Arab

by Jim Ingraham

  “And you wouldn’t come after me?”

  “I just want to talk to you,” Nick said. “Things I don’t understand. I’m as confused as you are. But one thing I’m clear on: Diab lied to you. I have no plan to hurt you. I’m not your enemy.”

  How many times he must have heard that from Americans. And how many times had he been warned not to believe it.

  Nothing in Bashir’s expression told Nick anything except that Bashir was scared.

  *

  For the entire ride into the city in the hired pickup truck, neither man said a word. The desk clerk at Nick’s hotel no more than glanced at them as they crossed the lobby to the elevator.

  Nick managed to have food sent up from the restaurant. Bashir was clearly nervous, sitting with a tray in his lap, eating in silence. They heard a call to prayer and both ignored it. Just to liven things up, Nick asked about Nuha, about the life of single women in Cairo.

  “I promised her roses,” Bashir said, and the memory seemed to sadden him.

  *

  An hour later, Habib, who had just arrived, was at the small table in the kitchen, toying with Nick’s car keys, fingering the small tag from the rental yard. “And it was all a lie? He isn’t wanted by the Israeli police?”

  “I don’t blame you for being confused,” Nick said. “But it’s what I was told. They said I was to find him,” glancing into the other room where Bashir was at the window gazing down at the street several floors below, “and deliver him to the Israelis. I was stupid to believe it.”

  Habib glanced reflectively at Nick, then looked into the other room at Bashir—an old soldier having trouble absorbing what he had just learned.

  “I may have a couple more days,” Nick said. “I’ll know more after I’ve talked with my contact. If you want to quit this job, I won’t blame you.”

  Habib dismissed that with annoyance. “I thought it was wrong,” he said. “Why bring you all the way here from Afghanistan? There had to be another reason. But I trusted you. I knew you wouldn’t lie to me. I knew your father’s son wouldn’t lie to me.”

  Nick couldn’t detect any uncertainty in Habib’s expression. “If you want to pull out….”

  “No,” Habib said. He tossed the keys to Nick. “When Yousef came to me the other night….”

  “He’d been told?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t mention anything like that. It was a warning. He tried to scare me. He wanted me to spy on you. But I don’t work for him.”

  “While I’m gone, talk to Bashir. Make him feel comfortable.”

  “If his car is in the pound, I can get it.”

  “Later,” Nick said.

  Habib walked him to the door.

  Outside in the parking lot Nick phoned Isaac Roach, no longer thinking of him as “Richard,” although he asked for “Richard.”

  “Not the Fontana,” Isaac said. “There’s a coffee shop near the Canadian embassy in Garden City. A sculpture—actually a bas-relief—of a lion out front. I forget the name of the street.”

  “I’ll find it,” Nick said.

  *

  The sun was dying in the distance beyond minarets like sharpened pencils pointing at the sky. “How did he jump you?” Diab said, rolling down his window, spitting onto the street.

  “I don’t know how he got loose,” Farouk said, swerving to avoid a deep rut. “All of a sudden he upended the table.”

  “And you ran?”

  “You told me not to shoot. What else could I do?”

  Diab laughed, tapping Farouk’s fingers on the steering wheel. “Well, don’t worry. We’ll find them. What’d the woman say this truck driver’s name is?”

  “Nawal Sabri. And that could be the truck down there,” pointing at a small pickup in the distance under the branches of a large tree.

  They pulled up behind the truck. Smoke carrying odors of burning rags led them to a fenced-in yard behind a small cement building. A woman in blouse and red skirt was poking a fire with a long stick. She glanced at them with attacking eyes and a head full of suspicion.

  “Why you want him? He don’t drive when it’s dark. Come back tomorrow,” holding the stick like a weapon.

  Diab ripped it from her hands and tossed it over the fence. The woman cowered from him, both hands shielding her face. Diab ignored her and led Farouk into a small, low-ceilinged room where a child in blue pants sat on a shredded prayer rug picking at a round loaf of baladi bread.

  “Your baba,” Diab said, striding past the boy into a darkened room thick with odors of sweat.

  “Stinks in here,” Farouk said, striding past the bed. He raised a window shade and tried to pry open the window. It was stuck.

  The man lay in a rumpled galabiyah on a stained mattress, one leg drawn up, his mouth open, beard crumpled under his chin.

  Diab tapped his shoulder. The man looked up, startled “Wha…?

  “Got to talk to me, Nawal.”

  “Wha…?” frantic eyes looking around.

  Diab slapped his face, not hard. “Need some information.”

  “Wha…?” watching Farouk who was smiling at him from the foot of the bed.

  “You drove two men into the city this afternoon. Where’d you take them?”

  Nawal squirmed from under Diab’s probing fingers and pushed the skirts of his galabiyah down his legs.

  “An American and a Palestinian. Where’d you take them?”

  “Midan el Tahrir.”

  “You watched where they went?”

  “No. The crowds. The traffic. No. I just let them out.”

  “You heard them talking? You know what they said?”

  “They talked different, not Arabic. I don’t know….”

  Diab grunted in disappointment. He studied the man a few seconds, then left the room. No reason for this man to lie. And doubtless the American—he’s a CIA operative on a covert mission. Why would he want the driver to know where he was going?

  Outside in his car, he said, “Midan el Tahrir.”

  “There’s a million hotels around there,” Farouk said, backing away from Nawal’s truck.

  “And we don’t know what name the American is registered under.”

  “That girl at the American embassy,” Farouk said. “What’s her name?”

  “You’re right! Sadjita! Very good, Farouk. Let’s find her.”

  “She’d be home now,” Farouk said, leaning forward, his chest on the steering wheel, adjusting the air-conditioner. “Know where she lives?”

  “Yes. Near Central Station.”

  “How do you meet these women?”

  Diab laughed. “Her brother, remember? Got shot. We called him Onions.”

  “BaSal, yeah. Funny looking.”

  “He introduced me,” flicking urging fingers at Farouk. “Come on, move this thing. I want to find that monkey Bashir before he disappears. He’s our gate to freedom, Farouk. It’s all we’ve got now. There’s nothing in the bank. Faisal is finished. If we don’t find Bashir—”

  “We could do it without Bashir.”

  “Kill Aziz? Find him on the street and stab him? Jaradat would laugh and pay us nothing. Think it through, Farouk. Why would Jaradat go to all this trouble over Bashir? Why doesn’t he just hire somebody off the street, tell them it’s for Allah?” He pounded hard on Farouk’s hand. “Because Bashir is uniquely qualified in some way. It isn’t just the death of Aziz al-Khalid he wants. It’s something bigger. It’s got to be. And that means money for us, Farouk. Big money! Otherwise we’re reduced to stealing. Think of it.”

  *

  The walls were afloat with decorative tapestries and ornate framed mirrors, the one behind Isaac Roach’s head reflecting a bald spot Nick hadn’t noticed before. Isaac looked older for some reason, sagging flesh under his eyes. Bad lighting, probably.

  “What can you tell me about Esmat Bindari?” Nick said.

  The cigarette in an ivory holder paused half way to Isaac’s mouth. “Where’d you get that name?” eyes
narrowing.

  “Out of my hat,” Nick said. “But he means something to you.”

  “The question is, What does he mean to you? Where’d you get the name?”

  Obviously Nick had stumbled into something. “I want to know whether Aziz al-Khalid is in danger.”

  “You’ve been looking beyond your mission….”

  “Just answer my question, goddamn it. You’ve been using me to betray my friend. I have a right to know what this is about. Tell me or I get the fuck out of here. You can do this on your own or get somebody else. If nobody knows who Bashir is, how’d he get a passport?”

  Isaac sighed. Amateurs! he was probably thinking. “Any fool can get a passport. Where did he get the money is the question?”

  “From Bindari.”

  “Why are you asking about him? That’ll get back to Yousef. It’ll feed his suspicions.” He made a face. “What have you learned?”

  “Nothing. Names fly at me: Saraaj, Jaradat, Bindari. I want to know what I’m mixed up in.”

  Isaac sat back, caressing the cigarette holder with a long bony finger.

  “If you’ve got him, Colonel, take him somewhere in your truck. Let me know where you are and we’ll pick him up. Then you can go back to Afghanistan. You’ll be free of this.”

  “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Calm down,” Isaac said, looking around for eavesdroppers. “There’s no plot against Aziz that I know about, if that’s what worries you.”

  “Why can’t you just tell me why you want Bashir Yassin? Am I a fucking outsider? What’s going on?”

  “Keep your voice down. Have you found Yassin?”

  “I know where he is,” Nick said.

  Isaac took that in, seemed concerned as he studied Nick’s face, his eyes saying I thought so. “Okay.” He sat up, leaned forward and placed both forearms on the table. Before speaking he tired of the position and sank back into his more habitual slump. He fitted a cigarette into the holder and lighted it, dragged smoke into his lungs.

  “All right. But this is for your ears alone,” smoke climbing around the words. “Esmat Bindari is an official at the Cairo airport. We suspect he might be forging something with General Saraaj. You remember him…. We talked about it, about his activities at that airstrip in the Sinai.” He dragged on the cigarette. “Whether this is connected to Colonel Jaradat we don’t know. Bindari and Jaradat are friends; we know that. We know that Saraaj and Bindari have been holding long heated talks. We couldn’t get close enough to know what they talked about. We know that Bindari’s been making phone calls to Brazil. We don’t know why. We don’t know whether Bashir Yassin’s connected to any of this. But he’s a pilot who’s been given additional training for some reason, just plucked out of a maintenance crew. We know he’s made flights to Brazil. That training you learned about? It wasn’t just to brush up his skills as a pilot. He was sent there to learn about new electronic devices in modern jet aircraft. It could be perfectly innocent. It could have nothing to do with whatever’s going on with Bindari and Saraaj. And we won’t know until we’ve talked with him.”

  “And if he knows nothing, if he isn’t mixed up with Bindari and Saraaj, why not release him?”

  “We may learn nothing from him, but he’ll learn something about us we can’t let out of the box. But that shouldn’t be of any concern to you. Just let us know where he is and we’ll take it from there.”

  “Why don’t you go after someone higher than a mechanic?”

  “That could cause alarm. The disappearance of a mechanic would hardly be noticed. Who would investigate it? Would Bindari make a fuss over it? Would Saraaj?”

  *

  A baby cried somewhere down the corridor as Diab and Farouk approached the suite the clerk downstairs had said was registered to an American.

  “Make a noise,” Diab said.

  “What noise?”

  They were outside the door. “Like you’re sick. Like you need help.”

  Farouk shrugged. He put his face near the door and wailed.

  Diab pulled him back. “Do it again.”

  At the third try, the door opened. A man wearing an eye patch poked his head outside just far enough for Diab to grab his throat and shove him back into the suite. The man tumbled backwards over a footstool. As he tried to scramble away, a small gun fell from his pants.

  “Get it!” Diab said, pulling the struggling man against him.

  Diab bullied the man across the room and slammed him into a wall.

  “Where’s Bashir?”

  The man got an arm free and drove it into Diab’s belly. Diab knocked the man backwards. The man squirmed free, turned to get away. Diab threw him down. The man struck the table with his face, tried to get up and Diab kicked his head, knocking him unconscious.

  Farouk was in the bathroom doorway pointing the pistol at Bashir, whom he had dragged from under the bed.

  “I know this man,” Diab said, meaning the man on the floor. “He’s a cop.”

  “He’s the one at Lamines!” Farouk said.

  To Bashir, Diab said, “You’re in the CIA’s hotel room with a cop. So don’t lie to me.” He grabbed Bashir’s shoulder and dragged him across the room.

  “Downstairs we go quietly past the desk. Don’t make trouble, Bashir. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I was just hiding there,” Bashir said. “I’m not with them.”

  “Don’t be pathetic. Act like a man and shut up. We get outside, you tell me exactly how you’re supposed to kill Aziz al-Khalid. Every detail.”

  “That’s crazy,” Bashir said, almost lifted off his feet as Diab led him by the arm down the stairs to the small lobby.

  The desk clerk, undoubtedly accustomed to the behavior of CIA people staying at his hotel, pretended to notice nothing as Diab hustled Bashir to the revolving door. Farouk, still holding the pistol, gave the clerk a big smile.

  *

  Nick stood in the doorway of his suite looking at a footstool on its side and a fallen-over table, Habib’s glasses on the carpet, blood on the carpet. He picked up the glasses and followed the sound of running water and coughing.

  “What the fuck?”

  Habib turned from the bathroom mirror, holding a bloody towel to his mouth, bruises over his puckered eye socket. He thanked Nick for the glasses and put them on. “Son of a bitch jumped me,” he said. “Big bastard. A little runt with him got my pistol.”

  “They took Bashir?”

  “No more than an hour ago. I didn’t have a chance,” embarrassed, ashamed.

  When he turned, Nick saw blood matted in his hair above his ear. “Jesus, you okay?”

  “He knocked me out. They were gone when I got off the floor,” his expression heavy with shame.

  “It’s okay, Habib. I know the guy. He did the same thing to me.”

  “So we’re back where we were.”

  “Maybe not,” Nick said. “We’ve got that little soldier boy we picked up in the cemetery. If he’s in the city lockup, maybe you can get to him, find out where Diab might hole up. He’s got to bring Bashir somewhere.”

  “That old army camp the kid told us about. We could try that. I don’t want to ask the police for help. Yousef Qantara would hear about it. I don’t need him on my back.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Bashir pressed his back against the rear wheel of Diab’s Pontiac, his feet in a clump of grass, his ankles pricked by weeds that sprouted from the sand. He tired of looking at the muzzle of Farouk’s small pistol and turned his eyes toward the river where a man in a white robe strolled toward a beached felucca, occasionally poking his long stick into green slime that curdled the water where insects flitted through reeds. Beyond the man were excursion boats moving in the current toward the city.

  “This time if he tries to get away, shoot him in the foot,” Diab said. “They know he limps. It won’t arouse suspicion. We have only this one chance, Farouk. Remember that.”

  “They’re bringing the money?�
�

  “I said we’d kill him if they didn’t. They promised nothing. Uthman won’t have the money. The men he sends won’t have it. They’ll come to see we’ve really got Bashir. They’ll leave or maybe set up a meeting somewhere. No matter what fancy tricks they have in mind, they don’t get Bashir until we get the money.”

  “We just wait here?”

  “No. I changed my mind. Put him in the seat next to you and take him to that place under the trees. Leave the car in that shed. You’ll see me on the wharf down there,” pointing. “I’ll wave you to come back. First I want to see who they send.”

  Diab watched the car drive off.

  He spat in the sand and lowered his gaze, saddened by a newspaper account of the capture of Faisal, the description of his health. “Precarious,” the article had said. And the story on television: “We’ll have to carry him up the steps of the gallows,” a policeman had said, everyone around him laughing.

  It comes to this, Diab thought, remembering the parties, the women, the banquets, the respect. I was an important man! Now what am I?

  As he inhaled odors of the river and listened to children’s voices flying off excursion boats, he stepped on a lizard that had scampered to the water’s edge to drink. He ground it into the mud.

  *

  Two men climbed out of a black French sedan that had crept down the narrow road and stopped ten feet from him. A third man, the driver, watched from the far side of the car. All three were in Western clothes—rumpled pants and sweatshirt. The beard on the taller one dangled to his chest. They were the men who had brought Faisal back to the cemetery.

  “Where is he?” the bearded one said.

  Neither of the two confronting him appeared to be armed. He himself was not armed. It didn’t matter.

  “You got my money?”

  “First we see Bashir Yassin.”

  “No,” Diab said. “First you pay me, then you see Bashir Yassin.”

  “That’s not how it works! How do I know you’ve got him?”

  “Show me the money!” Diab shouted, taking a step toward the man, his eyes flashing anger.

  Above sounds from the Nile—wailing gulls, people’s voices—Diab heard the cocking of a pistol. He glanced at the driver who was leaning over the hood of the car aiming a gun at him in a two-handed policeman’s grip he probably learned from television.