The Identity Thief (17 page)

He reached for her. "Mommy?" The shadowy figure of a man abruptly appeared behind her. The stranger shut the door, casting X into darkness.

"Mommy!"

His extended hand slammed against wood so hard it hurt. As he groped around in the pitch black, he found to his horror that he was inside a velvet-lined box. A coffin. He beat it frantically. He tried to call out, but no words came.

Suddenly it was bright. He stood under sunny skies in a graveyard next to the coffin, dressed in a black suit and shiny shoes. The coffin was in the grip of a system of pulleys, ready to be lowered into a deep open grave.

The preacher from the sewer, in his filthy priest's robes, stood with a prayer book in hand and listlessly uttered a eulogy.

"He was a man. And what is a man? I am who I am. Who am I? Madam, I'm Adam."

There were no other mourners at the funeral. Didn't the poor guy in the casket have a single soul who cared enough about him to show up? Then X recalled that HE had been in the coffin a moment ago. Was he dead? A ghost? Or buried alive and having an out-of-body experience? X stepped around to see whose name was on the tombstone, fearing that he would see his own. But the tombstone was blank.

What the hell
?! He lurched back, covering his mouth.

The Catholic priest opened his prayer book. He began in English, "We pray now for the soul of this sinner,
un homme sans nom, une âme perdue dont l'esprit..."

The words drifted from French into to Arabic, then meandered into Hindi. Then they dissolved into a pastiche of a dozen different languages. The priest had become a one-man Babel.

The ragged old man nodded and a pair of cemetery workers - who looked a lot like Ali Nazeer's bogus "bodyguards," car washers Babak and...
what was his brother's name
? began to lower the coffin into the ground.

"Stop it," X cried. "I'm not dead!"

The priest regarded him sadly. His lips moved but no words could be heard.

X was back in the coffin, beating on it furiously. "I'm not dead," he screamed.

Then his hands stopped moving as if held by an invisible force. Someone was holding his wrists. He opened his eyes to see Asar restraining him.

"Easy, easy, my friend," Asar said.

"He's coming out of it," Harry announced in relief.

X sank back onto the cot.

"We were worried that the terrible disease would claim you," Asar said, his brow still wrinkled with concern. "But Allah was merciful and spared us all. It is indeed a miracle."

"He must have plans for us," Harry, AKA Moammar, suggested. "That is the only explanation we can devise."

The belly pain had eased. X could tell he still had a low-grade fever but for the first time in hours - or was it days - he could think clearly. He took in his surroundings. A small room in the prison hospital, empty except for three cots, as white and pristine as an alien holding tank in some science fiction movie.

The plan.

"Are you well enough to speak, my friend?" Harry asked.

X nodded and sat up. He still felt the impact of disease in his bones - as if he'd gone 12 rounds with Mike Tyson.

"It is fortuitous that we find ourselves here," Harry said. "There is - "

"Look at what we have found," Asar interjected excitedly.

He pointed to the ceiling. There was a small grate above them, barely 18 by 18 inches.

X's two companions helped him to his feet and they circled beneath the grate. The identity thief went up on his tiptoes, stretched and reached it.

"There are four screws holding it in place, very tight," he said. "I don't see how we can dislodge it."

"Give me a boost," Asar said to Harry. The older man hoisted the lithe teen by the waist and Asar examined the grate.

"Air is flowing through it," he said excitedly. "I think there's some kind of airshaft."

He tried to twist the screws with his fingers, to no avail.

"If we had something we could use as a screwdriver," Harry said thoughtfully, pushing up his glasses, which had drifted to the bridge of his nose.

"Let's look around," X said, his voice still hoarse. "Leave no stone unturned." He dropped to his knees and made a show of examining the springs of his cot. The solution was pretty obvious - Harry had practically written it out with a bold black Sharpie. But he figured it would be better if Asar found the tool. He waited patiently.

Asar crawled under the bed, probed behind the metal toilet, his buns-baring hospital gown falling open. After 15 minutes, he finally looked at Harry.

"Your glasses!" he exclaimed.

Harry touched his spectacles protectively.

"If we break off one of the arms, and peel it down to the wire, it might work," Asar suggested excitedly.

Jesus, finally
! X thought.
The boy is certainly not the MacGyver of terror.

"How am I going to see?" Harry demanded.

"Afterward, we'll ask for some tape to mend them," Asar suggested, warming to the idea.

"Come, it's a good plan," said X, who'd been looking under his cot on his hands and knees. He climbed to his feet. "And there are no pretty nurses for you to see in here anyway, lover boy. The last one I saw was in a hazmat suit."

Wearing a reluctant expression, Harry took off the glasses and handed them to Asar. The two Americans watched as Asar went about turning the shaft into a tool. At one point, the Afghani caught their admiring gaze.

"When you are a driver in the back country, you must be a mechanic as well," Asar said with a grin. "I have learned to be very handy. We rarely have the proper tool for the job and have to improvise. I can turn a lead pipe into an axle."

As soon as Asar was finished, he asked to be lifted up.

"No, my young friend," X cautioned him. "We must wait for nightfall."

Harry agreed. "Let us return to our beds." Asar pouted, clearly disappointed, but assented.

This proved to be a good decision, because moments later a nurse clad in a hazmat suit as bulky as any astronaut's outfit entered, wheeling a cart.

"I am here to check your vital signs."

X was surprised that his temperature still measured 101. He was feeling pretty good now - was the man-made virus so smart it could fool a thermometer?

When the stocky woman was done, she pulled up their gowns to look at their torsos. Harry loudly protested.

"It is not fitting that a woman look upon the bare flesh of a man."

Through her plastic mask, X could see her smirk.

"You don't have anything I haven't seen before, Short Stuff," she wisecracked. "Only you've got a lot less of it."

When she left, Harry fumed, "These American women are all prostitutes. Yes, I imagine she
has
seen her share of male parts."

* * *

It took about half an hour to get the grate off.

"Imagine our luck that Allah placed us here in the prison hospital," Asar mused as he removed the last screw with his makeshift tool. "It is almost too good to be true."

X, holding him up, groaned from the weight and traded glances with Harry. The agent looked a bit frazzled and X winked at him.

"We have been keeping our eyes open for any opportunity to escape," X reminded the teen. "It is said, diligence is the mother of good luck." The other men nodded in agreement.

Asar pried off the grate. They gave his feet a shove and he slithered into the shaft.

"See, I told you I could fit," he said excitedly.

"See where it goes," Harry said. The boy began to worm his way through the shaft.

When the noise of Asar's body banging against the shaft died down, X said to Harry, in English. "So you're the computer geek in this operation?"

Harry flashed him a stern look. "You are to stay in character at all times."

"Oh, come on, he can't hear us."

"That's an order!"

X gave him an earnest Boy Scout salute. "You're doing a top-notch job keeping up the 'rigid jerk' act."

It was about 15 minutes before Asar returned and stuck his head out of the opening, wearing a broad smile.

"The shaft runs for about 30 feet, then there's a large grate. I could feel outside air," he said. "I wasn't strong enough to bust it open but maybe one of you could."

X looked up at the opening dubiously. "I don't know, Asar. My shoulders are wider than yours." Yet another tight place. He wished there were a pill for claustrophobia.

Why couldn't I be afraid of heights or chickens
?

Asar clambered down and Harry helped him reach terra firma.

"Come, you can do it my friend," Harry told X. "The Americans have made you skinnier than you know with their accursed Kellogg's Corn Flakes," he said.

X let them boost him up. The shaft was narrow. VERY narrow.

What happened to those airshafts in
Mission Impossible
, wide enough to comfortably accommodate Peter Lupus? He and Harry were quite similar in stature, both short, wiry men, but neither was as slightly built as Asar. X had to stick his arms out straight ahead of him and wriggle forward like a snake.

It took an eternity to reach the end of the shaft. Streaks of moonlight poked through the metal grate and X breathed in fresh air. He shoved hard against the grate. Shoved harder. It didn't give. Finally he gave it a solid punch and it flew off. X reached and grabbed it as it fluttered off into the air. He gave a sigh of relief. He wasn't sure what was out there, but a grate clattering around couldn't be helpful.

He cautiously poked his head out. About 9 feet below was a roof. In the distance he could make out a guard tower and the perimeter wall. There was no room to turn around. He had to worm his way backward now, feet first, until he got back to the cell.

"I've got it open, come on," he whispered.

* * *

The drop to the rooftop was not neck-breaking but neither was it easy on the knees. The moon was a quarter full, bright enough to see where they were going without toppling off as they hurried barefoot across the cement surface. The night sky was rich with stars.

X could see a guard tower, and the faint wisp of cigarette smoke trailing from a silhouetted figure. One sound and the Marine in the tower would turn their way. There'd be the glare of the spotlight and a cry to halt. They'd raise their hands - but what if the jarhead was some Audie Murphy wannabe and just opened fire?

The night air was cool, no more than 50 degrees. X could feel the desert breeze hitting his butt through the backless hospital gown, and realized how goofy the trio looked - like The Three Stooges making their escape from an asylum. Maybe the guard would just break out in hysterical laughter.

They reached the ledge. The next building, nearer the perimeter fence, was about 15 feet away. Below there was a drop of 20 feet to the ground.

Asar looked at down and then up at them fearfully. "I don't know if I can make it."

X clapped him on the back. "Of course you can, my young friend. I am nearly twice your age and watch me do it with no problem."

X wasn't much of an athlete. He had vague memories of practicing the broad jump in high school, but counted himself as accomplished in the event as he was an expert discus thrower. Asar was looking at him expectantly and X flashed a confident smile. The identity thief backed up to get a running start.

"What Allah wills," he whispered for Asar's benefit. He took off and hurled himself off the ledge.

He cleared the gap with a few feet to spare, rolling onto the black-tar rooftop.

Harry was next, making it with an even bigger margin and rolling to his feet like the martial arts expert that he was.

"Show off," X whispered.

They looked back at Asar. The teen bolted forward and jumped, his feet kicking in the air like a hanged man. He fell short and his eyes were full of panic as he stretched out his hands toward his companions. Harry and X reached out and each caught a wrist. They hauled him up onto the roof.

X scolded him. "This is no time for dramatics, Asar."

When they reached the edge of the rooftop they saw that the fence was about 16 feet away. Topped with barbed wire and, X suspected, electrified as well. The spotlight from the guard tower began sweeping the rooftops.

"Look," said Harry.

X turned and a few yards away, dead center on the rooftop was a hatch. He and Asar knelt and struggled with it, as the spotlight swooped toward them like a bird of prey.

"Hurry, my friends," said Harry.

The hatch popped open. First Asar, then Harry, then X dropped down, pulling the hatch shut after them.

It took a few moments for their eyes to adjust to the dark. The room was illuminated only by moonlight streaming in from the window. Soon X was able to make out rows of metal shelves, crowded with boxes. There were shovels, pickaxes, sledgehammers and other tools leaning against the walls haphazardly.