by J C Ryan
“They are too frightened to leave. They have made their decisions and will stay. I cannot say how long we have. Someone may have already telephoned for help.”
“Maybe not. I disabled the phone panel,” he said, realizing even as he said it that it may not mean anything to her. And that it may not have been the only phone panel, though he would have expected to hear sirens by now if any phone in the residence was operative. It was highly unlikely the women or the faharmana had a cell phone. Still, haste was not a bad idea.
Hande led him through the harem quarters to the courtyard, where the women had reassembled. Because Hande had told him how they’d be dressed, he wasn’t surprised to see his little flock resembled a murder of crows instead of a group of beautiful women. He was surprised that there was an unexpected seventh figure, much smaller than the others but dressed in a diminutive version of their costume, holding the hand of one of the women he hadn’t met yet.
“What’s this?”
“Her daughter,” Hande said. She must have anticipated the question. “She is an obedient child. She will cause no trouble.”
Except that she doesn’t have a passport, and children belong to the father in Saudi Arabia.
Rex knew the women probably knew the problem as well as he did. But he could not leave the woman behind, nor could he separate the child from the mother. This rescue was taking more twists than he’d ever imagined. Challenging his moral compass all the time. He would just have to make the best of it. The van he’d rented… when? He’d lost track of the days. The van had sufficient room for everyone including the child.
Now his question was how to get them all to the hotel. Which led to the next question. Was his room still being held, or had they removed his things, towed the van, and rendered his key inoperable? If they’d decided he wasn’t coming back, it presented a few more problems to deal with.
First things first.
“Is there a vehicle here that will accommodate all of us?” he asked. He assumed the women were sometimes taken as a group to shop or for entertainment. If not, he’d have to go and examine the available vehicles for himself before taking the women out of the courtyard. He might have to take a couple or three trips to ferry them all to the hotel and his rental van. If it was still there.
His relief was palpable when Hande told him there was a modified Lincoln Town Car, like he’d seen used as limousines in the States. Not suitable for a cross-country trip, probably, but adequate to carry the seven women, the toddler, Digger, and himself as well as food and water.
Speaking of Digger… Where’d he go?
The familiar pressure of the dog against his leg was missing. Rex looked down and found Digger sitting calmly next to the little girl. Her eyes and mouth were at odds. The eyes were frightened. The mouth was smiling. And her little hand was hovering over Digger’s head, a stretch for her, since he was as tall sitting as she was standing. She held tightly to her mother’s hand as she leaned toward the dog.
Digger was also smiling, and he’d ducked his head, so the child could pet him. She wouldn’t know that mouth full of sharp teeth with the tongue hanging out meant a smile, but something in the dog’s stillness had reassured her enough to want to touch him.
Rex was touched by the innocence. He’d once been as innocent as that child, and the dog he’d wanted to pet then had nearly killed him. Digger could bite that child in two with one snap, but he wouldn’t. Rex was sure of it. Just then, the little girl made a fist and punched Digger square in the eye.
But to Rex's surprise and relief, all he did was close the eye and his mouth.
“Digger, come.” Rex spoke sharply. If the kid was going to torment the dog, Rex couldn’t be sure of his reaction.
But Digger just turned his head and looked at him. As if to say, “don't worry I've got it.”
The next moment the child had pulled away from her mother’s hand and was hanging around Digger's neck with both arms, babbling in a semblance of Arabic that Rex assumed was baby talk.
Digger smiled while he looked at Rex. See, I told you I've got it.
Rex sighed in relief. He was right. The dog knew the little girl was just a baby and would tolerate a little pain from her explorations of this new friend.
The potential crisis averted, Rex told Hande to lead the way to the garage. The women fell into line behind her, some in twos, others walking alone. The woman with the toddler swept her up into her arms and Digger followed them. Rex brought up the rear, but as they passed into the home, he hurried to catch up with Hande so he could defend if anyone challenged them.
When it happened, Rex didn’t even have time to get involved. The farharmana stepped in front of Hande from the other side, but she simply swept him aside with one arm. It had been a token effort, not worth Rex’s attention.
When they reached the garage, Hande led them straight to the limousine. About a dozen other vehicles were neatly arranged in rows to both sides. Rex expected to have to break into the limousine and hotwire it, but Hande showed him a row of hooks with the keys to each vehicle hanging from it. They were organized in the same order on the hooks that the cars lined up in the row with the limousine. On the other side of the garage, a similar set of hooks and keys lined up with those cars. Rex took a beat to admire the organization, then lifted the Town Car key fob and pushed the button to unlock the doors.
He noticed the women climbed in with the same sense of order that they’d lined up behind Hande.
Pecking order?
The trip through town was uneventful, though Rex had a bad moment in the lobby of the hotel. He knew he looked like a mugging victim, but there was no help for it. He wasn’t going to put on Mutaib’s clothes, even if they would have fit him. Nor was there time to search the guards’ quarters for a suitable set. When he approached the concierge kiosk, intending to pass to the desk to inquire if his room key was still operational, the concierge stepped in front of him in false concern.
“May I help you? Do you need the police?”
“Not at all,” Rex replied. “You should see the other guy,” he said in English, a slight grin on his face. The grin faded when the concierge switched to English.
“I must insist. We cannot have you disturbing our guests.”
“I am a guest,” Rex said, producing the key from his shirt pocket. “However, I was… detained… and I’m not certain my key still works.”
The concierge’s frown eased slightly. “I will inquire. Please wait here.”
He returned in a few moments. “You are fortunate. The room is scheduled to be cleaned out today. The desk requests that you settle your outstanding bill, since you have not left a credit card. Then you will be permitted to return to your room. We must ask that you make other arrangements if you wish to stay in town.”
Rex nodded. “All right. So much for Saudi hospitality. But I’ll need to return to my room to settle the bill. Maybe someone could go with me.”
The concierge called a security guard to accompany Rex to his room and back to the desk with the cash Rex had left in the room safe. Once he’d settled the bill and had been allowed to return for his things, he’d been away from the limousine for forty-five minutes. He would have appreciated a shower and a change of clothes, but he’d left the Town Car running to keep the women cool, and it would run out of gas before long.
His plan was to take the women to Oman, a more liberal country, if any Muslim-dominated country could be called liberal, but in that sense more liberal than the other countries he could go to. At least from there with their passports returned to them, they could return to the countries of their origin or perhaps stay and find more palatable ways to support themselves.
However, Hande, when hearing his plan, soon had convinced him that crossing the desert as he’d envisaged would be a long and difficult and risky process. The chances that they’d run out of gas and die in the heat were just too high. Then, even if they made it to the border, the crossing wouldn’t be easy with all the women. Rex accepted it was
not going to be as easy as it had been for him a few weeks ago when he’d fled Afghanistan through Pakistan and into India. And easy wasn’t the word he’d use for that trip, either.
He’d been impressed with Hande. She had kept the women calm, shown ingenuity in the broken plans, made just the right move in having the women dress for the escape, and had even known about the limousine, where to find it, and where to locate the keys.
“So, what's the alternative?”
“Mecca,” she said simply.
“Mecca… are you…”
She nodded. “Yes. A trip there, if anyone notices us, can be explained as a pious necessity. We are making a pilgrimage to Mecca. There are hundreds of thousands of people, and we can easily blend in with them. From there, it is only a few more miles to Jeddah. We can find passage to anywhere and from Jeddah out of the country.”
Rex had to admit it was a great idea. No pursuer would think their escape route would lead back through the heart of Saudi Arabia. They’d be watching the port in Dammam, or the coastal highway into nearby Qatar. There were plenty of small towns where they could take rest stops and get food on the twelve-hour journey to Mecca. And where else would a lone man be taking seven women and a kid?
“Mecca it is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE TRIP TO Mecca was long, but uneventful. Rehka and Hande knew how to drive, so Rex was able to catch a few winks now and then. But he slept lightly, concerned about trouble if they were seen at the wheel by police. Digger slept while Rex was driving, but Rex set him to keep watch during the quick naps. In this way, they were able to drive straight through.
Rex had the radio on, listening for news and as expected the news about the carnage at Prince Mutaib bin Faisal bin Saud’s compound broke when they were about two hours out of Dammam. By the time the media got the news the police would have known about it for an hour or more. Rex would’ve liked at least a three-hour head start. He expected the police to be searching close to the city at first but would call in help and widening their search.
Straight through with seven women and a child was a different matter, though, than straight through with only himself and Digger. It seemed they had to stop at every small town for someone to make use of a restroom, and sometimes between towns, the women forming a modesty barrier by encircling each other in turns.
Then there were prayer times. They’d left a little later than midway between Fajr (the dawn Salah) and Zhur (midday). Though they were in the car and nowhere near a muezzin, the Muslim women knew when it was time and insisted Rex stop the van, so they could pray.
Rehka refused to pray, however. Being Hindi, she said emphatically that she was tired of being forced to pray to a deity that was a stranger to her. Rex didn’t blame her.
Rex made the best of it, choosing to believe that if six women and a little girl were praying for their safety, surely Allah would get his faithful servants, and he could only hope, their driver and his dog to Mecca unharmed.
Fortunately, they didn’t have to waste time figuring out which way Mecca was for the prescribed direction in which to pray. They only had to turn their faces in the direction the van was pointing.
Once on their way again, they hadn’t gone much farther when the child complained of hunger, and they had to stop in the next town for some lunch. By pushing hard and imploring that they hold their water, Rex persuaded the women he needed to make some progress before Asr. They weren’t happy, and more strife emerged when two of them, Shia instead of the more common Sunni of Saudi Arabia, disputed what time Asr should be offered. Now that they weren’t under the thumb of Mutaib’s household, they wanted to pray on their definition of the time.
By now Rex had quietly surmised that without a doubt this was one of the most taxing missions he had ever been on, and not because of the danger. He had been in similar or worse danger on CRC missions, but on those missions, he was alone. He went in, got the job done, and got out. Here, he had to put up with the constant bickering of seven women with conflicting religious views. And then there were the pea-sized bladders which had to be emptied, what felt to him like every half-hour. Instead of progressing at seventy-two miles an hour, the speed limit on the highway, they were averaging around fifty.
As a result of all the stops, Rex was as nervous as he’d ever been, fearful that a pursuit would be mounted in this direction after all. And both Maghrib (sunset) and Isha (night) prayers had been performed before they arrived in Mecca. Rex had even begun to empathize in some ways with Mutaib and any man with a harem. Keeping seven women and a little girl happy was exhausting, definitely not a one-man job.
He said as much to Digger after seeing to lodging for the women and himself for the rest of the night.
Digger didn’t seem to care. He was muttering to himself in dog language about being separated from the new object of his affection, the little girl.
Rex didn’t get it. That kid had pulled Digger’s tail and tried to pull out tufts of his hair, poked him in the eyes and pushed her little fingers up his nostrils, and used him for a pillow or for kicking practice the entire trip. He’d have thought the dog was relieved not to have to put up with the little terror anymore.
On further thought, Rex was grateful to Digger for keeping the kid entertained. He’d only been about eight when his little sister was this child’s age, but he had a vague memory that on long car rides she’d kept up a steady stream of babbling on variations of ‘are we there yet?’ That would have driven him right over the edge on this trip.
It hadn’t been easy to find lodging in the city, which was swollen with tourists. He’d paid a poor man with no family a small fortune to vacate his house and let Rex and Digger stay there for a few days. After the man had left to stay with a daughter and her husband, Rex snuck the women in.
The following day, Rex left the women in Hande’s care in the house where they’d stayed the previous night, while he spoke to some dive boat operators, judging their willingness to smuggle women out of the country, though he never asked such a thing. The trouble with doing such a thing was the unavoidable fact that anyone willing to smuggle anything was, by definition, a criminal and therefore untrustworthy. Rex spoke vaguely of other types of smuggling, skirting the issue with phrases like ‘transport of sensitive goods’. They probably thought he meant something like antiquities, because who would smuggle drugs or arms out of Saudi Arabia? But he never mentioned specifics.
It took several hours for Rex to find a Filipino luxury yacht owner who captained his own vessel and was willing to take on any cargo Rex wanted to transport, leaving that afternoon.
It took the better part of half an hour to persuade the women they’d be safer in Oman than here. The trip would take two days and they would arrive in Salalah, Oman after sunset.
Fortunately, the yacht had WiFi capability. Rex would spend the two days of the journey helping each woman choose where she’d want to go.
***
REX CONSIDERED WHAT he’d use for funds to get the women to their preferred destinations. Some intended to stay here in Oman, but in Muscat, the largest city. A couple of the others, Hande and the woman with the child, were going home. Hande would assert her independence, and the young mother was confident that her family would be elated to have her back. All of them would need transportation and some money to get started, for lodging, food, and clothing. Rex didn’t want to tell them about the gold coins and what he had in mind until he had something set up to manage the money and assure everyone got their equal share.
After some thought on the matter, he risked a visit to two of the banks where he had accounts in Indian branches and withdrew sums of cash just short of ten-thousand dollars avoiding the banks’ obligation to report the withdrawals. He gave each woman a thousand dollars in cash and used the rest of it to purchase airfare for Hande and the young mother and to pay the yacht owner to take the rest, except for Rehka, to Muscat.
To his gratification, the young man was also willing to hel
p them find lodging together when they arrived. However, before they set off, he took the young man aside and enlisted Digger to help put the fear of God in him.
“I want to give you some good advice. So, listen very carefully now. If you in any way shape or form, cheat these women, try to take advantage of them, or let harm come to them… my dog and I will find you and you will regret the day you were born. Are we clear?”
Something about Rex’s demeanor, the look in his eyes and Digger’s stare must have convinced him, because the young man, a Catholic, hastily crossed himself before saying, “I swear to God and to you, I will not violate your trust.”
Satisfied, Rex gave the man an email address where he could contact Rex if required. “Do this and do it well, and we will do business again.” Rex insisted that the man send him an email with his contact details on the spot, from his smartphone, and checked that he received it.
Rex then gave the women each a prepaid cell phone with the number of the one he’d keep with him programmed in.
“Call me with this phone when you are settled. I will make sure someone is always available if you need help, and I want to know where you are living and what you are doing, so I can be sure you’re safe.”
He didn’t expect physical demonstrations of gratitude or farewell but that didn’t stop them from showing their emotions and tears. Rex even had to blink a few tears away when the young girl clasped him around the knees and said goodbye. Her mother touched his hand on her daughter’s head and whispered a thank you. Hande, always the bold one, actually moved in for an embrace, but stopped and waited for a frowning man to pass before she stepped in again and almost hugged the stuffing out of Rex. He couldn’t say he didn’t enjoy it.
When Digger saw it was time to say goodbye he took up position next to Rex to make sure he also got his share of hugs and pets and scratches. The little girl was crying while she hugged him, and her mother had a hard time explaining why Digger couldn’t come with her.
