Back in the hookah bar, Elise had confounded him with the magnitude of her guilt for not saving her sister from a life of slavery, even though such an outcome was effectively impossible. How could she have stopped the execution of a legal transaction sanctioned by the Kingdom of Islam? Ali kept wondering why she was so hard on herself, but what he should have been questioning was whether Valerie was, in fact, her sister.
When they stepped outside the terminal, a cold wind snapped Ali out of his trance. They climbed into the car and Ali drove. He didn’t bring up Valerie, and neither did she. Elise told him about the child killer, a local dentist who’d been recommended to her by more experienced diplomats from Christendom. She never revealed that he was her contact in Budapest because there was no reason to state the obvious. Given he was dead, there also was no reason for her to protect him any longer.
“What about this treasure?” Ali said. “If Salim knows it’s location and he’s headed to Amerabia …”
“That means the dead are rising in the land of Satan.”
“Excuse me?”
Elise chuckled. “The kind of treasure he’s seeking, people have been looking for it since Adam and Eve, and I suspect they’ll be looking for it forever. I think the man in the wheelchair was an even better con artist than anyone realized.”
Ali waited, hoping she would reveal more about the treasure but she didn’t. It didn’t feel right to him to inquire any more about it, so he continued onward the rest of the way in silence. He wanted to drive Elise to her hotel, but he parked in front of a familiar building in Pest instead.
“Your hotel is close by,” he said, “but all the places where the delegations are staying are under surveillance for obvious reasons. It’s probably best for both of us that we don’t get caught on camera together given I was obviously at the dentist’s house. Someone might think you were there with me and that can’t have happened.”
Ali reached into his pocket and pulled out the satchel of diamonds Elise was carrying when he arrested her. He handed her the loot and grabbed a clipboard from the back seat.
“Sign here, please,” he said.
Elise signed the acknowledgment that she’d received all her personal possessions. When she handed the clipboard back to him, Ali grasped it with his hand but didn’t pull it away. Elise held onto her end lest it fall, and for a moment it hung in the air suspended between them.
“I want you to understand something,” Ali said. He channeled as much emotion as he could muster. “Everything I do that is good … Everything I did tonight … Everything I do is for Allah.”
Elise appeared to consider what he’d said carefully, and for that he was eternally grateful.
“Don’t worry,” she said with a straight face. “Jesus still loves you.”
She released her grip of the clipboard. Ali couldn’t remember when he’d last smiled, even a smile such as this one, which was only an imaginary one to himself. He stowed the clipboard in the back seat and glanced at her one more time.
“Walk three blocks straight, then take a right. You’ll see the hotel where the delegation from Christendom is staying another three blocks up ahead. Good-bye, Elise De Jong.”
Ali got out and marched across the street, leaving her alone in the car, suppressing the twinge of regret he experienced upon realizing that he would never see her again.
CHAPTER 40
Elise stepped out of the car and breathed the moist air.
Valerie was alive.
Nothing else mattered. Ironically, Valerie was going back to the place where she was born, for the Amerabian outpost was in the state that had been called Massachusetts and in the city that was known as Boston.
Elise watched as Ali rang a doorbell and spoke into an intercom. A minute later the lights went on inside the building and illuminated a row of barber’s chairs in front of a mirrored wall. A man and woman appeared at the front door. They seemed to recognize Ali, and after a few words were exchanged, they let him in. The woman led Ali to the barber’s chair nearest the window and extended her hand for him to take a seat. But Ali shook his head and motioned to the man beside the woman, as though suggesting that he take the seat instead. The man did so.
As Ali spoke, the woman massaged the man’s shoulders. The ease with which the two comported themselves and the familiarity with which the woman handled the man suggested they were husband and wife. Less than a minute later, Elise knew from their reactions to Ali’s speech that her suspicions were true. She knew with absolute certainty who these people were and why Ali had stopped here.
Ali stood with his back against a floor-to-ceiling mirror as he faced the couple and held court. When Elise studied the scene in the mirror, Ali’s proximity to it gave him the appearance of being a giant among men. He delivered information without hesitation, doubt or emotion. The couple absorbed it with similar composure until they finally couldn’t do so anymore.
Outside, rain began to fall. It started out as hail, chunks of ice that bruised Elise’s scalp, but quickly turned to sheets of water. Cars slowed. Pedestrians scattered. Elise stood still, soaked in rain, wiping her eyes, unable to tear herself away from the scene before her. Soon, not another soul could be seen on the street.
As for proof of God, it was everywhere. In the thunder that cracked in the sky and the lightning that flashed across it. In the words of the Muslim cop as he closed the case on a dhimmi’s murder. In the tears of Christian parents, as they wept for the loss of their child, and out of gratitude for closure. And in the bravery Elise had seen on her daughter’s face when she’d boarded the plane with her future husband.
The logistics of Elise’s next plan of action were less than vague. They were entirely unknown. But one thing was certain.
Elise would see that face again.
Girls of Yellow Page 25
