Between the jogging in and the walking out of the improvised training grounds, it wasn’t long before their teacher-student relationship crossed their respective barriers and the two became romantically involved. This was the first time a young Cara felt that sex could be enjoyable for the female, too, that it wasn’t just about letting a wolf feed off the remains of a carcass, but about finding a rhythm with a partner and working together to match strides and momentum. Making love. Making mistakes met with laughter rather than hostility.
During their many nights together he taught her how to contain her impulsive rage and maintain focus by using Krav Maga techniques he had learned throughout his IDF training to concentrate on pinpoint precision, counterattacks, and neutralizing her enemies without losing crystal clear awareness of her surroundings.
“The hardest part is the escape. Don’t ever lose sight of that. Or your target,” he’d tell her. Bar’s friendly eyes would crinkle and his crooked smile would actually make her lose focus when he joked. But he never distracted her for too long before giving her something else to consider. Bar loved her because she was rough like him. She was beautiful, but in many ways she was ugly, and he was fond of that, too.
He always reminded Cara to attack before being attacked, which was ironic because Bar would be shot in the back of the head by a jealous Barzeh police officer who wanted a piece of Cara. He would have told her to learn from his mistake.
Her name, Cara, meant fortress, and that was what the young woman became. Emotionally closed off, she was single-minded in her purpose. Shortly after Bar was killed, Cara realized that she was pregnant. Desperately hoping it was his, she put all of her accumulated hostility into killing a courier for the Central Bank of Syria, stealing the ten thousand in al-l ra as-s riyya he was carrying, and used the currency to buy her way into Egypt. People had compassion for a pregnant girl on her own, and money bought those for whom that wasn’t enough. It was there that she gave birth to her daughter, in the hovel of a midwife who was recommended to her. She was barely seventeen.
Egypt’s capital was a place where one could find-or be-anything one wanted. What Cara wanted was a new life. She began with a new name. She drew it from separate articles on the front page of a newspaper she found in the trash. The compost pile seemed a fitting place from which the new woman, Yasmin Rassin, should arise.
In retrospect, that had been a terrible, possibly fatal error.
Who could have known that one day newspapers would be searchable online? she thought. Inputting her name would not only place her in Cairo at that time, on that day, but it would suggest, strongly, that she had been there under another name. Most likely in a poor section, if she was looking to start over and picked her name from a newspaper without bothering to change it legally.
The midwife, Akila Fazari, was probably still delivering babies there. The CIA had Yasmin’s photograph from when she was captured by the British. That could have been how they learned about her daughter.
Will either of us ever be free of the Americans now? she wondered.
The car stopped across the street from Battery Park, an open area at the foot of Manhattan. Yasmin saw Castle Clinton, a circular fortress whose function was once to defend New York from the British. Beyond it stood the Statue of Liberty, aglow in the spotlights that surrounded her. Yasmin felt that this symbol of freedom should mean something to her; it did not. She was a captive here, most likely about to be coerced into killing. The irony was that if the Americans had simply been true to their capitalistic nature, they could have hired her to do their dirty work. They didn’t have to threaten her daughter.
A chill rolled from her shoulders down her back.
What if that isn’t why you’re here?
“Here.”
Yasmin looked to her right. The man to her right held a plastic water bottle. Beyond him she saw a short block of tall old buildings.
“I’m not thirsty,” she said.
“I don’t care,” he told her. “You’re to drink it all.”
She noticed the top was not sealed. The water had been spiked. They wouldn’t have driven her this far to kill her, and they also knew she was going to cooperate. Why drug her?
And then it occurred to her: it wasn’t water. The men had a scenario to enact.
She drained the vodka, sat back, and waited for it to take effect.
Blurry snippets of image and sound flashed through Yasmin’s mind. A solicitous doorman, a look of concern as they helped their inebriated friend to the front desk.
He didn’t know them. He had to call up to announce them.
A walk through a lobby whose ceiling reminded her of the Sistine Chapel’s, but with a maritime theme. The bing of several elevators coming and leaving, the three of them waiting for one. It arrived. They emerged. There was a floral-pattern carpet on the floor. Then it was above her, then below again…
You’re just dizzy.
She was being carried now. There was darkness. Then she was motionless, lying on something soft. Her arms and legs were being moved…
Yasmin awoke in absolute darkness. Her head hurt on the left side, above the eyebrow, like someone was striking the inside of her skull with a brick.
Hangover.
She tried to move; that was when she remembered being bound. With leather, she could tell from the feel of it. She did not bother to struggle, but lay back. She was on some kind of foam that conformed to her body. She did not sink deeply into it, but she moved her hips slightly from side to side and felt it give with her motion, like soft clay.
She had not been brought here to rest.
Yasmin thought through the pain, realized that she was no longer wearing the clothes in which she had arrived. She was in what felt like flannel pajamas. She did not feel as if she’d been violated. Yasmin was obviously here for a test or experiment of some kind; whoever was behind it wanted her to feel as if she could trust them.
She became aware of a slight pressure on her chest, over her heart. Yasmin rolled her left shoulder several times. There appeared to be something hard in her shirt pocket. She was able to increase the pressure on the fabric by raising herself from the foam slightly. Yasmin felt an object in her pocket, and it was round. It moved slightly. She arched as far as she could in a failed attempt to let it roll out. After a moment she relaxed.
All right, she thought. At least nothing had been implanted in her flesh.
The idea of giving herself to the police in Cairo or to the American authorities now in exchange for something made it still a matter of choice. But being fitted with a device that could stop her heart or explode against her rib cage-that was untenable to her, the idea of it miserably suffocating. She did not know how she would react to what spies called an “off switch.” She had always assumed that if she were captured, it would be by some legitimate, rule-of-law agency, like Interpol.
The hammering in her skull drew her attention once more, and she lay back, listening to the hollow silence around her. She wiggled from side to side; whatever she was on was fixed to the floor. Even that level of restraint gave her some anxiety.
Was that part of the reason for incarceration? she wondered. To distract me and break me down?
The headache prevented her from falling back asleep. Yasmin lay back again, with her eyes shut. She had no idea how long she lay there. She tried the wristbands again, giving little tugs, then an extended pull, and finally putting all her will into a long, fruitless struggle-first up, then sideways in both directions, then slumping.