by Nancy Kress
When Cami finally came, she was in her wheelchair but she had regular clothes on, not a hospital gown. Allen whispered loudly, “Cami!”
“Good morning, Allen. Good morning, Lisa. How’s Poo-poo today?”
Lisa didn’t answer—she never answered anything Cami asked—and she didn’t smile, either. But she gripped Poo-poo harder and sort of wiggled her body toward Cami, and Allen knew he better act quick or it would be Lisa, Lisa, Lisa again most of the day.
“Cami, I need help!”
“Okay,” she said. “But it will have to be now, Allen, because they’re sending me home soon.”
Home? She was going home? Instantly Allen revised his plan. He’d could overhear you on a cell phone.
Cami was talking to Lisa, saying in a low voice that she would come back and visit, visit every single day, she promised, and when Lisa was well again—
“Cami!”
“What, Allen?”
“Do you have paper and a pencil?”
“I can get them for you.”
“Please! And then when you go home will you take a note to my best friend, Jimmy Doake? It’s really, really, really important!”
“Of course I will. But you know, I can’t drive, so I have to ask the friend who’s taking me home. But I’m sure he’ll help, too.”
Cami’s face sort of glowed when she said “friend.” Allen ignored this. “Could I have the paper and pencil now? The nurses are probably too busy, they’re always too busy.” He tried to sound sad.
“I can get paper at the nurses’ station. Back in a minute.”
When she returned, Allen pushed the button to make the top part of his bed go up, balanced the paper on his good leg, and wrote. His teacher at school had taught them correct letter form:
Dear Jimmy,
How are you? I am fine only Im in the hospitel. You have to do something VERY IMPORTENT!!!! Belle is in my seller in the file droor and she needs food and water NOW. Also to go out. She will not bite you! She is sick but not biting. Please do this now and DON’T TELL ANYBODY!!!!
Your frend,
Allen
“Writing to a girl?” Jason said. He poked his neck toward Allen’s note. “A girl, a girl, Allen’s got a girlfriend!”
“It’s not to a girl!” Allen said furiously. He turned the note over.
“A girlfriend, a girlfriend, a hairy ugly girlfriend named Jimmy!”
A chill ran through Allen. If Jason had seen the name, he might also have read some of the note. Jason was a total loser but he was smart. Allen scowled at Jason’s stupid, taunting face and folded the note into a very small bundle.
“Here, Cami. It goes to Jimmy Doake, 146 Cobbler Drive. Remember—you promised!”
“I promise,” Cami said, smiling. “Jason, don’t tease so.”
“He’s a nerd.”
“Am not!” Allen said hotly, although in his secret heart he knew he was.
“Are too!”
“Am not!”
“A fight this early in the morning?” said a new voice. “Hot dog, let’s sell tickets!”
In the doorway stood a man with his arm in a sling. His hair was wet, like he’d just washed and combed it, he had on a dress-up coat like Allen’s father wore to the office, and he carried a bunch of red flowers. Behind him stood another man in regular clothes with, Allen saw, a gun on his hip. Ordinarily this would have been thrilling, as thrilling as the gun Jimmy’s dad kept under his bed, but now it gave Allen a sick feeling. People with guns were taking dogs away to the pound.
“Ready to go, beautiful?” the man with the flowers said to Cami, and she got that glow again. But she had good manners.
“Billy, these are my friends Jason, Lisa, and Allen. Kids, this is Mr. Davis and….”
“Jess Langstrom,” said the other man, who looked very tired. “Chauffeur.”
None of the three children smiled at the men.
Cami kissed Lisa and said, “I promise I’ll be back soon, Allen, Lisa, Jason. Meanwhile, get well.”
Lisa started to cry, silent tears rolling down on Poo-poo, and for a hopeful minute Allen thought maybe that would make Cami stay. But it didn’t. Mr. Davis rolled her chair away from them and down the hall. But at least Cami had Allen’s note to Jimmy, and at the last minute she looked over her shoulder, held up the note, and smiled at Allen.
That would have to do for now.
» 40
Tessa’s plane landed at Heathrow shortly after midnight, London time. She’d slept a little on the plane, but not much. Trudging along the jetway to Terminal 4, Tessa could feel every muscle in her body tense. By now Maddox knew that the British Air ticket for “Ellen Blakely” had been purchased on Tessa’s American Express card. If he was going to have her picked up, it would most likely be at Customs.
He didn’t. That probably meant Door Number Two: Maddox was gambling that she’d lead him to someone else. Now a lot would depend on how many agents Maddox had been able to assign last-minute to this, and how good they were.
Plus, of course, how good Tessa herself was.
She walked purposefully through the terminal, knowing that she would not be able to spot the agents following her. The Underground stopped running at midnight; Maddox would expect either a cab or the N9 night bus. He would have a team of agents in a car, ready to follow either.
She drew out euros from an ATM; her American Express card was already compromised, so what the hell. Outside the weather was cold and rainy, London at its most unpleasant. Tessa told the cabbie, “Charing Cross Road, please, at Shaftesbury.”
“Clubbing, then, is it?” he said pleasantly, but Tessa didn’t answer. During the ride in to London she leaned back and closed her eyes, not trying to identify her tail, but once they reached Soho she was alert again, watching for her chance.
She’d been here with Salah. He didn’t know London the way he knew Paris, but he’d loved it. He had loved so much, been so delighted with the world… Tessa pushed away her memories. Not now.
Soho was difficult for even Londoners to navigate. Narrow, winding streets jammed with shops, pubs, restaurants, clubs, and, even after midnight on a rainy Sunday, people. Tessa directed the cabbie, “Turn right here, now left…another left…” Midway down a tiny street she saw her chance, thrust money at the driver, and jumped out. She just glimpsed the two agents leaping from the car two vehicles behind.
Tessa darted into a club and pushed her way through the dancers. In jeans and Jess’s parka, she was spectacularly conspicuous among the short skirts and satin camisoles. The music pulsed and roared. Tessa kept close to the wall, moving fast, then hunkered down and doubled back as soon as she’d spotted the agent moving in the other direction. She was back outside the front door before the man racing after her realized what she was doing. A female agent waited outside, covering the door. Thank you, Lord, Tessa said inside her head. If the second agent had been male, this would be a lot harder.
As soon as she laid eyes on the agent, Tessa charged her and kicked. The woman had out her gun but didn’t get to use it, and she wouldn’t have shot to kill anyway. Tessa wasn’t Victor Balonov. Her kick caught the woman square on the chest and she went down.
A third agent abandoned the car, causing horns to beep in the narrow streets behind him. Time had slowed down for Tessa now, in that strange way it had always done during hard physical training. She was around the corner and into an alleyway—no, a mews, this was London—before the first agent had exited the club. Dodging, weaving, she made it to Piccadilly Circus and flagged one of the many cabs. One of the agents was close enough behind her to actually slap the back of the cab. He couldn’t stop it, but he had the number.
“Beat out that man for my cab, did you?” the driver said sourly. “Where to, then?”
“Shoreham. Quickly.”
It was two more changes of cab before Tessa was sure she’d lost all the agents. Leaning back in the last cab, she clasped her shaking hands together hard, and thought that she’d
have to tell Bernini to up the training requirements for the London Legat.
Ruzbihan al-Ashan lived in the East End, once the home of Jack the Ripper and still a stew of poverty, gentrification, immigrants, gangs, boutiques, and unrest. His firm’s world headquarters were in the City, moved ten years ago from Tunis. If you are that rich, your address is never an electronic secret. The house was large, surrounded by the high solid wall so popular with both Brits and Tunisians, and even at 1:30 in the morning, two men stood in the small, lighted guardhouse inside the iron gate.
Tessa pressed the intercom. “I am here to see Ruzbihan al-Ashan. He is not expecting me, but he will agree to see me. My name is Tessa Sanderson Mahjoub.”
The answering voice was heavily accented, and heavily sarcastic. “You demand to see al-ustaath al-Ashan at such this hour? Go away, woman.”
“If you do not tell him who I am and that I am here, he will be very angry.”
Silence.
She added, “You must tell him that I have come about Salah and Richard, and that others know where I am and why.”
“You threaten me?” Ruzbihan said quietly. “In my own house you threaten me?”
“No,” Tessa said. “It was only to gain admittance, Ruzbihan. No one else knows I’m here. Please…may I sit down?”
He motioned to a floor cushion. They stood in a small room directly off the spacious entry hall, furnished in the old Tunisian style with rugs, oversize cushions, and low tables of hammered brass inlaid with silver and gold in intricate designs. The white walls were hung with antique copper trays and yet more exquisite, hand-woven rugs. On the nearest table sat a brass coffee service. Tessa wondered if the entire house was decorated this way, or if Ruzbihan had deliberately chosen to see her in a room that might have existed when he and Salah had been boys together in Carthage. The security camera, which of course must be present, was not visible.
She sat on a bright cushion and studied Ruzbihan. Smaller and darker than Salah, he had a neat, compact body dressed now in a Western bathrobe over pajamas. Black curly hair, thick dark beard, and green eyes that, like so many Tunisians, suggested Berbers somewhere in his ancestral past. His expression gave her nothing.
“I am sorry to come here like this at this hour,” Tessa said. “I would have hoped to meet Salah’s boyhood friend under different circumstances. This is not…I’m sorry. But I have no choice. Something is happening to me in the United States, and I think it is connected somehow with Richard Ebenfield.”
“Richard has nothing to do with me. I have told you this since before.”
“I loved Salah very much,” Tessa said. A completely uncharacteristic thing for her to say to a stranger—not to mention being a complete non sequitur—but the moment after she said it, Tessa knew why she had. Ruzbihan must believe that she did not suspect Salah of anything underhanded. That she had trusted him, and was prepared to trust Ruzbihan…if he would let her.
He shifted on his cushion but answered nothing, his dark eyes wary.
She smiled slightly. “You don’t approve of my coming here alone, in the middle of the night.”
“It is not safe for a woman. Salah has before permitted this behavior for his wife?”
She saw the gulf then, between the Salah she had known and the heritage he must have shared with Ruzbihan. But there was no way to tell this man how much his childhood friend must have changed, how little the concept of “permission” had had to do with her marriage. Instead she said quietly, “You told me, Ruzbihan, that you had not seen Richard Ebenfield for ‘many, many years.’ But you also told me you’d seen him in Africa, in Mogumbutuno. That city was open to Westerners only briefly, two years ago. That’s not ‘many, many years.’ Can you tell me which is true?”
Tessa watched him carefully; she was trained to detect lying. But Ruzbihan did not change expression at all. “My English is sometimes not too good. I have perhaps spoken wrongly.”
“Were you in Mogumbutuno two years ago? And saw Ebenfield there?”
“Yes.” This time something moved behind his eyes, but it might just have been resentment at being questioned like this, in the middle of the night, in his own home, by a woman he could not in a million years understand or approve of. “I had business in Africa. Richard saw my name in the local paper and came to my hotel.”
“Why was he in Africa, do you know?”
“He said he was with les Frères de l’Espoir céleste.”
The Brothers of Heavenly Hope, a Catholic missionary order. It was the same thing Aisha had told her. “Was Ebenfield a monk, then?”
For the first time, Ruzbihan smiled, a cold smile that made Tessa suddenly feel she would not like to cross him in business. “Richard was not a monk. He was nothing, a failure. Never has he done anything with success, never for his entire life.”
“Aisha said that, too.”
“You have spoken with Aisha?”
“Yes. Yesterday.”
“She is well?”
“Yes,” Tessa said.
“And Fatima? She too is well?”
“As far as I know.”
Then Ruzbihan did give her a full smile, full of such sudden warmth and charm that Tessa’s heart was pierced. This must have been the Ruzbihan that Salah had known, that he had played with and laughed with and loved. Ruzbihan said, “Fatima has thought you a strange daughter-in-law, yes?”
“Yes,” Tessa said, smiling.
“You have won her heart after time?”
“No, I’m afraid not. But we managed.”
“Salah, he has loved his mother but he has gone on your side, the side of his wife,” Ruzbihan said shrewdly. “He was always brave, my good friend.”
“And it was bravery.” Tessa laughed. “He never said so, but I think that getting me away from Fatima was one reason he was willing to move to America.”
“‘Une femme formidable,’” Ruzbihan said, with such a good imitation of Salah that Tessa laughed again, in startled bittersweet memory. Ruzbihan seemed to understand. He smiled at her with sad sympathy, and out of that shared moment she began her hardest and most crucial question.
“Ruzbihan, your name—” The door flew open.
Tessa, facing the doorway, saw the young man first. Ruzbihan had his back to the door, but she saw from his face that he knew who it was even before he turned around. The boy was in his late teens, maybe as old as twenty-one. He was as short as Ruzbihan but much more muscular, as if he worked out daily, and without Ruzbihan’s green eyes. This boy’s eyes were very dark, burning with anger. He wore a traditional djellabah, perhaps thrown on hastily over whatever he slept in. Tessa’s first thought was that he was part of Ruzbihan’s security detail, but Ruzbihan’s expression, and the boy’s, told her different.
The young man said something in Arabic, a staccato burst that made Ruzbihan scowl. He said, with great deliberation, “Tessa, may I introduce my son, Abd-Al Adil. This is Tessa Sanderson, the wife of the friend of my youth, Salah Mahjoub. I have spoken of Salah to you.”
The boy ignored Tessa, once more speaking angrily in Arabic. Now Ruzbihan spoke sharply in that language to his son, perhaps reprimanding him for his behavior. Abd-Al Adil snapped back and then left the room, shutting the door loudly.
Ruzbihan turned back to Tessa, once again coldly formal. “I apologize for my son. The youth, they have not the manners, it does not matter sometimes what one says at them. I am sorry.”
“It’s all right,” Tessa said, trying to smile. “Kids will be kids.”
“He has wanted my car and driver this night and I have said no, because of some previous bad behavior. Again, I apologize.”
He was lying.
Tessa felt it as strongly as if Ruzbihan had just sent a polygraph stylus zinging off the charts. Their moment of shared warmth had vanished the second Abd-Al Adil entered the room. In fact, what had just happened was more than vanished camaraderie. The small room, with its Arabic furnishings and the quick and un-Anglo emotional warmth, had
changed in a second. It had become alien, foreign, a miniature version of that other Middle East, the one where nothing was quite as it seemed. The Mideast full of hair-trigger convolutions no Westerner ever really understood, and where no distinctions were made among business, politics, religion, and family. No Arab belonged to himself; he was part of a vast interconnected web where everything he did brought honor or catastrophe to all. Whatever Abd-Al Adil had been arguing about with his father, it hadn’t been the family car.
The moment to ask her pivotal question was lost. And all at once Tessa knew this was a good thing, that if she had voiced her question, disaster would have followed. She couldn’t have named that disaster, but it would have come. Ruzbihan watched her closely, waiting. She said instead, “Your name was ‘Ruzbihan bin Fahoud al-Ashan’ when you were a boy, Salah said, but now you use ‘Robert Ashan.’ If I hadn’t known how Arabic names worked, I’d have never found your address in the London directory.”
Did something in his face relax an infinitesimal amount? She couldn’t be sure. He shrugged and said, “Salah did the same, has he not told you this? His name was ‘Salah bin Mohammed bin Karim al-Mahjoub.’ He has changed his at the Sorbonne, because he has thought that ‘al-Mahjoub’ is too much an aristocrat for him. The family estates at Mahjoub has gone from the family since very long time ago. And ‘bin Mohammed bin Karim’ he has dropped because Salah has not liked too much formality, not because he has disrespect of his father Mohammed and his grandfather Karim.”
“But that wasn’t why you changed your name,” Tessa said.
They gazed at each other. Finally Ruzbihan said, “No. I wish for business a name less Arabic. In business in London I am Robert Ashan. With my own people, I remain Ruzbihan bin Fahoud bin Ahmed bin Aziz al-Ashan. This is the world we live in now.”
“I know,” Tessa said. He had given her the opening she wanted. “I have felt some of that myself, married to an Arab. That prejudice is the reason I left the FBI. When you asked me not to give your name to the FBI, I understood why. And I have honored your wishes.”
