Arab

by Jim Ingraham

  “I don’t—”

  “You have reals?”

  “They gave me a credit card.”

  “Well, it’s best you have a little cash. I’ll take care of that.”

  *

  She wasn’t anything resembling his idea of a prince’s courtesan. She was short, with muscular legs and a body like a barrel. Her face was long, ordinary except for the eyes. They were Elizabeth Taylor eyes, violet and expressive. You couldn’t ignore them. The rest of her might be dowdy but her eyes were captivating.

  She didn’t try to be friendly. She apparently felt no need to be liked or even welcomed, especially by someone like me, he thought.

  “So this is your pilot,” she said, addressing Nelson but looking at Bashir, like a judge appraising an Airedale at a dog show.

  “My pleasure,” Bashir said, rising from his seat, holding out his hand. She ignored the gesture and he dropped back into his seat, deflated.

  “Bashir Yassin,” Nelson said, holding the chair for her, running around the table when she was seated, “an excellent experienced pilot.”

  “And it’s Cairo you’re taking me to now? Not that airfield in the desert?” she asked, removing the ring from a folded napkin. The ring slipped from her fingers, bouncing on the tiled floor. She paid no attention to it. “And it’s been cleared?”

  “Everything’s taken care of,” Nelson said, looking up at a waiter who offered him a wine list.

  The waiter bent down and picked up the napkin ring, placed it on the table.

  “I hate wine,” she said. “And the Americans?”

  “They have no idea you’re in this city. You have nothing to fear from them,” Nelson said, dismissing the waiter without consulting Bashir.

  “And how can you be sure of that?”

  “I have ways,” Nelson said, with a smile, as though seeking applause.

  Later, when they had placed their orders—something French for her, steaks for Nelson and Bashir—she asked, “And how did you learn of General Saraaj’s death?”

  “When my contact called about the change.”

  “You still don’t know who that is?”

  “They never tell me,” he said. “But I assume it’s the one they call Uthman.”

  “Not his real name?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “And he called it an accident?”

  “I take it he was reflecting what he saw on the news. He didn’t witness it. You think it might have been something else?”

  “I don’t trust those people, nor should you,” she said, “even though you work for them.”

  “Actually I’m free-lance. I’m a white-collar mercenary,” said with a tittering laugh that made Bashir wince. The man had to be gay—neat, a bit effeminate.

  Bashir said, “Mr. Bindari is an official at—”

  She gave him a dismissive look. She obviously didn’t care what he heard or what he knew. She probably wondered why he had been invited to dine with her. Maybe Nelson wanted to show her that he wasn’t a reckless idiot. She seemed to need such assurances—a nervous, anxious, impatient woman who seemed accustomed to being waited on and catered to and had little regard for those she considered beneath her.

  Nothing of consequence was mentioned until their food had arrived—a filet of an exotic fish for her, which she began eating before either Nelson or Bashir had been served.

  “And when do we leave?” she asked, allowing her fork to linger on her tongue, a bit of food clinging to her lip. He wondered whether she was this gross in the presence of the prince. That she even knew a prince staggered him with awe. His feelings might be hurt, he might be grievously misjudged, but it was no disgrace to be slighted by such a woman. He could hardly believe he was sitting across the table from the girlfriend of Prince Fahd. He couldn’t wait to tell Nuha.

  “They’ll let me know,” Nelson said. “Things in Cairo have to be arranged.”

  *

  They remained in Porto Alegre three days, during which Bashir poked around the various shops in the area, heeding Nelson’s warning against wandering too far from the hotel, cautioned also by misadventures he had had in Rio. He didn’t see Helene Bryce again until they were at the airport. She seemed unimpressed by the beautiful Lear Jet, probably having flown in one many times. Maybe the prince owned one. She affected that air of indifference he had noticed in people of wealth, especially the insecure ones who pretend to be bored by everything that thrills the common folk.

  Felix joined them just before takeoff. Nelson had accompanied Helene to the airport and had disappeared without saying anything to Bashir. Felix brought all the necessary papers and was given the same indifferent reception by Helene Bryce that Bashir had received. She was nervous and anxious to get into the air.

  They made two stops in Brazil before crossing the ocean and ran into no snags until they reached Casablanca. Apparently for reasons of caution, Helene was not allowed to get off the plane.

  “This is ridiculous,” she said. “My papers are in order.”

  “They didn’t give a reason and I don’t think we should argue,” Bashir said. “I can bring you something from the restaurant while we’re refueling.”

  “Ignorant foreigners!” she exclaimed, snatching the menu from Felix.

  “I’ve eaten here before,” Bashir said. “The food’s good.”

  And that brought a sarcastic grimace. Despite the insult, Bashir had trouble suppressing an urge to laugh. There was something comical in this tubby little woman. A prince’s girlfriend!

  *

  A breeze swept dust across the tarmac at the Cairo Airport where two women arrived in a small car, both smiling and bowing, assuring the cranky Bryce she needn’t worry about her vaccination certificate or her passport. “We’re from the protocol secretariat,” one of them said. “Your man Felix LaPointe is taking care of everything.” Felix had alighted from the plane and was on his way to the terminal entrance with Bashir’s briefcase.

  A man in a white uniform drove up in a courtesy cart. “Just for you,” he said.

  “For me?” Bashir said, surprised.

  The man smiled. “I know.” He looked vaguely familiar. Bashir couldn’t place him but knew he had seen him before—probably working around the airport. Maybe he had come out to one of the hangers.

  “They’re being very nice to my passenger,” Bashir said, getting in under the canopy, hoping to learn something about her.

  The man nodded but said nothing, deafened probably by the roaring engines, men yelling at each other, squealing wheels. As they drove off, Bashir inhaled the familiar odors of burnt fuel. It meant he was home. It meant in a few minutes he’d be out at the hanger telling his friend Takfeer about his trip.

  Oddly, the man didn’t take him the usual way but drove to the back of the terminal building and stopped outside a small door, allowing Bashir only time to lift his duffle off the back seat. As though to escape detection, he grasped Bashir’s arm and hurried him into a small foyer to a stairs and to a room on the second floor. From the edge of his vision Bashir thought he saw Esmat Bindari’s face in a rapidly closing doorway. But he was tired and confused. It was probably an invention of fatigue. Why would a man like Bindari be in this janitors’ hallway?

  “You are to wait here,” the man said, and left the room and closed the door.

  “But what…?” Alarmed, feeling caged, Bashir hurried to the door. It was locked. The question died in his mouth. He rattled the doorknob and struck the panels with the flat of his hand. As a wave of nausea spread through him, he went to a chair at a desk and dropped into it, feeling faint.

  “What’s happening? What have I done?”

  *

  “It went smoothly,” Esmat Bindari said. “Just as we planned.”

  “And those people. Can we trust them?”

  “Implicitly,” Esmat said. “Felix LaPointe has worked for us many times. As to the women at the secretariat, they have no reason to think their role in this deception was an
ything unusual. It happens all the time—visitors avoiding the cameras.”

  “And the man who brought Yassin to the room?”

  “My nephew Anwar. I’d trust him with my life.”

  Jaradat, who trusted nobody, not even Esmat, sighed and sat back while his servant placed a white cup in front of him, another in front of Esmat. “Those little cakes,” Jaradat said, watching coffee flow into Esmat’s cup, enjoying the sound, the aroma, “the ones you brought me yesterday.”

  “As you wish,” the servant said, backing away with a bow.

  Jaradat set aside papers he had been reading and glanced idly out the glass wall at the marble deck and the pool and the statue of a boy stolen from an Alexandrian museum centuries ago, a prized possession the eastern sun was shining on, its shadow falling over a bed of yellow flowers.

  “It won’t be long of course before the muccabarat learn that Bashir Yassin is back in Egypt. They will by now, I assume, know about his flight. You’re sure they have no idea where the woman is?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “She must wonder what happened to Saraaj.”

  “I imagine so, but that’s to our advantage. The more insecure she feels, the more she’ll be inclined to help us. Now we are her only protection.”

  “Ah,” the colonel said, “we can’t be too sure of that. From what they say, she’s well connected. It’s probably not only that wayward prince she has influence with. Too bad we can’t monitor her phone calls. How long will it be before the muccabarat find out she’s here?”

  “Hard to say. We can’t expect to stop all the leaks. She’s afraid of them. She has to believe our police are cooperating with the Americans. She has to know the Americans have brought serious charges against her, possibly even treason. It’s well known she has facilitated the transfer of funds to bin Laden. We could be her only hope for survival.”

  “Well, let’s get to work on her. Let her know immediately that she’s in our care because of the prince.”

  “And his money.”

  “Of course. So how do we get rid of Bashir Yassin? We can’t use him now for that other thing, which I never had much faith in anyway.”

  “And that’s a pity. It was such a beautiful scheme.”

  “Well, it’s useless now. Oh, don’t be disappointed, Esmat. Things will happen. This government is teetering under enormous pressure. You know what’s been going on in Tunisia.”

  “Thanks in part to us, I suppose. Here, I mean.”

  “And cleverly handled, thanks to you,” Jaradat said. “You must have reached the same conclusion I have. The Americans want Bashir Yassin. The muccabarat want him. We can no longer use him.”

  “And he will talk,” Esmat said.

  “Yes. We can’t allow that. So what are your plans for his extermination?”

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” Esmat said. “It’ll get done.”

  “You still think it was wise to eliminate Saraaj?”

  “Without a doubt,” Esmat said. “Otherwise Helene Bryce would play us against each other.”

  “She’s a handful?”

  “It’s what they say. Very manipulative. From what Nelson tells me, the prince is not unhappy that she’s gone.”

  “But he’ll listen to her?”

  “Like a child to its mother, from what I hear. When she asks for money, he says ‘How much?’”

  “You trust this Nelson?”

  Esmat shook his head. “Not at all. He goes with the flow of the tide, whether it’s coming in or going out doesn’t matter to him.”

  The colonel found something in the file drawer of his desk to take his attention. Looking up, he said, “When the Americans over there discover that she’s gone, the Americans here will be notified.”

  “It will take them a while to find out where Bashir’s plane came from. The Brazilian authorities aren’t eager to get involved in this. They can be obstructive when they want to be.”

  “Nevertheless, we have to dispatch Bashir Yassin as soon as possible. We don’t want him caught by the police. And it must be done secretly.”

  “A pity that that giant Diab is no longer with us. We could use him for this.”

  “The fewer we have involved in our affairs, the better,” Jaradat said. “How is Ibrahim doing? Have you heard anything?”

  “Not recently. But he’s out of it. The last I heard he was making out a will, leaving everything to some whore named Afaf.”

  “The woman who was harboring him.”

  “I think so.”

  “And, of course, our concern right now is Saraaj. The police have to be suspicious about what happened to him. You saw that article in the paper. They know about his sprucing up the airstrip in the Sinai. They’ll learn, if they haven’t already, that Bashir was the pilot who took off from there. They’ll trace his flight and find out about his passenger….”

  “All of which was arranged by Saraaj, remember, not by us,” Esmat said. “There’s no way they can connect it to us.”

  “Except through you,” Jaradat said. “You’re the link they could eventually discover.”

  “And they know you and I are friends,” Esmat reminded him.

  Jaradat smiled. “You have nothing to fear from me,” reaching out his hand, tapping his friend’s fingers. “Neither of us will suffer. Like ships in a storm: if one goes down, we both go down. And that won’t happen.”

  *

  “Who owns this?” Nick asked, gazing across the iron rail at tall buildings beyond a bridge and the blue waters of the Nile, voices rising from small boats maneuvering for spaces at the quay off the street just below them.

  “A friend,” Isaac said.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “In Cairo? A few years. I was sent here by Porter Goss. Remember him?”

  “Vaguely. The name.”

  Nick sipped at his tea, waggled ice cubes as he watched a truck work its way past a donkey cart, men yelling, a little boy tapping the donkey’s nose, laughing at the man who chased him away. The congestion reminded him of the old fish market on Manhattan, abandoned now he had been told.

  “From what I understand, the woman he brought to the airport was spirited off in a taxi that was waiting for her.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The driver had refused several people who wanted his cab. When she appeared, he quickly opened the door for her. We’re looking for the cab, but the driver probably doesn’t know anything except where he dropped her off. He was probably paid by a stranger.”

  “And you don’t know what became of Bashir Yassin?”

  “He reported in, as far as we can tell. His papers were in order. No reason for him to stick around. Maybe he’ll come to you.”

  Nick didn’t think so. “You mentioned some trouble in Casablanca….”

  “It was nothing. The authorities got nervous apparently because my man asked too many questions.”

  “And the plane came in from South America.”

  “Yes, and she was aboard. My man heard her screaming … something about food.” He scratched his scalp, using only his index finger, staring absently at something on the floor. “So your friend Habib lost track of Bashir and thinks he was picked up by those two men whose bodies were found by the river?”

  “Diab and his driver, Farouk.”

  “That’s the last time you saw Bashir?”

  “The last time Habib saw him,” Nick said, correcting him.

  “And you were given their identities by…?”

  Nick sipped at his iced-tea, watching cars move along the bridge. “Habib has many friends in the police department, I don’t know. He found out.”

  “Captain Huzayfi?”

  Nick shrugged. “As I said—”

  “It’s what you haven’t said that interests me, Nick. I’m sure you know that.”

  “You think I’m holding back? Why would I do that?”

  “I would love to know,” Isaac said.

  Nick met Isaac�
�s gaze with a kind of passive challenge. “I’m as anxious to clear this thing up as you are,” he said.

  “What is it you want, Nick?”

  “The safety of Aziz al-Khalid. Before I leave this place I want to be sure I’m not involved in something that’s going to hurt him.”

  “And you don’t trust Yousef Qantara.”

  Injecting Qantara into this was quick. Obviously he had his own suspicions, ones he had never shared. “A lot of people I don’t trust,” Nick said.

  Isaac laughed. “Including me.”

  “If,” Nick said, “Qantara knows that that Israeli story is bullshit, why hasn’t he come after me? Is he giving me time to make a mistake? Why does he want Habib to spy on me?”

  “And if he suspects you, he suspects me,” Isaac said. “And this is directly aimed at Bashir Yassin. If he’s involved in something that could harm Aziz, we’re better equipped to pry it out of him than you are. Why not give him to us?”

  “I don’t have him,” Nick said.

  “You say he was picked up? You mean put into a car? In the city?”

  “Near Maydan at-Tahrir,” surprised at how effortlessly he lied.

  “Habib told you that? He’s sure it was Diab?”

  Nick smiled. “Reasonably sure.”

  He watched Isaac fit a cigarette into his ivory holder, setting both down while he coughed into his hand. “I’m as interested in why Yousef Qantara has not arrested you as you are. He’s one of the fanatics, you know. He’s not open about it but he attends their meetings. We’ve had our eye on him for longer than you’ve been here, longer than you’ve been the focus of his attention.”

  “Since he’s been assigned to watch over Aziz al Khalid?”

  “I don’t think he’s a threat to your friend, at least not directly. I’m sure he enjoys that post because it allows him to monitor high-level conversations.”

  “Who does he report to?”

  Isaac smiled. “We don’t know. We’ve never been able to find out. He’s very circumspect. I’m sure he thinks we’re up to something.”

  “Aren’t you?” Nick said, watching Isaac put a flame to his cigarette. From the edge of his vision he saw a woman behind the glass door draw the curtain aside. She glanced at Nick, then closed the curtain. Isaac’s friend?