The Sanctuary

by Raymond Khoury

  More questions were swamping Evelyn’s mind. “But how did he get it? He didn’t say where he found it?”

  Farouk didn’t answer. He was looking beyond Evelyn, and all of a sudden his eyes lit up with fear. He grabbed her hand. “We have to go. Now.”

  For the briefest of moments, his words didn’t register with her. They just seemed to hang in midair, a detached parallel conversation that wasn’t meant, couldn’t be meant, for her, a conversation she was witnessing remotely. Then she felt her head turn, almost by reflex, beyond her control, following his alarmed glare, and noticed two stocky men, the same two men she seemed to remember from an earlier sighting, moving forcefully through the crowd, their mouths set in tight lines under thick black mustaches, their eyes like dark slits in a pockmarked helmet and just as devoid of life, and heading straight for them.

  Then Farouk almost yanked her arm out of her socket and they were moving rapidly through the unsuspecting crowd.

  Chapter 7

  A drenaline flooded Mia’s veins as she advanced cautiously through the bustling arcade, desperately scanning the crowd for any sign of her mother while trying not to draw attention to herself. She had lost precious seconds cutting through the surge of traffic and skirting around the blocked BMW, and by the time she finally made it to the pedestrian zone, the android and his buddy were nowhere in sight.

  Reaching the end of the covered passage, she had no choice but to give up the relative cover of the colonnade and step out into the openness of the piazza, which sloped gently down towards the clock tower. The air around her was charged with a disconcerting blend of indomitable festivity and lingering sorrow. Hoping she wouldn’t get spotted, she slipped between the rows of diners, her palms wet with apprehension, her eyes searching for any sign of Evelyn or her pursuers.

  The crowd momentarily opened up before her, and her heart froze as she spotted her mom, around a hundred yards or so up ahead, talking to a man Mia didn’t recognize. Relief washed over her for an instant—Evelyn was right there, talking to someone she clearly knew, everything was going to be just fine—before she saw the man suddenly react to something and grab Evelyn before they ran off together.

  The urgency of his reaction jolted Mia. Quickly casting a glance around the piazza, she spotted the android and his buddy, halfway between her and Evelyn, not quite running but moving as swiftly as they could without attracting too much attention.

  A fear the likes of which she’d never experienced in her sheltered, academic existence spiked through her and nailed her to the ground. She felt like calling out for help, but there was no familiar face to turn to, no cops to enlist, and no time to think.

  She cast aside her fear, summoned her legs back to life, and tore off after them.

  FAROUK AND EVELYN HURRIED down the pedestrian plaza, slicing through the crowd, moving with no particular escape route or plan in mind, both of them darting terrified glances back at their relentless pursuers while struggling to stay ahead.

  “Farouk, stop,” Evelyn yelled out, her voice ringing with irritation and panic. “There are people all around us. They can’t do anything here.”

  “They don’t seem to mind,” he fired back without slowing down. He would have taken the risk—maybe—had the Parliament building’s soldiers been within reach, but by the time he’d spotted the two men chasing them, they were already between them and the soldiers, and there was no way he and Evelyn could circle back to get to them.

  Something suddenly caught his eye in the crowd ahead of them. Another man, same tightly drawn mouth, same icy stare in his eyes. Walking calmly towards him and Evelyn, his hand moving to the inside of his jacket where Farouk was sure he glimpsed the handle of a holstered gun.

  Farouk saw a side street open up to the left and dived into it. It ran uphill for a hundred yards or so and led to a mosque that was at the edge of the pedestrian area.

  Evelyn stumbled through the turn and righted herself quickly. Her breathing was now labored, her legs were already hurting, and it was clear she couldn’t keep this up much longer. She was in reasonably good shape for someone her age, but she hadn’t run like that for, well, ever.

  They kept going, leaving behind the bustle and bright lights of the piazza, their footfalls echoing in the tunnel of darkness that now surrounded them. A thought suddenly struck her. Farouk didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t know Beirut well, if at all, and it didn’t make sense that he should be leading her. Evelyn knew the downtown area pretty well, but she wasn’t familiar with that alley, and surely it made more sense to stay with the crowd. Plus, going uphill, even up a soft incline such as the one they were now on, wasn’t helping.

  “Farouk, listen to me,” she called out, breathless, “we need to find some cops, someone who can protect you—”

  “No one can protect us,” Farouk snapped, his voice cracking with desperation, “not from them, don’t you see? We’ve got to find a taxi, a car, something—”

  His voice cut off as, from behind them, the staccato claps of three sets of urgent footsteps sliced through the night and bounced off the walls around them. The man with the holstered gun had joined his two buddies, and the three of them were reeling Farouk and Evelyn in now that they didn’t have to worry about drawing attention to themselves.

  Evelyn was finding it harder and harder to keep going with every step and was just about ready to give up when a narrow side street opened up to their right, running alongside the rear wall of the mosque. It led down to Rue Weygand, a major avenue that was busy with evening traffic—and taxis.

  The sight invigorated her and seemed to have the same effect on Farouk. “Come on,” he screamed out, as they cut right and hastened down the deserted alley, gasping for breath as they rushed towards the bright lights and possible salvation up ahead.

  They were halfway down the street when Evelyn saw a lone car turn into it and head for them.

  It was a black BMW.

  Farouk beelined for the car and started waving at it frantically, yelling out the local equivalent of “Help!” but Evelyn slowed right down, suddenly fearful. She could make out a man silhouetted inside the car, backlit by the bright street behind him. He looked as if he was holding up a phone to his ear.

  Something told her he wasn’t there by chance.

  “Farouk,” she cried out to him, “wait.”

  Farouk lurched to a halt and turned to her, out of breath and confused. Evelyn was still eyeing the car suspiciously when it suddenly stopped in the middle of the alley, its engine still running ominously. Then the driver flicked the high beams on, flooding the street with harsh, cold light.

  Evelyn took a couple of steps backwards, shielding her eyes from the blinding light, then the noise behind her drew her attention. She turned to see the three men who were chasing them burst into the alley, clearly lit by the car’s headlights. They stopped when they saw her. One of them had a phone in his hand, the clamshell type, and he snapped it shut and pocketed it. He looked around to make sure they were clear and nodded to his buddies. Evelyn heard the car’s doors click open. She spun around and saw the driver emerge from the car.

  She looked at Farouk. He was standing there, as frozen in fear as she was, while the four predators closed in on them, the black BMW with its door wide open purring in the background like a hungry wraith waiting to be fed.

  She started to scream.

  Chapter 8

  M ia heard her mother’s screams just as she reached the mosque wall. She looked down the backstreet and saw two men struggling with Evelyn. They were halfway down the alley, about sixty yards from Mia. She squinted from the car’s headlights, and she thought she recognized its distinctive BMW grille.

  Evelyn was kicking and screaming as the android’s buddy tried to muzzle her with his hand. She bit him, then lashed out at him with her handbag, which only fired him up even more. He grabbed hold of it and tore it out of her hand, flinging it to the ground before striking her with a ferocious backslap that sent h
er reeling back.

  Nearer to Mia, Farouk had his back against the outside wall of the mosque that ran down the alley. He looked like a cornered, proverbial deer, all lit up by the car’s headlights. Two other men—the android and another she hadn’t seen before—were converging on him. The android’s hand was up in front of his face, his finger extended in a harsh, threatening gesture.

  Mia’s entire body went rigid. Her flight instinct wanted her to duck back behind the safety of the wall and keep out of it. Any fight instinct she might have had was pummeled into submission by common sense: The odds were overwhelmingly against her, and given that she wasn’t Batgirl, there was nothing she could think of to do.

  Well, maybe one thing.

  Basic. Primal. Not particularly creative or adventurous.

  Maybe dangerous.

  Definitely dangerous, come to think of it, but she had to do something.

  So she screamed her head off.

  First, “Mom,” then, “Help.”

  The frenzy halfway down the alley suddenly froze as if some great TiVo in the sky had its cosmic pause button hit. All the heads turned to Mia, the kidnappers glaring at her with expressions of angry surprise on their faces, the man Evelyn was with dropping his jaw in bewilderment, and Evelyn’s eyes locking with Mia’s in a brief glance of desperation and gratitude Mia would never forget.

  The freeze-frame didn’t last long, and springing back to life, the two men on Evelyn doubled their efforts to get her into the backseat of the car, the android leaving Farouk to his buddy and rushing towards Mia.

  She took a few hesitant steps back before the flight instinct kicked in big-time. She bolted back towards the mosque, summoning every last atom of energy from her burning legs, still screaming her lungs out. Darting a quick glance over her shoulder, she spotted Evelyn’s friend slipping away from the thug who was coming at him and pushing him aside before breaking off in the opposite direction, cutting to the unguarded passenger side of the car.

  The android angrily yelled something at her in Arabic that chilled her veins, and she could hear his crisp footsteps closing in behind her as she rounded the mosque’s wall and almost crashed into two Lebanese army soldiers who came tearing around the bend. They seemed to be coming from the mosque’s main entrance, where Mia could see a small sentry box. She grabbed one of them and, struggling to catch her breath, pointed back towards the android, who suddenly appeared at the alley’s mouth.

  The android lurched to a stop, startled, at the sight of the soldiers.

  “My mother. They’re kidnapping her. Please, help her,” Mia blurted, scouring the soldier’s eyes for any sign of comprehension. He stared at her suspiciously before coldly motioning for her to move aside and, with one hand already reaching for his handgun, shouted something out to the android that sounded like an order. The android raised a firm but calming hand and yelled back at him in a tone that threw Mia—the guy was almost berating the soldier as if he were his drill sergeant. More alarmingly, she noticed his other hand going behind his back. Mia turned to the soldier in confused panic and was relieved to see that the soldier wasn’t having any of it. He shouted back at the android as he raised his gun—then his chest opened up in an explosion of blood and he was thrown back against the mosque’s wall just as two deafening gunshots reverberated in Mia’s ears.

  Mia tore her eyes off the fallen soldier and spun to see the android adjusting his aim just as the other soldier grabbed her and pushed her down against the wall while taking aim with his other hand. Several shots burst out of the android’s gun and bit loudly into the wall by Mia, spitting out shards of stone that cut into the ground around her. The soldier next to her let off a few rounds that must have missed, as she saw the android fire off a couple of more shots before doubling back and disappearing down the alley.

  The soldier sprang to his feet and rushed to his fallen partner. Mia willed herself off the ground and staggered over to join him. The sight made her stomach lurch. The wounded soldier seemed dead. His face was splattered with blood, his eyes blankly staring into nothing. The surviving soldier spat out some angry words before gesturing to Mia to stay put and rushing off after the android. Mia stared at him blankly and took another look at the bloodied corpse on the ground. Still dumbstruck and in shock, she wasn’t going to stay behind on her own. She stumbled off after him.

  She heard a screech of tires as she entered the alley. The soldier was about ten yards ahead of her, his gun raised, but he didn’t stand a chance. The BMW was already bearing down on him. He loosed off a couple of wild shots before the big car ploughed into him, flicking him over its hood like a rag doll. He spun in the air and crashed into its windshield, spiderwebbing it before bouncing heavily onto the car’s roof and trunk and landing with a dull thud on the ground.

  She was next.

  She ducked behind the wall just as the BMW burst out of the alley. Its bumper clipped the corner of the wall inches from Mia in a thunderous explosion of steel and stone, then the car swerved right and charged off towards the mosque. As it rushed past, Mia caught a glimpse of the men in the car, the android and the driver in front, her mother crammed in between the two thugs in the backseat.

  There was no sign of Evelyn’s companion.

  Mia stumbled out from behind the wall. The street was deathly quiet again, as if nothing had happened. She didn’t know where to turn. She spotted the second soldier, lying down the alley from her. Beyond him, she saw her mom’s handbag, its contents strewn on the ground around it, and, a bit further away, a lone shoe of hers. Mia made her way over to the soldier, suddenly aware that her whole body was violently shaking. He lay there, on the ground, contorted in unnatural bends, a rivulet of blood snaking out of the corner of his mouth. He looked at her with pained eyes and blinked.

  Her legs collapsed from under her, and she knelt down beside him and cried.

  Chapter 9

  T he next hour or two went by in a blur.

  Sitting in an austere interview room in the Hobeish police station on Rue Bliss, Mia felt sick to her stomach. It didn’t help that the room, with its bare concrete-block walls, was cold and damp. She was shivering intensely, though that was probably more from the shock and the fear.

  She tried to remain focused on the only thing that really mattered right now: getting her mom back. But she wasn’t sure the two detectives sitting across the table from her or the agitated cops darting confusingly in and out of the room were getting the message.

  She’d left the bloodied soldier and blundered zombielike down to the main road at the end of the alley and just stood there, tears streaming down her face, facing the oncoming traffic with her arms up. Something about the haunted look on her face must have connected with the people driving by, as one car after another soon stopped to help. Before long, the cavalry appeared in the form of several Durangos filled with armed Fuhud policemen, a kind of paramilitary überforce. The quiet backstreet quickly morphed into a noisy, chaotic zoo. The soldier who’d been shot was already dead. The one who’d been rammed by the car was still hanging on, and an ambulance soon arrived and took him away. Evelyn’s handbag and her shoe were retrieved. Mia was questioned and shuffled from one cop to another—she tried to explain about her mom forgetting her phone and handed it over to them along with her own, that last request slightly unsettling her—before she was eventually packed into one of their jeeps and whisked off to the station under armed guard.

  She shifted in the cold, metallic chair and took a small sip from a bottle of water someone had brought in for her. “Please,” she murmured. Her throat felt as if it had been rubbed down with sandpaper. Her desperate screams still rang in her ears. She swallowed and tried again. “Listen to me. You have to find her. They took her. You have to do something before it’s too late.”

  One of the detectives facing her nodded and answered her in broken English, but it wasn’t what she wanted to hear, just more of the same evasive and condescending platitudes. More worrisome, his partner,
a wiry, ferretlike man who had quietly been rifling through her mom’s handbag and spreading its contents on the table, now seemed to be keenly interested in some pictures that he’d found in a brown envelope in the bag. As he studied them, he glanced up at Mia with a look she didn’t really like. He nudged his taller colleague and showed him the photographs. Mia couldn’t understand what the men were saying—she couldn’t even see what was in the photos—but the suspicious glances were now coming her way from both men.

  Her shivering was cutting deeper than before.

  The two detectives discussed something among themselves and seemed to be in agreement on their next step. The ferret collected Evelyn’s things and stowed them back into her handbag, while his platitude-spouting friend gestured to Mia to stay put, explaining to her as best he could that they’d be back shortly. Her reactions were still running on a slight time delay, and before she could really object or question what they were concerned about, they were already heading out of the room. After they shut the door, she heard a key turning in the lock before it clicked ominously.

  Great.

  She slumped in her chair and shut her eyes, hoping she could blink the nightmare away and start her day over.

  AN HOUR LATER, the two detectives were facing her across the table again, only they were now joined by a pug of a man in a gray suit, no tie, and an annoyed expression wrinkled across his pink-pale face that indicated he’d been dragged from the solitary comfort of his home. Her mind was a bit clearer now—she’d been offered a cup of Turkish coffee, a thick, syrupy local specialty that had taken some getting used to, but that she’d grown to like over the last few weeks—and she’d perked up when her new visitor had introduced himself as John Baumhoff and informed her that he was with the American embassy.