by Sarah Black
“This isn’t going to work,” she said. “You’re not supposed to make me look like a cute little girl. You’re supposed to make me look invisible. Who’s invisible? Dirty kids with runny noses and lice in their hair.”
“And?” Kim trimmed around her tiny ear.
“Don’t cut it. Shave it off!”
He reared back like she’d kicked him. “Excuse me?”
“Shave it off like they do to the kids with head lice. I’ll get some dirt on my face. Nobody will look at me. Nobody will see me.”
Kim looked pained, and John could see that his picture of their disguise had been a cute Korean-Arab mom in a silk hijab with a curly-headed urchin skipping by her side, like a couple of escapees from a Broadway production of Annie.
John grinned at him, and Kim gave him a dirty look that caused John to laugh out loud. “You asked for it, kiddo.” It was all he could do not to grab them both and lock them in a closet. He could feel his heart beating a hundred times a minute, the adrenalin coursing through his blood stream. Fucking hell.
“Fine,” Kim said. “I’ll do it.”
Gabriel put a hand on his shoulder. “Breathe,” he said.
Sam took himself off to the next room so he wouldn’t have to watch.
Mr. Aziz was working in one of the bedrooms with Eli and one of the housekeepers. They had unrolled pieces of Tyvek the size of a twin bed. Mr. Aziz was cutting and Eli was painting, looking from a picture pulled up on one of the laptops to the paper. He was working on a phoenix, painting the tail feathers flaming red. Kim had drawn the outlines. “How’s it going? You need a break?”
Eli shook his head. “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever done! I mean, is this wild or what?”
Mr. Aziz actually seemed in a good mood. “Yes, I agree,” he said, in his formal English. “This is very much fun.” He turned a fond look toward Eli. “We are going to start cutting the silk for the tails very soon.” He studied John for a moment. “This is a very interesting idea, General Mitchel. I hope it has the outcome we are all, Tunisians and Americans, hoping for.”
“I think it will,” John said. “If the good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise. That’s an old saying where I came from.”
“My grandmother always used to say, ‘Enough is as good as a feast,’” Eli said. “She grew up during the Dust Bowl. Said you never forget being hungry.”
Mr. Aziz looked thoughtful. “I never thought of anyone in America as being hungry.”
“The Great Depression happened around the same time as the Dust Bowl. That’s what we called it when agriculture on the plains collapsed because of poor land management. We’ve learned to take care of our land better now. But in every culture there are hungry people, people without homes or resources, people who live on the margins. My nephew Kim, he’s a photographer. He’s been taking pictures of these people.”
“Why these people?” Mr. Aziz asked.
“Because he wants us to see them.”
Chapter 22
GABRIEL came up out of the water, his dark hair slick as a seal, and climbed the steps out of the pool. John floated on his back, watched his long legs, the dark hair on his chest still as thick and lush as it had been when he was a baby pilot, twenty-five years before. Gabriel ran the towel over his head, then tied it around his waist. He stood on the edge of the pool, looking down at John, smiling at him. He could never get enough of it, he thought, floating, looking up at Gabriel. All the light, all the heat, all the sun, all the wind, the stars, the moon, everything beautiful and real and everlasting rested in Gabriel’s dark eyes. And those eyes were smiling down at him, full of love, and the promise of the rest of their lives.
The wardroom gathered before dinner to go over plans for tomorrow. Their suite was starting to look like a bomb had gone off. He thought about the faces of the housekeepers when they finally opened the doors and came in. Well, Painter could foot the bill and it would give him something to bitch about. Jen had been grinning since Kim shaved her head, running her knuckles over her nobbly skull. John actually thought her little face looked cute, all big eyes and freckles, without the distraction of the tangled ponytail, but the rest of the men in the room were avoiding looking at her, pained glances and then finding anything else, the carpet, the wall, to study. She was wearing a dirty white robe with a tee shirt underneath and sneakers. They were going to slip out when the rest of the crew gathered downstairs.
“Okay, here’s how we do it,” John said. “Everybody has a buddy and everybody has a person to watch. We back each other up in case of a problem. Wylie and Jackson will have their radios. They’re bringing a couple of those big-ass tanks from the embassy, that’s how we’re getting to the airport. Everybody, make sure your phones work and are charged, and if they don’t work, let Jen see them and she’ll check the programing. Emergency call is ‘Death Star.’ Anybody hears ‘Death Star’ over a phone or walkie-talkie, you immediately find your buddy and get to the vehicles.
“Okay, Sam and Jen, you’re team one and Jackson is your backup. Eli and Daniel, team two and I’m your backup. Kim and Abdullah, you’re three, and the Horse-Lord is your backup. This watching works both ways. If I get snatched, you guys are responsible to tell Wylie. He’s coordinating and watching for a group of Salafist bullies who don’t know how to clean their weapons.”
Kim raised his hand. “Problem. Me and Eli are going to be with the director. Abdullah is going to set up somewhere and play the cello, right?”
“I can stick near Abdullah,” Daniel said, and “you and Eli can watch each other’s butts.”
“Okay,” John said. “That sounds good. I’m backup for Kim and Eli, and Gabriel has Daniel and Abdullah. Don’t carry anything you can easily replace at a Walmart. If it doesn’t fit in a backpack, you can ask General Painter to reimburse you when we get home. It’s just stuff. Let’s not give away the game over stuff. Okay, so by 1200 the party is in full swing and the kids are eating ice cream and watching the elephant clock. Eli has brought balance back to the Force and the powers of good reign in Carthage. You are in the Jeeps with your buddy by 1200, no exceptions. We go to the airport, we get on the plane. Everybody, carry your passports next to your body. Touching skin, okay? Not just in a pocket. What else?”
“What do we do if we see Bahktar or his guys?”
“Jen, they might be there. I mean, it is a public celebration of sorts. And they certainly are not the only group of radicals in Tunis. Just pay attention. The danger will come if any of you are individually targeted. If they can get you off by yourself, you’re in more danger of being snatched.” He looked at their faces. They weren’t going to like the next bit. “Okay, so what happens if someone gets arrested? I know it’s not probable, and there are no valid reasons for it, but Eli and Daniel were beat up and thrown in jail for holding a copy of a page of a book that’s eight hundred years old. Something happens, the rest of you get to the vehicles and get on the plane. Sam, Daniel, you make sure everyone possible gets on the plane and gets to Sigonella. The XO and I will stay here and bring up any stragglers. General Painter should be making some calls so they know you’re coming. They probably won’t let you out of secure quarters on base, but just eat some spaghetti and make the best of it.”
Glum faces now. “Men, I am very proud of the way you have handled yourself during this mission. Every one of you has stepped up and contributed to the team. I would take this crew on a mission anytime, anywhere. And Eli and Daniel, you two have been outstanding, strength under fire. I am so proud of you. I don’t think I have ever been a part of a mission where we will leave behind so much grace and good feeling. Part of that is your willingness to take the hand extended to you by the Director, your willingness to forgive. You are the best of America, boys. And part of it is the whole team not being willing to settle. You wanted to do the most you could do, not the least, and I think tomorrow you will put your hand out and touch the history of this land. Now, Mr. Aziz tells me his staff has prepared a t
raditional meal for us! Go easy with the food. First man who pukes on the plane has to ride back to headquarters with General Painter when he picks us up at the airport.”
Abdullah gathered his sheet music. He’d set up his cello downstairs for the afternoon concert for the staff. It had been very well received. John and Gabriel had attended, dressed formally, and watched the housekeepers weep at the beauty of the music, and the brave front desk clerk fall in love with Abdullah’s dark eyes. Who could help falling in love with Abdullah? His talent and beauty, the swelling heart that seemed to rise into the air from his cello, his happy smile. He was full of joy, a great gift to the world, as his father had told John he was so many years ago. John had kept Omar’s letter, the one he gave the boy in Kuwait, begging John to save his son’s life.
John, my friend. I must beg your help for my son. The women, they will be safe, but the Iraqis are taking the sons of men like myself, leaving them in shallow graves in the desert. It’s a very old technique in war, is it not? It means something different to me today. Please, John, get him out of Kuwait and to safety. He is the very best of me. Do not worry about me. I am an old man, but my son is filled with beauty and light, John, and the world needs his light. Omar.
He’d given Abdullah the letter, sent him out to find his friend. And Omar had climbed behind the walls of his basement and waited for the soldiers, or death. Abdullah had walked thirty miles in the desert, hiding from the Iraqi army, until he found General Mitchel. He’d been eight. John had given him water and soup, then he’d found Gabriel. The two of them flew into Al-Jahra and brought Omar back to his son. By the time they’d found him, the guards had been working on him for twelve hours. The old man still felt the pain from arthritis where the bones were broken during his beating. John had tried to talk him into moving to Albuquerque, where the arthritis wouldn’t hurt as much as damp and chilly Cambridge, but Omar did not want to leave his library. And every time John looked at Abdullah’s happy smile, at his beauty and grace, heard him play his cello, he remembered the face of that small boy.
He didn’t look very happy now, setting his sheet music on the stand downstairs in the restaurant so he could play for them, for their dinner. Kim walked over to him, stood next to him while Abdullah fussed with the cello. When Kim was tired of being ignored, he nudged Abdullah with a knee, then nudged him harder, until Abdullah grabbed his wrist and pulled Kim down into his lap. He buried his face in Kim’s neck, arms tight around him. Kim touched his hair, ran his hands over his face, and even from across the room John could see Kim saying, “I love you.”
John turned away to give them some privacy, and because watching his boys always brought a lump to his throat. He couldn’t help them through this. Kim needed to go, needed to stick his toes in the pool he’d been staring at for so long, and Jen needed to go, to protect the people who had trusted her. Abdullah was going to feel sick until Kim was out of danger and off the streets of Carthage. Kim wanted to do this kind of work, was feeling bored with photography and wanted to save the world, but would he feel the same way about the risk when he could see what it was doing to Abdullah?
John put his hand on Jen’s shoulder. Their little urchin was ready to rumble, an old basket at her feet full of high dollar American electronics with a pile of torn rags on top. She was watching Kim and Abdullah and looked up at him. “Sam better not try that shit with me.”
He had to laugh at her. She was such a kick-ass warrior. “If I ever go into international problem solving on a regular basis, Jennifer, I want you to be my communications officer.”
“Okay,” she said, as if that had been understood all along. She shouldered the basket, walked over to Abdullah and Kim and tugged on Kim’s sleeve. “We need to go.”
Kim climbed off Abdullah’s lap, then he looked across the room at John. John nodded to him to go. Gabriel walked up, slung an arm around his shoulder. “You okay, boss?” John just shook his head and watched Kim walk out of the hotel, trying out a slinky female walk that was more Milan that Tunis, and adjusting his hijab. Gabriel reached down and kissed him. “It’s the worst thing in the world, isn’t it, watching somebody you love walk out the door and into danger? Sometimes, back in the day, I’d get this hollow feeling in my throat, watching you leave for missions when I couldn’t watch your back. You couldn’t even kiss me good-bye. It was like you were walking out the door with my heart in your pocket. I knew they wouldn’t tell me if something happened to you, but I figured I would know. My heart would start beating funny. Or maybe it would stop beating at all if your heart stopped.”
“If we could go together, that would be the best way, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I do. In a helicopter, maybe. As long as the kids are okay.”
“What was it Cody Dial told us? Life just keeps getting harder. I don’t know why we expected anything else.”
“Never occurred to me we’d be turning over the baton to a boy who still likes to wear cherry lip gloss and a little girl with freckles on her nose. Couple of general’s kids, they’re probably comparing notes over who had it worse growing up! I need to call Juan tonight. I’m gonna set my watch for 0300.”
“I’ll get up with you. I want to check in with Billy. He’s been on his own a long time.”
Gabriel turned, gathered the rest of the crew up, and moved them to the table. John walked over to Abdullah. “You okay, kiddo? You aren’t looking too happy.”
He shrugged, ran his fingers up and down the strings of his cello. “It’s weird,” he said.
John pulled up a chair. “What’s weird?”
“It was like, when we first got back to Cambridge, after you and Gabriel rescued Father? I felt so out of place. I didn’t look right, I didn’t speak like the other kids, I hated the snow and the cold. I kept thinking, if I could only get back home, I would feel right. Then I went to New York for school, and the planes and shit, and next thing you know, my face looks like the faces on the wanted posters. It got so I was afraid to leave the dorm. I just kept thinking, this isn’t my place, I don’t belong here. I love San Francisco, though. I’m happy there, but I had this idea in the back of my mind that home was still Kuwait, Al-Jahra. And then when I got here? I mean, I know it’s not the same. But the men are speaking Arabic on the streets, and everybody’s smoking, and the women look at the ground when I walk by, and I’m a stranger here. I mean, really a stranger. I don’t belong here, I don’t belong there, where do I belong?”
John watched his beautiful face, the glossy black hair and beautiful dark eyes. Abdullah had a smile as wide as the sky, though John had not seen it nearly enough in the last week. “You belong in America, kiddo, or anywhere else in the world you want to plant your flag. You belong in your father’s house and you belong in my house. Maybe even wild San Francisco. You might belong in Kim’s garage, though it makes my stomach knot up to say that.”
“You don’t mind? About me and Kim?”
“No, of course not. Though you both seem very young to me. Very, very young. I’m having a hard time remembering you’re grown up. I want to sit you down and give you a serious talk about something, I don’t even know what.”
“Yeah, I know. I can tell.” Now he got to see that beautiful smile. “I promise… I was going to promise I would take care of him forever and protect him, but maybe I better not. He doesn’t want to be taken care of, and nobody can protect him from himself.”
“He wants to be loved, I think.”
“So do I. I can promise to love him, now and forever. I don’t know if I can live with him, not if he keeps throwing on hijabs and running out into the streets like some….”
“You look so much like your father, Abdullah, when he was your age. I was twenty-one, I think, when I first met him. Maybe twenty. I had a massive crush on him, did you know?”
Abdullah held up both hands. “TMI, Uncle John! Don’t even go there.”
John laughed and got up from the chair. “I’m ready for another concert. You are a world-class t
alent, Abdullah. Have I told you that today? That you are a musical genius?”
“Yes, Uncle John, thank you. And it means a lot to me, even though your favorite music is the Ultimate Barry White Collection. I just tell myself that you are uneducated and I have plenty of time to train you.”
“Well, I’ll be looking forward to that. Don’t play so long you miss dinner.”
He bent over the cello, drew the bow across the strings.
The traditional Tunisian dinner Mr. Aziz’s staff prepared for them was a beautiful spread, rich and spicy with the scents of grilled peppers and garlic and tomatoes, bowls of couscous and eggs and grilled lamb. John was happy to see a dish with scrambled eggs, since he was very sure he would not be able to eat more than a couple of spoonfuls until Kim and Jen were safely back in the hotel.
Abdullah’s music was rich and sorrowful, with an Eastern sound John was not familiar with. Mr. Aziz stood just inside the door, listening to him. John walked over to join him.
“He is extraordinary, isn’t he?”
Mr. Aziz nodded. “It sounds like the music of the Bedu, the music of the caravans.”
Abdullah finished the piece, put his bow down and rose. Eli pulled out the chair next to him at the dinner table. “That was brutal, man. Like Ancient Carthage set to music. Did you write that?”
Abdullah nodded.
Daniel passed him a plate. “That was fucking brilliant, Abdullah.”
“It was like, I could hear the elephants. I could hear the chains around the ankles of the slaves. Is that wild, or what? It’s like you made the whole deal come to life.” Eli passed him a bowl. “Couscous with peppers and onions. So how do you do that? Write music like that out of the blue?”
Abdullah piled his plate with food. “I think of a situation, the people, what’s happening, how everybody feels. And the music, that’s the sound of the emotions, the way everybody’s feeling.”
“What was the situation for that music you just played?”