Bestiary Read Free

soldiers, and Hasan, to follow him. The soldiers looked puzzled for a moment and glanced longingly at the palace, as if to say, “Aren’t we busting in there?” and Greer understood their impulse. God knew what stuff might still be lying around inside, especially if Hasan was right, and the locals were too scared to set foot in there—but that wasn’t what he’d come to do. He’d come to find, and retrieve, one thing, and once he had that, he was out of here.
     
     
    It was a long walk around the side of the palace, but fortunately there was a sort of colonnade that provided some shade from the rays of the late afternoon sun. The heat was still nearly unbearable and, apparently, it had been too much for a couple of birds, whose bodies lay sprawled in the dust, their tail feathers spread like fans around them.
     
     
    “Peacocks,” Hasan said. “It was the al-Kallis’ favorite.”
     
     
    But these looked like they’d been picked clean with a knife and fork. All that was left were brittle bones and a spray of flattened feathers, a faint vestige of their purple and blue iridescence glinting in the sun.
     
     
    Greer motioned for the men to keep moving, his eyes swiveling from one side of the grounds to the other. They passed several smaller buildings—in one they could see the dust-choked grillwork of a Rolls-Royce, in another what looked like horse stalls—before coming to a short bridge spanning what was now a stagnant stream of green water. Greer tested the wood, pressing down with his boot, but it seemed solid. They crossed over, and into another vast courtyard, surrounded on all sides by towering palm trees. Underfoot, there was a length of fine meshed chain; Greer bent down to lift it up, but realized then that it was under both his feet—and under the feet of all his men, too. The chain was everywhere.
     
     
    “What do you think they were trying to catch in this net?” he wondered out loud.
     
     
    Nobody answered.
     
     
    Greer look at Hasan, who lifted his cuffed hands to point toward the top of one of the trees. “You see the hook?”
     
     
    Greer turned to see, and damned if Hasan wasn’t right—way up toward the top, there was a large iron hook driven into the trunk of the tree.
     
     
    “They all have such hooks,” Hasan said.
     
     
    “I still don’t get it,” Donlan said.
     
     
    “The net was not used to catch anything,” Hasan explained. “It was tied to those hooks and used to keep something in.”
     
     
    “Oh, you mean the birds? The peacocks?”
     
     
    Hasan shrugged. If that’s what they chose to think . . .
     
     
    “What are we looking for, anyway, sir?” Donlan asked. “It’s going to be dark soon.”
     
     
    Greer was studying the map; they were close. Straight ahead, there was a row of what had looked like little boxes on the map, but which he could now see were, in reality, cages, with loose straw thrown around their wooden floors. Some of the cages were small enough to hold a pair of rabbits; some were big enough for a couple of rhinos. All were enclosed at the top, too—and most of them were oddly dented, as if the creatures inside them had been banging their heads against the iron bars. On the last one in the row, the gates had been bent forward so far that they hung open on the twisted hinges.
     
     
    “What’d they do—keep a zoo?” Donlan said.
     
     
    There was the smell of a zoo, too, in the air. Although no animals were to be seen, the fetid scent of manure, rotting hay, and mangy fur still lingered. Behind a row of eucalyptus trees, and nearly concealed by dead vines and wilted flowers, Greer saw what he’d been looking for—the structure that was highlighted on the map with a yellow pen. It looked like an oversized mausoleum, made of the same yellow stone as the palace.
     
     
    “Follow me,” he said, striding up its steps and stopping at a pair of massive wooden doors, studded with iron bolts; with his gun still drawn, he