by Zoe Sharp
He threw up his hands. “Here! I bring him here to drink tea at the house of my uncle. I swear!”
She passed me a resigned look. I tried.
“I am telling you truth,” Moe insisted, sounding close to tears. “First morning, Mr. Sean ask me for place where he can meet his friend. Quiet place, away from foreign eyes. I tell him about my uncle. He ask me for address so he can tell his friend, and I bring him right here.” He slapped the top of the sun-cracked dashboard to stress his point. The plastic daisy jiggled its leaves in response.
“Did you see this friend?”
“No, when we arrive, his friend already gone. My uncle say someone call Mr. Sean’s friend on cell phone. He ask my uncle how to get to someplace else and he go. He walk.”
“And what did Sean do?”
“He follow. He walk, also.” From the way he said the word “walk” I gathered Moe thought anyone who chose to do so, when they could drive or be driven instead, was touched in the head.
“Alone? You didn’t drive him?”
Moe looked embarrassed. “I have flat tire. Roads here are very bad. Spare is flat tire, also. But I have uncle who owns motor garage—best motor garage in all of southern Iraq. So, I go get tire retreaded.”
“Doesn’t he mean repaired?” Dawson queried.
“Probably not,” I told her, eyes still on Moe. “So, he was telling the truth when he said he brought Sean here that morning. He brought Sean here, yes, but he picked him up again from the ‘someplace else’ where he went to meet his friend.”
“Yes!” Moe was jubilant that I’d finally got it.
“How long was it before you picked him up?”
“A very little time only. Two hours . . . maybe three?”
“Can you take us to the place where you picked him up?”
“Of course.”
We careered through alleyways and narrow side streets of crumbling buildings, most of which didn’t seem much wider than the Land Cruiser itself. Their doorways opened straight into the roadway, making stepping out of your house a hazardous occupation. I guessed that it had been that way for some time if you lived in Basra, regardless of actual address.
This time, when we pulled into another street and Moe stood on the brakes, it was one I recognized. We pulled up only a few meters from where the Streetwise SUV had parked on the opposite side of the road.
“Here,” Moe announced. “My timing was most excellent, because Mr. Sean call me on my cell the very moment I arrive, and tell me to go around the corner into the next street, where he will be meeting me.”
More likely that Sean had been keeping a covert watch for the kid from someplace unseen. It seemed a shame to burst his bubble by telling him so.
“How was he when you picked him up?”
“He is OK. Everything is OK.”
Despite the words, I heard the faint edge of desperation in Moe’s voice, and I realized that Sean’s reaction to whatever had happened in that dingy place had scared the kid far more than adolescent bravado would ever allow him to admit.
“Where did you take him from here?”
“Back to hotel.”
“That’s it?”
“Of course.”
He fired up the engine, which farted another cloud of sooty smoke behind us, and swung the four-by-four into a U-turn without seeming to check for traffic. I caught glimpses of the now-familiar oilfields off to the west.
“Sean went somewhere else after here, Moe, because he checked out of his hotel, and he’s gone.”
The kid gave a shrug that was close to a squirm. “Maybe he go to the airport. Maybe once he has met with his friend his work is done, and he can leave—he can go home?”
Because he was driving, only glancing back over his shoulder occasionally, I was concentrating on Moe’s voice. There was something just a little too artful in the way he spoke, a little too hurried. And at the same time, a little too practiced.
I shook my head. “Sean didn’t take the bus to the airport, and he didn’t get onto a plane. So he must have gone by vehicle.” I paused. “The only thing is, I thought you were the best guide in all of southern Iraq.”
“This is true!”
“But if you just took him back to his hotel, and you say you didn’t take him anywhere else, who did? And why would he use another guide if you are supposed to be the best?”
“I–I—”
“Why not just tell us, Moe?” Dawson cut in. “We’ll ask around, and somebody will tell us who really is better than you. Sean must have gone with them instead.”
“There is nobody who is better!” Moe’s voice had risen almost to a howl. Everybody had their weak points, and it hadn’t taken much to learn that vanity and pride were his.
“So, he paid you not to tell anyone where you took him, didn’t he?” I suggested gently.
Moe bowed over the steering wheel as if trying to hug it closer to his body. We came perilously close to sideswiping a broken-down truck in the process.
“He pay me, OK?” he admitted mournfully. “Mr. Sean pay me not to say—not to anyone. He trust me.”
“That’s all right. He didn’t want his enemies to know where he was going, but I’m not Sean’s enemy. And you haven’t broken your word,” I added quickly. “You haven’t actually said.”
I nudged Dawson’s good arm and pointed to the maps stuffed into her door pocket. She handed one over without a word. I unfolded it, thrust it between the seats practically onto Moe’s lap.
“Point. You don’t have to say the place out loud. Just point to it.”
He took his eyes off the road for longer than I was happy with, but I gritted my teeth and said nothing. After a few moments’ study, he stabbed toward the map with a finger, jerking away again as if to touch it burned him.
Dawson marked the place with her thumb, took a glance, and passed the map back to me with her eyebrows raised.
I took a look myself . . . and wished I hadn’t.
TWENTY
“SEAN HEADED NORTH,” I TOLD PARKER.
“Define ‘north’ for me.”
“His fixer drove him as far as Karbala.”
I heard Parker’s sucked-in breath. “You do know that’s a stone’s throw from Baghdad?”
“Uh-huh. About a hundred klicks. Moe’s agreed to take us up there. We leave first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Charlie—”
“Don’t say it,” I warned. “You won’t be telling me anything I haven’t already told myself. It’s bloody stupid, given the current situation, but what else can I do?”
“What does Dawson have to say about it?”
“She’s willing to come.” I glanced across my hotel room to where Luisa Dawson was sitting tensely in the single armchair near the window, eyes fixed on me. “In fact, she insists on it.”
“Be realistic. She’s only just had her shoulder pinned back together. She’s in no fit state to go into a war zone.”
“I don’t speak Arabic well enough to get by. She does.”
“Two women, traveling alone to a part of the country largely controlled by religious fanatics? If you’re caught by the wrong people, it won’t matter what language you speak.”
“And if Sean is caught by the ‘wrong people,’ they’ll claim he’s a foreign spy, hack off his head with a blunt knife, and stream it live on the internet. Which would you prefer, Parker?”
“That’s a low blow, Charlie.”
“Yeah, well, I never promised to fight by the rules.”
“Can you at least give me another twenty-four hours? I called in those favors we talked about. I think they may have something, but I just need a little more time.”
It wasn’t hard to work out which favors he meant—with one of the “three-letter agencies” that lurked in the shadows of any conflict. Not just the ordinary shadows, in my experience, but always the umbra—the darkest, most opaque part.
“Can you be more specific? Either on the ‘something’ or the timing?
”
“Right at this moment? No, I can’t.”
“By my reckoning, Sean’s already got a four-day head start on us. If I wait any longer, the trail will be stone cold—if it isn’t already.” Or he might be dead.
“Please, Charlie. Wait just one more day.”
“Moe’s picking us up first thing in the morning, and I’m sorry, I’m sticking to that schedule. But,” I added, when he would have argued again, “it will take around six or seven hours to drive up-country. That doesn’t take into account any delays en route or stopping for food or fuel. So, more likely eight or nine. Another half a day. If that doesn’t give you enough time to chase up your contacts, they probably weren’t going to give you anything worthwhile anyway.”
There was a long, static silence on the other end of the line, then Parker said grimly, “OK. I’ll work on it. But when you get back to New York, we are going to have a serious talk about the chain of command in this organization, you hear me?”
The next morning, Moe was late.
We’d arranged for him to pick us up at seven. He’d agreed to this cheerfully enough, even though it meant leaving his bed practically before he would have a chance to climb into it.
By seven thirty, even allowing for the kid’s possibly relaxed attitude to timekeeping, I was concerned. As we hung around waiting in the hotel lobby, I tried the cell number he’d given us but received only a garbled message from the Arabic network. Dawson translated that the number was out of service. “Whatever that means.”
“Nothing encouraging—either for us or for Moe.”
If the phone had rung without reply, gone to voice mail, or told us it hadn’t been possible to connect the call, that would have been one thing. Out of service implied something more . . . permanent.
I recalled the threat from the Russian who’d had me picked up and hand-delivered by the Kuwaiti police. He had threatened to “incapacitate” rather than kill me if I didn’t leave. Did putting our fixer and guide out of action fall into that category?
Just when I’d given up on him altogether, there was a flash of dirt brown and Moe’s Land Cruiser swung under the hotel portico. He was full of smiles and apologies, bowing and grinning, but no explanations other than there being “Someone you must meet! We go, yes?”
Dawson and I loaded our gear into the back of the Land Cruiser, thankful to finally have it hidden away. The AK-47 I’d taken off the dead Russian after the ambush had a folding stock, which made it easier to conceal inside a bag. Easier to use within the confines of a vehicle, too, if it came to that.
I placed the bag on the rear seat, well within reach. Dawson seemed happy to take the front again alongside a cheery Moe on the drive to the border. I didn’t join in. Instead I watched the desert flow past outside my window, kept an eye behind us, too.
“Everything OK?” Dawson had twisted in her seat. She’d abandoned her sling but was still keeping a supportive hand under her right forearm.
“Hmm. I thought we might have another tail, but if so, they’re better at it than the last lot.”
Dawson didn’t respond, but I noticed she kept a wary eye on her door mirror after that.
Out of the side glass I saw nothing more interesting than a couple of guys herding camels. We crossed the unremarkable border, delineated only by a compound stacked with dusty shipping containers.
Moe had the radio on in the background. He drove slapping his hands on the steering wheel in sloppy time to the music. I took his relaxed state as a good sign. Whatever had delayed him earlier took on less sinister overtones.
Until, that is, he swerved off the main highway and started heading east for Basra.
“Hey, Moe, we’re supposed to be heading north.”
“Yes, yes, of course, Miss Charlie. But first you must see my uncle.”
“We haven’t time to drink chai today. It’s a long way to Karbala.”
“Not the same uncle. He is brother of my mother. Very wise you see him first. Then we go north, yes?” His hands, I noted, had stopped beating time on the wheel, were now gripping more tightly.
“Where is he?”
“In Zubayr. Not far.”
“OK,” I said, receiving a raised eyebrow from Dawson. I reached across and quietly unzipped the bag next to me, got a flicker of a smile in response.
She nodded to the scarf I wore around my neck. “I’d cover your head if I were you. Blondes are not the norm around here.” Despite her darker coloring, she did the same, pulling her own scarf expertly around her face.
Zubayr was a sprawling town of squat square buildings in shades of mud and terra-cotta. Like Basra, it was punctuated by the ornate minarets of mosques. In the distance were the oilfields and refineries that dominated this area of the country. A constant reminder of what the wars had been all about.
Either Moe’s truck was known there, or it didn’t look as if it had anything worth begging for. The local kids hardly paused in their games of street football as we drove through. One or two—the older ones—paid a little too much attention for my liking, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.
It was just a case of letting Moe take us where we were going and hoping we could deal with what we found there when we arrived.
TWENTY-ONE
AS MOE DROVE US DEEPER INTO ZUBAYR, I FOUND MYSELF MENTALLY running escape and evade scenarios. None of them looked promising if the kid was setting us up.
Eventually, he turned into a narrow alleyway with barely enough room for the Land Cruiser’s mirrors to clear the rough-rendered walls on either side. At the end was a pair of studded wooden doors like the barred gates of a fortress.
As we reached them, he slowed and leaned on the horn. For a minute or so nothing happened. Then the gates swung slowly open and Moe drove through into a walled compound.
Two men carrying Kalashnikovs closed the gates behind us. They both wore black-and-white kaffiyeh scarves with the tails draped around the lower halves of their faces. I checked their hands, the set of their shoulders. Their stance was tight, close to jittery. Not a promising sign.
Ahead was a smallish courtyard. A woman in a niqab headscarf was hurrying inside the main building to the left, herding a couple of small children ahead of her. Was that a natural wariness of coming into contact with strangers, I wondered, or did she have a good idea what might be in store for us?
Moe was talking fast through his open window—too fast for me to follow. One of the guards crowded him, arguing and gesturing with one hand while the other stayed firmly on the pistol grip of the gun. I kept an eye on Dawson for her reaction.
When Moe climbed out, telling us, “Is all OK. Please stay here, pretty ladies,” I gave her a nudge.
“He’s explaining that he called his uncle about us, that they are insulting his honored customers by not treating us with more respect, yada, yada,” she said without moving her lips or turning her head.
“Yeah, but has he said why he called—or why we’re here?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
After some more heated to and fro between Moe and the gate guards, he came back to the driver’s window.
“Is all OK,” he repeated. “Please, come meet my uncle.”
I slung the strap of my bag over my shoulder before climbing out, keeping my hands in plain sight. One of the gate guards immediately barred my path. I didn’t need Dawson to translate that he wanted me to leave the bag behind. Reluctantly, I did as I was ordered.
Still, he hesitated. Through the folds of his kaffiyeh I saw the confusion in his eyes. Clearly he had orders to pat down visitors for concealed weapons. This was probably the first time those visitors had been women—and Western women at that.
After a beat, I lifted my jacket and turned a slow circle so he could see I had nothing tucked into my waistband. Dawson did the same. I still had the folded Ka-Bar knife down the side of my boot, but I didn’t fancy my chances if I had to use it.
The guard jerked his head to Moe. We f
ollowed him through the doorway where the woman and children had disappeared. Inside, the building was cool and dim. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. By that time we had been led along a narrow corridor and into a living room. The walls were bare plaster, hung with intricately woven rugs. Cushions and similar faded rugs covered the stone floor. A few items of furniture—a couple of cheap wooden cabinets, one holding a TV set—lined the walls.
There was one armchair, in which sat an old man with a luxurious beard, threaded with gray among the black. He wore the traditional keffiyeh headgear and baggy trousers beneath a white dishdasha that reached almost to his ankles. Almost at odds was the black suit jacket he wore over the top. But the thing I noticed most were his shoes; they looked English, leather, handmade and highly polished.
Moe shook the man’s hand and kissed him on both cheeks, marking him as family. Dawson and I bowed and murmured the stock Arabic greeting, “Salaam aleykum.” (Peace be upon you.) We received the stock response, “Aleykum salaam.” (Upon you, peace.) I was careful not to make eye contact beyond a brief glance.
The old man gestured us to pull up a cushion and sit. I didn’t like the idea. It was too difficult to rise quickly, too hard to do so without telegraphing the move in advance. It wasn’t until the two gate guards withdrew that I felt some of the tension begin to ease. The old man called through to a back room for chai. Even I could follow that.
I looked at Moe, who was smiling at me.
“You brought Sean here, didn’t you?” I guessed.
“Mr. Sean? Yes indeed.”
I was about to ask him why, when the curtain was shoved aside and a young boy entered, carrying the ubiquitous AK-47. I tensed. The kid must have been about ten. He handled the weapon with a familiarity I found more scary than any armed adult.
The old man spoke briefly.
“His son,” Dawson murmured.
The kid bowed a fraction to me, his face stiff with disapproval, and offered me the AK. I glanced at Moe.
“Please to inspect.”
Finally it hit me—his uncle was an arms dealer. Moe had brought Sean here for weapons before he’d headed to Karbala, which made me think perhaps Sean hadn’t completely lost all common sense.
