by Alex Carr
If the SBS team had unwittingly picked up Bagheri during one of their sweeps, it would have been impossible to release him without casting suspicion on him. Unless, of course, none of his comrades knew he'd been captured in the first place. This would explain the death of his companion, and the army's initial failure to make an official report of the escape.
“Which way?”
Kat's question yanked Harry from his reverie. He stopped walking and glanced up. Directly in front of them, the medina gate opened onto the busy axis of the Place des Nations Unies. Looking through the opening and out onto the traffic-clogged boulevard was like peering directly from the fourteenth century into the twenty-first, and Harry was momentarily disoriented by the powerful incongruity of the vision.
A young Moroccan man—a would-be guide—approached, offering his services.
Kat brushed him off with forceful Arabic, then turned back to Harry. “Gone but not defeated,” she remarked, watching the man move off to accost another Western couple. “We'd better go before he changes his mind and comes back.”
Harry nodded. “Don't tell me they taught you that in the army?” he asked, heading toward a taxi stand just outside the gate.
“How to get rid of hustlers?”
“No, your Arabic.”
“I went to DLI,” Kat explained.
Harry signaled to the first driver in line and got an affirmative nod in response. “But you must use it. Arabic gets rusty fast.” He opened the taxi's back door for Kat.
Perhaps it was the intimacy of the gesture, or the odd outdatedness of it—how long had it been since he'd held a door for a woman?—but Harry, watching Kat fold herself into the cab, was struck by both a sense of nostalgia and of shame, by the sudden realization of just how much he'd lost, how much of himself he had already forfeited.
“I teach,” Kat said when Harry joined her in the taxi's back seat.
“Voyageurs,” Harry told the driver, indicating the main train station on the eastern side of town. Then, to Kat. “Language?”
“Yes. And theology.”
“Islam?”
Kat nodded. “My specialty is soteriology, that's—”
“The theology of salvation.” The old spy smiled. “They don't call us intelligence men for nothing.”
Kat returned his smile.
They rode on in silence for some time. Out the window, Harry could see the massive silhouette of the Hassan II Mosque rising from the coast.
“And you?” Harry asked at last. “You believe in all of that?”
“All of what?”
“You know: a jinn on each shoulder, tallying one's works for the day of reckoning; life as a test to see who gets into heaven.”
Kat laughed. “It's more complicated than that. But, no, I don't believe in the Muslim version of the afterlife. Or in the Christian one, for that matter. If there is a God, I have to believe we're all saved.”
“And if there isn't?”
Kat shook her head. “Then there isn't, and none of it matters.”
TWENTY YEARS, Harry thought as they passed the train station and turned onto a side street. No, in reality it was more like twenty-five. For the first time, the obvious fact that his old friends might no longer be among the living crossed Harry's mind and he felt a twinge of panic. Then the familiar storefront slid into view, the old sign Harry remembered unchanged except by time and the elements: M. RAFA, PRINTING.
“Here?” the driver asked, pulling to the curb. Even he was reluctant.
“Yes.” Harry fished a wad of crumpled dirhams from his pants pockets and paid the man, then stepped out onto the sidewalk. “You speak any other languages besides Arabic?” he asked Kat, as they started for the shop's front door.
“High-school Spanish and the worst Pashto you've ever heard. Why?”
“Just thinking about your passport.” Harry opened the door and a string of bells sounded overhead, announcing their arrival.
A middle-aged Moroccan man in an ink-smeared printer's apron appeared from the rear of the shop. He was short and round about the middle, but powerfully built, his arms thick and muscular. His graying hair was cropped close to his skull, his beard trimmed into a neat goatee. A pair of delicate, wire-rimmed spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose.
“Mustafa?” Harry asked, marveling at the kindness the last two decades had shown his former acquaintance.
The man stepped forward and offered an ink-blackened hand. “Mustafa the son,” he said. His grip was firm, his English nearly perfect, the accent British public school. He made a point of shaking Kat's hand as well. “You are looking for my father, perhaps?”
“Yes,” Harry said, remembering the younger man from his previous visits. “Is he in?”
Mustafa the son shook his head solemnly. “My father is no longer with us, subhan'allah.” He peered over his glasses at Harry. “I remember you. You are the American, yes. Mr.…?”
But Harry didn't offer his name. “I'm sorry for your loss,” he said.
Mustafa bowed just slightly. “Thank you,” he said. “But you have not come merely to offer your condolences. My father may be gone, but I assure you his business is very much intact. You need something for the lady, I think.”
“A passport,” Harry told him. “English-speaking, preferably. Something with a few miles on it: EU, Asia, nothing suspicious. With a Tangier entry stamp.”
Mustafa nodded. “It can be done.”
“How soon?”
“One week. Five thousand euros.” He wiped his palms on his apron, leaving two dark streaks behind.
“One thousand, and we'll have it by this afternoon.”
Mustafa balked. “You know that's impossible.”
“Two thousand.”
“Three, and the document is in hand by six this evening.”
“Three,” Harry agreed.
Mustafa smiled at Kat. It was a crook's smile, obsequious and leering at the same time. “We will need a picture, yes?”
JAMAL OPENED THE FRONT DOOR of the Hotel des Amis and scanned the narrow street before wading out into the slow-moving river of humanity. It was nearly noon, well past the time by which Kat had promised to return, and Jamal was too hungry to wait for her any longer. His belly complaining, he stepped out into the crowd and started for the food stall he'd both seen and smelled from the window of the hotel room.
Twenty meters, he told himself, remembering Mr. Harry's warning about leaving the room. And what could possibly happen to him in such a short distance? This was his home, after all, his cradle and, if fate so wished, his grave. He had already made up his mind that no matter what happened he would not be leaving again.
Zid! Zid! From behind him came the cry of a donkey driver. The crowd jostled together, bodies moving in unison to let the creature pass. Bodies like his own, Jamal thought, marveling at the unusual sensation of belonging, at the oddness of the few European faces.
He reached the little food kiosk and stopped, momentarily stunned by the range of choices, unable to decide between the soft sfenj and the flaky rghaif, both still hot from the fryer, drenched in honey and butter, or the delicate half-moons of the gazelle's horns, with their thick layer of icing. Greedily, he chose all three, stuffing one of the crescent-shaped pastries into his mouth while the merchant packed the others into a paper bag.
His hunger dulled, he paid the man and turned to go, slipping into the crowd's upstream current and allowing himself to be carried back toward the hotel. Twenty meters or not even, he thought. Already he was halfway back. And then, moving toward him in the oncoming press of bodies, he saw a familiar face.
Mahjoub, he thought, Adil's friend from Ain Chock. Jamal ducked his head, but it was too late. As he elbowed his way forward toward the hotel's door, Jamal glanced back and saw that the man had stopped to watch him go.
FOR THE FIRST FEW MOMENTS UPON WAKING, the only thing Manar could think was that she was back in the prison. The inside of her throat was raw and sore, as if some obj
ect had been forced into her and then withdrawn. Her chest and abdomen were bruised and tender, her back resting uncomfortably on cold tiles.
Perhaps, she thought with relief, the last few years had not happened at all. Perhaps it had merely been some long, extended dream. Memory resolving into shape. She had never really left the desert, had not been wounded by hope and the forfeit of hope.
Then a voice came to her. “Sister? Wake up, sister!” Then a hand, a warm palm on her forehead, and she understood that she had failed.
She opened her eyes and saw Asiya kneeling beside her. The housekeeper's djellaba was damp at the chest, soiled with vomit, her hands red and shaking. Her scarf had slipped back from her forehead, and her hair was loose and disheveled.
Manar had a dim memory of the last seconds before she'd drifted off, of trying to force down the pills before sleep and paralysis overcame her. How many had she managed? Ten? Fifteen? Whatever the number, it had not been enough.
She raised herself up just slightly and grasped the house-keeper's hand. “Who knows?” she asked, suddenly wild with panic.
“No one, sister,” Asiya assured her. “We will tell no one.”
Sitting in the courtyard of Abdul Moussaoui's villa just south of the Parc de la Ligue Arabe, drinking fresh mint tea and listening to the sound of water in the basalt fountain and the gentle laughter of the home's unseen female inhabitants, Harry could scarcely imagine the existence of anything beyond the windowless walls. That was the point of such architecture, of course: to separate the luxuries of civilization from the arid outer world, to protect the family and its guests. But Harry had never been entirely comfortable with the opacity of Arab life. He knew that what happened behind the locked doors of these homes was not always pleasant, and that evil could be sheltered as easily as good.
How many had disappeared from this very spot, leaving only the dregs of their tea behind, how many had heard the soothing gurgle of the fountain and mistakenly thought it signaled their reprieve, Harry could only guess. But he was not naïve enough to be fooled by Moussaoui's genial smile and Hermès slippers into thinking him untainted by the horrors of the previous regime.
Once, Harry remembered, after a South African arms dealer they'd been working with had shorted them on a shipment, Moussaoui had the man's Moroccan lover picked up by the secret police and tortured to death. Harry had seen the pictures of the girl—Moussaoui made sure everyone got a look—and it was her face he was thinking of, the eyes swollen shut, the nose flattened to one side, the left cheek stippled with four small bruises, one for each knuckle, as he watched Moussaoui perform the ritual of lighting a fresh Cohiba.
“I'm telling you this as a friend,” Moussaoui said, once the cigar was burning to his satisfaction. “People know you are here. I received a call from Pete Janson this morning. He said you'd be coming to see me.”
Morrow, Harry thought. After all these years, Janson was still doing his dirty work. He couldn't help wondering if Mustafa the son had gotten a similar call. Rafa's name would have cropped up on the same short list as Moussaoui's.
There was a noise on one of the upper balconies, and Harry glanced up to see an Asian woman in maid's attire carrying a stack of folded linens.
Moussaoui chuckled. “It's the life of a pasha, no? Even I am embarrassed sometimes.”
Harry took a sip of his tea, wishing desperately that it was vodka. “The boy,” he prompted Moussaoui. “We were talking about the boy.”
“Yes. The boy.” Moussaoui leaned back in his chair and sucked appreciatively on his cigar, producing a large and aromatic cloud of smoke. “There were not as many cases like this as you would imagine. I remember only two or three in my time. Though undoubtedly there were others I was not aware of. When did you say he was born?”
“Nineteen eighty-three,” Harry said, quoting the boy's file. “Give or take a year.”
“You're not going to make this easy for me, are you?” Moussaoui observed.
Harry tried to smile. Dirty hands all around, he reminded himself. That girl's death on his conscience as surely as if it was his fist that had broken her nose.
“I'll make some phone calls,” Moussaoui said. “Discreetly, of course. See if I can turn anything up. It shouldn't take more than a few hours. You can call me later this afternoon.” He produced a business card from a pocket with a phone number printed in small black type, then rose and gestured to the way out. “My driver can take you somewhere?”
Harry contemplated the offer.
“Yes,” he told Moussaoui at last. “I would like to see the Blue Mosque.”
“AN HOUR, TWO AT MOST,” Harry had told Kat when he'd dropped her off at the gate of the medina. He hadn't volunteered where he was going and she hadn't asked. There was a kind of inviolable sadness about the man that she couldn't breach. All his failings on his sleeve.
Inside the medina, the few befuddled tourists who hadn't yet been picked up by guides moved cautiously forward past souvenir stalls and spice shops, shadowed by the Al-Djemma Mosque's minaret. Up on the flat rooftops a garden of rust-pocked satellite dishes bloomed, their faces turning in unison, like morning glories to the sun. Farther down the lane, above the poultry merchant's cages and the limp and flightless bodies of the dead, a Coca-Cola billboard loomed in red and white, the script familiar even in Arabic.
Kat paused briefly outside a clothing shop on the Rue Centrale, shuddering at the racks of loose-fitting dresses visible from the street, the bright colors and fabrics struggling to lend an air of individuality where none was possible. Inside, a woman in a full chador, her hands in black gloves, her face hidden behind a niqab, was browsing through a rack of children's clothing, while a girl of three or four tagged along behind.
Mother and child, Kat thought, watching the pair with horror, the woman gliding through the shop, silent and substanceless as a ghost. The girl stopped to do a ballerina's twirl and her hair swung dark and lush against her back.
It seemed foolish to be afraid of this woman, and yet Kat was, not of her necessarily but of what she represented. There was something perverse in such utter abandon of self, in allowing one's identity to be consumed entirely, as Kat's mother had allowed herself to be. Offering herself, piece by piece.
The woman looked up from her shopping then, and Kat, feeling herself caught, turned quickly from the window and hurried along the street.
It was almost noon when Kat finally returned to the hotel. Nearly time for Asr, she thought, already measuring the day in prayers instead of hours, anticipating the muezzin's call. She let herself in the front door and climbed the narrow steps to the second floor.
When Kat opened the door to their room, Jamal was sitting by the window, staring down at the lane below. His eyes, when he swung his head toward the door, were wide with panic, his face ashen.
“It's okay, Jamal,” she told him gently, forcing a reassuring smile. “It's just me.” Then, noticing the grease-stained paper bag on the table, she winced. “You went out?”
Jamal nodded.
“Did something happen?” She locked the door behind her and stepped forward. “What happened, Jamal?”
“Nothing,” he insisted. But his face, flushed, said otherwise.
A child, Kat thought, a child who'd been caught doing something he knew he shouldn't. “It's okay, Jamal,” she repeated. “I'm sure it's okay.”
But he was crying.
Kat reached out her hand and laid it on his shoulder. It was, she realized, the first time she had touched the boy. Physical contact had been strictly forbidden at Bagram, such a gesture entirely unthinkable.
His body beneath her fingers was even frailer than she had expected, his bones grazing the skin, brittle as spun glass.
He took a deep breath and shuddered, then turned his face up to hers. “I was hungry,” he said.
“KURTZ?” Janson's voice on the phone was clipped and nasal, the words chopped short, punctuated by the telltale ping of the satellite transmission. “You still
there?”
A bad sign, Kurtz thought, that it was Janson calling and not Morrow, notice that Morrow was washing his hands of the whole affair. Kurtz pressed the phone closer to his ear. “What do you have?”
From his seat on the patio of the Café National, Kurtz could see the Avenue Lalla Yacout in all its sun-struck squalor, the neglected Art Deco façades and the sagging balustrades, works of art in wrought iron and stucco, the aspirations of French culture left to the care of drug addicts and whores. Directly across from the café, in the doorway of the Wafa Bank, two boys were hustling the tourists who came and went from the ATM.
“There's a man named Rafa,” Janson said. “Runs a print shop out near Voyageurs. It's a family business. We used to work with his father. You know him?”
“I've heard of him.” Kurtz leaned back in his chair, watching the boys work. They had a system going, a divide-and-conquer routine that appeared to be serving them quite well. No doubt they shared a part of their profits with the bank manager in return for such a choice spot.
“Well, our Mr. Rafa claims he got a visit from two Americans this morning. A young woman and an older man looking for a passport.”
Kurtz sat up. “Who's the man?”
Janson paused, another bad sign. “His name is Comfort. He retired this past spring, out of the Madrid office. I can't imagine you would have known him. He was a bit of a dead weight at the end. You know the type, gin blossoms and the pre-lunch shakes. Endless stories about the old days.”
Kurtz shuffled through the Agency Rolodex in his head, failing to locate the name. He'd never been especially familiar with the European Division. “What's he doing here?”
“Apparently he developed some kind of friendship with the boy. Slipped him his home number before he left.”
“You're joking!” Kurtz had heard rumors of this kind of thing happening, but he'd never actually believed them.
