In the Kingdom of Men (37 page)

I swung out and crossed the hot sand. From inside the shack, I heard Carlo singing the same aria I’d heard that day in the car. I knocked, called, “It’s me. Gin.”

The voice went silent, and I heard the sound of whispers and shuffling before Carlo came to the door barely buttoned and missing his scarf, his hair loose, the broad dome of his forehead shiny with sweat.

“Bella!”
he said. “You are a surprise.” He glanced behind him, then back at me, and I heard a voice from inside.

“Come on in, Gin.” Linda sat on the cot in nothing but one of Carlo’s blousy shirts, her beehive undone, platinum hair falling across her shoulders. Her nurse’s uniform lay neatly folded across a fruit box, topped with her starched white cap. She crossed her bare legs and lit a cigarette. “Get her a Pepsi, Carlo. She’s thirsty.” She patted the space on the cot next to her and motioned for me to sit. “How are you, sweetheart?” she asked. “I’ve been worried.” She took my hand in hers, and her eyes filled with tears. “We’re going to miss her, aren’t we?”

I nodded and took the warm bottle that Carlo offered, tipped a swig, felt it bubble against the back of my tongue, my nose stinging until my eyes watered.

“Thank you,” I said. Carlo focused on me for a moment before looking away, and that was when I understood that he knew.

“What are you doing all the way out here?” Linda asked.
“Sun and Flare
?”

“I’m looking for Mason,” I said.

Linda glanced at Carlo, who busied himself with the buttons of his shirt, and her face grew more serious. “Why?” she asked.

“He’s missing,” I said. It sounded so ridiculous that I almost disbelieved it myself.
What do you mean, missing?
“He was supposed
to be home last night, but Security says he never boarded the launch.” I turned the bottle in my hands and began to tell them everything—about Lucky and Bodeen, Alireza and the ledger, Mason’s suspicion of Ross Fullerton and Yash’s warning about the company. Linda listened without interrupting, as though absorbing the information required for diagnosis, then moved her sharp gaze to Carlo.

“Did you know about any of this?” she asked.

Carlo fixed his eyes on a small wall mirror, tying his hair. “It is only as she says. That is all that I know.”

“That is the biggest lie I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth,” Linda said.

Carlo chuffed a single word I couldn’t understand, then began tucking his shirt, flush with exasperation. “The Arabs, the Americans, they are no different. They skim, they cheat, they give with one hand and take with the other.” He slapped his bare feet against the floor, puffing bigger with each breath. “The company”—he threw his fingers into the air—“
la famiglia
, is ruled by scoundrels who call themselves heroes and heroes who prove themselves scoundrels. How it is that anyone is ever surprised is beyond me.” He looked at me hard, but when he saw the stricken look on my face, he made himself small again.

“I’m sorry,” he said more quietly, and looked at Linda as though for permission.

“Just tell us,” Linda said, and wrapped one arm around my shoulder as though we were in this together. Carlo paused, judging our fortitude, took a few steps to his right and then his left, trying to find his mark.

“I had been sent to take photographs of the drilling platform’s progress.” He lit a cigarette, shook his head. “The company sees every new piece of machinery, every inch the drill drops, as worthy of record. They mean to write their own history.” He scratched a thumb behind one ear, and I saw something in his manner that I couldn’t quite read—a mix of hesitance and agitation.

“The wind had been rising for hours, and I feared it might strand me.” He stopped his pacing and rested his eyes on Linda. “I was thinking of you,” he said. I saw the way he shifted his gaze to the light of the window, taken by the memory already imbued with the beauty and horror of myth. “I stood at the railing, and something in the water caught my eye. I looked down, followed the cables’ trajectory into the sea. I thought at first that it was a tarp or a dhow’s lost jib.” He lifted his cigarette, held it just shy of his mouth, as though he had lapsed into some fugue, forgotten what he was about. “And then I saw that it was a woman, her face turning to the sun and then back to the sea. What I remember most is the school of little fishes that darted and hid in the lee of her body.” He held his breath for a moment, then lifted his shoulders as though there were no help for it. “And then she was gone, torn loose by the waves.” He averted his eyes. “I told no one. What business is it of mine? Trouble would surely follow.” He blinked hard. “A few days later, a pearling dhow found her washed ashore.” When he stopped in his pacing and rested his eyes on mine, I tightened my grip on Linda’s hand. “Dear
bella
,” he said, “it was the body of Abdullah’s sister.”

More than sadness or grief or even disbelief, it was a choking anger that filled my chest. “Alireza,” I said.

“But it isn’t Alireza the authorities are looking for.” Carlo resumed his pacing shuffle—more a harried clerk than a pirate. “Four Arabs have come forward to claim that they witnessed her in the company of an American man.”

“That would be suicide,” Linda said, and Carlo grimly nodded. I watched his lips, the rush of blood filling my ears.

“It’s Mason,” I said before he could utter the words. “He’s the one they are looking for.”

“That can’t be true,” Linda said. “Who would ever believe such nonsense?”

Carlo dropped his eyes to mine, his face heavy with regret. “Whether it is true that Alireza murdered his wife out of spite or
opportunity,” he said, “we may never know, but it is no secret that your husband was a threat to him. Doing away with his wife and casting blame on Mason would kill two birds with one stone. The four witnesses?” He shrugged. “They could be poor men lying to feed their families or simply to save their own skins.”

“Mason must be hiding somewhere,” Linda said, her face hot with insistence. “He’s not in the hospital. I know that.”

When Carlo didn’t answer but resumed his erratic pacing, Linda stood, grabbed his arm.

“Look at me,” she said. “You tell this girl what you know right now, or I’m walking out of here.”

“It does no good to offer false hope,” he said, but when Linda didn’t budge, he nodded to me. “Your husband was on the platform,” he said, “and then he wasn’t. It happened before the girl was found. It made no sense, the sea was too rough, but I saw it myself. A private boat came for him.” He blew a long breath. “When I saw it was Lucky Doucet at the helm, I had no doubt that trouble would follow.”

I sat for a long minute, saying nothing because Carlo had been right in his trepidation: what I felt was the shock of hope. When I saw the look of pity that passed between Linda and Carlo, I pushed myself up and gathered my bag. Linda took my arm.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I’m going to find Abdullah,” I said. “We can get that ledger and take it to the emir. He’s got to help me find Mason.”

Linda began to gather her uniform. “I’m going with her,” she said. But Carlo caught her arm.

“No,” he said.

Linda wrested her arm away. “What is the matter with you?”

“You must listen to me,” he said, an edge of desperation sharpening his words. “There is too much that you don’t understand.”

“Don’t lecture me, Carlo.” Linda sat down and tugged on one nylon, clipped it to her garter.

Carlo’s shoulders sagged, and he looked at her with resignation.
“Abdullah has already joined the search,” he said, then dropped his eyes away. “It may very well be that he doesn’t mean to save her husband but to kill him.”

“That’s not true,” I said, as though his words were a simple lie. “They’re friends.”

“The truth is,” Carlo said gently, “that Abdullah will have no choice. He will be honor-bound to avenge his sister’s loss of virtue or risk alienation at the hands of his tribe, which for a Bedouin means death.”

I stared at him, felt Linda find my hand, hold on.

“Maybe you should just stay here,” Linda said, “until we can figure this out.”

“No,” I said, and pulled away. “There’s not enough time.”

“Carlo,” she said, “for God’s sake, go with her.”

“She is safer without me,” he said. “They will be looking for any excuse to detain her.”

“Who?” she asked. “Do you mean the militia?”

“The company,” he answered. “Alireza. They all have reason to want her gone.”

Linda slowly moved her eyes from his to mine before wrapping me in her arms. I sagged against her until I felt myself beginning to tremble. Carlo took my hands in his.

“Vai con Dio, bella,”
he said. “Remember that you are young and beautiful. You need never be alone.”

His words hung in the air between us. He meant to comfort me, I think, or maybe it was his way of telling me what he believed: that the end of the story had already been written. I held his eyes for a heartbeat before pulling the door tight behind me. Somehow, I knew it would be the last time I saw him, that the image of Linda languorous in her pirate’s shirt would be the final memory I would have of her. But I didn’t let myself think of this then. How could I? I could wail my madness to the desert, or I could keep my wits and my will about me. It wasn’t stoic resolve that I felt but a numbness that allowed me to think of nothing but
what came next: I would get into the taxi, go back to Abqaiq, tell Yash all that I had discovered, find Abdullah, the emir, and then, and then …

I looked out across the sea to where the dhows rode the uneasy waves, and I remembered the Arab boy, the mango he had fed me, how he had wanted nothing more than to go to the movies. I touched my throat where the pearl had rested and thought of Nadia moving so easily through the water, her face sheened by moonlight, and then her body pounding against the pilings, her clothes torn away. How easy she was to sacrifice. What, after all, was the worth of one Bedouin girl?

I knew I was going to be sick. I fell to my knees in the sand and retched until my stomach was empty. I was afraid that Carlo and Linda might see me and insist that I come back inside, or that Yousef might decide that I needed to be in someone else’s care. The only weapon I had was control, my ability to convince everyone that I was okay, that I could do this, that I knew what it was that I was doing. If I broke down, then that was what I would be—broken, another helpless woman who could be put on a plane and flown far, far away.

I covered the bile with sand, sat back on my heels, then took a tissue from my bag, wiped my mouth. I stood, covered my hair with the scarf, and walked to the car, where Yousef was waiting to open my door. He averted his eyes as I slid into the backseat, and I wondered why I felt I could trust him. He could drop me anywhere, deliver me to anyone’s door, and I would be helpless to stop him. I stared at his face in the mirror, the Stetson Ruthie had insisted on.

“Ruthie,” I said. “I miss her.”

His eyes came up. “So do I,” he said.

He shifted the car into reverse, hit the gas, and swung us into a lurching half circle before dropping the car into gear so fast that we skittered forward across the sand and kept a head of steam until we hit the road. I leaned back, closed my eyes. I couldn’t believe
that what Carlo had told me about Abdullah was true—I wouldn’t believe it. I thought back to the movie theater, replayed the scene with Lucky, the way his hand had rested on top of my head, how the shadows had shifted across his face. I imagined him at the helm of the
Arabesque
, the fastest boat on the bay, his stance sure again as he steered into the waves, the hours that it would take him to buck through the storm, the extra fuel he had the foresight to bring, enough water and whiskey to get them through. He was grinning into that wind because he had made the decision to do the right thing, to undo what he had done. Redemption, and wouldn’t his Ruthie be proud?

When the hair on the back of my neck prickled, I turned to peer behind us, suddenly sure that we were being followed, and felt Yousef give the car a little more gas. It seemed a lifetime since I had left the compound, yet nothing in the desert had changed. Only as we approached Abqaiq did I see the outlying buildings with new eyes: somewhere among the portables and poor apartments, Yash lived his life separate from me. I tried to imagine him biking out of the gate, going to his thin bed, the fan I had given him oscillating the air, and I remembered nights in Oklahoma too hot to sleep, how my grandfather would wet a sheet and hang it over the open door, how I would lie awake and wait for the smallest breeze. When I thought of the harsh words I had said to Yash, I wanted to cover my face in shame. How could I have forgotten who I was, that place I had come from?

Habib met the taxi at the gate, smiling until he bent down and saw me in back, and then something like sadness came into his face. I listened to the quiet words he exchanged with Yousef, sure that they were talking about me. When Habib stepped back, Yousef motored forward, rounding the corners with great care as though I were made of glass and might shatter. I was glad when he pulled to a stop in front of my house, grateful that Yash would be waiting with his tray of tea.

Yousef got out to open my door, and I saw him focus on
something behind me. I whirled around, but it was only Faris, who stood with a trowel in his hand. His eyes were not on me but on Yousef, and I heard him speak a few hoarse words before turning, headed back to the garden.

“Memsahib,”
Yousef said as he waited for me to exit the car, and I raised my eyes. He looked away for a moment, then down at his boots. “You should return,” he said, “to your real home.”

I peered past him to the blinded windows.
“Inshallah,”
I said quietly, handed him the last of the cigarettes, and stepped to the porch.

The entryway gave me my breath back, the cool air chilling my skin. I left my bag on the console, went into the living room, and collapsed on the couch. I already knew what Yash was going to say: that I should rest for a while, eat a little something, that I needed my strength. He would bring us our tea, I would tell him all that Carlo Leoni had told me, and together, we would decide what came next.