He took two pills from a vial and washed them down. “Methamphetamine,” he explained. “Unfortunately, I need it to keep me going. I haven’t slept since I arrived in this country. Don’t worry. I tell you only so that if I start seeing dragons in the road, you’ll understand.”

In the glow from the dash, his face was both haggard and surprisingly youthful. Amira thought that she had never seen him so handsome, not even that afternoon at the cafe in Paris.

“How did you do all this?” she finally asked.

“Money. Old favors. Old friends. I’m using up all three at an amazing pace.” “And why? Why are you doing it?”

“You know why.” “Yes. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. Do you have your passport?” “Yes.”

“We’ll lose it somewhere before the border. Open that compartment.” There were two French passports, one for her, one for Karim. Philippe turned on the map light for her.

“So I’m femme Rochon, and this is little Karim Philippe Rochon.”

“At least until we’re in Turkey, at a place called Agri. Then you’ll be someone else.” “These look real.”

“Done by the best forger in France, which is saying something. One rea- son he’s the best is that only a select clientele know he’s the best.” “How did you know?”

“One of those old favors. Or two.”

“Is it safe to use your name? Won’t they be looking for us?”

“As I said, they won’t be looking for anyone until morning, and maybe not for several hours after that. The SAVAK is a complication, though. It’s best that we reach the border early.”

There were a hundred questions to ask. Amira let them all evaporate. She should have been exhausted, but instead a deep and almost radiant elation filled her. She had her child, and beside her the man who was the love of her soul, running with her in the desert night through one foreign land toward another, from known danger to danger unknown.

Free.

The word came to her as if whispered by a secret voice. Never in her life had she applied it to herself.

Free.

It was like honey, the first taste demanding the next.

A low haze of road dust dimmed the taillights ahead, but the stars burned bright and endless above.

‘‘Whatever happens,” Amira told Philippe and the universe, “it was worth it.”

O

Dawn caught them at Maku, a town huddled in a valley hardly wider than the road, under a huge overhanging cliff. They had been delayed at a bridge—not much more than a culvert, really—that a swollen mountain stream had torn away.

Philippe parked the Land Rover behind a truck.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes. What would you like to eat?” “Anything.”

“And Karim?”

“I’ll feed him while you’re gone.”