by Richard Fox
over the mishmash of Pakistani take away as his stomach rumbled. He’d never cared for South Asian food, and for the first time in his life Ritter longed for a freezer-burned burrito.
“So, where are we on finding Jeremy?” Ritter asked as he scooped lentils and potato curry onto a paper plate.
“Nowhere,” Shannon spoke towards the map as she ran her fingers from pin to pin. “There are too many places to look, and we don’t have nearly enough assets in country to run them all down. Not in the time that he has left. You were supposed to get us somewhere with whoever-it-is in the interrogation room.”
Carlos cursed and quickly left the room.
Ritter leaned across the table and sniffed a dish filled with lemons and fish filets. The smell reminded him of late nights in Beirut and the laughter of a beautiful woman he once knew. Could she be here?
“Is Haider’s wife in Pakistan?”
“Which one,” Tony asked.
“Badia, she’s Saudi but he and I knew her in Lebanon. Wait, what do you mean ‘which one’?” Ritter thought he must have misheard Tony. Baida agreed to her father arranging the marriage to Haider, but allowing a second wife wasn’t like her. Neither was moving to Pakistan with a terrorist. Maybe he never knew her as well as he thought he did. He almost convinced her to come to New York with him after graduation, then 9/11 happened and her father developed a sudden affinity for the Wahabi school of Islam.
Shannon, still transfixed on the board, said “Haider married the widow of a prominent al-Qaida member who stopped a bullet with his face during Operation Anaconda. Having multiple wives is common with well-to-do Arabs. You know that.” Ritter snorted. Haider once told him that an Iraqi man’s heart was like a forest; there was always room for another tree. “As for Baida: She’s here, came over with their infant daughter fifty-three days ago.”
“They had a baby…” Ritter felt a jealous bile rise in his throat.
A finger snap jolted him from his reverie. “Why do you ask? Is there something useful you can share?” Shannon’s words were tinged with hope as she looked at him with renewed intensity.
Ritter forced his emotions to leave his face and took a deep breath. “Baida has kidney problems.” Tony peaked over the top of his monitor, his attention piqued by the scent of new data. “She never took medication for it, just insisted that this god-awful Lebanese recipe would cure it. Samkeh harrah, it’s spicy fish covered in tahini paste. It’s worse than it sounds.” Ritter shivered slightly at the memory.
“Point, Ritter. What is your point?” Shannon demanded.
“She used to eat it three times a week, and the fish had to be red snapper. She wouldn’t eat it if it wasn’t cooked Lebanese style. If she’s here, I guarantee you she’s ordering it constantly, and with very specific instructions.” Ritter said.
Tony sat back down and started typing.
“Tony will have a list of every Lebanese restaurant in a few minutes. What then?” Shannon asked.
“Then I’ll call each one and see if they can make it just the way she liked it.” Ritter said.
“You speak Urdu?” Shannon raised an eyebrow.
“No, but I speak French and Lebanese Arabic. Baida won’t eat it unless a Lebanese cooked it. She’s…kind of racist that way. We could figure out where they’re ordering from, and maybe we can get a delivery address or something.”
“Got the list!” Tony yelled as he yanked a still-printing sheet of paper from the printer.
“They won’t have the food delivered, that’s bad trade craft. But it will give us a starting point.” Shannon handed him a cell phone. “Good thinking, get to work.”
He was in the trunk again. Ritter half-hoped that after calling dozens of restaurants and asking enough careful questions to find the few restaurants that could cook Baida’s fish, just the right way, he would have gained some respect. But, respect did not equate a “need to know” where the safe-house was located.
It took Eric an hour to match potential safe houses against the right restaurants. He’d rattled on about power bills and walking distance and police reports until he identified two addresses. One address was in a commercial district, and was surrounded by “collateral” at all times, according to Carlos. They couldn’t assault that address with their small team, it would require help from the embassy teams as well as Pakistani assistance. Deduction based on a Lebanese menu and housing expenses wouldn’t convince the CIA chief in the embassy to authorize an operation.
The other address was a large house in the suburbs, which Shannon decided, was isolated enough that they could raid it without significant risk to their covers. That’s where the car was heading, at least Ritter thought so. Riding in the trunk made it hard to know where he was or where he was going.
The ride was rough thanks to Peshawar’s terrible roads and frequent turns as part of what Shannon called their ‘surveillance detection route.’ After enough sharp turns that bumped him around the trunk, Ritter half-wondered if the ‘surveillance detection route’ was an elaborate excuse to drive poorly.
The car came to a stop and the engine rumbled to a stop. Ritter heard the car doors open, then four quick knocks on the trunk. Four meant things were fine. Shannon told him that if the trunk opened suddenly or without the knocks, something was wrong and he should do his best to run like hell and find the US embassy.
Shannon slowly creaked open the trunk, a pensive look on her face. “Come on, Mike cleared the building.” Ritter crawled out and looked around. There was no power in the neighborhood and the distant glow from the city center cast a false dawn behind the row of large homes.
Shannon pressed a flash light into Ritter’s hand. “We have to hurry; the first call to prayer is soon.”
“Did Mike find anything?” Ritter kept his voice low. Waking up the locals with their conversation wouldn’t help matters, it would be even worse if they heard him speaking English.
She led him to an iron gate built into a high wall around a two story house. She opened the gate and slipped inside. Ritter followed her inside. The house was large, surrounded by garbage and an empty chicken coop, delicate feathers smattered across the wire.
“I don’t get this.” Ritter scanned the darkened windows, watching for movement. “Where are Mike and Carlos? Did they find Jeremy?”
Shannon pressed her hand against an ear-piece. “The house is abandoned, but they were here.” She turned on her flashlight; a dull red smear of light hit the ground. “Help me search out here. Look for bills, receipts anything that’ll tell us where they went.” She motioned towards a distant trash heap.
Ritter turned on his own flashlight and swept it across the ground as he made his way towards the heap. Empty soda cans, small plastic bags and to-go food cartons littered the ground. He stopped to pick through a bag that had a yellowed paper-back novel and a few toothbrushes. Another bag, tied into a tight knot, was full of powdered detergent.
The acrid smell of smoldering plastic hit him as a gust of wind blew past him. There was a burn pit next to the trash heap. Something else was in the air, a smell like putrid milk and cheap perfume. Ritter thought he’d found the missing chickens.
The trash heap was waist high and a few feet from the smoldering burn pit. Tightly wrapped used diapers and trash bags made up most of the heap; newspaper and other detritus mortared the pile together. Ritter mashed the back of his hand against his nose as he picked through the trash pile. The newspapers were weeks old and were sprinkled in rancid rice.
He saw the edge of a large legal pad stabbing out from a garbage bag, he grabbed the corner of the bag and pulled. The whole pile heaved as he worked the bag out. He plopped the bag down and tore open the plastic around the exposed corner. A ghastly smell escaped from the bag as he exposed the contents. Nothing but old food and a blank legal pad.
The heap shifted and collapsed in a squeal of stretched plastic bags rubbing against each other. Ritter watched it fall, stepping back to avoid a full diaper rolling
towards him like a sick tumbleweed.
He shined his light on the base of the pile and froze. He tried to breath, tried to move tried to call out, but he was petrified. His mind rebelled at what he saw, what was at the bottom of the pile could not be.
A bouncing red light crept closer. “What is it” came Shannon’s loud whisper.
Ritter tried to say her name, but only a sibilant hiss escaped his mouth.
Shannon ran over and added her light to his.
A face peered up from the pile. Jeremy’s mouth hung half open, as though about to tell how his head came to be at the bottom of a garbage heap. Broken glasses reflected the red light and mercifully hid his eyes from Ritter.
Shannon reached out and lowered Ritter’s light. Jeremy’s face sank into darkness. She raised a hand to her ear. “This is four. We have recovery. Consolidate anything of intelligence value at the car and bring a body bag to the burn pit.”
Three hours later, Ritter weaved his way through morning traffic. Carlos dropped him off a few blocks away, easier now that Ritter rated back-seat privileges. No one suggested he share the trunk with Jeremy’s body bag as they left that house. Shannon was incensed with identifying Haider’s location, which led to his current task.
The only thing he had to do was walk. Carlos made it sound much easier than it really was. Just walk down a busy commercial street in a