Marc heard the unspoken. “Hannah Brimsley is different.”
“The lady lives for her God. She spent two years studying Arabic before she shipped over. She took care, she worked it smooth. She lives to bring Jesus into this world. And there’s just no telling what’s happened, or where she’s…”
Marc watched in the mirror as Josh Reames fought down his panic and restored the iron calm of an officer operating behind the lines. The way Josh loved this woman resonated deeply. Marc asked, “You met her over here?”
“Last year at a church gig.” His voice had lowered one raw octave. “I’d studied the Book, man. For years. But she was the one who taught me what the words meant.”
“Love,” Marc said softly, remembering. “Hope. Peace. Healing. Life.”
The hand lifting Josh’s cup shook slightly.
Marc said, “Since we’re into confessions, let me tell you, I don’t know what I’m doing. Until last week, my world was a prison called Baltimore.”
That brought Reames back from the edge. “Duboe said you were a bookkeeper.”
“The correct term is forensic accountant. Sort of an operative with numbers.” Marc waved that away. “The important thing is, I’ve been dropped in the deep end.”
“Which means you’re open to advice.”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay, Royce. Here’s what you do. Call Duboe. He’s over there in the Palestine Hotel, sitting next to the embassy jerk. He’s why I’m here. Duboe’s been made by every watcher in Baghdad. You, on the other hand, do not want to show up on that list. The Hotel Palestine is strictly for people taking the armored limo from the airport to the Green Zone, have dinner with the ambassador, bunk down at the safest hotel in Baghdad, and jet out again. They’re the sort who’re after photo ops and bragging rights. The embassy jerk ordered Duboe to arrange this meet because he wants you made by the bad guys. And taken out.”
Marc opened his phone and dialed the number. “What do I say?”
“Tell Duboe there’s been a bomb alert aimed at the hotel. Which there was. Only it was last week. But you don’t need to say that. The embassy jerk will bug out and scuttle back to the Green Zone.”
When Duboe answered, Marc fed him the line. Barry Duboe had clearly been expecting it. There was the sound of the phone being muffled, then Duboe asked, “Think you could find that alley where the troop carrier dropped you off?”
“Yes.”
“Tomorrow morning, ten o’clock.”
Marc shut the phone and said, “Why does somebody at the embassy want me gone?”
“You’re the last thing they expected.”
“Which is?”
“A success.”
“How can they say that? I haven’t done what I was sent out here to do. Alex and the other three are still missing.”
“Maybe so. But they hear the justice minister talking about some mystery American being involved in locating kidnapped children, and they worry. Then the top imam’s son, Jaffar, he talks about the role this American played and how great it is to see Americans caring about Iraqi children, and they worry some more.”
Marc started to ask Josh Reames how he knew all this, but decided it didn’t matter. “Is there a tie between the kidnapped children and the missing Americans?”
“That’s a good question, Royce. Here’s another. Are you ready for a walk on the wild side?”
“With you? Absolutely.”
“That’s the right answer.” Josh Reames finished his tea and rose from his stool. “Duboe gave me your cellphone number. When the time is right, I’ll invest a dime. You be ready to move.”
Then he was gone.
Chapter Twenty-One
S ameh was still mulling over the confrontation near the Persian market when he arrived at his destination. He recognized Hassan’s bodyguard, one of several outside the cafe’s entrance. The guard bowed stiffly and motioned Sameh through the entrance.
The structure, called a mudhif, had been erected on a strip of ground made barren by a Western bomb. Its name was drawn from the furthest reaches of Iraq’s history, during the epoch when Abraham was called by God to leave his homeland. Iraq’s civilization had occupied the fertile marshland extending north from the sea. This region gave rise to numerous city-states, including one called Ur, the idolatrous place from which Abraham was told to flee.
The marshlands had no stone and few trees. What they had in abundance were reeds and clay. The most elaborate of their structures, the mudhif, were vast assembly halls floored in brick, with walls and ceilings fashioned from woven reeds. These reed walls could be as much as four feet thick, like a cluster of reed baskets laid atop one another. They were also immensely strong. Halls like this one might be forty feet wide, with soaring sixty-foot ceilings that required no supporting pillars. Six art-deco chandeliers illuminated the space.
Hassan el-Thahie was on his feet long before Sameh arrived at the table. He embraced Sameh in the Arabic fashion, then touched his right hand to his heart in a sign of deep respect, then embraced Sameh again. Such a greeting in this place, surrounded by members of the nation’s power structure and the city’s intelligencia, was a public acknowledgment of debt. Sameh assumed this was why Hassan had requested they meet.
At the far end, two women in headscarves and the traditional flowing gowns stood upon a raised dais and alternated reading passages written by the Imam Hussein and daughter Zainab, founding members of the Shiite heritage. As Sameh took a chair, a gong sounded behind the serving counter, signifying the official moment of sunset. Servants instantly appeared through the kitchen door, depositing tea and a hot porridge called harisa.
Hassan scowled at the steaming bowl and declared, “Hungry as I am, I can’t bear the stuff.”
Sameh felt no such revulsion. “As a child, I lived on it. I could eat it three times a day.”
Hassan slid his bowl across the table. “Be my guest.”
The two women completed their reading and left the stage to resounding applause.
Hassan leaned over and said, “Observe how we are being ignored.”
Sameh looked around. “I see nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Over there is the brother of the justice minister, the man whose career you might have just saved. At the table to your left is the interim speaker of parliament. The long table up by the stage holds three members of the Alliance that could well form the next government.”
Sameh saw only a vibrant, noisy crowd. To his eyes, the scene hearkened back to the best of his memories. For centuries, these literary salons were a staple of Iraqi life, the one place where all the groups making up this ancient nation could set their differences aside-religion, tribe, politics. Here everything was open to discussion and challenge. Shia sat with Sunni, Jew with Muslim, Christian with Zoroastrian. Tribes that were officially at each other’s throats could meet together, eat together, and laugh together. Anyone who violated the mudhif’s peace was declared an outcast for life, and those who detested this melting-pot atmosphere were banned. As a result, the literary cafes became a vital outlet of expression and hope. The places were filled all day, all night, with writers, historians, academics, religious clerics, housewives, politicians. All came, casting aside the chains of their conservative, hidebound society. They talked, if not as friends, at least as Iraqis.
Saddam Hussein had changed all that, along with so much else. Within three years of his taking power, the literary cafes were gone. Those refusing to shut their doors suffered mysterious fires. Some went underground, only to be infiltrated by the dictator’s spies. Visitors who dared speak against the regime simply disappeared.
Sameh looked around the crowded chamber. If he were to ignore the metal detector by the door, the armed guards, and the watchful waiters who were probably also armed, he might actually find a reason to hope.