by Sarah Black
John did not want to look down at his new suit. He was going to be so pissed when he saw the bloodstains. John turned to Mortimer. “Stay back, okay? Let me handle this. Try to get my good side.”
Mortimer slid his cell phone out of his pocket. The car with Ali Bahktar and his thugs slid to a halt in front of the Regency, and they piled out of the doors. John walked to the middle of the white lobby, waited for them, his arms folded over his chest. Bahktar had three men with him, all bearded, wearing dirty white robes and western pants, with weapons in their hands. Two of them grabbed John and pulled his arms out to the side. Ali Bahktar walked up to him. He was preaching, John thought, the usual bullshit about American Imperialism and insults to Islam. The hotel staff was horrified, the crowd getting bigger. There must have been ten of them, wait staff and housekeepers watching them, hands pressed tightly over their mouths, and the kitchen staff in their pristine whites. The smell of baking bread drifted into the lobby. The manager had disappeared, his cell phone pressed to his ear.
John struggled against the men holding him, just enough to break the flow of the bullshit sermon, not enough to get loose, and Bahktar came closer, grabbed the back of his head. With his new haircut, though, his hair was too short for Bahktar to hold. Kim was definitely getting a gold star after this op was over. “You stupid piece of shit camel turd. Why aren’t you rotting in the desert?”
John said it so quietly only the men holding him heard it, and Bahktar. It enraged him enough he lost control, started slugging John in the stomach. He moved fast, and John didn’t have time to brace himself against the blows. Bahktar landed a neat punch to the solar plexus that had John so sick and winded he nearly puked. That was not the visual he was going for. He drooped for a moment between the men holding him, his head nearly on the floor, which protected his tender stomach from any more blows. The women in the lobby were screaming, the noise from the staff getting louder. When he could speak again, he lifted his head and shouted in Arabic. “You are not Tunisia!” He repeated the words in English. Then he said, “You are not Islam.”
The police poured up the white marble steps to the lobby.
IT WAS nearly an hour before John managed to exit the chaos in the lobby. Shouting, threats, police and Ministry of Justice thugs threatening to arrest each other, and the hotel manager standing taller than them all, shouting them down until the Salafist bullyboys left the hotel. Not, John was disappointed to see, in handcuffs. Mortimer went upstairs with him in the elevator. “You okay?”
“That little shit had better not have ruptured my spleen.”
“It would have looked even better if you have managed to vomit blood over one of them.”
John laughed, closed his eyes. Oh, shit, that hurt. “Did you get it?”
“Every word. Half the lobby was taping you with their little phones. I particularly liked that last bit. ‘You are not Islam’.” He studied John with his quiet brown eyes. “It sounded like you meant it.”
“I did mean it. I don’t want what we do here to make things more difficult for these people. And Islam is a beautiful religion, full of gentleness and peace.”
Mortimer put his head back, started to laugh. “My God, I’m starting to think the rumors about you are true. You sure keep the kettle on full boil, General.”
“I don’t know why people keep saying that.” Just for a moment, John thought he would give anything for a cup of rose hip and hibiscus tea, with Billy stirring in the honey, telling him about his latest piece of art. He wasn’t sure his dinner was going to stay down. “I think we’re going to need a doctor. Green has a fever, and he’s not entirely conscious. The other boy, Forsyth, did you see the bruises over his ribs? Looked like he got kicked when he was down. We need to get them checked.”
“Your girl, Jennifer Painter?”
“You know her?”
“Oh, yes. She knows a doctor.” Mortimer left John at the door to his room. “I’ve got some damage control to do. Memos to Washington, videos to YouTube, just the usual. I’ll call you in a couple of hours, see if things are settling down.”
“Thank you, Greg.” John held out his hand, and Mortimer shook it.
He grinned at John. “I can’t imagine what you were like when you had the Horse-Lord to back your play.”
“I still have him,” John said, “he’s coming.” He closed his eyes when he pictured Gabriel’s reaction to their little piece of democracy theater.
Inside the suite was the sound of showers, and Jen was moving across the living room with damp, bloody towels over her arm. Their pair of Marines was inside the doors, and when he got inside, Wylie nodded at him. “Sir, we’ll be in the hall.” He stepped out, closing the door behind them.
“You know a doctor, Jen?”
She nodded. “You remember Youssef Shakir, the driver who was here earlier? He has a son who’s a doctor. He’ll come if we ask him.”
“Do we want to ask him? His daughter has already fled the country. I’m sure he’s being watched. Can his family take any more trouble?”
“I think if you ask him, he would tell you this trouble is the beating heart of his country and he would never walk away from it.”
“Let me talk to him.” John held a hand out for her phone, and she punched in the numbers and handed it to him. He took the phone, held it up to his ear. He spoke in Arabic. “Mr. Shakir, this is John Mitchel. I am so sorry for disturbing your rest.”
“How may I assist you? I am at your service, of course.” He sounded sleepy, and John could hear the murmur of a female voice in the background.
“I have two young nephews who were mistakenly brought to 9 Avril Prison.” John heard the man’s sharp intake of breath. “They sustained some injury while there. I feel they need a doctor, but I am new here in Tunisia and I wonder if you could advise me where I can find a careful, trustworthy person.”
“I will be there in thirty minutes,” he said.
“Drive with care so you are not seen.”
“I understand.”
John handed the phone back to Jen. “He’s coming.”
She was watching him. “What happened? Are you hurt?”
“I’m too old to be used as a punching bag, but luckily he’s skinny and punches like a girl.” He winked at her. Her face was priceless, John thought, moving between outraged and confused. She seemed like a nice girl. She just took herself too seriously. “Can you update me, please?”
“Sam’s with Eli. He’s got him in the bathtub, trying to wash him off so we can see where he’s hurt. Forsyth is in your room in the shower. We’ve got Marines with weapons standing around looking menacing. I’m not sure who they’re protecting us against, I mean, the guys are here, right? The Salafists won’t come into the Regency and try and take them back, will they?”
“They’re probably just hungry. The Marines, I mean. I suspect Eli and Daniel as well.”
She waited a moment, staring at him, then—“And naturally the women bring the food!”
“The smart ones do. We don’t have any lemon soda, do we? Or a ginger ale? My stomach hurts, Jennifer.”
She went to the bar and brought him back a tiny Coke, opened it for him and handed it over. “Who punched you in the stomach?”
“Ali Bahktar, of course.” The cold Coke might have been the very best thing he’d ever tasted.
John went into his bedroom, started taking off the new suit. Blood, just as he’d thought, but not so much it was ruined. The dry cleaners might be able to do something with it. Twenty-five hundred dollars for a suit, my God. He put on his jeans and his favorite chambray shirt. These were the sort of clothes you could get blood on, and then you threw them in the washer with some Tide and some bleach and you were good to go. Where was the new lemon-colored shirt? He added that to the pile to be cleaned. Now he was back to himself again, faded jeans, only with new Suede Hipster Chukkas.
He stuck his head out the door. “Jen? Do we have any spare clothes so these guys can get dressed?”
He went into the suite’s living room, sat down on the couch and propped his feet up on the leather polka dot of an ottoman. Tried to think over the buzz of fatigue in his head. They needed more rooms. They need the rooms on either side of them as a buffer zone. He hauled himself up off the couch, stuck his head into the second bedroom. “Sam.”
Jen was digging through his luggage, and Sam stuck his head out of the bathroom door. “Sir, is there a doctor coming?”
“Yes.” John pushed the bathroom door open. Sam had been on his knees next to the tub, holding Green’s head above the water. The boy was moving in and out of consciousness. “Sam, roll up a towel and put it on the ledge at the end of the tub. That will keep his head above water.” John bent over, studied the boy’s body. Bruises and contusions over the ribs, one eye purple and swollen shut, his mouth cracked and bloody. His arm was swollen, the skin tight over the forearm. Sam looked helpless, standing there holding a washcloth. John took the cloth from him. “Go help Jen find some clothes for these guys, okay? The doctor should be here soon. Bring him in here first. And go down to the front desk, book the rooms on either side of us and the one across the hall. We need the space, and we don’t want unwelcome company. Oh, find us something to use as a splint for this broken arm.” Sam was starting to look overwhelmed, exhaustion creeping across his face. “Ask one of those Marines for help. Wylie, he’s the redhead, and the other one is Jackson.”
“Yes, sir.”
John knelt down next to the tub, dipped the washcloth in the hot water and started sponging the dried blood from Eli’s chest.
Chapter 13
DANIEL tapped on the bathroom door a few minutes later. He was carrying a Coke and wearing a pair of Sam’s boxers. “Hey, Hannibal. Look what I got.” John stood and backed up, and Daniel knelt on the floor next to the tub, tipped a little of the Coke into Green’s mouth. He turned around and looked at John. “Seems like this is all I’ve been doing for days. I don’t even know what day it is, or how long we were there.”
John shook his head. “I’m a little mixed up with times and dates myself. You got snatched on August first. I got here August fifth, local time. So by now it’s the sixth. I’m sorry you were in there for so long, Daniel.”
“I don’t even know what it was about. They were all screaming at us, pushing us, you know? And they tore this paper out of Eli’s hand, some picture he’d taken of the page of this book. They were shaking it in his face and screaming.”
“Was it a page from the Qur’an?”
Daniel shook his head. “No! It wasn’t anything to do with that. We’re not stupid. I don’t know what it was. Just something Hannibal here was jazzed about.” Daniel tipped the bottle up, poured a tiny bit, a teaspoon, into his mouth. John could see Eli swallow, the grimace move across his face. “Or he was. The last seven days might have burned the love of Carthage right out of his bones.”
“No,” Green said. He reached up for the Coke with his good arm, tipped the rest down his throat. It was the first thing he’d said. John had seen the tears tracking down his bruised face.
John stuck his head out the door to the bathroom. No one had brought him splinting material, and Green was sitting in the tub with his broken arm bobbing up and down in the rapidly cooling water. “Sam!”
Jen came to the door. “He went downstairs about the rooms.”
“Get me something to splint this boy’s broken arm right now.”
“Like what?” She looked around the room.
“A magazine and some tape! Jesus Christ. If you can’t figure it out, send one of the Marines in here.”
She turned sharply on her heel and left, then came back a moment later and handed him a pair of his own boxers and the new copy of Monocle he’d brought to read on the plane. “These will fit Green better than Sam’s. Hang on a minute and I’ll pull the shoe strings out of your shoes and we can use those to tie it up.”
“Good thinking,” he said moodily, watching her back disappear into his bedroom.
THE doctor looked like a younger version of Youssef Shakir. He was carrying a heavy black leather satchel. His father was with him, along with the hotel manager Mr. Aziz and the senior public security policeman who had been left to watch their backs. Or to keep them from escaping, John wasn’t sure which. John wondered if there was a single person in Tunisia who would not know by morning this young doctor had been helping the Americans.
John called Wylie over. “This is my head of security,” he said to the Tunisians. “I have instructed him to not let anyone near these rooms for the next two or three days, until we can straighten this misunderstanding out.” John turned to Mr. Aziz. “Will that be a problem for your staff, sir?”
“Oh, no, General Mitchel. We will find a way. And may I once again offer my sincerest apologies to you from the Tunisian people over the egregious attack on your person by the radicals. Believe me when I tell you this is not Tunisia.”
“I know that very well, my friend. I have loved your beautiful country for many years. These young nephews of mine came here because they loved Carthage. Did you know one of the boys carries the name Hannibal? His ancestors came from Tunisia. He came here to pay his respects.” John didn’t mention Eli and Daniel had also come to pay their respects to Andy Whitfield, the handsome young actor who had played Spartacus.
Both Wylie and the public security officer looked skeptical at this, and Wylie murmured something to him in Arabic that had them both grinning. They moved off down the hall. John had asked Wylie to make arrangements for a buffer zone around their rooms.
“What can I offer you, sir?”
John thought a moment. “We need some food and drinks. Coffee, bottled water, some Cokes for the room. The boys will need clean clothes. What they were wearing in the prison will most likely need to be thrown away. Oh, clean towels for the doctor. I will ask him what else he needs. If your staff at the front desk will very carefully send calls to our room? I will need to speak to anyone from the embassy who calls, and I will need to speak to Minister Hamid Dilou immediately if he tries to get in contact with me. Also, if there is any contact from a representative of the Ministry of Justice other than that donkey prick Ali Bahktar, I will need to speak to that person at once. But on the phone, sir. I have asked my security men to not allow strangers on the floor, for the safety of my sons and daughter. If I need to speak to any of these representatives, I will come down to your beautiful lobby to do that.” The man looked mildly alarmed at this, and John smiled. “Thank you for the kind support of your staff in helping me bring my family to safety. General David Painter, who is sponsoring our trip here, will, I am sure, be generous in reimbursing you for any problems. Oh, wait. One more thing. We need some dry cleaning, my clothes unfortunately have some bloodstains.”
John looked at his watch. 0635. He needed to get some sleep. Tomorrow, no, today, he needed to be as sharp as he’d ever been in his life. At the moment his foggy brain felt like a dull weapon indeed.
The manager came into the room with him, took an armful of clothes out with him for cleaning. He promised John would have a clean suit by eight.
“Jen.” She came and stood in front of him. “They are bringing some food and drink. Make sure we distribute it between the three rooms. You and Sam are going to have the room next door. It has two beds, or so I understand. You two figure it out. I need to be in here with Eli and Daniel. The third room is for our Marine guards, and for the doctor and his father if they need to stay overnight. If you would please check everyone has what they need for a few hours. I need to lie down.”
“Did they hurt you? Do you want the doctor to look at you?”
John shook his head. “Just three hours sleep. Make sure I’m up by ten. If Gabriel calls, come get me but no one else for a couple hours, okay?”
“Who’s Gabriel?”
John blinked at her. Was there actually someone in the world who didn’t know the Horse-Lor
d? “He’s the love of my life.”
THE soft chime of the alarm on his watch had John opening his eyes at nine thirty. He knew he wasn’t at home. The sheets smelled different, fresh, but not the lemon eco-detergent Kim used, and the light filtering into the room was not Albuquerque light. And Gabriel wasn’t by his side. Back in the saddle again, he thought, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. It didn’t really matter if you were on a cot in a dusty tent or in a five star resort. If it wasn’t home, it wasn’t home.
He pulled on his jeans, walked in bare feet out to the kitchenette of the suite and put on a pot of coffee. Jen was curled up on the couch, but he let her sleep. He stuck his head out of the door, waved Wylie over. “What’s the status?”
“Everything’s quiet. Mr. Mortimer sent me a text, said to stay put until I hear differently.”
“Thanks. I appreciate the backup.”
“General, the twitterverse is going mad. Have you seen it?”
John shook his head, and Wylie pulled out his phone. “This is on YouTube. They’ve got it up in English and Arabic.” John watched Ali Bahktar punch him in the stomach repeatedly, watched as he drooped between the arms of two grinning thugs. Fucking little shits. He could hear himself clearly, though, and the final you are not Islam came through nicely. John was pleased.
“Wylie, what did you say to the security service man this morning?”
“I told him when American babies were born with balls the size of an elephant’s, their mothers name them Hannibal. Arabic is the best language in the world for curses.”
“I agree. Get some coffee if you want some.”