“My God. It sounds horrible.”
“That wasn’t even the worst part. The police held us all night.”
So that’s why she hadn’t been there when I phoned. And I, of course, had assumed the worst and then recklessly acted upon it, taking Nura to bed.
“They wouldn’t believe our story,” Mila went on. “We gave them tag numbers and everything, but they did nothing to check it out. Just kept us waiting, and asked us the same stupid questions again and again. They said we must have all been drunk, but they wouldn’t give us any tests. They didn’t let us go until eight the next morning, and when we finally got back to my aunt’s she said you had called over and over, and that it was urgent, so of course I thought something terrible must have happened. Then when I couldn’t reach you…”
“Really, I’m fine. I was just out doing…fieldwork.” Another wince.
“You weren’t the only one who’d left a message.”
“Black, White, and Gray?”
“They didn’t leave a name. All they said was, ‘Tell Mila to stop.’ Then they hung up. So you see?”
Just like Mbweli would have done it. I was furious more than intimidated, because once upon a time I had caved in to that kind of threat, and look what happened. Not that I could say that to Mila. Not now or ever, which brought us back to the same impasse as always.
My inclination was to offer yet another lecture on trust, while urging her to hold out a while longer. But under the circumstances I didn’t have the nerve for it, and I could never have made it sound convincing. So I resorted to a lame pep talk.
“Look, all I can offer is the news that I’m nearly done, or hope I am. And as terrible as all of this is, it only makes me want to push harder to finish up. But you really do need to sit tight and stop trying to get answers. That’s all they want you to do anyway. Then they’ll back off. Just be careful. Stick with your cousin and Luka and Petros and anyone else who’s available whenever you go out. I’m pretty sure they’ve got someone watching the apartment, so be aware of that as well, and keep a low profile. Then when I’m done I’ll come get you and take you out of there. If we can’t go back to Karos, or you don’t want to, then okay, we’ll live with that. But we’ll find someplace where we can make things work, and we’ll put all of this behind us. Okay?”
“I hope so. But someday you’re going to have to tell me everything.”
“Sure. Whatever you want.”
I would do nothing of the sort, of course. But a cad like me would be able to come up with something.
“I want to believe you. But you don’t make it easy. You should have seen us. We were scared to death. We started to wonder if the police would ever let us go. If you had been there…”
“I know. I understand. But I’ll make it stop as soon as I can. I promise.”
We said good-bye. Mila was as calm as I could have expected, and seemed resigned to the idea of waiting it out in relative submission. Quite a concession for her.
Her news heightened my sense of urgency. If my employers had joined forces in Greece with the Mossad, then who knew what that would mean for me in Jerusalem. Yet another reason to watch my step. And if they were going to get rough, then I had to be prepared to do the same. Taking the gun to Jerusalem was out of the question, given all the security at the border. But I was wary of simply leaving it in a dresser drawer. I could imagine how the authorities would react to finding an illegal weapon in the possession of someone who had just slipped across the river to Israel.
I decided to bury it out back before leaving. To keep the disturbed earth from arousing suspicion I drove to the Safeway on Sunday after all the shops had reopened and bought an outdoor plant and a gardening spade. On the morning of my departure I sealed the gun in a plastic bag. Then I dug a hole in the corner of my small yard and dropped the gun in, followed by the plant. As I was patting the soil back into place, Fiona called out from next door. I flinched and nearly dropped the spade.
“That’s not a bad little tree you’ve chosen. Not sure about the placement, though. A little shady, perhaps?”
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Sorry. I’m very nosy when it comes to gardening. Did you fertilize it?”
“Maybe later.”
“I could give you some.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”
I wiped the dirt from my hands and disappeared indoors before she could quiz me further. Had she seen the gun? If so, would she tell her friends at the palace? But that was all the worrying I had time for. Jerusalem beckoned, and I was eager to make the most of it.
27
F
or three days Aliyah had managed to accomplish absolutely nothing. She spent the rest of Monday shopping. On Tuesday she toured Petra. Then on Wednesday she rode a bus north to the Roman ruins of Jerash. All the while she kept her cell phone switched off.
She knew that her ad-libbing was risky, and that the next scheduled contact might well take matters into his own hands and confront her somewhere when she least expected it. Perhaps they would even relay word to Abbas that she was being uncooperative. But she couldn’t resist the temptation for delay, because each day without progress was a further handicap to disaster. Haphazard or not, perhaps her plan to stall things out would succeed. The senator would die, the funeral would come and go without incident, and she would return home to a thwarted but safe Abbas. Eventually he would realize it was for the best.
At breakfast on Thursday, which was the day of her scheduled appointment at Bakaa with Khalid II, she switched her phone back on. It rang before she had finished her second cup of coffee.
A voice she didn’t recognize instructed her to meet another contact that very night in the lobby bar of the InterContinental. At least this one wasn’t also named Khalid. But of the three operatives she had met so far, he was easily the most disturbing, and so was his news.
Well before that meeting ever took place there was another discouraging development. Khalid II never showed up for their 4 p.m. appointment.
She got there in plenty of time, just as they had arranged. The streets of Bakaa were packed with people, cars, and motorcycles. Everyone seemed to be shopping for Eid al-Fitr, and the taxi had to fight its way slowly down narrow lanes of corrugated metal buildings. She nonetheless managed to reach Khalid II’s house promptly at 4 p.m., only to learn that she had been stood up.
A thin, soft-spoken woman who must have been his wife met her on the doorstep. She spoke before Aliyah even gave her name.
“He said to tell you he is sorry, but he had to leave. He will not be back today.”
A young girl stood behind the woman in the shadows of the room. Aliyah wondered if Khalid II might even be in there.
“He should have phoned to tell me,” she said loudly, in case he was listening.
“He said to tell you that would not have been a wise decision. It was not possible for him. It may not be possible for quite a while.”
The choice of words was disturbing. If she wanted to learn how to dismantle a bomb, Khalid II might be her only hope.
“Is Khalid—” She felt ridiculous using the code name. “Is your husband in some kind of trouble?”
The woman’s face fell. She seemed on the verge of tears.
“I do not know. But he is very worried.”
“Worried about what? Did someone find out about our meeting?”
Perhaps the American had reported it to the authorities. The wrong kind of attention might be ruinous for a young man with a family to support. But it might be a disaster for her, too.
“Please, you should go now. There are other people to consider.”
The woman looked up and down the street, as if someone might be coming. Aliyah turned, but saw only the steady stream of shoppers.
“Other people?”
“Please. You must go.”
“Let me leave a message.” Aliyah reached in her purse for a pen.
“Please go now. I will tell him that you wish him to call.”
“But—”
The woman shut the door with an almost frantic heave. It was a little frightening, but it also angered her. So much for her tutorial. If Abbas figured out how to rig up a bomb on his own, she wouldn’t have the first idea of how to disarm it. And given Khalid II’s sudden disappearance, she supposed she now had to worry about getting in trouble here.
If the authorities wanted to arrest her, Bakaa would probably be the perfect place to close in. Not back at the hotel, where the scene could become an embarrassment, or upsetting for the paying guests. And if she disappeared into some ministry van out here, who would ever pass the word to Abbas?
It made her want to leave in a hurry, but there were no taxis in sight. She tried calling for one on her cell phone, but dispatchers for the first two companies refused to send anyone to Bakaa. The third one gave in, but only after she promised to meet the taxi at a major intersection at the edge of the camp.
The rendezvous point was more than a mile away, and she had to stop several times for directions. Even then, there was no taxi waiting at the appointed spot. She waited another half hour in mounting frustration, feeling dusty and angry, and a little dizzy. A swallow of water would have helped, but she didn’t dare drink it in public during the month’s final hour of fasting.
As Ramadan’s last seconds ticked away, the bustle of the crowd took on a frenzied edge. Compared to the previous days, when nearly everyone was indoors by sundown in order to break fast as soon as possible, here in Bakaa there were still plenty of people in the streets. Their mood was celebratory, an almost manic glee sharpened by their daylong hunger. When the call to prayer finally announced the setting of the sun from the crackling loudspeaker of a nearby mosque, she heard an ungodly squeal from around the corner, followed by the sound of grunting and scuffling. She walked a short distance to investigate and saw a man in a bloodied apron butchering a goat, right on his doorstep. A little farther down the alley, two more men were doing the same thing. The whole neighborhood seemed to be erupting in a frenzy of butchery in preparation for tomorrow’s midday feast. Looking into the faces of passersby she saw smiles of anticipation and relief. The long month of self-denial was over, and the animal screams echoed like a signal of primal urgency.
While she could certainly appreciate such emotions, her own weariness and worries left her feeling mostly revulsion. The smell of the blood was strong. It pooled in bright red splotches on the dust and against the curb. She fought down an impulse to retch and turned away, feeling foolish and weak. This was certainly no more barbaric than lopping the heads off millions of turkeys for Thanksgiving, and at least on these humble streets they didn’t leave the dirty work for processing plants and supermarkets. Nonetheless, she was physically overwhelmed, and wanted only to get out of there as quickly as possible.
She walked unsteadily up the main drag toward the entrance to the camp, jostling men and women who were carting home sacks and boxes bulging with the fruits of their shopping. It took another half hour, but she finally found a driver who would take her back to Amman. She spent the next forty minutes slumped in the backseat with the windows down, letting the wind off the darkening hillsides blast against her face.
Back at the hotel room, her message light was flashing. The desk clerk told her there was a handwritten message waiting downstairs. She unfolded it as she stood at the front desk.
“Please call,” was all it said. It was signed by Freeman Lockhart. The American again. Maybe he was even some kind of operative or agent. For all she knew, he was sitting in a windowless room with Khalid II, interrogating the poor fellow. She crumpled the message and tossed it into an ashtray on her way back upstairs.
After a quick shower, she returned to the lobby just in time for her 8 p.m. appointment. The noon phone call had instructed her to address this latest contact simply as “the doctor.”
Whoever he was, he seemed to recognize her right away. She saw someone waving from the far side of the tables, and he crossed the room to meet her. He looked to be in his late fifties, with a mannered patrician air. Aliyah knew a thing or two about doctors, and after only a few minutes of conversation she pegged this one as the sort who would talk down to his patients and hold himself loftily above his staff. Something about his voice, his mannerisms, even the way he dealt with their waiter, marked him as one of those surrogate gods convinced of his own infallibility. Under his rules, she guessed, mistakes were made by nurses, administrators, or assistants. Any patient who died had failed him, not vice versa. Or maybe she reacted so adversely because of what he told her. In any event, they quickly got off on the wrong foot, and things went downhill from there.
“You must be Mrs. Aliyah Rahim?” he said, as if relishing possession of her full name.
“Yes. And you are the doctor?”
“I am indeed. Please, I have taken a table for us. One of the better ones, where we are less likely to be disturbed.”
It looked like the rest of the tables to Aliyah, except it was against the back wall. All around them people were in a festive mood, gearing up for tomorrow.
“My favorite time of year,” the doctor said, gesturing grandly with his hands. “And how will you be celebrating, being so far from home?”
“Dinner in my room, I suppose.”
“How unfortunate. Under more favorable circumstances I would of course invite you to our home, but my wife’s family from Madaba has quite filled the place up.”
“Of course you would invite me, especially when I don’t even know your real name.” She had held her fire with these bumblers long enough. “As long as you’re extending empty hospitality,
doctor,
perhaps you could diagnose why everyone knows and uses my correct name while I am only told pseudonyms, like Khalid I, or Khalid II, or the doctor.”
Her rebuke didn’t make the slightest dent in his expression. If anything, his smile widened.
“I am afraid there is no other way. Not if you really want our help.”
“I think the question is not whether I want it, but whether I will ever get it.”
“So am I to take it that your meeting with Khalid did not go well?”
“Which Khalid? The café one or the Bakaa one?”
“I was told Bakaa was where the more important matters were to be discussed. Am I correct, Mrs. Rahim?”
She wished he would stop announcing her name to everyone within earshot. He wasn’t even attempting to keep his voice down.
“Correct.”
“So was he satisfactory?”
Had he really not heard?
“He was very kind. Very solicitous.” No sense letting them make Khalid II the scapegoat. The young man seemed to be in enough trouble already.
“Kindness is commendable. But was he able to answer your technical inquiries?”
“Truthfully?”
“I deal only in truthfulness, Mrs. Rahim.”
“He was a little sketchy on details. I got the idea no one had correctly informed him of my purpose.” She leaned across the table so no one else could hear her next words. The doctor leaned forward as well, and she was nearly overpowered by the scent of his cologne. “Someone had led him to believe I was a suicide bomber.”
She half expected the doctor to fly into a rage. Instead he smiled smugly, as if she had just told an amusing anecdote.
“Ah. A mix-up, then. Not to worry. I am sure we can find someone else to offer more precise instructions.”
“In his defense, he said that he might be able to do that. He was going to try, anyway. But he didn’t strike me as very experienced in these matters.”
“Oh, but he is experienced now, of course. Thanks to you.”
“I don’t follow your meaning.”
“You don’t need to. It is a local matter. But we thank you for your role in it. In return we will do what we can to assist you. Although our services may not be quite as vital as you think. Not with the headway that your husband has made in your absence. I am told that some sort of excavation is involved in his work, correct? And that he has already made substantial progress.”
“Substantial progress?”
Her mouth went dry. If the doctor had been wearing a stethoscope she might have asked him to listen for a pulse, because suddenly she barely seemed to have one.
“Why, yes.” The doctor took an obvious pleasure in his revelations. “It has been our understanding all along that time was short. So, no matter how slowly you have chosen to move, and no matter how many days you have turned off your mobile phone, it has not stopped us from taking measures to assist him as much as possible.”
“What do you mean? I thought you were supposed to assist him by helping me.”
“I am aware that is what you thought. But mostly what we sought from you and your husband was evidence of your commitment. Abbas demonstrated that to our satisfaction merely by sending you to Amman. So, once our representatives observed that you were safely aboard the plane at Dulles, we extended an offer of immediate help to your husband.”
“Immediate help?” She felt like someone had just knocked the wind out of her.
“Technical expertise. And, when necessary, manual labor. So you should not concern yourself too greatly over your failures with Khalid in Bakaa. As I said earlier, you have served our own interests on that count. In return we are serving your interests in Washington. I am told the work is nearly complete. Meaning that any sort of, well, reluctance on your part has been very ably overcome by others. So you see? Everything is well in hand.”
Aliyah felt queasy. Her nausea resurrected the images from a few hours ago at Bakaa, with their animal screams and the letting of blood. The smell of slaughter seemed to emanate from her clothes and skin, as if she had never showered.
“Are you all right, my dear? Can I order you something? I am told that you drink alcohol. Perhaps a gin would help.”
“No.”
She gripped the bottom of the table and looked him in the eye, determined not to exhibit any further sign of weakness. He was already enjoying her discomfort far too much. As well he might, having played her for a fool. Then she thought of something that might make his smile disappear.
“This all comes as something of a surprise, but I will be fine. There is one possible complication, though.”
“Yes?”
“An American. He observed Khalid and me together at Bakaa. He may even have overheard our conversation. His name is Freeman Lockhart. He gave me his card.”
Her news did not have the desired effect. The doctor only smiled, broader than ever.
“I am familiar with Mr. Lockhart. There is no way possible that he could know of your plans, so I would not trouble myself worrying about him.”