ARAB (24 page)

“And he will talk,” Esmat said.

“Yes. We can’t allow that. So what are your plans for his extermination?”

“Don’t trouble yourself,” Esmat said. “It’ll get done.”

“You still think it was wise to eliminate Saraaj?”

“Without a doubt,” Esmat said. “Otherwise Helene Bryce would play us against each other.”

“She’s a handful?”

“It’s what they say. Very manipulative. From what Nelson tells me, the prince is not unhappy that she’s gone.”

“But he’ll listen to her?”

“Like a child to its mother, from what I hear. When she asks for money, he says ‘How much?’”

“You trust this Nelson?”

Esmat shook his head. “Not at all. He goes with the flow of the tide, whether it’s coming in or going out doesn’t matter to him.”

The colonel found something in the file drawer of his desk to take his attention. Looking up, he said, “When the Americans over there discover that she’s gone, the Americans here will be notified.”

“It will take them a while to find out where Bashir’s plane came from. The Brazilian authorities aren’t eager to get involved in this. They can be obstructive when they want to be.”

“Nevertheless, we have to dispatch Bashir Yassin as soon as possible. We don’t want him caught by the police. And it must be done secretly.”

“A pity that that giant Diab is no longer with us. We could use him for this.”

“The fewer we have involved in our affairs, the better,” Jaradat said. “How is Ibrahim doing? Have you heard anything?”

“Not recently. But he’s out of it. The last I heard he was making out a will, leaving everything to some whore named Afaf.”

“The woman who was harboring him.”

“I think so.”

“And, of course, our concern right now is Saraaj. The police have to be suspicious about what happened to him. You saw that article in the paper. They know about his sprucing up the airstrip in the Sinai. They’ll learn, if they haven’t already, that Bashir was the pilot who took off from there. They’ll trace his flight and find out about his passenger….”

“All of which was arranged by Saraaj, remember, not by us,” Esmat said. “There’s no way they can connect it to us.”

“Except through you,” Jaradat said. “You’re the link they could eventually discover.”

“And they know you and I are friends,” Esmat reminded him.

Jaradat smiled. “You have nothing to fear from me,” reaching out his hand, tapping his friend’s fingers. “Neither of us will suffer. Like ships in a storm: if one goes down, we both go down. And that won’t happen.”

*

“Who owns this?” Nick asked, gazing across the iron rail at tall buildings beyond a bridge and the blue waters of the Nile, voices rising from small boats maneuvering for spaces at the quay off the street just below them.

“A friend,” Isaac said.

“How long have you been here?”

“In Cairo? A few years. I was sent here by Porter Goss. Remember him?”

“Vaguely. The name.”

Nick sipped at his tea, waggled ice cubes as he watched a truck work its way past a donkey cart, men yelling, a little boy tapping the donkey’s nose, laughing at the man who chased him away. The congestion reminded him of the old fish market on Manhattan, abandoned now he had been told.

“From what I understand, the woman he brought to the airport was spirited off in a taxi that was waiting for her.”

“How do you know that?”

“The driver had refused several people who wanted his cab. When she appeared, he quickly opened the door for her. We’re looking for the cab, but the driver probably doesn’t know anything except where he dropped her off. He was probably paid by a stranger.”

“And you don’t know what became of Bashir Yassin?”

“He reported in, as far as we can tell. His papers were in order. No reason for him to stick around. Maybe he’ll come to you.”

Nick didn’t think so. “You mentioned some trouble in Casablanca….”

“It was nothing. The authorities got nervous apparently because my man asked too many questions.”

“And the plane came in from South America.”

“Yes, and she was aboard. My man heard her screaming … something about food.” He scratched his scalp, using only his index finger, staring absently at something on the floor. “So your friend Habib lost track of Bashir and thinks he was picked up by those two men whose bodies were found by the river?”

“Diab and his driver, Farouk.”

“That’s the last time you saw Bashir?”

“The last time Habib saw him,” Nick said, correcting him.

“And you were given their identities by…?”

Nick sipped at his iced-tea, watching cars move along the bridge. “Habib has many friends in the police department, I don’t know. He found out.”

“Captain Huzayfi?”

Nick shrugged. “As I said—”

“It’s what you haven’t said that interests me, Nick. I’m sure you know that.”

“You think I’m holding back? Why would I do that?”

“I would love to know,” Isaac said.

Nick met Isaac’s gaze with a kind of passive challenge. “I’m as anxious to clear this thing up as you are,” he said.

“What is it you want, Nick?”

“The safety of Aziz al-Khalid. Before I leave this place I want to be sure I’m not involved in something that’s going to hurt him.”

“And you don’t trust Yousef Qantara.”

Injecting Qantara into this was quick. Obviously he had his own suspicions, ones he had never shared. “A lot of people I don’t trust,” Nick said.

Isaac laughed. “Including me.”

“If,” Nick said, “Qantara knows that that Israeli story is bullshit, why hasn’t he come after me? Is he giving me time to make a mistake? Why does he want Habib to spy on me?”

“And if he suspects you, he suspects me,” Isaac said. “And this is directly aimed at Bashir Yassin. If he’s involved in something that could harm Aziz, we’re better equipped to pry it out of him than you are. Why not give him to us?”

“I don’t have him,” Nick said.

“You say he was picked up? You mean put into a car? In the city?”

“Near Maydan at-Tahrir,” surprised at how effortlessly he lied.

“Habib told you that? He’s sure it was Diab?”

Nick smiled. “Reasonably sure.”

He watched Isaac fit a cigarette into his ivory holder, setting both down while he coughed into his hand. “I’m as interested in why Yousef Qantara has not arrested you as you are. He’s one of the fanatics, you know. He’s not open about it but he attends their meetings. We’ve had our eye on him for longer than you’ve been here, longer than you’ve been the focus of his attention.”

“Since he’s been assigned to watch over Aziz al Khalid?”

“I don’t think he’s a threat to your friend, at least not directly. I’m sure he enjoys that post because it allows him to monitor high-level conversations.”

“Who does he report to?”

Isaac smiled. “We don’t know. We’ve never been able to find out. He’s very circumspect. I’m sure he thinks we’re up to something.”

“Aren’t you?” Nick said, watching Isaac put a flame to his cigarette. From the edge of his vision he saw a woman behind the glass door draw the curtain aside. She glanced at Nick, then closed the curtain. Isaac’s friend?

“There’s something else I want to talk about,” Isaac said, deliberately, it seemed to Nick, changing the subject. “I brought all of this speculation about Bashir Yassin to a friend in Quantico.”

“Marine or FBI?”

“A technical consultant. When I mentioned that Bashir’s training in avionics was focused on air-conditioning systems in the new Lear Jet, he came up with a name you’re probably familiar with.”

“What name?”

“Payne Stewart.”

“The golf pro?”

“The one who died in a Lear Jet due to a malfunction of the air-conditioning system. Everyone in the plane died of asphyxiation and the plane just kept going and going and going until it ran out of fuel and crashed. Remember that?”

“And you think…?”

“Bashir Yassin wasn’t tortured in Mokatam just to get him to fly across the Atlantic.”

“I’ve thought about that,” Nick said.

“And, come to think of it, your friend Aziz al-Khalid often flies with the president. So you may be right. Another reason for getting our hands on Bashir. And that man you chased down, the one who escaped to Khartoum…? It wasn’t simply that he was trying to reach Bashir Yassin that we wanted him. It’s that he was instructed to do it by our friend Uthman al Ajami who we believe was acting on behalf of General Saraaj.”

“Saraaj was involved in this?”

“Involved in what?”

“Whatever the hell is going on! Why are you being so fucking cagey? Why not tell me?”

“I don’t know what’s going on. Maybe it’s nothing. That’s why I want to question Bashir Yassin. He’s in the middle of whatever it might be. He could be the key to everything. And we can dig it out of him.”

“Torture him the way Ibrahim did?”

Isaac gave that a dismissive shrug. “We don’t torture.”

“Yeah, I heard Cheney say that. It’s un-American.”

Isaac laughed.

Nick told himself to settle down. This guy was a pain in the ass but maybe he’s trying to be straight with me. “The
muccabarat
has to be wondering why Saraaj was killed.”

“Complicated, isn’t it,” Isaac said.

“And they think I’m involved in something subversive because I let Shkaki get away?”

“Probably. I don’t know who ‘they’ are. Maybe it’s just Qantara. I’m not sure he isn’t reporting to someone other than Aziz.”

“Like who?”

“He’s a kind of closet fanatic. We know he attends meetings of various subversive groups. He probably calls it investigative snooping. But it could be something else.”

“I wonder how much of this Aziz is aware of.”

“I’d love to know. So ask him.”

*

Chapter Nineteen

Hours later in a hotel in Cairo Esmat Bindari stared into the reflection of his eyes in the bathroom mirror as he hitched up his pants, warning himself that the woman in the room out there was not to be underestimated. She didn’t look like a prince’s courtesan. She had neither the face nor the stature he imagined such a woman would possess. But who was he to judge? He didn’t like women.

“The Americans call you ‘Rio Rita’?” he asked, coming into the room.

“So I’ve been told,” idly fingering skin inside the open collar of her wine-colored blouse, dropping her hand to the varnished wooden arm of her chair, crossing a leg at the knee, allowing a flat-heeled shoe to dangle off her big toe.

“Your Arabic is almost flawless,” he said.

“The prince insisted.” She kicked the shoe off, watched it clatter against a chair leg.

“And he’s now on his ranch?”

“Smelling the horses,” scratching her knee.

“Why would he want to kill you?”

“He wouldn’t. He doesn’t. That’s just something Nelson cooked up. He was afraid the pilot might baulk if he thought Americans were after me. I don’t know what he told the pilot, who, by the way, is very handsome, but stupid. He hardly said a word to me, couldn’t look me in the eye, and when he did it was like a mouse swapping looks with a cat.”

“And Nelson is not your husband?”

“Hardly. He’s one of the prince’s flunkies.”

“He said you were his wife.”

She reached down and kneaded her foot. “I can’t imagine why. I’m not anyone’s wife and never was.”

“Did somebody really take a shot at you?”

“I made that up to put a spur into Nelson.”

“To impress him?”

“Something like that. Look, why don’t you cut this bullshit and tell me why I’m here? It’s been three days.”

She raised a closed hand to her mouth and coughed up something from deep in her chest, reached for a tissue and spat into it. Unlike every woman he had ever known, she didn’t seem to care what people thought of her. Crudeness of this sort, he believed, was not unexpected in people of a nation of lower-class immigrants. And she was American. Her face held that arrogance typical of the breed.

“The Americans are here, you know,” he said. “Like the
muccabarrat
, they’re looking for your pilot. They assume he knows where you are. They probably think he’s involved.”

“And what is it they think he’s involved in?”

Her manner changed. A coldness invaded her expression. She wanted answers.

“You don’t trust me,” he said.

“I don’t know you, Mr. Bindari. I know only that you claim to have been an associate of General Saraaj. For all I know, it might have been you who had him killed.”

“But he died in a highway accident.”

“So they say.”

“Why would I have wanted him killed?”

“I don’t know, but in all the months of correspondence, he never once mentioned you. Why is that? I didn’t hear your name until Nelson showed up.”

“Perhaps the prince?”

“No. The prince never heard of you.”

“You’ve been in touch with him?”

She gave that a cold face. “The timing, Mr. Bindari. Doesn’t it seem odd that the general should die just as I am about to come here under his protection? I assume, given your position, it was you who arranged the switch to the Cairo airport.”

“Which, of course, proves that I knew about the general’s plans. We worked on this for months.”

“There are many ways to get information, Mr. Bindari, especially for someone in your position. But that doesn’t interest me. My concern is how quickly you changed the destination of the flight. Nelson thought the changes may have been made before the general died.”

“Which would suggest that he made the changes and I had nothing to do with it.”

“Or that you made the changes in anticipation of his death.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You tell me.”

She found an irritant on her lower lip and scraped at it with a polished fingernail. Her teeth were too large, her face too long, her hair, looped behind her ears, too obviously dyed. She may have been more attractive when young, but it was hard to imagine her ever having been a prince’s courtesan. Prince Fahd raised horses: maybe he preferred women who looked like them.

“Would you get me a cigarette?” she asked. “They’re on the counter in the kitchen.”