet into the air. From behind the wall Carter could hear strange snuffling sounds, barks and grunts, and the occasional roar. He approached it cautiously, wondering what on earth could lie behind it. The first pen — there were several, each about a hundred feet apart — had a narrow chain-mesh gate, and then another gate, about a yard inside, so that together they formed a little sealed compartment; an extra security measure, Carter surmised, to allow someone to enter the pen — for feeding or observation purposes — without permitting whatever was imprisoned here any chance of a sudden escape.
But at first he saw nothing that could escape — only a wading pond, with fresh, clear water in it and several lily pads floating idly on its surface. The floor of the pen, rolling and uneven, was covered everywhere with a layer of broken rubble, pebbles and stones colored gray and green and rust. It looked like an immense mosaic, the pattern of which could only have been discerned by rising forty or fifty feet into the air and looking down. When Carter turned to ask al-Kalli where the inhabitants were, he saw that Jakob, his arm fully extended, was holding out to him a pair of plastic goggles. Al-Kalli himself was hanging well back.
Carter took the goggles.
“You might want to put them on,” al-Kalli said, “just in case.”
Carter did, though he could not, for the life of him, see why. He stepped back into the gated enclosure and looked again into the huge pen. Maybe a hundred yards in the rear, there was a shaded enclosure, but even there he could see nothing but shadows and gloom. What was he supposed to see? Was al-Kalli so deluded that he kept imaginary creatures in gigantic, empty cages?
But the bird, the bird he’d seen was real.
He studied the rock-strewn floor again, and this time he could see just one thing strange — a blurring above some of the stones. At first, thinking it was the goggles, he took them off, breathed on them, then wiped them clean with his handkerchief. They were a sturdy pair with a snug elastic strap, but when he put them back on, the blurring continued. In fact, he saw it now in another spot. Were there steam grates, or vents of some kind, under the rocks?
“It’s not the goggles,” he heard al-Kalli say.
And then, as if it were some optical illusion, the rocks themselves moved — but not randomly, as if they were being disturbed, but as if they were alive and integrated. He blinked several times, adjusted the goggles, but the rocks now were rising up, in not one but two separate places, and they were… standing. The fogging recurred. What was he looking at?
And what was looking back at him?
There were eyes behind the fog, sinister eyes that held steady under a thick, gray brow. There were two creatures, on all fours now, their entire bodies — perhaps six or even eight feet long — covered with spikes and stony protuberances, exactly like the rocks they’d been lying on. The noises they made, as they lumbered in his direction, were wet and hoarse and rasping. The one in the lead — like a gravel pit come to terrible life — raised its head, coughed, and, like a hail of bullets, the spittle splatted against the wall, clung to the bars of the gate, and dotted the lenses of the goggles. Carter fell back, wiping away the gray-green smear, in shock.
He could hear al-Kalli and Jakob chuckling.
“They used to be quite accurate,” al-Kalli said. “Like cobras, they aim for the eyes.”
Carter stumbled out of the gated enclosure and whipped the goggles off altogether. Some of the mucus was stuck to his cheek, where it stung like a bad sunburn. Jakob handed him a hand towel.
“What is it?” Carter said, wiping away the gunk from his face.
Al-Kalli said, “I’m sure you scientists would have your own name for it. But in my family, we have always called it the basilisk.”
The basilisk? Carter thought. That was a mythical creature — not the thing he had just seen walking toward him with slow, deliberate steps, the thing that even now was just a few yards away, behind a concrete wall.
