Arab

by Jim Ingraham

  “What is this?” Diab yelled, offended. “You point guns at me?”

  The bearded one, apparently the leader, gestured for the driver to pull back.

  “I don’t have any money for you. Show me Bashir Yassin. Show me you have him.”

  “And then what? You grab him and shoot me? Is that it? You think I’m a fool? You tell Jaradat I show you nothing until I get the money.”

  The man seemed puzzled. “Jaradat?”

  “You think I don’t know who you work for?” Diab shouted.

  The man gave that a helpless shrug. He conferred with his partner. After a moment, he said,

  “If I come back with some money—and I can’t promise that—will you have Bashir here?”

  “Bring the money.”

  “Here?” the man said, aiming a finger at the ground. “You’ll have Bashir here?”

  “No tricks,” Diab said. “You try anything stupid, I’ll kill him. Just bring the money.”

  Whether an amount had been agreed upon, Diab had no idea. Faisal hadn’t said. Diab hadn’t expected to negotiate. He’d settle for whatever these people brought. He had envisioned millions. Now he hoped for thousands, enough at least to get him and Farouk out of the country.

  *

  The French sedan did not return until shadows of moving boats reached the river’s edge.

  With hatred in his heart because they had made him wait—I am a general!—he watched the same two men emerge from the car. The bearded one set a brown leather satchel in the sand at his feet, not looking at Diab, looking at Bashir and Farouk near the green Pontiac. This time Bashir was between Farouk’s spread legs, the muzzle of Farouk’s small pistol against Bashir’s temple.

  “You see that short one?” Diab heard Farouk say. “You know what they call him? He’s the butcher. Il-Gazzaar,” and he laughed.

  “Bring the satchel here,” Diab said.

  Almost simultaneously Diab heard the rifle shot and saw Farouk slump against the fender of the Pontiac, blood flowing off his head, the gun dropping from his hand. Before he could move, before he realized what was happening, a bullet slammed into Diab’s chest. Blood filled his mouth as he pitched forward, reaching blindly for the satchel, face in the sand, body twitching when a bullet charged through his skull.

  *

  Bashir declined the cigarette offered by the bearded one. They were in the back seat of the sedan, the other two up front, driving through traffic toward the eastern desert. Bashir’s heart had settled into a normal rhythm. But he was still frightened and confused.

  “They would have killed me,” he said.

  “Indeed.” The man had introduced himself as Nizar Ismael and said he and his “rescue squad” had been sent there by important people. “I’m sure you’re in for a sizeable reward.”

  “I’m just a mechanic,” Bashir said. “I’m not anybody.”

  “Oh, no!” and Nizar patted Bashir’s knee. “More than that. I don’t know what they want you for. But it’s important. It’s for national security. You are a valuable man.”

  Bashir didn’t believe him, knew he was being flattered. But he didn’t care. He was too frightened to think about anything except that he was free. He vividly remembered seeing that giant topple to the sand and reach out an arm. He remembered a man with a rifle emerging from underbrush and running off. He didn’t know who these people were but they were the enemy of his enemy.

  “I’m grateful that you rescued me,” he said. “They were going to kill me.”

  “They were vicious criminals. They were trying to sell you!” He leaned forward and tapped the driver’s shoulder. “Not too fast. We don’t want to arouse attention.”

  “You are the police?” Bashir said.

  “Special Forces Rescue Squad,” Nizar said. “You must be tired. Why don’t you lean back and try to sleep. We have a long ride ahead of us.”

  It had become dark and Bashir watched the lighted road coming at them, small buildings rushing past them. He closed his eyes and slept.

  *

  At the air strip on the Sinai desert, walking beside Nizar toward a lighted doorway, Bashir heard the tall lieutenant say, “Yes, at sunup.”

  “He’ll only get five hours of sleep!” in the woman’s brassy voice. “It’s a long flight, even to his first destination.” She was in a dark green uniform. Security forces? Army? It was she who had helped him out of the sedan, a tall woman in her forties, stern as a school teacher. She claimed to have no idea what he was going to find. She knew only that his ultimate destination was Porto Alegre in southern Brazil.

  “It can’t be helped,” the lieutenant said. “We’re on a strict time table. He can’t just fly down the Mediterranean any time he chooses. He must pass those check points within minutes of when he’s expected. It’s all been worked out.”

  “And coming back?”

  “That will be arranged. It’s not our concern. Our job is to get him into the air at exactly seven a.m.”

  After taking a shower and lying between clean white sheets on a single bed in a large room, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He was convinced he hadn’t slept more than a few minutes. They gave him clothes that actually fitted him, underwear, toilet articles, packaged food. Still tasting the remnants of breakfast, he walked into the morning sun and was driven to the runway for his first look at the jet they had provided, miles of empty desert expanding to distant hills.

  It was identical to one he had worked on in England.

  “Yes,” the lieutenant said, as they walked around the plane—a beautiful sleek white rocket with wings—”it handles the same as the Thirty-five-A. This has an increased range, more than enough to get you to your various stops. The specs are in the package, of course,” pointing at the briefcase held by the man who would accompany him to his first stopover.

  “When you get to Oran, a man named Felix will co-seat with you to Casablanca. He’ll go the rest of the way with you. In Porto Alegre he’ll introduce you to Phillip Nelson. It’s all in the book there….”

  “I’ve never been to Porto Alegre,” Bashir said. He had a million questions but didn’t dare voice them for fear he would lose the respect they were showing him. He was important to them. He was certain that all of this had been brought about by Esmat Bindari. He no longer felt ashamed by the way Bindari had treated him at the restaurant. He was an important man. They all act like that.

  “You’ll love Porto Alegre,” the lieutenant said. “Very sophisticated, a charming city on a river. Nightclubs, beautiful women. You’ll love it there.”

  And that is all he was told. The man who sat next to him seemed recklessly uninformed. He spent much of the first wing of the flight reading a paperback novel. Bashir’s questions received only blunt replies and a blank annoyed stare.

  *

  In the street-side café, Captain Rashid Huzayfi leaned a uniformed arm across the table to poke Habib’s hand, get his attention. Habib had been staring down the long room at two women, both young, maybe college students. “It’s unlike you to be this impatient,” his friend from the city police said. “What’s the rush? We’ll find your Bashir Yassin. He can’t elude us forever.”

  “The captain of that trawler. What did he tell you?”

  “He denied ever being near that beach, said he never picked up anyone, never heard of Bashir Yassin. And the witnesses on that wharf in Marsa Mutruuh couldn’t identify the ship, said it was too far out.”

  “Why is he so elusive?” Habib said.

  “He knows he’s being hunted. It’s possible that cane we found at the river didn’t belong to him. We’ll check it for prints, of course. But why would he have been there with those two hoodlums?”

  “They stole him from me.”

  “I know, but why would they bring him to that remote spot? I mean, we both can invent a lot of reasons….”

  “No witnesses?”

  “The old man who heard the shots said he saw nothing.”

  “Afraid?”

>   “Maybe. Maybe he actually saw nothing. He was more than two hundred yards away. Maybe his eyesight is bad. And the ones working on that felucca? They said they heard nothing.”

  Habib sipped at his coffee, which had become cold. He shrugged. “At least the world is rid of two undesirables—with thousands to take their place. But without them I wouldn’t have a job,” laughing.

  “When will I get my gun back?”

  “In due time,” the Captain said. “How was that cake?”

  “I’ve had better,” Habib said, again glancing across the room at the women.

  *

  Habib’s stomach bothered him. Pills didn’t help. All day he had felt gloomy. He wished he could find Bashir Yassin and send him out of the country and end this madness. Life had been so much simpler when he was in uniform. You received orders. You carried them out. You didn’t worry about who you were working for. You didn’t worry about being loyal to anyone. You did your job.

  Next day around noon he stopped at the police station to find out from old friends what people were saying about Faisal Ibrahim. A clerk at the front desk—a woman he had tried many times to spend an evening with—waved him over and said Lieutenant Yousef Qantara was looking for him.

  “I just saw him go down the hall,” she said. “Wait a minute.” She hurried from behind the desk and chased after a man who stopped, listened to what she said, nodded and continued down the hall.

  He noticed her ass was wider than it used to be.

  When she returned to the desk she said, “He’ll tell him.”

  “Tell him I left before you could stop me.”

  “No, no, please, Habib. He’ll blame me. Please wait. He’ll be….”

  Bile crawled into Habib’s throat at the sight of Yousef stepping from behind a group of men coming toward him. Damn! I shouldn’t have come here.

  “Glad I caught you,” Yousef said, conferring a brief, artificial smile on him, taking his arm, leading him to a conference room, the smile vanishing the moment he closed the door.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you,” he said. “You’ve heard the news about General Saraaj?”

  “Saraaj? No.”

  “Your American Colonel still hiding things from you?”

  “I haven’t seen….”

  “Well, it’s not surprising. Here, sit down,” pulling a chair from the small table, another for himself. “It’s been on television all morning.”

  “I’m retired,” Habib said, noticing the ubiquitous portrait of the president on the far wall. “I sleep in the morning.”

  “Not every morning,” Yousef said. “But enough of that. Saraaj was killed instantly in a highway accident in Heliopolis near the airport. At least the early reports call it an accident.”

  And why are you telling me? Habib wondered.

  “You’ve heard of the general?” Yousef said.

  “I’ve seen his name.”

  “Your colonel hasn’t talked to you about him?”

  “No.”

  Yousef gave that a moment’s reflection, accusations riding in his smile. “Not even once?”

  “No. Why would he?”

  “I find it hard to believe you’re as naïve as you pretend to be.”

  “I’m only his assistant, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, yes, I know,” impatiently cutting him off. “You of course realize that I too am in the service of His Excellency, sworn to protect him.”

  “I realize that. I don’t—”

  “We’re both loyal citizens of the state, and your colonel is an American working for an American who spies on us. You’re aware of that, of course.”

  Habib sighed. He didn’t like where this was going. “We’re interested only in finding Bashir Yassin.”

  “Oh, come now, Habib. You’re not that naïve. Even if it’s true, even if you want to believe that, you must wonder why the Americans want Bashir.”

  “To banish him—”

  Wagging a finger, Yousef said, “No, no, that’s been discredited, as I’m sure you know. Or hasn’t your colonel told you the Israelis are not interested in Bashir Yassin? Does he still want you to think—?”

  “He told me about that,” Bashir said.

  “Aah! Was it before we talked the other day? And you didn’t tell me?”

  “It’s not my job—”

  “But it is!” leaning over the table, pounding a finger in front of Habib. “Your first obligation is to this nation! You will find out what this American knows about what happened to General Saraaj! He’s not innocent in this, Habib. You’re not working for an innocent man. You will watch everything he does, listen to everything he says. And you will report everything you learn to me!”

  *

  “We don’t know,” Isaac said, drawing Nick’s attention to a dog with lifted leg right here in the café. “Could you imagine that happening in New York?”

  “I’ve seen worse than that in New York,” Nick said, although the incident surprised and disgusted him.

  Isaac toyed with his ivory cigarette holder, spinning it on the surface of the table.

  “Any reason to think it wasn’t an accident?” Nick asked.

  “I believe I mentioned it to you the other day—when was it, Tuesday?”

  “I think so.”

  “We talked about General Saraaj. I think I mentioned his recent phone calls to Brazil.”

  “I vaguely….”

  “Well,” he said, hitching himself up on the small chair, looking down the room at three women laughing over tall drinks, a man arguing with a waiter, “the reason I called you. We’ve received word that the likely recipient of those calls is a man known as Phillip Nelson. Ever heard of him?”

  “Afraid not,” Nick said.

  “A former outfielder for the British MI-6, fired for some indiscretion I’m not sure what it was. But he’s recently been in the employ of a Saudi prince who claims to be the grandson of the late King Fahd, owns a farm, raises horses in the back country near the border of Paraguay, a playboy, a little ga-ga, I believe, but active in supplying funds for various insurgencies.”

  “And?”

  “And very very rich,” tapping the holder on the table before putting it into his shirt pocket. “But for his wealth, he’d probably be deported, or hanged.”

  “And why are you telling me this?”

  “Esmat Bindari has also made phone calls to him. It may mean nothing, but it’s unusual. And we are always interested in the unusual. And by the way,” he added, scraping his chair back, picking up the check, “Yousef Qantara has been told about the Israeli spoof.”

  “And now he’s going to have me deported?”

  “Not necessarily,” Isaac said. “He may want to keep you around. We think he has his own agenda. Why else has he had that woman following you?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The tall man with white hair, a thin face and blue eyes rose from the cushioned seat in the waiting room outside the office in the Porto Alegre airfield. “That didn’t take long,” he said, referring to Bashir’s check-in.

  “Routine,” Bashir said, affecting a nonchalance he didn’t feel, responding to the man’s friendliness with a smile. He was nervous, dead tired from the long series of flights, but high enough on adrenalin to play the game.

  “Phillip Nelson,” the man said. “And of course you are Bashir Yassin. I watched your landing out there … very skillful, very skillful indeed,” gripping Bashir’s hand longer than was customary. Maybe that’s how people greeted each other here, regular people, not the kind he had dealt with in Rio, a frightening city he was glad he had not been sent to. Nevertheless, this effusive friendliness made him uncomfortable.

  “The Sheraton,” Nelson said to the cab driver as he settled into the seat next to Bashir. The scent of cologne drifted off him. His fingers looked manicured. The shirt cuffs on his wrists were the French kind, flashy links. His suit and tie looked new.

  It took only a few minutes to find the downtown hotel—a
great white tower rising up like the prow of a ship. It was modern and doubtless expensive, Bashir thought. Made him wonder who was paying for this. Just renting a Lear jet would bankrupt most people. Faisal couldn’t afford this. Could it possibly be Jaradat, as Diab had said?

  “This is the safest part of the city,” Nelson said. “Nice shops, good restaurants, everything you need within walking distance. And speaking of walking,” he waved a hand at a park across the way. “If you love nature,” and he laughed. “It’s safe. You can stroll around in there at night if you want to.”

  In the expansive lobby, decorated with the usual trappings of luxury, Nelson handled the check-in and led Bashir to the elevators. “You’ll love the room,” Nelson said.

  And Bashir did. It was spacious with nice appointments, a large bed, and didn’t smell of cigarettes.

  “I assumed an intelligent man of your age wouldn’t smoke,” Nelson said. “So!” dropping into a large cushioned chair. “Any questions?”

  Bashir’s head was swimming with questions but he decided to keep them to himself. He wanted to ask, “Why am I here?” But that would drop him off the pedestal. He must pretend to know exactly why he was here.

  Nelson laughed. “If you’re wondering where Helene is, all I can tell you at the moment is she’s not staying at this hotel. That would be dangerous. I assume you have already been spotted. They would be curious about a young Arab who arrived here in a private jet. Even here the troubles of the Middle East have an impact. Until they are satisfied that you’re harmless, it’s best we not connect to her.” He raised a leg, his chin on his knee as he tightened the knot on his shoe, grunting at the effort. “Tomorrow I’ll arrange a meeting. We’ll run into her as though by chance in a small café where the waiters don’t speak English. You may find her a bit abrupt: she’s been under a lot of pressure. And,” he added, laughing, “she might not fit your idea of a prince’s courtesan.”