The Shield of Darius (15 page)

FOURTEEN

Ben jumped lightly to the floor as he heard the guards approach the door with the evening meal and pushed his stool back to the table.

“The clothes are still on the line. The people must be gone.”

The men sat stiffly as the guard deposited the tray and left, then looked without enthusiasm at the bowls of rice, plain yogurt, whole cucumbers and flat
sangyak
bread.

“Don’t think I can eat this stuff tonight,” Ben said. “I’m so nervous I might throw it all up.”

“Better eat all you can anyway. You might not be seeing another good meal for a long time.”

They hunched forward in their loose pajamas, staring at nothing in particular.

“I don’t think this rain’s stopped for long,” Jim finally whispered as if he might be overheard. “And sure as we’re sitting here, those people are going to come back and get those things off the line. That
chador
thing will be wet. Let’s just wait till the next switch and…”

Ben looked up sharply. “The change only happens on the right day once a month. That’s another month of rotting away in here. It’s
got
to be tonight. Anyway, this mist will help.”

Jim slumped even farther forward and continued to stare absently at the tray.

“Sorry Jim. I know it sounds like I’m just thinking about me. But it’ll speed things up for both of us. It might only take a day or two to find help.”

Jim lurched up from the table, turning away from his cellmate. “Don’t give me that crap. There’s no way in hell this is going to work.” He spun back toward Ben, arms wrapped tightly about his chest and eyes gleaming with a crazed spark.

“What are the chances? You tell me…what are the chances for either of us?”  Without waiting for an answer he wrenched his arms apart and jabbed a finger up in front of Ben.

“Possibility One. They
do
notice that you’re gone and come in here and blow my head off.” He paused, letting the words settle before he continued.

“Number Two. They catch you, bring you back here and blow
both
our heads off. You like that one better?” He held up a third finger.

“Three. They kill you outside and leave the rest of us in here just like we are…for another damn year, or two or ten.... Or number Four, just maybe you get out.” He nodded and laughed cynically, pacing back and forth between the beds. “Maybe you get out and tell the world exactly where we are. And what the hell are they going to do? Invade the damned place? Send in the Marines? How often do you see them go in after hostages without screwing something up and everyone getting killed?”

Ben straightened on his stool and looked steadily into the red face of the trucker.

“And what happens to us if I don’t go out? You got that one figured out too, bright guy
? Nothing. Nothing
. That’s what happens. Or maybe they kill us anyway, after they’ve had their little fun, whatever it is. If I can get out, there’s a chance. Our
only
chance. There have been a couple of successful rescues lately using those SEAL teams. If I can get to someplace safe, we can get you out.”

Jim turned away from him again, his head drooping and hunched shoulders beginning to shake. Slowly he dropped to his knees and lowered his head into his hands against the bare floor. Ben rose slowly and circled the table, kneeling beside him and wrapping an arm around the sobbing man.

“It’s going to be all right,” he whispered. “
I can make it out
.”

Jim lifted his head and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. His voice was low and intense.

“Before you came, when I’d been here almost a year, I just about gave in to it. I couldn’t take it anymore. That knife on the tray started looking better and better.” He sniffed and looked sadly over at Ben. “Then they opened that door one day and dragged you in here…and it saved my life. It saved me, Ben. And now, I’m going to be alone again.”

“But there’s new
hope
.” Ben coaxed Jim back to his feet and helped him onto the stool.  “Every morning you can think ‘Today might be the day. Will they come for me today?’ And then one day, not too far from now, they’ll come and this will all be over.”

They sat for another five minutes, picking silently at the food until they again heard the guards in the hallway. Jim suddenly sat erect, drew a deep breath and rose again from the stool.

“Well, if we’re going to do it, we’d better be doin’ it.” He picked the uneaten bread and cucumbers from the table and slipped them beneath his mattress as the guards entered for the tray.

As soon as the bolt snapped behind them, Ben jumped to his feet and began to move through a routine he had practiced hourly in his mind for the past week. Stool turned over. Dowel out. Bit into place and wrapped with wire. Jim’s stool to window. Inside panel off.

Behind the wire screen, pressed against the outer board, was a bundle the size of two house bricks tightly wrapped in a white hand towel. Ben drew back the wire and handed the package to Jim.

“Put tonight’s food in here. I think with this overcast, it’s dark enough we can go anytime.”

While Jim repacked the bundle with the hidden food, Ben removed the side and bottom screws from the outer panel and loosened the top. He looped the electrical wire around each end of the swinging board, then jumped to the floor.

Thunder sounded distantly and above the buildings beyond the alley, lightning danced beneath heavy purple clouds. Ben pulled the pillow and blanket from his bed, pressed the pillow over the sharp wire nubs that lined the opening where the screen had been broken free, and flipped one end of his brown military blanket up through the square hole.

He turned to Jim and the big man wrapped him in his arms.

“You remember your messages?” Jim whispered in his ear.

Ben nodded.

“Take care then. And walk like a damn woman.”

“You take care, too. We’ve made it this far and I won’t let you down. Hang tough in here.” They squeezed each other tightly, then separated without speaking again. Standing on the stool, Ben removed one of the top screws and carefully let the board swing to the side, then placed a foot on Jim’s shoulder and the older man lifted him until he could throw one leg across the pillow through the opening. Gripping the outside top of the square with both hands, he slid the other leg through and sat facing the wall while Jim climbed onto the stool behind him. Slowly they turned Ben until he was lying face down across the pillow with his legs dangling against the outer wall. He wrapped a corner of the blanket tightly around his left wrist, gripped the coarse material in his fist and nodded. Gingerly he eased backward until he hung by his elbows in the square, then grasped the blanket with both hands and let Jim lower him down the damp brick back of the building.

He felt the top of the window frame below with his feet and edged to his left. Releasing the blanket with his right hand, he felt below for the frame and held it as Jim lowered as far as the blanket would stretch.  Ben’s feet still dangled four feet above the muddy alley and taking a long, slow breath, he pushed away lightly with his knees and elbows, released the blanket and dropped with a soggy splash into the mud.

As his feet hit the ground, Ben lurched against the brick wall with such force that it momentarily knocked him breathless. He froze in place and listened, waiting for lights to flash on in the row of windows that stretched away to his right. There were no lights. He rolled quickly to his left with his back against the wall and peered down the building in the other direction. Still no lights. Above him, thunder rolled across the top of the city and light rain spit against his face. He turned again and inched cautiously away from the wall, looking up at the window where Jim now held the white bundle. The trucker raised a fist, thumb thrust up, then tossed the towel-wrapped food into Ben’s arms. Ben returned the sign and watched the panel move methodically back into place.

From the window above, Ben had found a spot on the wall across the alley where the pieces of broken bottle, embedded in the top to discourage intruders, had been worn or broken away. The spot was near the clothesline and he crossed to it, dropped the bundle against the base of the wall and felt along the top for a handhold. With both hands hooked over the six foot enclosure, he jumped and thrust upward with his arms, throwing a leg over the top to straddle it. He had estimated the distance well and was within two feet of the end of the sagging line. Leaning inward, he pulled a damp
chador
from the line, added a pair of long dark stockings, and threw his leg back over the wall, dropping heavily to the ground.

Above him, the sky glowed pale yellow as sheet lightning burst between heavily charged clouds. During that brief, lighted moment he saw Jim’s face pressed against the upper pane, and in the clear half of the window below…for a split second…Ben thought he saw the pale, frightened face of a woman. A fair-skinned woman. The instant passed almost before the image could register, leaving it more felt than seen. The impression was that she had been looking toward him and that her eyes had widened as she saw him.

He crouched, pulling the wet black shawl about him as the lightning’s crash shook the air about him and split the sky, pouring blinding rain into the alley. He groped for the package, splashed back across the alley to the protecting wall of the prison, and again pressed against its brick side. When lightning flashed again he would be gone and the woman, if she existed at all, would also wonder if he had been only an apparition.

For no particular reason, Ben decided to move down the building toward what had appeared from above to be the larger street. He reached it and found it not much wider than the alley and without traffic, but heard to his right, in the direction of the building’s front, the slushy hiss of tires against rain-covered pavement.  Carefully he arranged the
chador
, draping it over his head so that it fell completely around him like a black, clinging tent, covering everything but his eyes. In front of him across the vacant street was another hotel-looking building and he turned up between them until he reached a main avenue where a regular flow of traffic sped by with apparent disregard for the drenching downpour. Street lights glowed dimly along both sides of the street, suspending small orange circles in the rain-veiled twilight.

Ben crouched in the shadows of the side street until the shower subsided, pulling his white bundle tight against his chest beneath the wrap. When a break developed in the traffic, he waddled flat-footed across the street as he’d seen the
badji,
the family maid, do years ago in Iran. On the far side, he turned back and looked through the opening in the
chador
at the dark building that had been his prison. It was a large, squat three-story structure of brownish-red brick with low concrete steps leading to a wide, heavily glassed front entryway. He had guessed right about it being a hotel. Not a fancy one. The lower floor windows still hung with dark curtains but all of those on the second and third floors were painted completely black. There were some advantages, Ben thought, to having a room in the rear.

He studied the building again, trying to etch its details into his memory, wishing he felt more comfortable with his sense of direction. They had determined from their cell that their rear window faced north since the sun, in its high summer arc, tracked right to left along the long surfaces of the parallel compound wall. But as Ben examined the building’s front, he felt that he was facing south and he wondered if they had been mistaken. The heavy overcast added to his uncertainty and he squinted left and right along the avenue, looking for something that might orient him.

He found nothing and again crossed the busy street, re-entering the narrow street that ran between buildings, shuffling forward until it took a ninety-degree turn to the left and fifty yards later, turned sharply right again. As he made the second turn, an even larger boulevard loomed ahead through what had again become a vaporous haze. The street was broad and four-laned and he inched forward, staying in the shadows of the smaller street and mentally retracing his steps back to the prison hotel. With heart pounding beneath the
chador
, Ben tightened the dark wrap about him and stepped out onto the wet sidewalk that bordered the avenue. He was not in Damascus, he guessed, and not in any city in Europe. People carrying umbrellas walked with little apparent concern along the far side of the street.  The women wore
chador
s like his own, and the men were dressed in loose fitting trousers, jackets and open-collared shirts. The mist was lifting and he could see for some distance in each direction. Trees and well-kept shops.  No damage to buildings.

As the clouds continued to break, unveiling a white half-moon in a purple sky, Ben realized that it was not that late in the evening and shops were still open. He had come out earlier than he’d planned, fooled by the darkening storm.

He started left along the boulevard, leaning slightly forward into his
badji
shuffle, then stopped as he saw the street ahead widen into a broad open square that held in its center a round traffic island supporting a towering bronze statue. The square was beginning to stir again with shoppers, convinced that the rain was over for the evening. Ben looked at the distant statue and the busy square and turned back instinctively. Something was wrong. If he’d been back at work, he’d have labeled it “free floating anxiety” – that feeling that something was amiss or out of place, without being able to put his finger on exactly what it was. The people around him were Middle Eastern, he was sure of that. But something didn’t fit.