There was still no sign of Abbas. Inside was barely warmer than outside, and as she stood in the silence her breath vapored into the darkened hallway. Yet there was something else in the air, too, a scent of human occupation with its whiff of sweat and exertion, of old food wrappers. She stepped forward. The soles of her shoes slid on grit, a whispering sound that made her skin crawl.
“Abbas?”
She said it tentatively the first time, and heard the tremble in her voice. Then she spoke it louder, stronger.
“Abbas!”
There was a scrabbling noise not unlike that of the rats, only this time it turned into footsteps approaching from the basement. A faint line of light appeared beneath the doorway that led downstairs. Then her husband’s voice called out in a tone almost as timid as her initial effort.
“Aliyah? Is that you?”
“Yes. I am home. I am here to help you.”
He opened the door only enough to shine a small flashlight toward her. The beam made it impossible to see him, but she heard him sigh, in either relief or exasperation. She held her breath, wondering what he would say.
“Come down, then. It’s too risky waiting here. They’ve been by three times already, and they’ll probably check again in an hour or two.”
She assumed he meant the Secret Service or the Metro police, so she did as he asked.
He turned and shut the door behind them, and at the bottom he opened another door to a basement storage room, where the dank smell of turned earth was strong and ominous. A small camp lantern burned in a corner, and when Abbas turned now she saw his face clearly for the first time.
The last thing she wanted to do was alarm him, or somehow turn him against her, but she couldn’t help but put a hand to her mouth. It wasn’t just the dirt and the grime, which made him resemble a coal miner. It was his eyes, opened wide in manic exhaustion. A bunker mentality, she thought. Abbas against the world.
She looked around the small room. A blue plastic tarpaulin was draped across what must be the mouth of the tunnel. A pair of insulated copper wires emerged from the right of the tarpaulin. They were attached to a small box with a silver toggle switch. So was that it, then? His means of detonation?
Opposite the tunnel was a pile of bricks, which he must have removed from the building’s foundation. On the floor he had unrolled a cheap sleeping bag next to an alarm clock and a small Styrofoam cooler, where presumably he stored his food and water. Propped on top were a small radio and the picture of Shereen that had been on the wall of his study. The orange plastic vial of pills was there, too, right next to the radio.
At that moment Aliyah knew that her decision to leave Washington had been a fatal mistake. She had already suspected as much, but the sight of this bleak little room confirmed it. Abbas was now completely captive to his wayward emotions, and no manner of elaborate artifice would stand a chance against him. The only plausible course of action was outright sabotage, but she had never learned how.
The only good news was that he appeared to be alone. Whoever had helped him dig the tunnel and place the charges must have cleared out.
“My God, Abbas. Are you all right?”
He nodded, letting his eyes answer. They might as well have been calling to her from across a canyon, judging from his distant stare. When he finally spoke, his words made it clear that he had misinterpreted the nature of her concern.
“I was too worried about the timer.”
“The timer?”
“On the explosives. Ahmad set it when we finished the tunnel. He said it was foolproof, but their real expert on explosives never made it here. He was detained at the border by the Canadians. So I decided to stay here and do it manually. I was too worried it would go off at the wrong time, or not go off at all. And with funerals, it seems like they never start on time anyway. You remember Shereen’s.”
She did, all too well, and down here in the darkness their daughter’s spirit seemed close at hand, grieving and mournful at her father’s vengeful folly. This is not what Shereen would have wanted, no matter what Abbas had talked himself into believing.
“So you’re going to push the button, then,” she asked, trying to muster enough false enthusiasm to keep it from sounding like a challenge, or a dare.
He nodded.
“And I don’t need you here for that, you know. It’s a one-man job. I don’t think there is enough food and water for both of us.”
“I doubt we’ll need much. It’s only another nineteen hours, Abbas.”
He glanced at his watch, as if to make sure she wasn’t trying to fool him. Then she noted a new look in his eyes, one of worry and concern, and at that moment she realized why. She imagined the blast going off. Not only would the explosion heave up the floor of the church, it would also throw a massive load of concussive energy back down the tunnel. It seemed obvious that whoever was in this room would be killed. The realization must have showed on her face, judging from what Abbas said next.
“There is no guarantee I will survive. That is why I don’t think you should stay here.”
Her next words spilled out before she could stop herself.
“So you’ve become a suicide bomber, then. In that case you might as well put on a vest of explosives and go walking up the church steps, holding a copy of the Holy Quran and shouting, ‘God is great!’ like all the other fanatics.”
“It’s not like that. Not at all. And there are things I can still do to improve my chances.”
“Like what?”
“There’s a table upstairs I was going to move down. To put across the opening.”
“That won’t do it. And you’re not going to move it anyway.”
“Or I could extend the wiring, once the service starts. Splice on another few feet so I can turn the switch from upstairs. I just won’t do it now. It might go off prematurely.”
Aliyah shook her head, unconvinced.
“You’re not going to do that, either. Not unless I stay here and make you. So I will stay. I won’t lose my husband. Not without a fight.”
He nodded, as if resigned. Maybe he was too weary to contest the point.
“Stay if you want. But not for me. For Shereen.”
How was she supposed to triumph over that kind of passion? And when the appointed hour arrived, how would she defeat him? Or worse: If she couldn’t defeat him, what would come next, even if they both survived? It was only then, for a single fleeting instant, that she allowed herself to contemplate the feeling of release that one might experience in carrying out such a horrendous act. Maybe it was her own weariness, her own lingering grief, but she had to admit there was a certain horrible beauty to the whole idea. Why
not
kill all those bastards, after everything they had done? Why
not
awaken all the slumbering fools who thought they could simply bludgeon their way across the globe without regard for any lives but their own? Show them that you could decapitate the leadership here just as easily as in some weaker nation. Show them that they weren’t simply putting the poor slobs on subways and in tall towers at risk with their stupidity. Put them on notice that, henceforth, their lives would be on the line as well.
But the moment passed as quickly as it came. And, as with the breaking of a fever, she shivered in its wake. Think of Faris instead, and of how terrible his life would be in the aftermath. And think, as well, of how terrible life would be for all the other sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers of those who would die in the church.
Somehow, despite all the pity and compassion she now felt for her husband and his doomed cause, from this moment forward she had to think of him as the enemy, a threat both to her and to Faris. She must defeat him at all costs.
40
T
he longer I talked to Carl Cummings, the more he convinced me I was overreacting to what I’d overheard in Dr. Hassan’s office.
“You got caught up in the moment,” he said. “It’s understandable. Yesterday was a bad day for all of us, and you’re new to this stuff. Hey, by late last night a ton of people were talking about funerals and explosions, and they will be today, too. So unless you’ve got something a little more solid, well, you get the idea.”
I was lucky to be speaking with him at all, even if only by telephone. A secure line, he assured me. How he knew that about the connection at my end I had no idea, which made me suspect he was bluffing. Earlier I’d been turned away at the embassy gates. I then placed half a dozen calls from my house. Even my old friend Mike Jacoby wouldn’t answer. The rejections let me know exactly where I must have stood in Cummings’s small constellation of operatives and informants.
But my persistence finally made an impact, because Cummings called back a little before noon. Then he threw cold water all over my story.
“Well, could you at least run the woman’s name, this Aliyah Rahim?” I said. “She’s from Washington, and—”
“Look, you really wanna know the truth, Fremont?”
“Freeman.”
“Sorry. It’s been that kind of day. But just save it, okay? I know you want to earn brownie points, but I haven’t slept in twenty-eight hours, and right now you’re the least of my worries. Sit tight and I’ll get back to you in a few days.”
“This isn’t about ‘brownie points.’ I was worried. It sounded like a possible threat. How long could it take to just run one name?”
“You know how many Rahims there must be in the network? And right now I’ve got a fresh kill to worry about—fifty-six of them, in fact—all of them wiped out by a local al-Qaeda faction. Plus the Mukhabarat is breathing down my neck because they find it mighty hard to believe our NSA guys didn’t pick up some kind of advance chatter. And frankly, so do I. So unless you’ve got something better?”
“Fine. Maybe I’ll just write a report, and later you can—”
“Whoa, now. Putting it in writing is the
last
thing you wanna do. Start putting stuff like that into the system and God knows where it will end up. I really do have to go now. Many thanks for your concern, but why don’t you take a chill pill and then we’ll talk next week about your recent employers, if you take my meaning.” Secure phone or not, I suppose you didn’t dare say “Mossad” over any line in Amman. “That’s my interest in you, okay? Stay on topic and we’ll get along fine. But no more phone calls. We’ve got our hands full as it is.”
“Yeah, sure, Chris.”
“It’s
Carl.
”
“Sorry. It’s been that kind of day.”
He didn’t get the joke, of course, and we both hung up. So much for due diligence. And after sleeping on it, I had to admit that the few snatches of conversation I’d picked up didn’t add up to much, especially when compared to the reality of what had happened at the three hotels. The topic of explosives was indeed on everyone’s lips. Maybe I got carried away by the hysteria, as Cummings suggested. Or I took everything in the worst possible light because of my dislike for Dr. Hassan.
Whatever the case, I had done what I could, and would defer to professional judgment. There was a certain relief in that, seeing as how I had been playing the game alone for too long. Cummings had just talked me down from a ledge, in a sense, a dangerous place where I might have made a fool of myself.
Yet part of me was still disconcerted, even if Aliyah Rahim didn’t seem to have the necessary zeal or cunning for cooking up some terrible plot. From what little I’d seen, she looked and acted like what she was, a wife from a wealthy suburb, perhaps with a job of her own. But if that were the case, then what the hell was she doing here all alone, meeting shady characters with iffy connections in a bad neighborhood like Bakaa? Maybe she was an emissary for her husband. But the scant info on him didn’t add up, either. Was he a surgeon or a pizza maker? And when I thought of these so-called “facts” long enough, my fears did seem overblown, just as Cummings said.
To further ease my mind, I decided to check Mrs. Rahim’s latest movements. I punched in the number for the InterContinental. When she answered, I would offer my help, as one expat American to another on this tragic day, in hopes of being able to find out more about her.
“I’m sorry, sir, but Mrs. Rahim has not returned to her room.”
“She’s checked out?”
“No, sir. In fact, in light of events, we are worried for her safety, and you are not the only one who has inquired of her whereabouts.”
“What are you saying?”
“I am saying, sir, that her room is empty and her luggage is gone, but she has not been seen by anyone since she left here yesterday evening. And if you or anyone else has any information that would—”
I hung up. Because
I’d
seen her, of course, or heard her voice, at any rate. But the last thing I wanted to get involved in was some sort of official search, which had been implied by the clerk’s mention of others asking her whereabouts.
It made me all the more suspicious of her. Who knows, maybe she had even gone back to America. The thought was unsettling. Why leave so precipitously unless she had urgent business? Then again, maybe Cummings was right, especially when there seemed to be little that I could do about her if she had truly disappeared. Time to move on.
Having reached that conclusion, I was giddy with restlessness. There seemed to be little work left to be done. I had come clean with Omar, gotten Mila out of harm’s way, and reported my suspicions about Dr. Hassan to the agency best able to act on them.
As for Black, White, and Gray, I no longer felt any obligation. Even my vow to help Cummings seemed insubstantial now that he was preoccupied with the bombings. If I left now, he could always reach me in Boston. Time to move on before I showed up on someone else’s radar. Norbert Krieger’s fate had showed me why.
Amman was a changed city, and probably would be for quite a while. The airport had reopened, but plenty of checkpoints were still in place. Although, with the streets virtually empty, it was in some ways easier than ever to move around as long as you had the right credentials. The local news was talking about a late-afternoon demonstration that would protest the bombings, so I decided to pack as lightly and quickly as I could before the streets began to fill. Then I would head for the airport and take the first available flight to the States. I would make it a clean break, swift and certain. Leaving some of my clothes behind seemed like a small price to pay.
In some ways, the timing was ideal. If Carl Cummings was too busy for me, that would go double for the Mukhabarat. Judging from news accounts, the agency was still rounding up suspects by the dozens. My only worry was that good old Mahmoud, true to his warning, had put me on some sort of watch list before all hell had broken loose. There was only one way to find out.
I got my answer two hours later while waiting at a café in the airport’s international terminal, biding my time before a 4 p.m. departure. Just about every flight had empty seats, so I chose a route via Zurich on Lufthansa that would land me in Boston tomorrow afternoon.
The ticket transaction went smoothly enough. To my surprise, so did passport control, and I was relaxing with a magazine and a cup of coffee when the PA announcer paged me to the Lufthansa counter.
A smiling woman with a British accent greeted me sheepishly, a bad sign.
“I’m sorry, sir. We are unable to honor your ticket. You will receive a full refund, of course.”
“Unable to honor?”
“We can’t allow you to board.”
“Why?”
She looked down, ashamed for me.
“I’m afraid you don’t have clearance to leave the country.”
“But here’s my exit stamp.” I held my passport open. “And I’ve paid the departure tax.”
“Yes, sir. But we have received instructions that—”
“Instructions from who?”
But why ask? I already knew. She must have realized this herself, or seen it in my expression, because she blushed and turned away.
“Please, sir.” She lowered her voice. “I really can’t tell you anything more.”
I angrily headed off to collect my refund. I considered appealing immediately to the embassy, but doubted they would take my call, much less lend a hand. Cummings wanted to keep me around as much as Mahmoud did. Everyone wanted their cut of information before letting me go, and by then the Mossad would be after me. I might be stuck for weeks.
I thought of Mila up in Massachusetts. If her flight was on schedule she would be landing in another eight hours. I pictured late-afternoon sunlight filtering through the white curtains in my mother’s kitchen, and Mila and my parents pulling up chairs around the long walnut dinner table, the places set too far apart for any real intimacy. I imagined Mila picking at her New England pot roast, all three of them wondering what to talk about and how they were going to fill the awkward hours until my arrival.
Such thoughts predominated as I rode the taxi back to the city, the desert looking as drab as ever, a pall over everything as the radio droned on with an updated death toll and a new claim of responsibility—expat Iraqis, for the most part, working for some al-Qaeda offshoot run by Zarqawi, the expat Jordanian. At least my mind was now at ease on one point. It wasn’t the sort of bunch that either Nabil or Dr. Hassan was part of. A different poison altogether. And that, in turn, made me feel better still about the conversation I’d overheard. I supposed Cummings was right.
But nothing could improve my mood about being stuck in Jordan. Or, at least, not until the taxi reached Othman Bin Affan Street, and I saw Fiona working yet again in her front garden.
I waved quickly and rushed inside before she could say a word. Then I scrounged through my cupboard for the best available bottle of wine—with only three to choose from, it didn’t take long—and headed back outdoors.
“There you are,” she said, managing a faint smile. “I was worried about you last night until I heard your car pull up. You were out late. Such a terrible evening.”
She looked as if she had barely slept. Her face was drawn, with dark semicircles under the eyes. Even her exertions in the midday sun hadn’t put any color in her cheeks. It was more than just the standard sorrow that anyone might feel after yesterday’s events. She was in mourning not just for the dead and the maimed, but also for her romantic view of her adopted land, and her place in it. Like many Westerners who fell for Jordan, she had convinced herself of its impregnability as an island of sanity. Yet another fellow traveler in search of moats and fortresses. Well, I hate to break it to you, Fiona, but no such place exists. Not here, not on Karos.
“Glad to see you’re okay, too. I was stuck in the hinterlands for a while. Otherwise no problem.” I held aloft the bottle. “I’ve come to offer my condolences. It’s also a peace offering. For all the ill repute I must have brought to the street yesterday morning. And for, well, the little surprise you found out in the garden.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything more, you know.”
“If it’s any comfort, I’m out of that business now. For that employer, anyway.”
“I figured as much, or you never would have come back from the Eighth Circle. Unfortunately, visits like that aren’t all that rare, even for foreigners sometimes. It’s funny. I wouldn’t have admitted that yesterday morning. I was even blaming you some for probably bringing it on. Then the bombs went off, the roundups began, and I had to rethink all my assumptions. Last night changed a lot of things, I suppose.”
I wondered if she would continue to live here, but didn’t have the heart to ask. Instead I uncorked the bottle while she fetched two glasses. We sat on the cool tiles of her porch and talked quietly. When the bottle was half empty I explained my plight and asked for help, while hoping she still had enough faith in her connections to give it a try.
Fiona creased her brow and sipped the wine.
“It’s not going to be easy. Not in this climate. But let me make some calls. Who knows, it might be exactly the kind of chore to cheer someone up. A little busywork to soothe the soul. Maybe it will cheer
me
up. Anything to make life seem normal again. I suppose that’s how it was for everyone in London after 7/7, or in the States after 9/11. It must have felt just like this.”
“I can’t really tell you. I was in Africa on 9/11, way out in the bush. Didn’t even hear the news for twelve hours, and even then it was on BBC shortwave.”
She nodded, seeming to instantly understand all the implications of that remark.
“That’s how it is with people like us. We forget how things are back home. The whole point of view. Then something big happens, and instead of drawing closer we get a little more out of touch.”
“All the more reason for me to head back.”
“I suppose so.” She stood. “I’ll get on it straightaway. Give me your passport number. They’ll need it if we’re going to make this work.”
Later I saw her leave the house for one of the demos being staged downtown, and when she returned her face was streaked in tears. But early the next morning she knocked on my door with a smile on her face.
“The palace came through,” she said. “But we have to hurry. We should get moving before the Mukhabarat has time to react. Do you have a flight?”
“No. But I’m sure I can get one at the airport.”
“Then let’s go.”
My bags were still packed, so we left almost immediately. There was another demo scheduled in a few hours, so we took my car rather than try to flag down a taxi. Omar would have to get someone to collect it from the airport. I left my house key on the kitchen table and took a last look around the place, almost shaking now at how close I had come during my stay to losing everything I held dear. But maybe such prideful folly was the norm for professionals, too. The occupation offers too many mirages to ever know for sure when you have succeeded. A little like the aid business, I suppose. Even when you are serving thousands, there are always thousands more hidden away in places you could never reach. Maybe we were all amateurs, all across the board. Cummings, too. I shut the door for the last time and heaved a great sigh of relief.