Layover in Dubai (36 page)

“Assuming that Basma is willing to talk, Laleh may be there an hour, even longer. The return trip will take another forty minutes. So maybe two and a half hours in all. In the meantime, you gentlemen are welcome to join us for dinner, but I suggest that you make other arrangements for sleeping.”

“I’ll call Ali,” Sharaf said. “He is lining up accommodations.”

“Safe Houses R Us,” Sam said. “Hope it’s better than the place he found for me.”

Laleh stood to go. Sam expected a tearful farewell, but Sharaf seemed to deliberately avoid it by keeping his seat. He opened his phone in his lap and punched in Ali’s number. From the intent look on his face, the policeman was working overtime to block the father’s entry to the scene. Laleh smiled gamely, as if she understood. Then she mouthed a silent “good-bye” to Sam and was on her way. By the time she had disappeared down the hallway, Sharaf was talking to Ali as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Or maybe he was trying to drown out the sound of the shutting door.

Sam waited for the conversation to end, then spoke up.

“We should play the rest of Patel’s recording,” he said. “See what they said in Russian.”

“Not here. Not anywhere in this house. Mrs. Halami might be right about her government visitors. Maybe they did plant a microphone somewhere.”

“In which case we’re dead anyway.”

Sharaf frowned.

“Okay. Then I will tell you the real reason. I am too nervous. In my current state of mind I can only think in one language at a time. I would get half the translation wrong if I tried it now. Later, when we are at Ali’s safe house.”

“He found one?”

“Some golf course condo development where no one has moved in yet and, according to Ali, no one ever will. Four hundred empty units. Plus canals, of course. We will be sleeping in the furnished display model. Mansour’s Maritime Police will provide security, front and back. Which reminds me. Sam Keller is now officially dead. Mansour released the news to the media only an hour ago. He told Ali that Hal Liffey was on the phone to him within minutes to arrange for transport of the body.”

“Happy to do it, no doubt.”

“And if Sergeant Habash was having second thoughts, he will realize now that he
has
to keep quiet about us, unless he wants to look like a fool.”

They shared in the household’s communal dinner, but to allow the women to feel at ease, the men ate in an alcove of the dining room, sealed off by a curtain. Neither of them ate much, and afterward they returned to the canteen to wait, flicking back the curtains every time a car passed out front. Three times the phone rang in the kitchen, jarring them to alertness. None of the calls were about Basma or Laleh, and none were from the police.

Finally, after two hours and forty-seven minutes, they heard a car come up the rear alley, followed by the opening and closing of the back door. Laleh walked up the hallway, fresh from her mission.

She was pale, subdued, and took a seat without a word. From her widened eyes, the set of her jaw, and the way she folded her hands, it was clear that something momentous had taken place. Her earlier signs of triumph and excitement had been replaced by something more sober and deliberate.

“So?” Sharaf asked, the policeman in him still just barely in charge. “What did you find out?”

“Far more than I wanted to. For the first time, I guess, I understand why you and Mom have always tried to shelter me.”

She then placed her hands on her knees, as if to brace herself, and told them the story of Basma.

“She came from the war in Iraq, the last of her family. Everyone else died in some explosion. She didn’t offer details, and I didn’t ask for them. But that was how it started for her, as a war victim. She was fifteen and alone. Easy pickings. Some militiamen found her wandering in her village. They raped her, of course. Many times. And she
did
describe that, as if she still couldn’t quite believe it had happened.”

Laleh paused to sip her tea. Halami had presented the steaming mug like broth for an invalid. That’s how shaken Laleh looked.

“For a week she was pretty much their slave, of course.”

“Laleh, please stop saying ‘of course,’” Sharaf said. “It’s not as if such things are inevitable, even in wartime.”

Halami stared him down like he was a dolt—a look Sharaf remembered from his tutors whenever he had mangled some obvious fact. Was this truly how the world worked when all control was removed? He’d certainly seen evidence to that effect before, but not to this degree, and he had hoped he would never have to. Too late now. He held his tongue. Laleh continued.

“They got tired of her after a while. She wound up near the border, then across it. She’s still not sure how that happened. A lot of truck convoys and aid people were involved, and in all the confusion someone took her to a village in Iran. An older woman who ran a restaurant took care of her, got her some new identity papers, and promised to help. Another jackal, of course.”

Sharaf cringed.

“This woman told her and the other girls that she knew people who could find them jobs in a beauty salon in Turkey, so all of them agreed. The next day they took the four girls away in a truck. Her memory of that part wasn’t so good. Not enough food and water, and hardly any light. She wound up at some kind of port, big ships everywhere, and they put her and another of the women into a freight container that had been outfitted with a pair of cots, blankets, water and bread, and a pot to piss in. There were holes for air that let in some light, but that’s all. She also remembers what else was in the container. Boxes marked with the name Pfluger Klaxon.”

She glanced at Keller, not in an accusatory way but as if to say she now better understood why he was on the run. He nodded back, a kinship that Sharaf envied.

“They were seasick, of course, but they survived. The voyage took two days, maybe three, before their container was unloaded. Then it sat in a lot for another night while they wondered if they would ever get out. She thinks now it was one of the freight yards at Jebel Ali, based on what others have told her since. The next day the container was loaded onto a truck, and when it was finally opened they were in the back of the Rand Hotel in Bur Dubai. Russians and Uzbeks were standing in an alley, men with guns who took them upstairs where a woman, this Tatiana woman—”

“Tatiana Tereshkova?” Sharaf asked.

“Basma didn’t know her last name. But yes, if that’s the Tatiana that Charlie Hatcher knew. She was Basma’s pimp, or at least some kind of boss, and she took the girls twelve stories up to a two-bedroom apartment. Fourteen other girls were living there, sleeping on mattresses, mostly Uzbeks and Tadjiks, and one or two others also from Iraq. One of the Iraqis had also come by container ship, only a month earlier.

“Tatiana got them cleaned up and fed, and gave them a place to sleep. Later she gave them dressy clothes, makeup, high heels and nylons, miniskirts, tights. The whole wardrobe they would need as whores, of course.”

Sharaf felt shamed. Not just for Laleh, but for human beings in general, for his country, and for his own inability to do something about it, year after year. He couldn’t look her in the eye as she continued.

“How long ago was this?” Keller asked, a question that should have occurred to Sharaf.

“Three months, maybe four. She couldn’t be precise.”

“Understandable. Sorry, go on.”

“They kept the girls locked in the apartment all day. All they did was watch TV, eat, sleep, and do their hair. In the evenings they went out, always with pimps and bodyguards, someone to make sure that they got their work done and didn’t run away. They were driven in vans to the York, or the Regal, or other places. They simply told her to start producing, as they put it. She was supposed to pick up men any way she could, for any kind of sex. Blow jobs, two-for-ones, whatever the men wanted.”

Sharaf stared at the floor. Such an education he was giving her.

“After a week she was beaten because she had hardly made any money. Some man lectured her for an hour on how to be more aggressive—more appealing, as he put it. A few weeks later three more Iraqi girls arrived from Iran the same way Basma had come—inside a shipping container. Tatiana told her it was all part of a test, and that the shipment of three was the last one.”

“A test?” Sharaf said, looking up, forcing himself back into the role of a cop.

“For the main event,” Laleh said. “Those were Tatiana’s words.”

“Just like the space program,” Keller said, shaking his head. “Mercury with one astronaut, Gemini with two, Apollo with three—working their way up to make sure they could handle the logistics of bigger loads. All of it practice for Monday. Payload of fifty.”

“And if that works,” Sharaf said, “who knows how many more will follow. It is just as I thought. The crackdown at the airport is taking a toll, so they’re shifting to sea lanes.”

Halami shook her head.

“Awful. Despicable. And right under your noses.”

“Why do you think we are here?” Sharaf snapped. “Why do you think I am risking my daughter, and everything about her future?”

Laleh intervened.

“No one’s blaming you, Father. I’m not, and I know Basma isn’t. She is hoping it can be stopped.”

“How did she get away?”

“With the help of Charlie Hatcher, and Tatiana. Charlie was one of her customers.”

“A customer,” Sam said, somewhat incredulous. “So I guess part of Nanette’s cover story was true. No wonder he was talking about atonement.”

Laleh shook her head.

“Not that kind of customer. He bought her for information, not sex. And when he came to the York he asked for her by name. That scared her at first, because she already knew what a ‘special request’ could mean. Usually something kinky, even dangerous.”

Sharaf shook his head.

“But when they were alone, he didn’t take off his clothes. He just sat on the bed and started asking questions. He said Tatiana had told him how she had arrived, and he wanted to know more about the boxes that were also in the container, the ones marked with the corporate name of Pfluger Klaxon.”

Sharaf perked up.

“So even then he was already on their trail. I wonder how he found out?”

“He told Basma he had come across something in his work, something that made him believe he was partly responsible for what had happened to her.”

“Responsible? That makes no sense.”

“Unless …” Sam said, sitting up straighter than before.

“Yes?” Sharaf prompted. “Unless what?”

“The shipping routes. There was something in one of Nanette’s quarterly reports about a project she’d worked on with Charlie. Boring logistical troubleshooting, or that’s what I thought. But it had to do with securing and streamlining new shipping routes out of the Far East for a new line of imports, and I’m sure it mentioned some transshipment issues along the way.”

“Meaning he had unwittingly helped her set up the whole operation,” Sharaf said. “But how would he have found out?”

“Who knows? But once he did, he knew he couldn’t report it to the corporate security officer.”

“Or to law enforcement here,” Sharaf said.

“So this was his atonement. His one-man show of morality.”

They turned back toward Laleh.

“What else did Basma say about him?” Sharaf asked.

“He paid her triple the normal price and told her he was going to pay for her freedom, and put her somewhere safe, where he could talk to her some more. A week later Tatiana drugged one of the guards. Basma and an Uzbek girl got away. The Uzbek disappeared. Basma came to the Beacon of Light by prior arrangement. That was two weeks ago. A few nights later Charlie came to see her—last Friday. He told her everything was arranged. He was going to make sure they wouldn’t be able to send any more girls the way they had sent her. He told her it was all planned for April fourteenth.”

“Charlie’s ‘day of reckoning,’” Sam said. “No wonder they wanted me to follow him. He was their one big threat, and I was their homing beacon.”

“And from Charlie’s movements, they tracked down Tatiana and Patel.”

“What will you do now?” Halami asked.

“Intercept their delivery, obviously,” Sharaf said.

“But that won’t shut down their pipeline. The only way to do that is to round up the main players.”

“Can’t you just arrest them?” Sam asked.

“Only if they show up for pickup and delivery of the goods, which I very much doubt will happen. As long as Assad has ministerial support, they will remain untouchable unless we can establish a tangible link. You heard the recording, Mr. Keller. Even Liffey can probably wiggle out of it with a good lawyer. We need to catch the five of them in the act, preferably all at once.”

“And how do we do that?”

Sharaf had been wondering the same thing all day.

“Obviously I don’t know yet. We need time to think.”

“Better think fast,” Sam answered. “Charlie’s day of reckoning begins in about three hours.”

Sam had his doubts about their so-called safe house.

For one thing, it was the only apartment in the entire complex with any lights on. Even with the blinds drawn, it stood out like a neon tube in a tunnel of desert darkness. Then there were the two vans from the Maritime Police parked out front—the only vehicles on the newly paved grid of roads—plus the skiff in the canal out back, tethered to the wharf with its running lights burning. To Sam they were an open secret begging for further scrutiny, guaranteed to attract the curiosity of any passerby.

But as Sharaf and Ali had already pointed out, there weren’t any passersby, and at this late hour the location was too remote to attract anyone but drag racers and vagabonds. Beat cops apparently never approached within a mile, and there were certainly no neighbors to raise an alarm.