by Jim Ingraham
“‘City eyes’ at the edge of the city,” Rashad said.
“Oh, my network extends into every corner of misr, I assure you.”
“And you get paid at both ends?”
“I make a living,” Uthman said, tiring of the topic. “So, tell me, why did Shkaki want to find this pilot, this Bashir Yassin? Was it for himself? Is he flying off somewhere? How could he get clearance? He’s an alien, a criminal.”
“My man wasn’t close enough to hear. He heard the American accuse Shkaki of making the call. He didn’t hear anything more. But he knows that Shkaki spoke to someone about getting funding from Syria. Maybe this Yassin is connected to that.”
“But he’s certain Shkaki was taken to the army base in Helwan?”
“He followed them.”
“And you have men there?”
“Of course.”
Uthman remembered that a unit of the army that had gunned down Anwar Sadat had been purged, but the loss was only temporary. “I don’t imagine Shkaki can be broken,” he said, “but letting the police have him would not help our cause.”
“There could be an accident….”
“No. He’s too valuable. Can’t you spirit him across the border?”
“It can be arranged,” Rashad said.
“And Khartoum will send someone to replace him?”
“That’s up to them, of course. But they will be urged to make contact with you.”
“And if you learn anything more about the American—”
“Of course,” Rashad said.
“Is he CIA? You say his father—”
“I don’t know. All I know is he’s a long-time friend of Aziz al-Khalid and that he attended the university here.”
“And the man with him?”
“An old friend of his father, possibly an agent of the muccabarat.”
“If this American is CIA,” Uthman said, “then we should be concerned. Was my name mentioned?”
“No.”
“Anyone I may be representing?”
“No. If my people knew of your connection to the insurgency, I’d’ve been told. They know nothing beyond what Shkaki has been doing.”
“And do they know about my Saudi prince?”
“They know nothing of him. They assume the money is coming from bin Laden. He’s still their hero…ever since the American imperialists invaded Somalia. He spent his money well in that country. They adore him.”
“Good. Let them think all of this comes from him.”
Uthman leaned back and closed his eyes. After a moment, he asked, “How soon can you arrange for Shkaki’s release?”
“Tomorrow evening soon enough?”
*
The recorded voice of the muezzin had faded into the shadows when Hussein lifted his bicycle from the stack of empty cartons in the alley. He watched the man come out of Mr. Ajami’s gate and get into his car. He would follow him, hopefully get a closer look at him, maybe learn where he lives, and for the second time have information that Habib Rahal will pay for. This has been a good day. Allah’hu Akbar!
*
The following evening, after sharing a meal with Habib and dropping him off at his apartment, Nick went south to the army camp in Helwan. He had little else to do, and maybe Shkaki would loosen up a bit. If he knew Bashir, maybe he knew this Diab. It was worth a shot.
Flashes of war invaded his mind, as they often did, unwanted and without warning—the screaming mouth of a child clinging to the body of its dead mother, intestines dangling from her burst belly. Out of the war zone or in, the images tormented him.
He yelled curses at the windshield and slipped a CD into the slot on his dashboard. For the remainder of the ride he listened to the rollicking piano of Ramsey Lewis.
At the short road leading into the base camp, he was startled by lights from military police cars darting everywhere like frightened bats, flitting over his windshield as he edged into a parking lot. Uniformed men were crowded at the entrance to the station, their backs to him, all of them straining to see inside. A large man with angry eyes thrust both palms at Nick and yelled something Nick couldn’t hear. He shut off his engine and got out of his truck and showed his folder, cringing at the sound of grinding gears in a truck moving behind him.
The anger melted. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t….”
“What’s going on?”
“A shooting. The desk sergeant…. Three men in there were shot.” He waded into the crowd, his long arms pushing men aside. “Make way here for His Excellency!” bowing as Nick strode past him, amused by the honorific he wasn’t entitled to.
Nick was stopped inside by an army lieutenant who peered intently at the photo on Nick’s folder, then at Nick’s face while Nick looked beyond him at the blood-soaked shirt of the desk sergeant sprawled in his chair, his mouth gaped open, his dead eyes looking at nothing. Beyond him, a few feet down the hallway a man in street clothes was on one knee examining the body of a soldier. Another uniformed body was sprawled on the floor beyond him.
“It happened suddenly,” the lieutenant said. “They burst in and started shooting.”
Nick ran down the corridor to the holding cell in back. The door was open. Shkaki was gone.
Back at the desk he asked the lieutenant, “Were any of these people witnesses?”
A soldier who called himself Ahmed, said, “I was outside when it happened. All I saw was a black car leaving the compound.”
“A license-plate number?”
“It was gone in a second. I couldn’t see.”
“You’re stationed here?”
“Yes.”
“You knew about the man in back?”
“I wasn’t told who he was.”
While the lieutenant was writing something in a small notebook, Habib rushed inside, out of breath. “I got this on my monitor.”
“He’s gone,” Nick said, taking Habib by the arm, leading him into the parking area. “You know where he lives?”
“Shkaki? No. But my man Hussein. Yes.”
“I’ll follow you.”
They drove north the several miles to Darb al-Ahmar in Cairo and stopped in front of an old stone building. Nick almost stepped on a dead rat as he got out of his car. A barefoot girl was leaning against the building, idly turning pages of a magazine. She watched the two men go inside, only mildly curious.
Two women sat on wooden steps in the airless downstairs hallway.
“We’re looking for Hussein,” Habib said. “He owns that bicycle out there. You know him?”
One woman looked at the other, an older married woman, a muhagabah, as though seeking permission to speak. The older woman slid across the step to make room. “Upstairs,” she said. “Second floor.”
“Is he home?”
The woman raised both hands and shrugged, glancing at the younger woman. They both laughed.
Hussein came to the door in a stained galabiyah which, from the looks of him, he had probably been sleeping in. There was an old woman in the chair behind him. The room smelled of fried fish and unwashed bodies. Instead of inviting them inside, Hussein stepped into the hall and closed the door.
“I heard,” he said. “I saw one of the men. He carried the youngest child out to a large white van. I didn’t get a plate number. The wife and the other two….”
“What are you talking about?”
“The family of Shkaki. Isn’t that why you’re here? I thought … I was going to contact you,” glancing nervously at Habib, then at Nick, afraid he had done something wrong.
“They’re all gone?”
“No more than an hour ago.”
“You have any idea where they went?”
“No. I don’t know them personally. I’ve always avoided them,” looking to Habib for approval. He stepped past them. “This way,” he said, urging them to follow. They had to work their way through a cluster of women on narrow stairs that led to the third floor. At the end of the hallway, Hussein stopped and knocked on a door.
“This woman knows Shkaki’s wife. She may know….”
The door opened and a woman in her early forties looked out at Hussein, then at Nick and Habib. “Yes?”
There was an edge of defiance in her eyes. She seemed to assume they were police, barely glancing at Nick’s folder. She apparently saw something in Habib’s expression that amused her. Her hair was not covered by a scarf.
“May we come in?” Nick said, tucking the folder into his jacket pocket.
The woman, still amused as she looked at Habib, stepped back.
Hussein was the last to enter the apartment. It was modestly furnished. Amateurish framed floral paintings on the walls, a worn sofa the three men were invited to sit on. Hussein, rather than squeeze into the space between the two others, lowered himself to the floor, folding his legs in front of him, grinning as though pleased to demonstrate that he accepted this position of inferiority.
“Something you want to drink.” the woman said, sitting on an upholstered chair across from them.
“Thank you,” Nick said. “We just have a few questions. We understand you’re a friend of a woman who left here a few hours ago with her children.”
“You mean Safiya Ramzi?”
“The wife of a man called Shkaki.”
“The prisoner.”
“Where’d you get that?”
“I heard,” she said, again glancing at Habib, smiling a subtle flirtation.
“What can you tell me about him?”
“Nothing,” shaking her head. “It’s his wife I became friends with.”
“This is the truth?”
“Why would I lie? He wasn’t a very nice man. He was abusive.”
“To his wife?”
“And to his children,” again glancing at Habib.
“So you won’t mind telling us what you do know.”
“I know that his wife wanted desperately to get back to Khartoum. She wanted to be with her family. She was very unhappy here.”
“Who are the people who took her away?”
“She didn’t say, but I thought it was her brother and some men he brought with him. There were three of them. The way they bundled her off I thought she was using this chance to be free. She thought her husband was in jail and couldn’t stop her.”
“How did she know he was in jail?”
“Everybody knew. They were all talking about it.”
“Did you know the people she went away with? Did they live here?”
“One of them did.”
Nick asked a few more questions. What little she knew was mostly gossip about Shkaki. She denied ever having heard of Bashir Yassin.
Back on the second floor, Hussein obtained a key to Shkaki’s now emptied apartment. Among the bagatelle—a baby’s shoe, a worn toothbrush, a candy wrapper, some scattered papers—they found nothing that pointed to where the family of Shkaki had gone or who the people were who had taken them.
*
“And the man you saw with Uthman Ajami?” Habib asked Hussein.
“He drove too fast. I couldn’t keep up.”
“But you’re sure they talked about Bashir Yassin?”
“I don’t think they knew him. They knew Shkaki had tried to reach him.”
“For what reason?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t stay near the wall. I wouldn’t have heard anything except that the other man had a loud voice.”
The old woman sitting on the front steps sucking candy said that Shkaki’s family had gone to Khartoum.
“And how do you know that?” Nick asked.
“Allah gave me ears,” the woman said. “I often use them.”
“You heard them talking?”
The woman bent her head toward her friend. They giggled.
“Do you know Bashir Yassin?”
“Is he married?” the woman asked.
Chapter Seven
LieutenantYousef Qantara, personal security assistant to Aziz al-Khalid, a thin man with a high, broad forehead wearing an immaculate bone-white uniform, sat across from Nick at a table in a small upscale restaurant in Garden City. He tapped his teeth with the mouthpiece of a carved ivory cigarette holder, a fastidious man who at the moment seemed ill at ease. That he didn’t like Nick was evident at their first meeting in Aziz’s apartment the day Amina had flown to America. At the time Nick thought that Joseph resented him because Amina had paid so much attention to him whom she hadn’t seen for many years. Yousef had watched her from across the room with wounded eyes. But Amina had been gone a week and the quiet hostility was still there. It’s because I’m an infidel and an intruder, now Nick believed.
“Nevertheless,” Yousef was saying, “our office should have been notified.”
“Before we picked him up, you mean?”
Searching Nick’s expression for sarcasm, Yousef said, “Even though you’ve been granted certain privileges, Mr. Palermo, you are still subject to our authority.”
“That’s Colonel Palermo,” Nick said, correcting the slight without a show of umbrage. He really didn’t give a damn what this guy called him, although he intended to be respected.
“Of course. I apologize. I meant no offense. It’s just … that I’ve never seen you in uniform. I suppose that’s what it is.”
Nick let it pass, aware that Yousef disliked Americans, especially American marines whom he viewed as ruthless killers. Although Yousef had mentioned nothing of this to Nick, he had voiced these sentiments to Nick’s friend Habib. Usually it was Habib he went to for these little discussions. It was interesting that this time he had come directly to Nick.
He watched Yousef lower the cigarette holder to a napkin and raise his coffee cup, wetting the fringe of his mustache as he sipped. He set the cup down and patted the mustache with a cloth napkin. The selection of this restaurant with its potted plants and ornate mirrors had been his. Nick would have chosen a streetside bistro: wouldn’t smell as good but the food would be the same.
“So the people out there in Abu-Awekila are growing beards?”
The question seemed to take Yousef by surprise. “Was my visit to Sinai in the news?”
“I guess it must have been,” Nick said. Actually he had heard about Yousef’s trip from Aziz al-Khalid.
“They have respect for their religion,” Yousef said. “I don’t fault them for that.”
“You’ve had problems with them?”
“Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” Nick said, laughing, wondering whether the job makes men like Yousef Qantara paranoid. “Just making conversation.”
“These are young men whose religion has rescued them from despair.”
“But you’ll put them in jail,” Nick said.
“If they have committed crimes, of course.”
“Like Shkaki.”
“Shkaki is a foreigner. Whether he’s motivated by religion we may never discover … since you allowed him to escape.”
“Come on,” Nick said. “I turned him over to the army. It’s not my fault—”
“You should have notified me before you went after him.”
And, had I done that, you would not have allowed me to talk to him outside of your presence. Aloud Nick said, “There wasn’t time. Do you know how many rubber stampers we have to go through just to reach your office? We found out he was in that building and we went there. Look, if he hadn’t tried to contact this Bashir Yassin, I wouldn’t give a damn about him. I’m not intruding on your turf.”
“That’s not entirely true, is it.”
“I’ve told you why we want Yassin.”
“Yes, and your cause has been approved by Mr. Khalid. But I still have responsibilities. I don’t enjoy working in the dark.”
“But you agree that Habib and I have to work alone on this.”
“I agree that your activities must be kept secret. I don’t agree with the wisdom of it, but I respect the authority of Mr. Khalid.”
“And of the president,” Nick said, wanti
ng to get that in. How thin these expressed loyalties were, he didn’t know. What he did know was that Yousef Qantara played his game close to the belt. Like a lot of Egyptian officials he was standing tiptoe on a fence, ready to drop to the winning side.
“Have you learned anything new about Bashir Yassin?”
“Not much,” Yousef said. “Men who work with him at the airport say he’s originally from Gaza. Apparently he hasn’t admitted that, but they detect Gaza in his accent, they say.”
“And they have no idea where he is now?”
“That’s what they say. They suspect he’s in trouble and are lying to protect him. We have ways of getting past that.”
“Then it’s not just his relationship with His Excellency’s daughter that you’re interested in?”
“We want to find him.”
“And turn him over to us?”
“A curious use of the word. Who is us?”
“His Excellency and me,” Nick said, unintentionally implying that Yousef was not included as “one of us.”
“That, of course, is a decision for his Excellency to make. I am just a policeman. I follow orders.”
Yousef patted his mustache, folded the napkin and placed it on the table next to his cup. He spent a moment smoothing a wrinkle on the tablecloth with long tapered fingers. He edged his chair back, preparing to leave.
“We’ll keep you informed, Colonel. Never fear.”
“I appreciate your help,” Nick said, pushing his chair back, walking with him past empty tables toward the cashier “This is on me.”
“The ‘cultural attaché’ has an expense account?”
Nick laughed. “It’s for my protection. It was his Excellency’s idea.”
“You require diplomatic immunity?”
“You never know,” Nick said. He didn’t blame Yousef for being skeptical. If he had Yousef’s job, he’d question why a Marine combat officer had been sent from Afghanistan to catch a Palestinian criminal wanted by the Israelis. He’d wonder, as Yousef evidently did, why Nick was really here. Aziz seemed to trust him, but Nick wondered whether Yousef fully trusted Aziz.
