“That’s not the point,” Skip said. “It’s not
his
power they’ll be paying court to. It’s his wife’s. You can bet she’ll be a lot more active once she holds the seat. She’ll be out to make an impression. Any way you look at it, she’s key. Swing vote on an important committee. Plenty of patronage. None of the big names will want to miss it.”
“Really? Even the White House?”
“Schedule permitting. Plus Cabinet secretaries, the Supremes. It’ll be an A-list event. Sort of a Fortune 400 of Washington, except with room for maybe only half that number. And as attending physician, you’ll no doubt be invited. So be prepared to arrive early and give me a full report.”
Skip laughed oleaginously and placed a hand on Abbas’s shoulder.
“Oh, I never have much use for such events,” Abbas said modestly.
“So I’ve heard. You’ve never been one to use your position like some of them.”
Aliyah could have sworn that Skip then nodded toward Drs. Harmon and Wilkins, who were chatting in other corners. Abbas, to his credit, didn’t nod back. But the conversation still bothered her for reasons she couldn’t put her finger on. At least Abbas wouldn’t be attending the funeral. She could imagine how tempted he might be to climb on his soapbox in such powerful company, lecturing on how they’d led the nation astray. Truth be told, she wouldn’t mind the opportunity, either. They could use an earful, all of them. But she could also imagine how that would go over with the Secret Service. An agent might place a hand on her husband’s arm, and then he would explode. Or maybe she was thinking back to the cop on Connecticut Avenue and projecting her own reaction. Another topic to raise next week with Annie Felton.
“Dear, are you all right?”
It was Abbas, standing by with her coat. Others were also preparing to leave. She didn’t know how much time had passed, just that she was the only one still sitting there at the end of the couch. Maybe she was the one with the problem, jumping to wild conclusions on the scantiest of evidence.
“Yes, I’m fine. Just a little tired.”
“Let’s get you home, then.” He leaned forward as she stood, and whispered into her ear, “Home, and into a nice warm bed.”
It was unmistakably an invitation, and she was pleasantly surprised to find that she was receptive. Their eyes met, and she smiled back warmly.
For the first time in months they made love that night, Abbas gentle and solicitous, the nimble compassion of his surgeon’s hands gradually giving way to urgency and more emphatic movement. So much for the supposed side effects of his antidepressants. It was the first time in more than a year that the act hadn’t seemed fraught with desperation. Perhaps the alcohol helped, but in any event she felt like they had crossed another threshold back toward normalcy.
Afterward, Abbas fell into slumber—a silent one, thank goodness—but Aliyah was wide awake. She lay there replaying the evening’s conversations in her head, with a nagging sense that a stray word or phrase had snagged on some troubling event from the past few days. But the connection lay just out of reach, as if hovering above the bed. She gave up and rolled onto her side, and she was about to drift off when the realization hit her. It was that morning in the Volvo on their way to work, when Abbas had muttered, “Sheer genius.” Something to do with a radio news report had triggered the remark, and it was now prodding her. All that her conscious mind could recall was a mention of Kandahar and a casualty total, but something more must have also registered.
The broadcast would be archived, she knew. Available online. She need only remember the date and approximate time. She slipped out of bed, put on her robe, and crept downstairs to the computer in their kitchen. The link for NPR’s archives was easy enough to find. The page for
Morning Edition
displayed a calendar for the current month, and she clicked on the correct day for the previous week. Then she turned down the volume to keep from waking Abbas and slid the bar across to about where the story should be in the broadcast, based on the approximate time.
A minute or so later it jumped out at her like a voice from a bad dream:
Twenty-three people were killed today in Afghanistan when a suicide bomber struck at a mosque in Kandahar. The blast occurred at the funeral for a prominent Muslim cleric who had been assassinated by pro-Taliban gunmen three days earlier. Authorities said several local leaders were in attendance and are believed to be among the casualties.
“Sheer genius.” That’s what Abbas had said of this horrible event. And she supposed that it was genius, in its twisted fashion. Kill someone prominent, then wait for his famous friends to gather at the funeral so you could kill them all. Aliyah flushed with horror, thinking of all Abbas’s questions about Senator Badgett’s funeral. She clicked off the rest of the broadcast before any further such “genius” came blaring from the speakers.
It all added up, yet she couldn’t quite accept the conclusion. Everything had come together so fast that it literally made her dizzy, and she placed a hand on the table to stop the spinning. The gin, perhaps. Bob mixed drinks so strong. For a moment she felt as if she might be sick, but she held on. Could Abbas really be planning something so diabolically awful?
She steadied herself and reconsidered. Then she took the mouse and clicked to a search engine. What church had Skip and Abbas been talking about? She couldn’t recall a specific name or denomination, so she tried typing in Senator Badgett’s name along with the words “church” and “Washington.”
The hits were all over the map, mostly having to do with the senator’s past comments on the issue of school prayer, so she tried again with just the senator’s name. That gave her his Web site, where she clicked on the link “About Senator Badgett.” His bio appeared. The last paragraph said he was Baptist but didn’t mention a particular church. She searched again, adding “Baptist church” to his name, and this time she got what she needed on the first hit, right there in the summary.
“The Badgetts are members of the United Baptist Church of God in Washington.”
She found a Web site for the church. Its address popped onto the screen with the power of an alarm: Cordell Street, in Southeast. The same block as the vacant storefront Abbas had just rented. It was the church across the alley. She gasped out loud.
It was too horrible for words, but now she had to know more. She walked through the family room to try the door of his study, but it was locked. Her heart beating urgently, she tiptoed back upstairs to the threshold of their bedroom, where she stood for a moment as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Then she got down on her hands and knees and crawled to where Abbas had left his trousers, tossed on the floor as they had undressed each other in their rare moment of passion. She slid her hand into a pocket and withdrew his keys with a small jingle. She clutched them tightly to keep them from ringing further while she rose slowly to her feet. Abbas hadn’t moved a muscle, and his breathing was regular.
Aliyah headed back downstairs, unlocked his study, then gently shut the door behind her. Barely able to contain her growing dread, she opened the desk and rooted carefully through the papers and envelopes, hoping she wouldn’t again come across Shereen’s passport. The note was still there with the address on Cordell Street and the name of the real estate agent. But nothing else seemed to offer a clue.
She tried the rest of the drawers, and in the last one the back cover of a large paperback book caught her eye. White type inside a black box, with the words “Warning! Read this book, but keep in mind that the topics written about here are illegal and constitute a threat.”
Aliyah turned the book over and sagged in despair. Her knees were wobbly, so she sat back on the floor while staring at the title stenciled white on black:
The Anarchist Cookbook.
Abbas had folded back the corner of a page for easy reference, and she opened the book to chapter four, “Explosives and Booby Traps.”
At that moment the door to the study opened, and Abbas appeared on the threshold.
He, too, had put on a robe.
“Aliyah?” he asked, his voice ever so quiet, as if their children had returned home and he was taking care not to wake them. “What are you doing in here, down there on the floor?”
His expression was neither hostile nor challenging. There even seemed to be a hint of sympathy in his eyes. Or maybe that was wishful thinking, because already he was scanning the evidence of her betrayal—the book in her hands, opened to the damning chapter; the scribbled address on Cordell Street atop the pile of papers on the desk—his deepest secrets, laid bare.
Yet he did not shout, or even frown. That was the oddest and most disturbing thing of all, Aliyah decided. He didn’t seem to mind in the least.
17
M
ost first-time visitors to Athens are disappointed, and I assumed Omar would be no exception. To the untrained eye, the marbled glory of the Acropolis seems to frown down through the haze at the architectural chaos below, as if regretfully surveying Sparta’s final triumph. I once felt that way, too, until Mila helped me discover the city’s hidden charms. Without her at my side, maybe Athens would again hold me at arm’s length.
I had only a few hours to prepare for Omar’s arrival. I hadn’t yet told Mila I was coming because I didn’t know if I would have time to see her. And after Black’s last message I didn’t want to mix her up in this business more than she already was. We had spoken often by phone, but she was clearly haunted by the thought of eavesdroppers parsing every word. This led to long silences that spooked us as badly as any warning.
“When will it be safe?” she had finally asked, only two days ago.
“Soon, I hope. But until then maybe you’d feel better if we didn’t talk for a while. Our conversations don’t seem to be making things any better.”
“I’ll let you decide. You can tell me when it’s safe.”
I had then vowed to myself to surprise her with a visit if at all possible. It now seemed that the Athens trip might be my only chance to see her for months, since my work in Amman had slowed to a crawl after such a promising start. Following my fruitless search of the files, I settled into a dreary round of meetings with doctors, medical suppliers, and pharmaceutical reps. Omar wanted me to secure pledges of donated drugs and equipment, and that left little time for visiting Bakaa. And when I did go I treaded lightly, still smarting from my close call even after the bruises healed.
Nabil seemed equally wary. I hadn’t seen him since the day of the mob scene, which left me instead in the tiresome company of Dr. Hassan. I also hadn’t been able to drop by Sami’s salon. He was out of the country, destination unknown.
I easily found the scooter shop in Plaka, a onetime slum of cobbled alleys and leaning homes that had recently been gentrified. There was only one fellow on Sunday duty, a gray-haired man reading a sports tabloid at a cluttered desk. The small office was set up like a tiny showroom, with scooters taking most of the floor space.
“Mr. Higgins,” he said before I could open my mouth. “I’ve been expecting you.”
A Piaggio Typhoon had been reserved in my name, the same model I drove on Karos. But how would I sign for it without proper identification? The deskman supplied the answer by handing me a slim white envelope. Inside was a U.S. passport and an American driver’s license issued in Virginia. Both had my photo and the name Robert Higgins. There was also a Visa card in Higgins’s name, along with a strip of paper carrying the name and address of a local hotel.
“Is this where I’m supposed to stay?”
The deskman’s frown told me I had strayed from the script, so I took the keys without another word. The Typhoon was gassed to go. I didn’t bother mentioning I’d return it on Wednesday. He had already gone back to his newspaper.
The hotel was also in Plaka, and as soon as I’d checked in I set out for a reconnaissance of the Grande Bretagne, which was only five blocks away. The lobby was spacious, but for all the grandeur of its mosaic floors and tall windows, it offered no suitable nooks where I could wait in seclusion yet still have a view of the elevators. I would have to sit in the open, with only a newspaper to hide me. I tried it out, drawing a suspicious glance from a woman speaking French on a cell phone. Uniformed desk clerks scurried back and forth at the far end. Outside there was a host of taxi hailers and liveried doormen. I would have to park my scooter around the corner, which could make for a rough start if Omar took a cab in the opposite direction.
On the way back to my room I withdrew five hundred euros from an ATM with my own card, not theirs. Then I set out to find someplace sunny for a drink to steel myself for Omar’s arrival. Plaka’s outdoor cafés were already filled with Germans and Japanese, so I wandered farther, working my way around the base of the Acropolis. To my right, young men rolled dice on backgammon tables and sipped chilled Freddocinos from tall glasses. An old man sat at the curb playing a sort of Mediterranean bagpipe. I paused at an iron rail to stare up toward the Acropolis, where the white colonnade of the Propylaia was rosy in afternoon sunlight. Only at the last second did I notice a Greek man approaching in apparent interest.
“You are American?” he asked in English. He looked to be in his sixties.
“Yes.”
“Where are you from?”
“Boston.” The truth was too complicated. And I was already wondering if this encounter had been arranged. I half expected him to thrust a folded message into my hand, but he kept his distance.
“I live in America fifteen years. Houston. Exxon Corporation. Then Saudi Arabia for last ten.”
Right across the desert from Amman. The coincidence seemed too close for comfort.
“Dhahran?” Taking a guess.
“Yes. You know Dhahran?”
“Sure.” Another stop along the way during the Gulf War. “Can’t get a beer there.”
“Yes, no beer.” He smiled and nodded. What did he want? “Where you go? You stop, drink a beer?”
He nodded toward the café tables. Was he scrounging for a drink? But he was too well dressed to be a bum.
“Sorry, but I’m on my way somewhere. Have to go.”
He nodded again, seeming disappointed. I glanced over my shoulder a block later to see if he was following, or snapping a photo. But he was gone, or at least I couldn’t find him. I still craved a drink but was too wary to stop until I wound up back at the hotel, where I took a beer from the minibar. Then I telephoned the Grande Bretagne.
“Mr. Omar al-Baroody, please.”
“Yes, sir.”
A few clicks, a ring tone, and then Omar’s voice.
“Hello?” He had arrived on schedule.
I hung up, walked back to the Grande Bretagne, then spent the next several hours peeking around the edge of a
Herald Tribune.
Either Omar had already gone out or he had decided to eat in his room. At any rate, he was a no-show. At ten I walked to a souvlaki place in Monastiraki, then returned to my room and laid out clothing and supplies for the next morning as if preparing for battle. Then I crawled beneath the sheets and shut my eyes.
An hour later I was still awake, agitated by the idea that Mila was mere minutes away. She was probably drinking coffee after a late dinner with her aunt and cousins. They would be laughing around the table as they passed platters of pastries and fruit.
It took only half an hour to dress and ride the Metro to within a few blocks of her aunt’s building. The apartment was on the sixth floor at the far end, and I easily picked out the balcony from my vantage point in the street. A light was on. She was up there—I knew it. My spirits lifted in anticipation, and I set out for the entrance.
I had scarcely stepped into the parking lot when the main door, thirty yards away, opened with a burst of animated conversation. I stopped in the shadows, hesitant, while four people stepped into the glare of an overhanging streetlamp. One was Mila. She spoke Greek, and her fluting voice was quite a contrast to the despairing tones of our last conversation. This was the Mila who could charm your socks off.
I was about to call out her name when I realized that the foursome was actually two couples. Two men, two women. If I hadn’t known better I would have guessed from their body language that they were double-dating, headed out for a late night on the town. The second woman was Mila’s cousin. The men were strangers. I opened my mouth to speak, but the words dammed up. Not now, something told me. Too awkward. Too much of a surprise in present company.
By the time they had climbed into a car I was regretting my reticence. This was foolish, a product of my old insecurities about marrying a younger woman. For Chrissakes, she was my wife and we were in love. There was no reason she should stay cooped up every night just because I had temporarily deserted her for a nest of Middle Eastern snoops and fanatics.
But it was too late. The doors slammed shut, the engine started, and the car rolled away while I remained in darkness. It turned up the street, taillights receding.
It was about then that an engine started on a dark sedan parked across the street, opposite the parking lot. I hadn’t heard its doors shut, and its headlights remained off as it pulled away from the curb. More paranoia on my part? I didn’t think so. And at that moment I boiled over. Enough of this meddling in our lives.
I ran into the street, making it just in time to stop the sedan. The driver slammed on the brakes and laid on the horn. I stepped forward, placed both palms on the hood and glared into the smoked windshield. The engine revved, but I didn’t budge. When you’ve been thrown to the cobbles by a mob in Bakaa you develop quite a tolerance for petty threats like this one. I slammed a fist on the hood.
“Open up!”
At first, nothing. Then the window on the driver’s side glided down, and a face poked into view. Young fellow. Short dark hair. Stupid sunglasses. He’d probably put them on for my benefit.
“You must be Freeman. Mind getting out of the way?”
The accent was American, right off the Jersey Turnpike.
“Tell Black this has to stop.”
“They warned us you might be dropping by.”
“Enough! You tell him that. I know the stakes, but I’m doing my job.”
“It’s like this every night, you know. With your wife and all.”
“Did you hear me?”
“Parties. Nightclubs. Same joints all the time. She gets around. Maybe you’d like to read the logs?”
I slammed down a fist again and stepped around the fender toward the driver. As soon as I cleared his path the car roared forward with a screech of rubber. He still hadn’t turned on the headlights. I watched, fuming. When he reached the end of the block he turned right, just as Mila’s car had done. As if he knew exactly where to go.