Many things blew up in Brendan’s head. Half a day. He was half a day too late to find Cal. How far behind him were they now? Yesterday was Thursday, he thought, though he was so rattled by all of the recent events, his orientation to time was unreliable.
“Why would they take him prisoner? You said the Sultanate is friends with the U.S.”
“I cannot say.” The rebel leader returned his phone to his pocket. “It is possible the Royal Navy’s prerogative to manage criminals aboard its own sovereign warships supersedes their diplomatic concerns. They are headed straightaway to the Sultanate.”
“Cal’s not a criminal,” Brendan said. “You’ve got to let me call a U.S. embassy. They need to release him and let him return to his family.”
The fellow stood in front of Brendan. “I think you know that is not going to happen, Mr. Thackeray-Prentiss. Nothing can interfere with our operation.”
Brendan heaved an exasperated breath. “What’ll they do to Cal?”
His companion shrugged. “Death at the extreme. An amputation. Flogging. If he is lucky, a term of confinement. The Sultanate dispenses justice based on King Al-Moghadam’s unique interpretation of Sharia law.” He squatted down, eye to eye with Brendan. “You see now that our agendas are aligned.”
Brendan shivered. He was suddenly aware he was drenched in cold sweat. “I don’t understand. You want me to join your military operation against the Sultanate?”
“Yes.” He studied Brendan’s face. “Do not look so appalled. I don’t intend to put you in charge of sea-to-land artillery. I have skilled men for that purpose. In fact, we procured a decisive advantage from arms dealers in Georgia. A Russian Scud missile launcher. It will easily destroy the modest coastal defenses surrounding Abbas Barundi.”
“What use do you have for me?” Brendan asked.
The man grinned briefly. “A squad of men will storm the beach while we attack the city’s naval base. Every man we can enlist will help ensure our success. You will be part of that team. To take out any soldiers who are activated to protect the city on land. We have a clandestine force in Abbas Barundi and many peasant sympathizers who will join our cause. They will take out the military police within the city. Once the beach force secures the port, our ships will enter, and a second round of troops will disembark. We will assemble to surround the King’s palace and force his surrender.”
Brendan’s mind reeled. It was a stunning amount of confidence to place in him, or a suicide mission about which the young fanatic did not care. And how was he going to rescue Cal amid missile strikes and rioting in the streets?
“This sounds like there’ll be many casualties,” he said. “What makes all that bloodshed worth it to you?”
“You would not know what it is like to live in tyranny, would you, Mr. Thackeray-Prentiss? To be afraid of having your house stormed by the military based on rumors someone spoke against the king. To see your loved ones stoned to death in a public square. To have everything you own seized by a corrupt government.”
He stopped there. Brendan’s eyes must have betrayed his dubious appraisal of the man. Though he wore the attire of a revolutionary, he spoke and looked, with a quick change of clothes, like he would fit perfectly fine in a members-only club in London’s Soho.
“Is there something you wish to say?” he said.
“I was just wondering what your part is in this?”
“The people need a leader. They have been disenfranchised for so long, they do not have the freedom or the means to organize for themselves. The great Che Guevara of the Americas was born into a privileged family. Like him, I have matured with an affection for the masses who have been exploited by the ruling class. I can also supply them with information they would otherwise not have access to.”
“How so?”
Brendan’s companion hesitated. His gaze returned fiercely, brooking no disdain. “King Abdullah bin Salib Al-Moghadam is my father. I was sent away for a British education at a young age, and our relationship has always been strained. With the benefit of living abroad, I came to see my family’s treatment of its subjects through an objective lens. Perhaps you know something of this phenomenon. My brief research turned up that your involvement in Thackeray Worldwide Enterprises has been, how shall I say, ceremonial?”
Nothing the guy said inspired a sense of kinship, but Brendan thought it wise to play along. He shrugged. That brought a smirk to his companion’s lips. Brendan told him, “I don’t even know your name. I suppose I should call you Prince?”
“Bassam bin Abdullah Al-Moghadam. I am my father’s firstborn son. But I have forsworn my family name, which has been held by dictators since the 17th century. I have abdicated my title. I am now Bassam El-Amin. You may call me Bassam.” A clever grin crept on his face. “And now that you have extracted that information, you see there is no way I could set you free.”
“Why would you trust me to help with your operation?” Brendan said.
Bassam frowned. “I see I have not succeeded in converting you to our cause. No matter. You have no choice but to help me. If you wish to see your husband again.”
“How is he supposed to survive while you’re blasting the city with missiles?”
“He will be held in the naval prison,” Bassam said. “Our strategic targets are a distance away. Abbas Barundi has two missile silos to defend its port. Our attack will take them by surprise, and once they are immobilized, we will destroy the city’s airfield and naval base. After that, it will be a simple matter of overpowering the few surviving soldiers with rifles.”
Did Bassam overestimate his strategy? Truly, Brendan would have no idea, though it sounded a lot more complicated than he seemed to believe, and with a whole lot of ways things could go wrong.
“How can I be sure Cal will be set free once you’ve taken the palace?”
“Indeed, you cannot,” Bassam said. “But you will have earned my gratitude by helping to support the revolution. I believe in honoring my promises.”
Brendan was not so sure. They meant nothing to one another, mere strangers whose paths had crossed by unlucky circumstances.
“So you’ll free Cal and let us both go safely home.”
“Unless you decide to stay on to enjoy the celebration of the Sultanate’s liberation. You may find revolution to your liking, Mr. Thackeray-Prentiss.”
Brendan was quite sure he wouldn’t. It was insanity to be drafted into a bloody takeover of an Arab state. He didn’t trust Bassam. But what could he do? If there was a remote chance he could find Cal in the carnage and get him safely out, he had to do it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
THEY REACHED ABBAS Barundi, and Cal was cuffed and brought on deck where he had his first glimpse of the Sultanate of Maritime Kindah’s island capital. The ship was anchored at a naval base that stretched across a long peninsula to one side of the city center. The city was a treeless plain, dominated by a coastal thatch of glass and chrome skyscrapers. Beyond, a grid of streets disappeared into a hazy, desert horizon. The crystal blue Arabian Sea surrounded the city on three sides, and Cal saw white sand beaches and a harbor with boat yards for luxury yachts. It was grand but desolate, and the metallic landscape glared and steamed beneath the equatorial sun.
Faraj ushered him along behind scores of sailors who were disembarking from the warship. Cal had successfully skirted the young man’s repeated offers to show him his penis during their two-day sail, and notwithstanding that bit of awkwardness, Cal was going to miss Faraj’s company. They had talked all about his adventure, and Cal had given Faraj lots of tips on gay clubs and beaches on Mykonos if he ever had leave to visit the Greek isles. Faraj, in turn, had coached him on the protocol for when he was brought before the king, and he’d helped Cal shave and trim his hair. Cal had even discovered a new appreciation for Arabian pop music.
He was a mess of nerves now that they were on land, and he was headed inevitably to answer to King Abdullah bin Salib Al-Moghadam. After crossing the gangplank, he
spotted a group of military Humvees at the end of the pier, one of which would be conveying him to a detention center.
They followed the sailors in that direction, and Faraj walked him to a utility vehicle where a naval officer stood waiting to take custody of him. Both men let their pace drag.
“I guess this is goodbye, Faraj,” Cal said.
Faraj halted. “In my country, men say goodbye with holding each other and kissing faces.”
Cal couldn’t move his hands to give Faraj a hug, but the young man’s arms soon enough surrounded him, and he kissed Cal’s cheeks. As the embrace went on, Cal’s hands were in the unfortunate position to feel the ardor between Faraj’s legs.
Faraj sniffled. “I never forget you.”
Cal nodded his head. “I never forget you either.”
Faraj released him, and an older, sterner naval officer showed Cal to the back seat of the Humvee.
Cal gazed out of his window while they drove through the base, feeling like it was all surreal. Kidnapped by Romanian mobsters, lost at sea in a lifeboat, and now a prisoner in a foreign nation. What was next? Would the earth cleave open and a black hole suck him into another dimension? Cal wondered how Brendan was holding up. He’d now been gone a whole week. The possibility had to be sinking in he was dead. Who knew how long he’d be kept in detention, and after weeks, maybe months, the search for him would go cold. Brendan and his family would have to come to terms with that and return to their lives in the States. Cal was beginning to believe in fate. Unbeknownst to him, all his life had been leading up to this: his disappearance from the world. He wished there had been time to say goodbye, to tell Brendan it wasn’t his fault; it wasn’t anybody’s fault. He had just reached his expiration date.
They drove him to a gated barracks with a high, barbed-wire fence, and the naval officer escorted him into the facility. Cal had liked the ship’s brig a whole lot more. The detention center was cold and cordoned off by many locked gates. It smelled like ammonia and, if Cal had to describe it, suffering. The officer brought him to a barred counter where he spoke with a uniformed man on the other side. The conversation was in Arabic, so Cal couldn’t tell what was being said. The detention clerk wrote something down on a clipboard and pushed it back through a slot for the officer to sign. Then he buzzed open a door, and the officer took Cal by the arm to bring him into the lockup.
SOMETIME THE NEXT morning, the door to Cal’s cell rattled open, and a detention officer grumbled at him in Arabic, waving a pair of handcuffs and gesturing for him to come over. Cal shook out of his cot, offered his hands for shackling, and followed the man out of his cell. With all of the dreadful anticipation that had been coursing through him, he’d barely slept overnight and barely eaten his navy-issued tray of colorless and tasteless food. Now he wished he’d been given more time to enjoy his privacy. He had no idea what was going on, but the possibilities—interrogation and torture—were not encouraging.
He was led to the far end of the cellblock and buzzed out to another corridor. After passing through a hydraulic gate, the detention officer put him into the custody of a pair of soldiers. Cal tried out a smile, but neither man smiled back and their eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. They brought him out to a blinding, sunbaked lot and into the barred backseat of another Humvee. They drove out of the detention center, through the naval base, out of the gated security booth, and onto a highway through the sterile cityscape of Abbas Barundi. Neither of the soldiers in the front of the military vehicle told Cal where they were going. Cal’s throat was too dry to ask.
They took a ramp off the highway and onto a boulevard lined with palm trees and a green, landscaped median. It looked to be a municipal district with its many flagpoles and grand office buildings. Cal noticed a pair of police cars surrounding a van on the opposite side of the street. Passengers had been drawn out of the vehicle, and it looked like men with rifles were questioning them. Cal’s gaze locked in on a man in a headscarf who had been pulled out of the vehicle. His face was bloodied, as from being jabbed by the butt end of a rifle.
They whirred by that scene, and farther along, Cal saw a group of workers washing a wall that had been defaced with graffiti in bloodred Arabic script. All along the boulevard, billboards and posters showed the portrait of a politician in a banded, white keffiyeh. That had to be King Abdullah bin Salib Al-Moghadam. He held a quiet smile on his full face, and he had a neatly groomed moustache and goatee and wore a golden collarless jacket. He was a man in his fifties perhaps. The father of twenty-nine sons.
The Humvee stopped at a military checkpoint and drove onward to a neoclassical-style building, draped with flags, with a grand, arched staircase to its columned entrance. Soldiers stood around in various posts, and Cal saw Arabian gentlemen here and there in white robes and keffiyehs—businessmen or ministers, he supposed. The Humvee traveled around to the back of the building where there was a fenced-in entryway that looked like it was the place where they delivered prisoners. A courthouse? Cal was appearing in front of the king already? His hands were suddenly as cold as ice blocks.
The soldiers took him into the building where there was a processing station, and then a gloomy waiting area where two dozen other prisoners sat on benches, wearing handcuffs. Some of them glanced his way when he entered, his skin color a minor curiosity. They were all Arab men and mostly young. Some had cuts and bruises on their faces, and they all looked like they’d been detained much longer than Cal had. The moment of curiosity passed, and the prisoners returned to their whispered exchanges, skyward gazes, and mumbled prayers. Cal seated himself in a quiet corner of the holding pen.
He hoped to maintain a low profile. Cal had always sympathized with the criminal justice reform movement—the problems of racial profiling, mandatory sentencing, and the like—but now he’d been thrust into the company of men who could be murderers and rapists. A bedraggled young man with a moustache was eying him with a gap-toothed grin. Cal looked the other way, not wanting to encourage any sort of friendly interaction at all. He had seen enough TV prison dramas to know what happened to the new kid in town. At least in American prisons. He sprouted sweat when the guy shuffled over to sit down next to him. In addition to his busted teeth, he had a jagged scar across his chin.
“Where you from?” he asked.
Cal didn’t answer him. He could be lured into some seedy dealings in the prisoners’ economy, or entrapped into sexual favors. Furthermore, he had no idea what prejudices the desperado might harbor, or what any of the other prisoners might make of a nominally Greek Orthodox, gay American in their midst. An armed soldier watched over the room from some distance. Cal’s knee bounced. What if his companion got angry at him for not responding to his question?
In the end, the gracious opportunity to speak to someone in English wore down Cal’s defenses.
“I’m from Syracuse. That’s Upstate New York.” He glanced at the man’s dumbfounded face. “I know. It’s unreal. I was supposed to be getting married in Hydra and going on a honeymoon in the Mauritius.”
“You are American?”
“Yes, sir.”
His companion’s face lit up. “I went to college in Southern California. Pepperdine University.”
Cal did a double take. “You’re kidding! What are the chances? Pepperdine! That’s a really great school. I majored in Classical Studies at Syracuse University. I graduated in 2016. What about you?”
“Business administration. I graduated in 2014. I took the MCATs, and I plan to go on for my master’s degree.”
“That’s really smart. Who can do anything with a bachelor’s degree these days? Hey, my name’s Cal. I’d shake your hand if I could.” He rolled his eyes grievously. “Looks like we somehow ended up in the same situation.”
“My name is Hakim.”
“Nice to meet you, Hakim. Boy, have I got a story for you. But I can be such a chatterbox. How did you end up in this place?”
“When I came home to renew my visa, the military police imp
risoned me for bringing blasphemous Western ideology to the Sultanate.”
“That’s terrible. I mean, I met someone from here who was telling me how strict the government is, but I didn’t realize it was that bad. If you don’t mind me asking, why did your family let you go to an American university in the first place?”
“All wealthy families send their sons to schools in Europe or America,” Hakim said. “The king’s own sons have their education in Great Britain. My father was accused of insulting the king’s first wife, and so the king cut out his tongue and punished him by imprisoning his family. I spent two years in jail. This makes the first time the king will see me to appeal my sentence.”
Cal gaped at him. “Holy hell. That’s an awful story. I hope the king is lenient with you.”
Hakim nodded somberly.
Just then, the door to the courtroom flew open, and two soldiers dragged a prisoner into the room. The man screamed, beseeching mercy, though Cal could not be sure exactly what was going on because all of his commotion was in Arabic. The soldiers harassed him onward and through the waiting room’s other locked door. Prisoners around the pen shook their heads and spoke sotto voce oaths of disbelief.
After a moment, Cal gathered the courage to ask Hakim about it. “What happened to him?”
“The king has sentenced him to beheading.”
Cal took a dry gulp. “What did he do?”
“He was the king’s manicurist. He was accused of trimming His Majesty’s nails too short.”
“Holy Moley. Talk about capricious justice.”
Hakim muttered quietly. “It is all a farce. The king is paranoid. He sees enemies everywhere. We are all doomed. Until the revolution comes.” He knelt on the floor and bowed down, calling out some prayer to Allah. The other prisoners around the room got down on their knees and joined him in his prostration. Overwhelmed by his vulnerability, and feeling starkly left out, Cal knelt down with Hakim and imitated his movements. Cal had been raised Greek Orthodox, but he really only kept up with religion for the sake of family tradition. Given the circumstances, how could praying to a Muslim god hurt?
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