by Jan Coffey
Fahimah looked from one man to the other before continuing. “That old man represents hundreds of thousands of people who never stop mourning their loved ones. He makes the younger ones remember, so that we won’t allow the same thing to happen to us again.”
Both men fell silent. The traffic was moving again, and Ken turned at the next intersection. In a few minutes, they were in a section that she knew well. Fahimah looked at all the new houses and shops that had gone up since the last time she’d been here.
Austyn broke the silence. “About the old man. The Kurds have been in control of this region for years. Why didn’t anyone give Jalal information about what happened to his son?”
“I don’t think there was ever any information to give him. In fact, I don’t know if he was ever here. I don’t know what has happened in the past five years, but before that, the Kurds were always finding the sites of more mass graves. The boy is probably in one of those graves, along with so many other Kurds who were shot in the back and bulldozed under in the killing fields.”
Fahimah’s eyes suddenly teared and she looked out the window again. Such thoughts were painful. She’d lost some of the men in her own family that way. Three brothers, two uncles, and a cousin. Her youngest brother had been only twelve. He was tall for his age, and that was enough to collect him with the men, taking them where no one would ever hear from them again.
She blinked back the tears and focused on the low, white brick buildings and the people as they passed. She was glad they were moving again.
“Unless they give him his son’s body to bury,” she said finally, “Jalal will keep his vigil.”
“And you think he might know where your sister is?” Austyn asked.
“No, he doesn’t care to keep that kind of information. But many people talk to him. The Kurds respect him. It would be good for him to know that I have returned to Erbil. Through him, many will know.”
She busied herself adjusting the scarf around her neck. She didn’t want them to know she was upset.
“You haven’t been back here for five years. Do you think Jalal still goes to the place by the prison?” Austyn asked.
His tone was gentle. She didn’t want them to be nice to her. Not these people. She wanted it to be easy to walk away.
“I asked at the hotel where we’re staying. People still see him there.”
The van was now very close to their destination. She could see the high wall of the prison at the end of this street. Fahimah looked past the oncoming traffic at the sidewalk on the opposite side. Just ahead, she could see the stalls of an open-air bazaar that lined the far side of the street and spread up into several alleyways. There were crowds of people on foot in the area, but she spotted a group of men near one of the stalls, crouched and standing in the shade around someone sitting against the wall. It was the old dervish.
“Please pull to the curb and let me out.”
“We’re coming with you,” Austyn reminded her.
“You can sit in the car and watch me walk across the street,” she told him. “Jalal will not talk to me if he sees you. And even if he does speak to me, the news that will reach my sister is that I’m still under arrest. That is not the way to bring Rahaf forward to see me.”
“You can pretend you don’t know me,” Austyn said more forcefully. “But I’m not going to let you go out there alone.”
Ken pulled to the curb where he was directed. Fahimah considered arguing with Austyn. But glancing across the street, she saw Jalal starting to gather his things. A boy was helping him up.
“Keep your distance,” she warned him. “After we cross the street, you go ahead and pass him. You can wait at that vendor’s stall over there and watch me. Even if something happens, do not reveal that you know me.”
She pushed her door open before he had time to disagree. For some reason, the traffic on the wide street had crawled to a halt. She began to weave through the cars across the concrete roadway. Behind her, the other door to the van opened and slammed shut.
Drivers were now beeping their horns and cheering out their windows, and she looked up the street in surprise at the sound of musicians playing. Beyond the line of cars and trucks, coming along the street at the base of the prison walls, she saw a procession of people. They turned onto this street.
“What’s that?” he heard Austyn ask in her ear. He couldn’t stay away from her.
“It’s a wedding. People get married on Monday and Thursday nights. This is Thursday,” she told him. “Now get away from me.”
The cheers were loud. The car leading the parade passed them. It was covered with flowers. The bride and groom were walking behind the car. The rest of wedding guests followed behind, some on foot and others in vehicles. Musicians walked along the outside, singing and playing their drums, while women in traditional Kurdish costume followed behind and threw candy and rice on the heads of those standing by.
Everyone on the street, drivers and pedestrians alike, had come to a standstill, watching and cheering for the bride and groom. People shopping at the open-air market were now lining the street, as well, and Fahimah couldn’t see the sidewalk. She was afraid that Jalal would leave. She made up her mind and made a dash across the street ahead of a truck carrying another mob of guests.
Arriving at the opposite side, she looked around and panicked, unable to see any sign of Jalal.
“Fahimah.” She heard Agent Newman calling her name.
She turned around and saw him still in the middle of the street. He waved at her to wait for him. She searched the faces of the people on the sidewalk, looking for the older man.
Someone tugged on her sleeve. She looked down. It was a young boy.
“Hatin,” he whispered.
Fahimah nodded, took his hand, and followed him quickly into the throng of people.
Eighteen
Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C.
Cathy Mittman, the office manager of the law firm Crandel and Smith, reached for the phone when her line buzzed at 8:59 a.m. It was the receptionist who answered outside phone calls.
“Cathy, do you know where Leo might be? I have his girlfriend on the line, and she doesn’t want to be put through to the voice mail.”
Hired right out of Harvard Law School and moving quickly along the fast track, Leo Bolender was a newly made partner, working in the real estate group.
“I don’t know where he is. But why don’t you put her through to me.”
Cathy had only met Kimberly Cage a couple of times, at office parties. She worked in sales…some kind of rep. Cathy couldn’t exactly remember. She seemed like a nice enough person, and very pretty. The two of them looked really cute together.
“Good morning, Kimberly.”
“Cathy! Thank you for taking my call,” the young woman said, sounding agitated. “By any chance, have you seen Leo this morning?”
Cathy glanced toward the young man’s office. “Well, I know he’s here. I can see his briefcase and suit jacket. And this morning when I came in, his office light was on. I haven’t seen him personally, though.”
“Oh, thank God,” the young woman blurted, clearly relieved. “I’ve been so worried about him.”
“Worried?”
“I’m in Seattle this week. But last night I couldn’t get him at home. And I tried his cell, too, but he didn’t answer it. I left half a dozen messages on his office line, too. I know he’s been busy with the Dubai resort negotiations…”
Cathy put her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and whispered thank you to one of the secretaries for bringing her a cup of coffee.
“And when I talked to him yesterday morning,” Kim continued, “he said he wasn’t feeling well at all. He was wondering if he should switch medicines.”
Cathy logged onto her computer and checked Leo’s appointment schedule. As the office manager, she had access to all the partners’ appointment calendars.
“These young bucks just don’t know how to
take care of their health, do they?” she said brightly.
“I told him he should take the time and see a doctor. Do you know if he went yesterday? He’s been fighting whatever it is he’s got for two weeks now.”
Leo’s first meeting of the day wasn’t until eleven. She noticed that there were eight messages left on his phone line. He had to be around.
“I don’t think so, hon. But I told him the same thing. He was coughing and hacking all over us yesterday.”
Cathy returned the wave of Dardo, one of the summer interns, as he passed by her desk. She watched the young man go down the hall toward the rest room.
“Well, I’m not waiting for him, anymore. I don’t want him to go through the entire weekend feeling miserable,” Kimberly said. “Will you please tell him that I’ve made an appointment with—”
Someone was shouting.
“Hold on a sec, would you?” Cathy stood up. Everyone else in their section of the office was looking in the same direction.
The bathroom door banged open.
“Call 911!” the intern called out, staggering out of the bathroom.
He was as white as the tiled ceiling.
“Call 911,” he croaked again before bending over and throwing up into one of the office plants.
Cathy dropped the phone and ran toward him.
“Do it,” she shouted to one of the other assistants who was staring in disbelief a couple of steps away from the sick young man.
She crouched next to Dardo. He was gasping for air, crying at the same time.
“Get me some towels,” she ordered a young lawyer who’d just arrived. She was standing with her briefcase in hand, watching.
“Towels?”
“In the bathroom,” Cathy said. “There’s a supply closet in there.”
“No!” Dardo shook his head. “Don’t go in there.”
It was too late. The young woman had opened the door. “Oh my God! What’s that smell?”
When the young lawyer started screaming, she was loud enough to let everyone from here to the Capitol Building know the problem wasn’t with the sick intern at their feet. Something else was lying on the floor in that bathroom.
Nineteen
Erbil, Iraq
She was standing there one minute and the next she was gone. Austyn shouted for Ken over his shoulder and pushed his way through the passing wedding celebration. When he reached the sidewalk, a sea of angry faces greeted him every way that he looked.
He didn’t care. He couldn’t see her. He strode to the place where he’d seen the dervish sitting. But he was gone, too.
Ken reached him. “Where is she?”
“Gone,” he said angrily over the music and cheering of the wedding procession, which had stopped and formed a circle in the street.
He grabbed a wooden box from a stack next to a fruit stall and climbed on it. He scanned the crowd. Still, he could see no sign of her.
“I’ll go talk to those Peshmerga,” Ken told him.
Austyn saw the three uniformed Kurdish soldiers standing by the curb, enjoying the festivities. Based on what he’d heard so far, he doubted they would help a foreigner at the expense of a Kurd—no matter what the reason was. They took care of their own people and their own problems.
Inside, he was kicking himself. He had somehow gotten to the point with Fahimah that he actually couldn’t believe that she would do this to him…that she would just walk away. Like a moron, he thought they’d formed a working relationship, at least. They had an agreement. He’d believed her when she said she was going to help them.
Austyn thought about the five years that she’d been held in their prisons. What kind of grudge would he carry after being treated like that? What a fool he was!
“Fahimah!” he shouted out, knowing there was no purpose to it. He wouldn’t answer, if their places were reversed.
A few people in the crowd near him turned around and gave him a side look. They soon went back to watching the wedding celebrations.
Ken was walking away from the soldiers. Austyn saw the soldiers’ attention turn to the dancers again.
“Anything?” he asked as he stepped down from the box.
Ken shook his head. “That was a waste of breath. They haven’t seen her. They don’t have time to look for her. And they didn’t know what I was talking about as far as Jalal goes. There’s no such person, so naturally they couldn’t know where he lives.”
Austyn kept looking beyond the crowds as he talked. “We can spread out and check the side streets. Also, I need you to get hold of Matt. I want him and the rest of our men down here. Can we get help from your base?”
“I’ll call them,” Ken suggested. “But that will take time to round them up and get them down here. As I told you before, we have only a skeleton crew stationed in Erbil.”
“I’ll take whatever I can get.”
“You know, maybe you should give her a little time. She might come back on her own. Fahimah did tell us that she wouldn’t be able to get any answers if we were hovering over her shoulder.”
“I’m not willing to risk that,” Austyn told the other man. “She might also have just been abducted.”
Ken shook his head doubtfully. “I know that’s an everyday occurrence south of here, but you just don’t hear it happening in Erbil.”
Austyn disagreed. “If this is all connected to Al Qaeda, if the sister is behind the attacks, then the word could be out that Fahimah is here and that she could ruin everything. And even if Rahaf is not involved, she could hold the key to the remedy. If that’s the case, then it doesn’t matter which sister they get hold of. They’ll know grabbing Fahimah is one way to stop any cooperation with us.”
Suddenly, Ken seemed a lot more motivated in getting to a phone.
Austyn wanted to think of Fahimah as walking away of her own free will. He didn’t want to think her life was in danger. It was so much easier to be angry at her than to think that he hadn’t done a good enough job protecting her.
The truth was, though, that he’d failed miserably.
There was a tug on his sleeve. He looked down. A Kurdish boy, who couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old, stuffed something into his hand and ran away. Austyn took a couple of steps after the boy, but the street urchin disappeared like a ghost into the crowd.
“What is it?” Ken asked over Austyn’s shoulder.
“It’s a scrap of paper.” He opened the crumpled note, read it, and looked in the direction the boy had gone. “It says, ‘I’ll see you back at the hotel.’”
Twenty
Washington, D.C.
No one knew how the media got word of the debacle unfolding at the law firm.
Clearly, though, the phone call to 911 had not been the only call made from the law office of Crandel and Smith after Leo Bolender’s rapidly decomposing body was discovered in the men’s bathroom. By the time Homeland Security had moved in their ambulances, equipment, and personnel to quarantine the people and the building, news vans were pulling up across Pennsylvania Avenue.
Before Faas even reached the office building, news stations were already reporting another outbreak similar to the tragedy in Sedona. The intelligence chief knew it could have been anyone at the law firm. One call to a family member would be enough to start a media avalanche.
It no longer mattered. What did matter was the word calm no longer applied in D.C. In less than an hour, chaos had taken hold of the city. Telephone systems and cell phone lines were jammed. The highways were a parking lot. Emergency dispatchers were inundated with calls from hysterical residents.
President Penn had already called out the National Guard. Government offices were ordered to close by midday. A state of emergency had been issued for the District of Columbia, and the governors of Virginia and Maryland were about to do the same thing. Airlines, trains, and buses were not running. All bridges into and out of the district had been closed, and a perimeter was being set up, with Georgetown, Q Street, Florida
Avenue, and Benning Road forming the northern boundary. Police and troops would keep vehicles from moving into or out of the city at that point. A mandatory curfew was in place from 8:00 p.m. tonight, and people were being encouraged to remain where they were.
In short, the president had clamped a lid on the nation’s capital. Assured by his staff and the Director of Homeland Security that they weren’t overreacting, President Penn had gone on television with the mayor of D.C. to explain the actions that were being taken. Their first priority, he’d told the nation, was to safeguard the wellbeing of the people of Washington. To do that, they needed the cooperation of everyone in getting off the streets and into a secure location. What the president didn’t say was that there were no safe zones that anyone could be certain of, and until they knew how far and how fast the plague could spread, no one would be allowed to run away, only to carry the horror with them.
Faas leaned against the mobile command unit parked in front of the building. The lines of vans and ambulances and police cars, four deep inside the police tape, provided some barrier to the news people. He crushed the cigarette he’d been smoking under his heel. He’d gone without one for eight months now. That had made his kids proud. Well, he thought, he’d just have to quit again.
The door to the vehicle opened. One of his agents held a phone out to him. “The President. He wants an update.”
Faas took a deep breath and looked up at the windows of the law firm.
“Yes, sir. Only one dead. No other infection that we know of. It appears no one touched the body of the victim,” he told the president. They’d already spoken half a dozen times this morning, and Faas was glad he finally had something positive to pass on. “Everyone on the fourth floor, where the law offices are located, has been isolated. They’re being transferred to one of our nearby facilities for more testing and observation, but that will take some time.”
