Escape from Baghdad!

by Saad Hossain

  27: MINISTRY

  THE MINISTRY TURNED OUT TO BE EASY. HOFFMAN PRETENDED TO be a visiting colonel on tour. He wore the stripes he had stolen from Colonel Bradley. Sabeen pretended to be a doctor liaising with the UN and his interpreter. Behruse had to stay in the car because he couldn’t pretend to be anything other than a stone thug.

  Harder than access was actually finding anything coherent. The bureaucrats were on strike because their salaries were late. The building was having problems with electricity, and the phone lines had been cut last night by vandals. Inside the vaults, hundreds of thousands of paper files were being protected by two rival armies of clerks. Two-thirds of them were the “New Nationalists.” One-third was Ba’athist loyalists. The New Nationalists had the political might, but the Ba’athists knew where everything was. It was a stalemate.

  This was, in fact, Hoffman’s comfort zone. He smoked, gossiped, and bribed his way into the Ba’athist headquarter, where a quick deal with the chief clerk netted him a jar of Vaseline and two hours alone with the Al-Rashid Hospital files. The chief clerk, did, in fact, charge by the hour for alone time with files, and moreover, he had his rates printed out on a piece of cardboard. Hoffman was able to avail himself of the “American Liberator” discount but could not swindle the ultra-low “Secret Ba’athist Sympathizer” rate.

  The files themselves were in chaos, but Sabeen was quick, and she knew how hospital bureaucracy worked. It turned out that Dr. Sawad, being a suspicious man, tended to rotate his staff with extreme efficiency. Interns, junior techs, even nurses were changed with regularity, and all of them left him with highly negative recommendations. It was as if once having used them up, his earnest desire was to bury them somewhere far from sight.

  “This is useless,” Hoffman sneezed. “This guy was paranoid.”

  “Not a single medical staff stuck,” Sabeen said. “He had no team. Could he do his work single handed?”

  “No way a single man could handle Taha. Not even sedated.”

  “He trusted no doctor or nurse,” Sabeen said. “He lived alone. He was mostly estranged from his daughter. No friends to speak of. No colleagues. The man was a hermit. How on earth could he have a partner?”

  Hoffman laughed. “Look for the invisible people; cleaners, guards, cooks. They wouldn’t be able to steal his work. And he would be able to control them easily.”

  Sabeen shrugged and grudgingly dug into further packets of mildewed files. Hoffman, whose Arabic was not up to scratch, basked in the light of his great idea.

  “None of these files track the lower staff,” she complained. “Ah, payrolls. Interesting.”

  “What is it?”

  “Shit, you were right,” Sabeen said. “Janitor. Was at the Al-Rashid with him the entire time. Got full marks from Sawad, regular raises. Quit five months ago, no reasons given. Sawad recommended him for redundancy and full pension.”

  “Address?”

  “Yes, but four years old,” Sabeen said. “Full name. Ali Mazra. Kurdish. Phone number crossed out. We’ll have to tease him out.”

  “Behruse has been wanting to hound somebody for ages,” Hoffman said. “Best let him do it.”

  Behruse, it turned out, was surprisingly good at hounding random people down. Having numerous old friends at police stations, post offices, and municipal authorities, he had access to the dry bureaucratic bones of the city. Apartment records, cell phone registrations, marriage certificates, voter records, income tax returns—Ali Mazra had them all. Sawad, if he had been trying to hide himself, had been woefully amateurish.

  It took Behruse only a day to track down Mazra’s current address, two apartments in a half-abandoned tenement building. One year’s worth of rent had been paid in advance in cash.

  “Now where does he get that kind of money? Hmm?” Sabeen said, on the way over. She held a pistol in her slim fingers, a 22 caliber Beretta. There was a small grin on her face, the instinctive excitement of a predator catching a scent. Hoffman couldn’t stop leering.

  “You think Taha’s come back here?” Hoffman asked.

  “If we’re lucky,” Sabeen said. “Or we’ll get a better idea, at least.”

  “Mazra will talk,” Behruse said. “Leave it to me.”

  The building was in a bad neighborhood and had lately suffered both bombing and looting. Several plots were burnt husks. The people on the streets were rough, many of them openly armed. The apartments themselves had no elevator, only a narrow stairway smelling of urine. The lights were gone, and they had to climb in near darkness, the false light of dusk filtering in through broken windows in the landings.

  “Camera,” Hoffman said, pointing.

  “It moved,” Sabeen drew her gun. “Someone knows we’re here.”

  Behruse knocked on one of three doors, a heavy BAM-BAM-BAM, reminiscent of police everywhere. There was no answer. He moved to the next one, tried again. Shrugging, he lifted his foot and started kicking methodically, using the sole of his boot.

  “Stop, stop,” a muffled voice said from within.

  “Ali Mazra?” Behruse asked, in his cop voice.

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Open the door. Police,” Behruse said. “Be very slow.”

  “What do you want?” Ali Mazra cracked the door open as far as the security chain would allow. “I have paid the monthly gift to Sergeant Ali Kharimi already.”

  “Kharimi is out, and I’m in,” Behruse said. “Transferred last month. He conned you. Now let me in.”

  “What? Transferred?”

  “Your boss Sawad made arrangements with me. Said you’d settle up,” Behruse said. “Now open the door.”

  Ali Mazra opened grudgingly. He was a huge man, well over six feet, of cavernous height and build. Large, raw hands gripped a cleaver. He was ill at ease, his face sunken and blemished with lack of sleep, his body stinking of unwashed clothes and various chemicals.

  Behruse barged in, into a small antechamber, cluttered with garbage and cardboard boxes. The door in the back was heavy wood, fortified with bands of iron. It was partially ajar, but the interior was cloaked in darkness.

  “You aren’t police,” Ali Mazra said, staring at Sabeen and Hoffman. His hands gripped convulsively on the knife. The hilt of a tranquilizer gun peeped from his waistband. The hallway seemed ridiculously over crowded. Hoffman didn’t mind the smell, but the Kurd looked crazed, capable of anything. Surreptitiously, he tried to maneuver Behruse’s bulk between himself and the janitor.

  “Relax,” Sabeen said. “Not police. Mukhabarat.”

  “What?” Ali Mazra said.

  “We are friends of Dr. Sawad,” Sabeen said. “He told us where to find you.”

  “Where is he?” Ali Mazra asked. “We don’t have any friends.”

  “Relax, Ali Mazra,” Sabeen said. There was some hypnotic cadence to her voice, which, Hoffman couldn’t help but notice, seemed to soothe even the most savage humans. “You have been alone too long. We have come to help you.”

  “Get out of here,” Mazra said, gesturing to the door. “Leave. It’s not safe.”

  “You think the Lion will come to get you,” Hoffman said. “The Lion is loose, and he might want revenge. How long can you stand guard? How long can you even stay awake?”

  “Sawad will come back.” Mazra stared at Hoffman, as if daring him to disagree. The cleaver wavered between Behruse and Hoffman. The Kurd had his back to the wall and, even in his debilitated state, could probably take both of them. There was in him a sense of pure animal strength and desperation.

  “Dr. Sawad is dead,” Sabeen said flatly. “I have his autopsy and death certificate. He was murdered not long ago.”

  “No,” Ali Mazra seemed to collapse into himself. “No.”

  “In my bag,” Sabeen indicated her slim leather case. “You must know that Sawad was working for us. We are Mukhabarat. I am the doctor who was monitoring him. I will take over his work.”

  “Murdered how?”

  “Thrown off the roof,
” Sabeen said. “By Afzal Taha, his patient, who even now might be looking for you. You are in danger, Ali Mazra, out on your own. We are your only aid.”

  “Taha killed the doctor?” Ali Mazra laughed hysterically. “Or maybe the Old Man killed him, Mukhabarat bitch. He was running from you.”

  “A misunderstanding,” Sabeen said, smooth. “There are factions in the service. Some elements—like the Old Man—wanted to take over the doctor’s research for selfish gain. We are the other side of the Mukhabarat, the reasonable side. We have the government mandate. We are legal.”

  “And him?” Ali Mazra pointed the cleaver at Hoffman. “Who is this rat?”

  “CIA,” Sabeen said. “Dr. Sawad was an important man. This project is of international importance. We can take care of everything if you let us.”

  “The doctor…”

  “He’s really dead,” Sabeen said. She removed the autopsy picture gently from her case. “There is nothing else.”

  Ali Mazra stared at the picture and as acceptance finally clouded his eyes, the weariness of the past weeks caught up with him, and he sat abruptly against the cardboard boxes. This was a man who had survived purely on adrenaline and hope, and now it crashed away, leaving him broken.

  “We are going to airlift you and the patient both to America,” Hoffman chimed in. “Straight to Washington DC. Get you into the program.”

  “Patients,” Ali Mazra said. He waved to the dark interior. “You think Taha was the only one?”

  28: THE STRANGE ISLAND OF DR. SAWAD

  THE STENCH OF ROTTING FLESH AND MORGUE CHEMICALS HIT Hoffman, an olfactory assault coiled around the room like a serpent. There was, cutting through it all, the sharp edge of chlorine, strong enough to make his eyes water and his nose tingle. Behruse, of a frail constitution, went so far as to gag discreetly in the corner. For a fat man, he had a surprisingly weak stomach.

  Mazra was limping through in the dark, his torch light wavering. “They don’t like the light,” he said in passing. Hoffman dreaded to think whom he was referring to. The chamber ran through the breadth of the apartment and was furnished with four large laboratory tables, each one scarred with beakers, Petri dishes, varieties of chemical stocks, and reams and reams of papers.

  This, the inner sanctum of Doctor Sawad and Mazra, revealed an unruly side to the great man. Everything was in chaos. No thought had been given to tidiness. Books, journals, references lay haphazardly wherever they had been last used. Blackboards along the wall were covered in scientific shorthand, some of it chemistry, some of it Arabic, some of it unique to Sawad.

  There was an abandoned fish tank in one place, with the fish and water out, replaced by stacks and stacks of dirty Petri dishes and test tubes. Another bin was full of used syringes, like a graveyard for heroin addicts.

  As his eyes got accustomed to the dark fugue, Hoffman saw that one-third of the room was closed off by a curtain, a great green dirty thing, half dragged on the floor, and splotched with dull red stains. Beyond this, lay three cots, hospital issue, no doubt stolen from the Al-Rashid, with makeshift shackles welded on.

  Two of these were side by side, occupied by a man and woman. They were hooked up to life support machines. In the vague green light, Hoffman could see tumors on their faces. They were skeletally thin and ill cared for. Their diapers stank, and they were covered in bed sores. Multiple drips fed into their veins. He could judge that they were not far from death. The shackles were undone, for in truth they were no threat to anyone. The third cot, ominously, was empty, the sheets covered in dried blood and feces. Behind was a padlocked door with a small barred cutout. Hands extended out from here, raw with wounds, and an unintelligible moaning ensued.

  “Dog Boy,” Mazra said, “too dangerous to let out without tranks.”

  Mazra led them on into a corner of this section, where his own bed lay, a more comfortable version of the hospital cot, minus the shackles. He slumped into it, with unfeigned weariness.

  “You poor man,” Sabeen said.

  The Kurd glared at her. “Three weeks, all alone. Every day I thought the doctor would come. We are out of food, tranquilizers, almost everything. And the constant moaning. I haven’t slept in days.”

  “You’ll be alright now,” Sabeen said. “We’ll make a list of everything you need here and get it to you. You’ll have help too, trusted men. Plus security.”

  Dog Boy saw them through bars somehow or just saw the wavering light of Mazra’s torch, because he started howling right then, shouting obscenities and pleas, begging for water, begging to be let out or put to sleep or killed.

  “He’s gone mad,” Mazra said. “Patient 3. I’m supposed to keep him under, but he uses up the tranks too fast.”

  “These patients, are they from the Al-Rashid too?” Sabeen asked.

  “No. At the Al-Rashid we only had Taha,” Mazra said. “We got these after.”

  “What exactly happened with Taha?”

  “The doctor was close to success with Taha,” Mazra said. “And then he became afraid of the Old Man. He had to hide all his research. Said there was someone after him to steal the research and kill all of us. He told me to find a safe place. I set up this apartment, and we moved all the equipment here bit by bit. We had a schedule, but the Al-Rashid got broken into, and we decided to move Taha then.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “It was stupid,” Mazra said. “Taha is almost immune to tranquilizers. We both knew that. The cell was a temporary structure. It wasn’t strong enough. Taha broke out one day.”

  Mazra lifted his sleeve. “He gave me this scar, nearly killed me. The doctor was enraged when he got back.”

  “Where did you get these other patients from?”

  “I got those two in the beginning. They used to live in this building. Quiet couple, no family. I drugged them and brought them here,” Mazra said. “We got Dog Boy later, after Taha left. But things weren’t good without Taha. The doctor said we needed him to finish the work.”

  “We will find Taha, don’t worry,” Sabeen said. “The work will be finished. How far along exactly was the doctor?”

  “He thought that with Taha’s blood and the Old Man’s papers, he could make these two work,” Mazra motioned at the hapless couple. “But they kept getting worse. It was my job to monitor them for improvement. I kept charts of everything, even the Dog Boy.” He motioned at a neat stack by the foot of his bed.

  “Very good charts too,” Sabeen said. “You are as good as any nurse or lab tech, Ali Mazra.”

  “The doctor taught me,” Mazra said. He sounded very pleased to be compared to a nurse.

  “Where are his papers, Mazra?” Sabeen leaned forward. “Where is the research of the brilliant Dr. Sawad?”

  “He told me to destroy his formulas,” Mazra said, “if he ever went missing for more than a week.”

  “You destroyed all his work??”

  “He memorized everything,” Mazra said. “He didn’t need the papers.”

  “But he’s dead!”

  “That’s not something he anticipated.”

  “Well what are we supposed to do now?”

  “He didn’t leave any orders for after this death.”

  “What papers are left?”

  “I didn’t destroy his personal journals,” Mazra shrugged. “You can have those.”

  29: THE JOURNALS OF DR. SAWAD

  LOG 1, DAY 13. AL-RASHID, BASEMENT WING. STUDIES ON SUBJECT 0, Afzal Taha, continuing at fast pace after initial breakthrough. OM help invaluable. Telomere mutation expected to be main cause of Taha rapid cellular healing and age. OM suggests to study telomerase levels present in Taha cells. This is the enzyme that extends telomeres in cells. High levels are most often found in cancer cells, which is one of the reasons cancer cells don’t die. Performed tests by replacing cancer patient’s blood sample with Taha’s. Lab returned positive result. Must be careful to erase tracks. Might be necessary to bring in geneticist into study at some point. Dr
. J, perhaps. I shall definitely get promoted for this work.

  Log 3, Day 21, Al-Rashid, Basement Wing. Telomerase present in large quantities but no cancer. Very unusual to find high levels of telomerase in healthy cells. Have written to the American genetics company Geron to gain preliminary technical information. OM seems to know a lot more than he is telling. It’s just like him to obstruct medical progress.

  Log 8, Day 23, Al-Rashid, Basement Wing. Research at a complete halt. No working theories as to why S0 (Subject Zero) has high levels of telomerase in cells but no cancers. Consulting OM again. Threefold situation likely: (a) Telomerase increased initially in host body by some unknown means, (b) hyper immune system developed to suppress cancers and prevent late onset mutations, and (c) telomerase levels kept stable to prevent cell death without continued input of telomerase-making enzymes.

  Log 10, Day 28, Al-Rashid, Basement Wing. Taha is highly resistant to disease, highly resistant to tissue damage, with faster than normal regeneration powers. Also confirmed reduction of senescence. Discussions with Dr. J. Might have to bring him in soon. Need blood. work confirmed 100% for research papers. Taha’s immune system alone is remarkable. Nobel Prize possible. Could he just be a genetic freak of nature?

  Log 11, Day 29, Al-Rashid, Basement Wing. OM quashed research paper emphatically. Refuses to understand what a marvel Taha is. Has become unreasonably autocratic. OM having me watched, I think. Forbade me to speak to anyone, even consulting specialists. I cannot work in a vacuum anymore. This is high level genetics. I have demanded more explanations. Am certain OM knows everything. Asked my Mukhabarat supervisor discreetly. That bastard told me to follow OM’s directions explicitly. What the hell are they interested in genetics for? Biological weapons perhaps?