The Blue Widows - [Kamal & Barnea 06]

by By Jon Land

  They reached the shack’s mud-strewn yard to the stench of the bread burning in the outdoor stone oven. Coarse black smoke drifted from the opening. Danielle reached the shack just ahead of al-Asi and threw back the door.

  Hakim lay on his back on the floor, his eyes blinking rapidly, blood oozing from both sides of his mouth. His mother lay nearby on her stomach, her bullet-riddled back drenched in blood.

  “Stay with him!” Danielle ordered al-Asi, and burst out of the shack.

  * * * *

  Chapter 17

  D

  anielle had seen the killer mere moments before and hadn’t realized it: a tall man walking with his head down, hunched to disguise his true height but unable to disguise the fresh pair of sandals that had given him away. She looked down at the mud, saw the imprints of large, heavy feet leading around the rear of the house to a connecting street.

  Danielle ran swiftly, following the trail to the wider road laden with ancient, rusted hulks of trucks and cars, their tires sinking into the ground, they had been parked in place so long. She swung left, right, searching for a head rising above the clusters of people moving about one of the camp’s main thoroughfares. Climbed atop the carcass of an old barrel to get a better view.

  She spotted the tall man a hundred yards ahead, clinging to the side of the street where camp residents bartered goods from rickety pushcarts. He turned briefly, and she saw the patch that covered his right eye. Danielle climbed down from the barrel and hurried along the street, keeping her eyes fixed on him as she slipped between Palestinians lugging wares and possessions to exchange for more needed ones.

  She picked up her pace, adrenaline surging through her veins. She could feel the familiar sense of her body tightening, preparing for battle. Heard a voice to her side, then another.

  Danielle glanced about, suddenly aware of the stares being cast upon her, multiplying by the moment. She tried to refocus on the tall man, just ten yards from her now, but the crowd closed from the sides.

  “Israil,“ she heard spoken. Then, “Surtiyyah.“

  Policewoman.

  Suddenly she was being jostled, shoved from side to side.

  “Out of my way!” she ordered in English, unable to form the phrase quickly enough in Arabic.

  The command infuriated the crowd further, drew more attention to her. Danielle’s eyes swept the street ahead, trying to keep the tall man in focus as he widened the gap between them.

  “Qif!” she shouted in Arabic, raising her gun. “Stop!”

  The crowd closed around her, stealing her line of vision. She tried to wrench herself free, but something heavy, a sack it felt like, struck her shoulders and pitched her sideways. She fought to resteady her gun on the tall man’s shrinking shape, but a trio of boys kicking a torn and tattered soccer ball, perhaps the same ones she’d glimpsed in the cemetery earlier, lurched in her way.

  The tall man turned back. Their stares met. She could see the scar dominating the right side of his face, the exposed parts of his arms lean and sinewy with muscle.

  Someone slammed into Danielle and her pistol went flying. She ducked and groped for it, but a filthy shoe kicked it aside into a sea of churning feet. She felt herself being pummeled with fists and covered her face, the shouts and screams echoing in her ears, the vast rage of her attackers finding a vent at last. She tried to twist free of the mob, caught the glimmer of her pistol, but another hand swiped it off the ground before she could grab it.

  Something hard struck the back of her head. A fist pounded her stomach, others flailing at her ribs. Then a man’s hand closed on her arm, yanking her sideways and upright, shoving her behind him.

  “Ila l-wara!” Colonel al-Asi shouted, shielding her with his body as he brandished her pistol. “Stop!”

  Some of the crowd, enough, backed off, recognizing him. Al-Asi jammed Danielle’s pistol into his belt, wheeled about to make sure his command was heeded.

  Danielle heard a few of the refugees protest, taunting al-Asi as he led her away, testing him. A rock glanced off the side of his head, mussing his hair. The colonel turned and waved a reproaching finger at the stubborn crowd.

  “I know your faces,” he warned. “Leave now and I will forget them.”

  He swung back to find a crowd had formed before him as well, surrounding the colonel and Danielle in the midst of the all-encompassing squalor. Al-Asi didn’t hesitate, just started walking forward again with Danielle pressed tightly against his side. They reached the edge of the crowd, which seemed on the verge of holding its ground, when suddenly it parted, providing a slim passage through the center.

  The colonel led Danielle forward, meeting the hateful gazes of all he passed, freezing them with his stare. Before Danielle knew it they were back at Hakim’s shack, guarded by a pair of camp elders al-Asi must have set in place before heading out after Danielle. The elders stood their ground firmly, preventing the further advance of the crowd that had followed Danielle and al-Asi there.

  The colonel swung back toward the throng one last time. “Sa’ati marratan ubra,” he announced icily.

  “What does that mean?” Danielle asked him.

  “That I will come another time.”

  Another of the camp elders had placed a pillow beneath Hakim’s head. His face was ghastly pale and his eyes darted fearfully toward death. Still he managed to latch on to Danielle’s wrist with steellike strength when she knelt over him.

  “My children,” he rasped, “my wife . . .”

  “I’ll get them to Turkey. I promise,” she said, wincing from the pain of her own wounds.

  Hakim tried to nod, struggled for breath. “A woman ...”

  “What?”

  “A woman came with those who killed Khalil.” Hakim swallowed and the breath caught briefly in his throat. He gagged and more blood and spittle leaked from the sides of his mouth. “She was tall, looked like . . . When I first saw you, my knife,” he continued, rambling. “Because I thought, I thought—”

  “You thought what?”

  “That it was you,” Hakim rasped, just before his eyes locked open.

  * * * *

  Chapter 18

  I

  am starting to wonder whose side you’re on, my brother,” Sayeed said, as they made their way down the third-floor hallway of a small, decrepit apartment building.

  “This isn’t about sides.”

  “The American government would like nothing better than to round all of us up. Put us behind some fence where they could watch us all the time like animals in a zoo.”

  “We are Americans too, Sayeed.”

  “All the more reason why we shouldn’t stand for this, my brother.” He stopped and checked a number painted in peeling paint over the door. “This is Latif’s new apartment.”

  “Did you call?”

  Sayeed Kamal raised his hand and knocked loudly on the door. “He’s not answering his phone. Mohammed?” Sayeed called through the wood. “Mohammed, it’s Sayeed Kamal.” He stopped and rapped harder on the door. “Mohammed, I need to talk to you.”

  “Let me,” Ben said, sliding in front of his brother as he removed a slim black case from his pocket.

  “What’s that?” Sayeed asked.

  Ben zippered the case open. “Lock picks.”

  Inside a dozen picks fit into neatly tailored slots, none of them ever used. The kit had been a gift from John Najarian, given along with his tacit approval to use its contents.

  “A police officer?” Sayeed raised, shaking his head.

  “I’m not a police officer anymore,” Ben reminded him, selecting the proper pick and going to work on the door.

  He had learned how to pick locks during his last investigation as a Detroit detective. A serial killer called the Sandman had slain three entire families as they slept: No signs of forced entry were found at any of the murder sites. Ben concluded someone capable of picking locks was the killer and wanted to learn the process, see how difficult it was.

  Much m
ore than he had imagined, as it turned out, leading him to investigate the possibility that the killer was a locksmith. He was out canvassing names when the Sandman showed up at his home in Copper Canyon, picked the lock on the front door, and moved upstairs to where his wife and children were sleeping. Ben arrived just after the killer’s work was done and the smell of blood was rising in the air.

  The single lock sprang easily and the door to Mohammed Latif’s apartment swung open.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” Sayeed protested.

  But Ben had already entered ahead of him, found the light switch and flipped it. A dull haze enveloped the room’s dingy confines. A single couch, chair, and an old television accounted for all the furniture in the living room area. A bare mattress and box spring stood alone in the bedroom. No food remained in the refrigerator or the cupboards.

  “He’s gone,” Sayeed Kamal said, swallowing hard.

  “For some time,” Ben said, kneeling down to inspect a layer of powdery dust that had collected in a gap between the tile of the small kitchen and faded, chipped wood of the living room. But the consistency was wrong for dust, and the color too. Ben touched his finger to his tongue, trying to identify the substance. “When was the last time you actually saw or spoke to Latif?”

  “The students I sponsor are not required to keep me informed of all their movements,” his brother said defensively.

  “How long?” Ben persisted.

  “Five or six weeks.”

  “Which?”

  “Six.”

  Ben tasted some more of the powdery dust. “Did Latif have a job?”

  “No, he was a full-time student. I arranged for the grants and scholarships, even a living allowance.”

  “From one of the Arab charities?”

  “Where else?”

  “Those charities are terrorist fronts. They used you.”

  “I give Palestinian youths a chance! I sponsor good kids!”

  “Latif is connected to a known Hamas leader. And now he’s disappeared.”

  “You should never have come back here,” Sayeed said.

  “To Dearborn or America, my brother?” Then, without waiting for a response, Ben ran some more of the powdery, sweet-tasting dust through his fingers. “Taste this,” he said to Sayeed, smoothing some of the white dust upon his fingertip.

  Sayeed Kamal touched the substance hesitantly to his tongue, swirled it around his mouth.

  “Recognize it?” Ben asked, watching his brother’s nose wrinkle.

  Sayeed shook his head.

  “Commercial flour. Did Latif ever work at a bakery?”

  “I already told you, no.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “I’d know if he had.”

  “Just like you knew where he lived.” Ben stood up. “He was here in this apartment briefly, but long enough to leave plenty of residue behind.”

  “I’ll find him,” Sayeed said obstinately. “Just let me make a few calls.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ve got a better idea.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 19

  P

  lease understand, Ms. Rahani,” the man named Shipley said, “these men were expecting to hear from your father.”

  “You did not receive his e-mail?”

  Shipley, lead broker for the venture-capital group that was waiting in an adjacent boardroom, shrugged. “Only yesterday.”

  “And did it not explain how he had been summoned by the royal family and wished me to speak in his stead?”

  Shipley shrugged again. “Then let us proceed, Ms. Rahani.”

  But Layla held her ground. “Is something else wrong, Mr. Shipley?”

  He sighed. “Only that the group has been less than enthusiastic over the prospects of your father’s proposal from the start. The fact that he is unable to address them personally. . .”

  “Just let me worry about that.”

  “There is also the matter of your brother.”

  “My brother.” Layla felt herself begin to seethe once more. That Saed had uncovered the truth of their father’s condition shouldn’t have come as any surprise. That he had moved so quickly to assert himself, though, left her taken aback.

  She watched Shipley’s face crease with concern. “He offered considerably better terms than you have proposed. Told me to disregard your proposals.”

  “My brother is not well versed on the intricacies of this deal, I’m afraid. He does not share my father’s confidence.”

  “All the same . . . Well, they’re waiting for us. We should get started, I suppose.”

  Layla followed Shipley into the conference room and knew instantly he hadn’t been exaggerating. The men and women seated around the mahogany table were fidgeting nervously, clearly with designs on being somewhere else. Their polite glances cast her way made Layla’s flesh crawl even more severely. She had not been back in the United States in fifteen years, since midway through her sophomore year in college. The horrible memories had been buried deep, not forgotten but kept distant. Returning here had brought them all back. The air had done it more than anything, Layla thought. The stench that claimed the city as soon as she had stepped off the plane.

  Shipley completed his introduction and beckoned Layla to join him at the head of the table, where she took her place behind a lectern upon which rested a laptop computer to use for the Power Point presentation she had planned. Looking at the bored, disinterested gazes on the investors’ faces made her rethink her strategy in midstream. There were eight men and three women, which gave her an idea.

  “My apologies for the absence of my father, Abdullah Aziz, who could not be here with you today. It would have pleased him to see three women in the room, because women are the centerpiece of the opportunity he has sent me to present to you today.”

  Those around the table exchanged glances, unsure of where Layla Aziz Rahani was going. They consulted their notes, as if some clue might have been contained within them, then looked back up when they found none.

  “I say that because in my country this kind of gathering, of men and women together, is prohibited. In Saudi Arabia you would need special permission from the ruling council to participate. And, of course, I would not be permitted to address you.”

  Layla Aziz Rahani moved slightly away from the lectern.

  “You see me today dressed in a suit that can be bought at Macy’s, or Saks, or Bloomingdale’s. But I would not be allowed to wear it in my country, where the dress code is very strict.”

  She refocused her gaze on the nearest woman.

  “In my country,” she told her, “you would not have been able to drive the car that brought you here. You would not be able to walk in the street in the company of a man unless it was your husband.”

  Layla retrained her stare on a second woman at the table. “You would not be allowed to travel without written permission of a male relative. And if you dared have sex before marriage, a male relative could kill you without fear of punishment.

  “It’s called an honor killing,” she said to the third woman. “But where is the honor in such a cruel and cowardly act? There is none, of course. There is only dishonor and repression in a society, a culture, that refuses to grow or change.

  “Being alone with a male who is not an immediate relative,” Layla Aziz Rahani continued, backpedaling toward the podium, “is called khilwa and is watched for diligently by mutaw’een, our religious police, who patrol the streets in SUVs built in your country. Get caught and you receive thirty days’ confinement in jail and twenty lashes across your back.”

  A number of those gathered around the conference table, both men and women, winced.

  “In lieu of driver’s licenses we are permitted to carry identity cards. You must be at least twenty-two years old to obtain one and have the consent of a guardian and letter from an employer if you work. Two hundred fifty thousand women have joined the workforce in Saudi Arabia now, and six thousand of those operate their own businesse
s. Of course, in the latter case all financial transactions outside of the workplace must be conducted by men.

  “Recently an all-male advisory board known as a Shura permitted a delegation of women to take part in a consultative council. We were segregated in a different hall and presented our list of suggestions for meaningful change behind closed doors with our veils on.