The Babel Conspiracy

by Sylvia Bambola

  “Audra I have nothing. We are . . . prisoners.” She scanned the room. Both sun and noise now streamed through the narrow window as the village awoke. She wanted to see if she could spot something that would tell her where they were, but she dared not leave Audra.

  “Help me,” Audra whispered through chattering teeth.

  Suddenly, the door flew open, hitting the wall with a loud bang. Two men in baggy khakis stood in the entrance. One was dark, lean, and tall, with black, threatening eyes. Two bandoleers of ammunition formed an X over his chest. In his hands he cradled a Russian automatic rifle whose barrel was pointed at Trisha’s head.

  The man beside him was also dark, but shorter, and stocky. Though he, too, looked menacing, he wore neither bandoleers nor carried a weapon. Without being told, Trisha knew they were in the hands of ISA.

  “Up!” growled the man with the bandoleers, in English. “On your feet! Get up, slut!”

  “My friend is ill,” Trisha said. “I don’t think she can move.”

  Ignoring Trisha, the gunman came over and nudged Audra with the toe of his boot causing her to moan. “Bring the daya!” he shouted when it became obvious Audra couldn’t rise.

  Moments later, a woman wearing a black burka and head covering stepped quietly through the door. Her face was unveiled and she looked to be in her sixties. Her large, doe eyes stared shyly at the two strangers, but they were filled with gentleness and compassion as though they had seen their share of suffering. And for a brief moment they shone with an understanding, as though in some way she identified with the two captives. She was the daya or mid-wife, and Trisha would learn that aside from delivering babies, she often tended the sick women in the village.

  The daya examined Audra while she still rested on Trisha’s lap. When she was finished, she said something in Farsi to the gunman whom she called Mustafa. Her words caused him to explode with laughter. When he tired of the joke, he bellowed another order which seemed to displease her. She made a feeble attempt to argue, but in the end nodded and left.

  “The daya has seen this sickness before, in Russian soldiers.” His voice was cold, hard. “It is the curse of the drink. Allah, in his wisdom, forbids Muslims to partake of this poison and the daya, a true believer, didn’t want to defile herself by handling it. But I have sent her for some. What is it to us or Allah if infidels want to pollute themselves?” He gestured with his rifle toward Audra as though he was gesturing toward a rodent.

  Trisha had been praying silently. A supernatural peace had settled over her. It was as though God had woven together all her insecure threads, forming instead iron that braced and strengthened her for whatever was to come. Fear no longer prevailed. She had settled the question of death. Her life was not in Mustafa’s hands, but in God’s.

  Her steady gaze seemed to anger Mustafa. “Lower your eyes!” he screamed in English. Trisha obeyed. There was no point in needlessly provoking him.

  All the while the other man, whom Mustafa called Nabil, stood watching. “Infidel pigs!” he said in English, making a spitting noise. After sufficiently purifying his mouth, he released a string of vile obscenities just as the daya returned carrying a bottle of Russian vodka.

  Mustafa took it and barked an order. Again, the woman disappeared, returning moments later with a small, shallow clay bowl. Mustafa handed his rifle to Nabil, then poured vodka into the bowl and placed it on the floor across from Trisha. Then he walked over, and after taking his rifle from Nabil, used the butt to push and prod Audra until her eyes opened and she sat up.

  “You want a drink?” Mustafa said in English, looking like a sadist about to pull the wings off a fly. When she didn’t answer, he held up the vodka bottle.

  Audra, who looked like she could barely focus, managed a nod.

  Mustafa pointed toward the bowl across the room and bellowed, “Then get it!”

  Audra looked confused, not sure what she was supposed to do. When she tried to rise, Mustafa’s foot shoved her to the floor.

  “No! Not walk, but crawl like the dog you are.”

  Trisha tried to hold her back, but Audra pulled away then slowly made her way on all fours, to the saucer of vodka twelve feet away. When she was about to reach for it, Mustafa’s boot pinned her hand against the floor.

  “Lap it, infidel!”

  Without a word, Audra lowered her face into the bowl and began lapping up the liquid.

  Unable to watch any longer, Trisha turned her head and wept.

  “It is well that you cry, whore,” Nabil said, seemingly pleased by her tears. “For Allah has reserved a most fitting fate for all infidels.”

  Then the two men and the daya were gone.

  • • •

  “It’s been five days, Pete. Five days since we’ve been contacted by ISA.” Mike looked rumpled and out of sorts. “This waiting, the not knowing anything . . . it’s hard. And my employees are being affected. Several have quit, others are threatening to. Everyone is afraid. They wonder who will be next. My staff has tried portraying calm, but if mass hysteria sweeps through PA, it’s going to leave an empty plant.”

  “Your R&D people don’t seem to be panicking. They appear more angry than anything else.”

  “That’s because they’re taking this personally. Two of their co-workers have been kidnapped. They’re pretty mad. And that’s saying a lot because most of them are the brainy-pacifist type.”

  Pete nodded. “I can’t blame them. And the waiting is always the hardest part. That’s when time seems like the enemy.”

  “I don’t like sitting around doing nothing.” Mike had left his desk and paced the room.

  “Believe me, everything is being done.”

  “I’m not faulting you, Pete. But I was sure ISA would have called back by now. Still . . . something doesn’t sit right. Why would ISA want the women alive? They killed Nolan. I thought the idea was to stop our nuclear fusion project? It doesn’t make sense. What are they after?” Mike felt his chest tighten. “You don’t think they’ve gone ahead and . . . killed . . . them, do you?”

  Pete drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “I’m sure the women are safe, for now anyway. Had ISA wanted them dead, they wouldn’t have bothered abducting them. Maybe they’re holding back communications to make us more desperate, more receptive to their demands.”

  Mike stopped pacing. “You don’t pull any punches.”

  “Would you want me to?”

  “No. That’s why I trust you. And Pete . . . you know I don’t pull any either.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just this: I want Trisha back, and I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  • • •

  Hours later, Mike stood ringing the bell of a posh Everman condo. Within seconds, the door opened, revealing a tall, lean man with delicate hands. “Dr. Daniel Chapman?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Michael Patterson from Patterson Aviation. I’ve come about Trisha Callahan. I need your help.”

  • • •

  CHAPTER 13

  Trisha peered out the small, glassless window and surveyed the strange, dusty village below. She had come to realize that her dwelling was higher than most, being built on the side of a mountain, and this afforded her a good view. After endless days of gazing through this opening, she could recall every detail with her eyes closed: the whitewashed adobe houses with their flat roofs where clothes were dried; how the houses were clustered together; the village square; the two large beehive-shaped communal ovens; the stubby tower where the muezzin’s wail called the faithful to prayer five times a day; the training ground in the distance where men rolled and tumbled across the ground, lifted concrete blocks as weights, climbed wooden barriers or fired their rifles into human-shaped targets.

  The men wore Arab head coverings or kaffiyehs. Some were dressed in black loose fitting trousers bu
t most wore mismatched baggy clothes. The men far outnumbered the women. Some had wives or perhaps they were women captured from other villages and taken as slaves, the daya had been unable to make that clear.

  The women wore black burkas and head coverings, and appeared to be a solemn lot; washing clothes in large metal tubs or baking in the communal ovens. They never seemed to rest.

  Not like the men.

  Whenever they weren’t training, the men appeared idle; toting guns and milling around the village square, talking, arguing, laughing. Many spent hours drinking finjans of coffee.

  By night, they gathered in the square, lighting smudge pots to drive off insects, then lighting their own pipes filled with crumpled hashish. Before long, the music of reed horns, tambours and the dhamboura filled the air. Then eight or ten males would begin the dabkah, a dance only for men. At first, they moved together, bodies rigid, arms draped over the next man’s shoulder. But it would end wild, frenzied, with maniacal war cries and knives slashing the air.

  During the times when the guards allowed her and Audra to go to the outhouse, Trisha scrutinized every detail. And whenever she could, she’s prod the daya for information. Surprisingly, the woman was eager to talk. In broken English, she had revealed these details, including the fact they were in a Mexican village the jihadists had taken by force. The daya also told her, with evident pride, that there were at least three other ISA settlements scattered across Mexico.

  Trisha wondered at the daya’s devotion to her cause and at the hatred she saw in the male faces whenever they looked at her. How had the world gotten here? How had tradition, superstition, and fear brought it to this? How had the sperm of hostility reproduced itself throughout the centuries, shaping the basic canon of these people’s lives? This offspring was enmity; brother against brother, tribe against tribe, and all against the infidel.

  Yet, if a villager was asked why this was so, why the Quran ordered him to kill all those unlike himself, Trisha doubted he’d be able to explain, any more than a salmon could explain why it swims upstream.

  All this hostility made her long for a friendly face. Audra rarely spoke. Three times a day a saucer of vodka was prepared, and despite Trisha’s pleas, Audra obliged her captors by crawling on all fours across the room.

  But Audra’s shame manifested in a prickly and quarrelsome manner. Often she’d instigate groundless arguments with Trisha. It made Trisha pray more earnestly; storming heaven with pleas of deliverance from addiction and God’s tilling of Audra’s heart to enable her to receive the seeds of His love.

  And it was beginning to happen.

  “Look,” Trisha said, “here come the peddlers.”

  It was market day again and the entire village bustled with noisy confusion as scores of peddlers arrived in their trucks, protected by three jeeps fitted with machine guns. The trucks carried wares stuffed in enormous clay jars except for the one carrying meat which hung from racks.

  In the jars were medicines for every known ailment; amulets to ward off evil spirits; combs and mirrors, cloth, used clothing, and shoes. There were jars of beans and rice, corn meal, condiments and spices, sesame seeds, pistachios and pecans.

  Other peddlers sold their services; grinding knives, scissors, and gardening tools; repairing everything from pots and pans, to guns and rifles. Still others dealt in luxuries; glass beads for necklaces, perfume in alabaster jars, gilt-handled daggers. There was even a craftsman who made tiny objects out of gold or silver.

  “I wonder where they come from?” Trisha said. The jeep mounted guns made her think they were somehow associated with the drug cartels.

  Audra struggled to her feet, then walked to the window and peered out. “It’s been two weeks since they were here last. How many more market days will we see, do you think? I just wish we knew what this was all about and why we’ve been brought here.”

  Trisha had wondered that herself. Neither she nor Audra had been interrogated. And other than the cruelty with the vodka, they had been well treated. A large clay jar had been brought into the room and filled with fresh drinking water, daily. Outhouse privileges were frequent. And though they still slept on the floor, blankets were given to each of them as a buffer against the chilly evenings.

  In addition, the daya brought them beans and rice twice a day. Only once did this vary, and that was on the last market day when they were given falafels or deep fried balls of crushed wheat and chick peas, steamed grape leaves filled with pine nuts and currants, and two pieces of roasted chicken covered with couscous.

  It was a feast, and Trisha had had that uneasy feeling she might be eating her last meal. “Remember that wonderful dinner we had on market day?”

  “I’m trying not to. I don’t know how many more meals of beans and rice I can stomach. If . . . we ever get out of here I’ll never eat them again.”

  “Well, I certainly wouldn’t recommend this restaurant.” For the first time since their captivity, Trisha heard Audra laugh.

  “At least we never have to wonder what’s for dinner.”

  Now they both laughed, and so hard—like a corkscrew popping a tension-filled bottle—that tears rolled down their faces. And as they laughed their hands reached out to each other and held fast until the door suddenly flew open.

  Mustafa stood in the entrance, the same bandoleers of ammunition across his chest. As he pointed his finger at them, Trisha knew their three-week routine was about to change.

  “You,” he shouted, “come with me!”

  Audra squeezed Trisha’s hand so hard her fingernails turned white, but neither one of them moved because neither knew who Mustafa was summoning.

  “I said you, come here!” Mustafa’s blazing eyes exploded with fury as he saw his command go unheeded. He strode across the room, then gestured toward Trisha. “I mean you.”

  Trisha nodded and tried to leave but Audra won’t release her. “It’s okay, I’ll be back,” she said, not convinced of the statement herself. But it seemed to persuade Audra because she let go. Then Trisha followed her jailer.

  Mustafa’s office was a room much like the one they had just left. The walls were whitewashed adobe, the floor covered with straw mats. But attached to the far wall was a long, mud brick bench upon which the stocky Nabil half sat, half laid. A gray, metal desk dominated the center of the room.

  Mustafa pointed to the cell phone on the desktop as he slid onto his chair. “I have just received orders to begin interrogations. And I’m authorized to use any force necessary. Believe me, sooner or later you’ll tell me all I wish to know.”

  He opened one of the drawers and pulled out a large knife with a rough, wooden hilt. He smiled as he placed it on the desk.

  “What do you want to know?” Trisha said calmly.

  “She is proud, this infidel!” Mustafa growled.

  Nabil rose from the bench and began encircling her. Today he was armed with a revolver which was holstered and strapped to his waist. “Yes,” he said with a hiss. “We may have to teach her some manners.”

  “We know the company that employs you is owned by Zionist pigs,” Mustafa said with an air of authority. “We also know that you are building a secret super plane which your employers will use to slaughter thousands of innocent Muslim women and children.”

  Trisha’s eyes grew wide, and before she could stop herself she blurted, “That’s ridiculous.”

  “By Allah’s beard, how this infidel lies!” Mustafa shouted, thumping the desk with his fist.

  Nabil nodded. “Has not the Quran warned us about nonbelievers, especially the dirty Jews? The surahs wisely caution us against befriending Jews for they are corrupt and untrustworthy. It is unfortunate for this daughter of a camel that she doesn’t know the wisdom of our holy book.”

  “Jewish entrails will be used as fertilizer!” shrieked Mustafa, picking up the knife. “Their eyes will be torn from their sock
ets! Their skulls will be used as kick-balls by our children! May the Prophet strike us blind if we do not exterminate every living Jew who breathes the air of Allah’s earth!”

  Trisha watched madness sweep over Mustafa as his voice grew louder. The blue, bulging veins on his neck formed a roadmap pattern. Herein traveled his hot, flowing hatred, pumped into every cell of his body.

  “You will give us the details of this super plane,” Mustafa said, replacing the knife on the desk. “Every minute detail.”

  When Trisha said nothing he rose from his seat.

  “Are you deaf, whore? I said you will give us the details of this airplane. And you will write it on this paper.” The lean guard poked a pad of yellow paper with his finger.

  Still Trisha remained silent.

  “Well!” shrieked Mustafa, the veins on his neck bulging again.

  “I can’t do that.”

  Mustafa convulsed in amazement. “Has there ever been such an evil, treacherous woman? We give her the chance to repent, to strike a blow against the Zionist pigs, thereby endearing herself to Muhammad the Great Prophet, the Ultimate Messenger of Allah, and she insults us! We who have shown her Allah’s compassion! It is her Jewish friends. The scum have defiled her beyond redemption. It would be a just act, indeed, to spill her blood with this knife.” Once again Mustafa picked up the weapon.

  “Not yet,” returned Nabil, putting up his hand. “This whore is proud. Perhaps all she needs is a lesson in humility. Perhaps we can still make her see the truth and justice of our words.” Nabil stopped circling, then slowly, almost ceremoniously, he pulled the revolver from his holster. “You will disrobe, and in shame and humiliation kneel before us, ask our forgiveness, and beg us to spare your life.”

  The look on Nabil’s face told Trisha he was prepared to kill her on the spot. She shook her head no, then held her breath. She was not afraid to die. She just hoped it wouldn’t be painful. She prayed for a swift end.