“All these people are leaving the city to go stay with relatives,” Naurouz said. “There is never any traffic on this road in the middle of the night. They’re afraid. There are often secondary quakes, some that are just as strong as the first. Out where my parents are, there are no tall buildings to fall down on your head. In town, pieces of the buildings that have been shaken loose by the first quake fall down in the street during the secondary quake, even when the tremors are weaker.”
“I’m glad we’re leaving town,” Steve said. “Where are we meeting Leila?”
“At a caravanserai. We’re almost there.”
Kella leaned forward and said, “You mean we would have had to walk all this distance in a tunnel?”
“Until we were past the road blocks.”
She suddenly felt guilty for being thankful for the earthquake.
The ambulance swung off the road on a sandy track. The headlights revealed a plateau punctuated by small bushes hanging tightly to the dry ground. Ten minutes later, the dark outline of a structure with a thick round tower on each end appeared. As they got closer, a large gate was visible. Naurouz said, “This is the only circular caravanserai in the country. It took three years to renovate it back to what it was five hundred years ago.”
“No bathrooms?” asked Kella.
“Communal bathrooms,” Naurouz grinned.
They parked and could see another tower at the end of the side wall.
Pointing at the five other cars, including Leila’s, Naurouz said, “There are usually only tourists here. The earthquake is forcing people to get out of Yazd.”
Walking through the gate, Kella could well imagine camels and their heavy loads having come through the same portal during the Silk Road days. Had Marco Polo traveled here in the thirteenth century, bringing back spices and stories of the Kublai Khan court that excited Europe to learn more?
Inside they could hear raised voices coming from beyond the small lobby. “That’s Leila’s voice,” Naurouz said moving quickly in that direction,
Steve and Kella followed him into an octagonal common room with colorful rugs on the floor and pillowed banquettes lining the white brick walls. Green jars sat on the recessed shelves created by two bricked-in and arched alcoves, one on each side of a large fireplace. A long, narrow red rug separated two rows of foot-high wooden platforms closed off by patterned copper-colored curtains.
The only people in the room were Leila, sitting behind a low round chiseled copper tray table supporting a tea pot and her cup, and two men in their twenties, black-haired and bearded, with bad teeth, standing on each side of her.
They looked at the newcomers and Leila exclaimed, “Naurouz!” She stood and brushed by one of the two men to give her brother a quick hug.
In a few words, she told him that the two men were insisting that she go to their room with them. In self-defense, one of the men said, “We know what kind of women travel alone.”
Naurouz stepped toward them and, grumbling, they backed off to a table the other side of the room.
Leila returned to sit behind her tea tray as Steve, Kella, and Naurouz settled themselves around her. In low voices, they discussed their plans in English. Naurouz was telling Leila that she should go home and that he would go on with the ambulance when Steve nudged him and glanced toward the two men on the other side of the room.
They were clearly agitated, speaking quickly in whispers and glancing surreptitiously at Steve. He had been waiting for this moment, anticipating and fearing discovery and the incentive of the reward offered for his capture.
“Naurouz, we better move,” he said.
The two men rose and walked out toward the lobby.
“They’re going to call the police,” Steve said, and quickly followed them, with Naurouz close behind.
The two men were not in the lobby, and Steve went outside looking toward the parked cars. Running in that direction, he saw them in an old, dented white Fiat. He could see that the one in the driver’s seat held something in his hand. Now sprinting to the car, he wrenched open the door.
For a split second, Steve and the driver stared at each other. Obviously, the driver had not seen Steve racing toward them. The cell phone Steve had assumed was in the driver’s hand was now exposed as a gun.
At that moment, Naurouz opened the passenger door, pulled the second man out of the car and held him face down on the sand of the parking lot. He picked up a cell phone that the man had dropped.
On his side, Steve grasped the semiautomatic gun with both hands. One hand gripped the trigger guard, the handle, and the owner’s hand while the other held the slide pushed back to keep the gun from firing. He twisted and pulled down violently, which gave him ownership of the gun.
Stepping back and pointing it at the driver, Steve said, “Naurouz, let’s tie them up. Use his belt.” Steve gestured for the driver to get out, took the keys out of the ignition, and forced his prisoner to lie face down where he tied his hands.
When the passenger started shouting, Naurouz bent down, picked up a handful of sand and filled the passenger’s mouth with it, effectively silencing him. “We can’t leave them here.” Steve said, “We’ll have to take them with us and leave them where they can’t alert the police.” They brought the two men to the ambulance where, with the help of surgical tape, Steve and Naurouz improved on their initial efforts to keep their prisoners from creating problems.
Steve was looking at the cell phone Naurouz had picked up from the sandy parking lot. Before they started moving, he asked,
