Taking Morgan

by David Rose

  Finally the Dogmush commander waved them on. As the car began to move, Morgan exhaled loudly.

  “Dogmush,” Omar said. “Is bad persons, but they leave us alone. Today you have good luck.”

  At last they were inside Gaza City proper. They drove past the handsome, nearly new Palestinian parliament, and the streets became cleaner and wider, the buildings bigger and better constructed. The car made a turn around the wide green space of Unknown Soldier Square, with its fringe of lush palm trees, then headed downhill past the new culture center toward the gleaming Mediterranean. Just behind the seafront, Akram headed down a shady side street, then came to a stop. He popped the trunk, took out Morgan’s leather holdall, and opened her door.

  He gestured expansively. “Madam. We are here.”

  “Thank you, Akram. Sukran jazeelan.” Making sure her head was still covered, she got out of the car and stepped into the marble lobby of an apartment building. Akram summoned the elevator, and they rode it to the fourth floor. Abdel Nasser must have seen them arrive from the window, for he was standing by the apartment’s open door.

  “Marhaba, Morgan Cooper. Welcome.”

  There were several chairs outside on the landing, arranged around a small, portable TV set. This was a new development: in the past, Abdel Nasser had been happy to talk at the apartment alone with her, only summoning his bodyguards when they traveled outside. Khalil, Abdel Nasser’s other guard, was already there, and stood when Morgan approached. As she went inside, he sat down again, and was joined by Omar and Akram. Abdel Nasser spoke to them in Arabic.

  She entered the apartment ahead of him. At last he could close the door. He held out his arms. For a moment, even as she walked toward him, she felt a pang of guilt: an awareness of the pain her betrayal would cause if Adam or the children were ever to become aware of it. But she banished it, her incipient remorse driven out by the sheer pleasure of being with a desirable man who wanted her, and she stepped once more into Abdel Nasser’s embrace. She closed her hands around his waist. “Jesus, Abdel Nasser. It’s getting scary out there,” she said into his chest. “Couldn’t you have chosen someplace else to live?”

  “You know very well I could have done. But if I had, we would probably never have met.” He stepped back a pace and smiled. “But I promise you, here we are safe. Very few people know I own this apartment, the whole building actually, and for now, the rest of it is still unoccupied. Later there are things we must do. But for now, you can relax.”

  She breathed in the faint, citrusy scent of his aftershave. Abdel Nasser was wearing frayed but expensive jeans and an olive shirt that matched his skin tone. The phrase that had entered her mind that first time they met in New York came back to her, unbidden: this was a man who somehow always managed to look cool. But if she wasn’t mistaken, he was tired.

  “You sure you’re okay?” she asked, looking up at him.

  “I’m fine. It’s just that the past few nights, there’ve been air strikes, and you know how it is—they do disturb one’s sleep.”

  She turned her face toward his and closed her eyes. “Well, hello properly, this time.” He bent his head, and for twenty lingering seconds, they kissed.

  The building was not on the waterfront, but it was much taller than those on the other side of the street, which meant the airy, white-walled apartment had a view: children and donkeys on the beach; low rocky bluffs; the dark red Ottoman-style arches of the Al-Deirah hotel on its little promontory. Behind Abdel Nasser, the big window was half-open, filling the place with a fresh, onshore breeze. Beside him, on the starched white tablecloth, stood a fresh and fragrant feast: four kinds of salad, fried halloumi cheese, spicy tabbouleh, hummus, calamari, and flatbread.

  “Come,” he said. “I know it’s still early, but let’s eat. Omar texted me from the road so I knew when you were coming. I just warmed the bread and seared the calamari myself.” He poured them each a goblet of mint and arugula lemonade and handed one to Morgan. They clinked their glasses. “Please, sit.” There was a scent of orchids. Erez, the Jabaliya refugee camp, Adam: they all seemed very distant.

  They sat close to each other, their knees and thighs touching. He picked up a fat, gleaming olive in his thumb and index finger and popped it into her mouth, lingering a little to touch her lips and the inside of her cheek. When he withdrew she chewed it and swallowed.

  “Mmm,” she said appreciatively, “these are delicious.”

  “Not as delicious as you. Not as delicious as what I am going to taste later.”

  “I think you’ve been listening to too much Barry White, though you do say the sweetest things. But Abdel Nasser, I’m not going to be able make love to you with three of your men sitting right outside.”

  “No. Of course not. And anyway, we have work to do. After we finish eating, I have arranged appointments. I will take you to meet commanders from both sides, Fatah and Hamas, people I trust, people who know my family. They will give you good information, and maybe you can tell your colleagues that what is happening here is madness. Then tomorrow we will meet the guy I told you about, the one who knows about the missiles from Iran. But there is somewhere else we can go later. I have another property no one knows about. In fact, I only bought it recently: an empty farmhouse, in the countryside. It was used by some Israeli settlers, but of course now they have gone. So far as such a thing is possible in this overcrowded place, it is remote. There we can really be together.”

  She laid a palm against his neck. “I’d love to spend a whole night with you. I’ve wanted to ever since … well, you know, since this started. But I can’t. If I’m not at the Al-Deirah, my people will get to know. They’ll assume something has happened to me, and believe me, that’s not what we want. They’ll launch a full-blown international woman-hunt.”

  “I know. But all you have to do is check in. I know a way you can leave without being seen. There is a particular ground floor room which has a hidden terrace, and I’ve spoken to the manager, he is my friend. I’ll meet you twenty minutes before the curfew. You can lie down in the back of my car. Where we are going is south of here, where there are no roadblocks. No one will ever know.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Everything about what she was doing was already so reckless from so many angles that in some ways, this latest crazy plan of his might make no real difference. But before she could begin to weigh it up, she started at an unexpected sound. She knew at once what it was: a high-velocity rifle, being fired extremely close. The building’s heavy wooden door onto the street had been locked, but someone must have shot the lock out. Her realization and fear were instant.

  “Abdel Nasser! You said this place is safe! We’ve got to get out of here!”

  Even as Morgan yells, she hears the sound of footsteps, thundering up the stairs. Their owners are moving quickly and then there are words being shouted in Arabic and agonized, guttural screams. A deafening crackling comes from the landing outside the door to the apartment, like someone eating a noisy bag of candy or chips in a movie theater, but amplified. Morgan’s training kicks in and she recognizes what it is: the firing of Kalashnikovs. Abdel Nasser’s face falls and he races for the door, knocking against the table and spilling his drink: his goblet falls to the floor and shatters. He leans against the handle and rams home a bolt. Someone is hammering on the other side, yelling. Morgan needs no translator. She grabs one end of the table and she and Abdel Nasser maneuver it across the marble floor to act as a barricade.

  “We haven’t got long,” she says. “If they start shooting again, forget about the door: even these walls aren’t thick enough to withstand many high-velocity bullets.” Abdel Nasser yells into his cell phone, trying to summon help. But no one seems to be answering. Morgan pulls out her own phone, trying to call the Agency night duty officer in Langley, then the station in Tel Aviv. But all she gets is a message in Arabic. The line won’t connect.

  Morgan looks out at the balcony. There’s no drainpipe, no ledge, noth
ing that might offer a means of escape, and they are much too high up to jump. In any case, there’s a black Mercedes parked outside. Wrapped up in her reunion with Abdel Nasser, she had not heard its approach. It probably contains more gunmen. The street is silent, devoid of passersby. In a place like Gaza, people know when not to look. Whatever it is that is happening, there will be no witnesses.

  The men outside are battering at the door with something heavy and the wood starts to splinter. Abdel Nasser sounds hysterical, his voice two octaves higher as he continues yelling into his phone. Morgan knows it’s useless. For a moment images of her children’s faces fill her mind but she thrusts them away: if she is to survive the next few minutes she has to stay calm.

  “Abdel Nasser. We should let them in. That way, they may not shoot us—at least not yet.” His eyes are panicked, but he nods his assent. She unbolts the door and opens it. Her stomach lurches at the sight beyond: the lower half of Akram’s big, kind face has been blown away, and the remains of Omar and Khalil lie sprawled at the head of the stairwell. They aren’t even holding their own, puny weapons, and it looks as if they were taken entirely by surprise. Even after the street door was opened, they seem to have done nothing to put up a fight. The explanation is still on the television screen: a soccer game. They must have been absorbed in it.

  Four gunmen, in fatigues and black balaclavas, pour into the apartment. One menaces her with his AK47 while the others focus on Abdel Nasser. They scream at him in Arabic. She can only watch as one man kicks him in the back, and another behind his left knee, forcing him to the ground. Dazed, he’s on all fours, close to the door, panting in his fear. One of the intruders clubs his ribs with his rifle butt. Then another slides the steel switch on the side of his rifle, changing its setting from rapid fire to single shot. He raises his weapon, and while Abdel Nasser half-struggles to rise to his feet, he shoots him through the back of each knee. Morgan sees the blood spurt, not much at first, at the points of entry.

  She starts moving toward Abdel Nasser but one of the men grabs her arm, poking her chest with the barrel of his gun for emphasis. Abdel Nasser lies, his head to one side, his eyes meeting hers: a look of pain, terror, and anguish she will never forget. His cries remind her of the music made by whales: high-pitched, other-worldly, involuntary. By now, his jeans are a mass of red, and a pool is spreading beneath them. His body jerks while the men follow the shots with further, brutal kicks to his kidneys. At last one of them clubs him again, this time around the head. His shrieks become groans. He seems to have lost consciousness.

  “Abdel Nasser,” she screams herself, so stupidly. What can yelling now achieve? A hand is clamped across her mouth. It’s followed by duct tape, wound tightly from her jaw to the back of her neck. She glances backwards as two of the men grab her arms and begin to frogmarch her out of the apartment.

  They half-push, half-carry Morgan down the stairs to the lobby. Then they pull her outside. She catches the glint of the sun a final time, before they thrust her into the trunk of the waiting Mercedes.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Monday, April 2, 2007

  Adam Cooper knew it wasn’t cool to feel impressed by his own office, but after a decade’s toil in a dingy cubicle at the Washington Crisis Assistance Center, he simply couldn’t help it. Even now, when he had been at Spinks McArthur for almost two years, he would catch himself gazing at his blond wood desk bearing two steel-framed photos of Morgan and the kids in childlike wonder. He had two big windows, all his own, and if he stood next to them and twisted his neck he could just about see the White House. Outside his door he had Estelle, his first-ever full-time assistant. All this, plus more money than he’d ever imagined he’d make in his life, and still he was doing what his friend Ronnie called “the Lord’s work”—fighting the good fight against injustice in all its forms and its political handmaiden, the United States government. He liked that phrase of hers, though he wasn’t in any conceivable way religious.

  At the age of thirty-nine, Adam still possessed the broad, muscular frame that had made him both a mainstay of his Cambridge college rugby team and a successful Alpine mountaineer, with several daring first ascents to his credit. In older, happier times, when his hair was still almost black, Morgan had called him her “silverback.” But now that his temples really were whitening, he still wasn’t doing too badly. After all, George Clooney had also been turning gray.

  It was Estelle who broke his reverie by ringing his office phone. “Adam? I know you’re real busy, but I’ve got Mila, your babysitter, on the line. She’s already called three times, while you were in the meeting. Anyhow, she’s says it’s urgent.”

  Adam fought against betraying his deep irritation. “Hi Mila, hi. How are things? Aimee get off to her soccer practice? Is there a problem?”

  “Adam, you told me Morgan would be home an hour ago. I can’t go nowhere because Aimee will be home soon and anyway there is Charlie. I checked her flight and the Continental website says it landed on time, but she doesn’t answer her cell phone. I know you are having a very important case this week, but I have my seminar and I only came this morning because you asked me a special favor. Please, Adam, what are we going to do?”

  Inwardly, Adam cursed. He knew how hard it was to find a reliable part-time nanny—they had been forced to let three go in just the past two years—but why Morgan had insisted on employing a bluestocking Czech who thought the psychological origins of Franz Kafka’s story In the Penal Colony the most important thing in the world, he would never know. Outwardly, however, he could not have been more charming. After all, if Morgan was already one day late, she might as easily be two. Since she had gone back to working in the field, he was becoming used to it. He might well need Mila to do him more favors, later in the week.

  “Mila, I’m so sorry. There must have been some kind of crisis that meant she couldn’t make her flight. Maybe she got bumped. What time is your seminar?”

  “It’s at two o’clock.”

  “Would it be okay with you if I get home by one?”

  Mila paused ominously and Adam held his breath, hoping against hope that she was not concocting a reason for demanding his immediate departure from the office.

  “Yes, Adam, that will be absolutely fine,” she said. “I’ll make the children some lunch. Don’t worry. I’m sure Morgan will be home tomorrow.”

  Adam plunged back into his legal research, working his way through the enormous stack of precedents with which he hoped to win over the Supreme Court. He knew that over at his office at the Georgetown University Law Center, his co-counsel, the constitutional law professor Joseph Bright, would be doing the same thing. If he ran to the Metro, he could leave as late as twelve fifteen. Yet a break might do him good. Since Morgan left, he hadn’t been sleeping well, an unfamiliar experience. It wasn’t simply the fact that in less than seventy-two hours, Adam would be on his feet in front of the nine men and women his colleagues flippantly called the Supremes. Adam had handled, and sometimes won, death-penalty appeals on which men’s lives depended. But United States vs. Mahmoud was somehow different. It could change the entire legal framework of what the government called the war on terror.

  Adam didn’t know what Morgan was doing in the Middle East, and he didn’t really want to know, either. But whatever it was, he reflected grimly, the likelihood was that he and his wife were on opposing sides. She would be trying to acquire information on one of the region’s many brands of Islamist, perhaps by dubious means. He had spent the past several years fighting to protect the same people’s rights.

  It was true that Mahmoud, a US citizen born in Lebanon, had given almost $100,000 to Zakat Relief, an Islamic charity. According to the Department of Justice, this was a front for Hamas. But Adam felt certain that Mahmoud, who currently resided at a federal prison in Ohio, was no terrorist. Now, for his final appeal, Adam had managed to get his case in front of the Supremes, and was trying to prove that his treatment amounted to abuse so outrageous that his convic
tion should be vacated.

  It was not until his train left Tenleytown, two stops before Bethesda, that Adam finally started to give serious thought to his wife’s non-appearance. Her missing her flight wasn’t what made him feel uneasy. What did was her failure to send even a text or an email in explanation. He tried to work out when they had last spoken. It came as something of a shock when he realized that it had been almost a week, and that he had heard nothing since she had left a hurried voicemail on his cell phone the previous Wednesday. When she had first started traveling again, she had warned the kids that there would be times she would be unable to get in touch, that she would sometimes be in places where it was impossible to contact America. This, however, was by some way her longest radio silence. It didn’t really seem likely that she might be in danger. How many times had he heard her say that she knew what she was doing? It was probably just some agent giving her the runaround, or a chance to grab some exciting intelligence tidbit that she felt she couldn’t miss. A shame she seemed to have forgotten he was about to make the biggest court date of his life.