Camel Club 01 - The Camel Club

by David Baldacci

  “That is because they change. Ramadan is celebrated in the ninth month of the Islamic year. It was then that Muhammad received the first revelation of the Qur’an from the angel Gabriel. But Muslims use the lunar calendar, so Ramadan comes earlier every year. My parents have celebrated Ramadan during winter and also during summer.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want to celebrate Christmas in July. And I can’t imagine fasting like that. Djamila, it can’t be healthy for you.”

  “Actually, it is very healthy. And the women with child or nursing, they do not have to fast. The sawm, how you say, the fasting, it purges the body of bad thoughts. It is a cleansing, focusing time of life. I enjoy it very much, and I do not feel hungry at all. I eat the sahur before dawn, and after sunset I can eat the meal. It is not much of a sacrifice.”

  Djamila didn’t add that one American meal typically equaled three of hers. “Then at the end of Ramadan we celebrate. It is called ‘id al-fitr. We wear new clothes and exchange nice meals and visit with our friends and family. It is very much fun.”

  “Well, I still think it’s unhealthy.” Lori Franklin looked out the window. “It’s a beautiful day, so why don’t you drive the boys to the park and let them burn some energy up? That way the house will be a little quieter when I get home.”

  “I will take them, miss. I like to drive very much.”

  “Women aren’t allowed to drive in your country, are they?”

  Djamila hesitated and then said, “It is true that a woman cannot drive a car in Riyadh, but that is just a local law that has nothing to do with Islam.”

  Franklin looked at her with pity. “You don’t have to make excuses. There were lots of things you weren’t allowed to do over there. I know. I watch the news. Forced marriages and men having lots of wives. And you had to wear all those veils and things to cover up your body. And no education. You have no rights at all.”

  Djamila looked down for a moment so Franklin wouldn’t see the resentment reflected in her features. When she looked back up, she forced a smile and said in a positive tone, “What you say is not Islam that I know or that most Muslims know. Muslim women are not forced to marry. It is a contract between man and woman, and also between their families. If a divorce happens, God forbid, the woman she is entitled to much property from the man. This is her right by the law, you understand. And a man may have more than one wife, but only if he can support them all equally. Unless a man he is very rich, he only has one wife. And Islam says all should learn, men and women. I receive a good education.

  “As for dress, the Qur’an does not say wear this or that. It tells both men and women to be modest and righteous in their dress. God is loving. He knows if one believes in him, that person will make the right choices. Some women choose the veil and the abaya, what you call a body cloak. Others do not.”

  “Well, it’s very different here, Djamila. In America you can do anything you want to. Anything. That’s what makes this country so great.”

  “Yes, I have heard that. And yet sometimes is doing everything you want to do really that good?”

  Franklin smiled. “Absolutely, Djamila, especially if you don’t get caught.”

  “If you say so,” Djamila replied, but she didn’t believe any of it.

  “Women really run this country, Djamila, we just let men think they do.”

  “But women in America, they were not allowed to vote until the twentieth century, is that not so?”

  Franklin looked a little put off by this comment but then waved her hand dismissively. “That’s ancient history. Let’s just say we’ve made up for lost time. And the sooner the Muslim women figure that out, the better.”

  Djamila chose not to respond to this. She had been instructed not to address such issues with her employer, and yet sometimes she could not help herself.

  Franklin said, “I wish you’d reconsider and come live with us. This house is huge.”

  “Thank you. But for now I would like to keep our arrangement the same.”

  “Okay, whatever you want. I can’t afford to lose you.”

  She blew kisses at her sleeping family and left. As Franklin pulled out of the driveway, she glanced at the white van parked there. It had never occurred to her that it was somewhat odd that a woman who before coming to the United States had never driven a car would have shown up for a new job with her very own van and valid driver’s license. However, Franklin already had far too much to occupy her mind than to worry about such a trivial incongruity.

  She was in fact not going to play tennis or cards at her country club. In the small bag she carried was a negligee of breathtaking sheerness. She was already wearing the matching thong, and she had seen no reason to wear a bra for what she would be engaged in doing that afternoon. Her only problem would be convincing her very young lover not to tear them off her body.

  Djamila went to the window and watched her employer drive away in her little Mercedes sports car. On one afternoon when George Franklin took the day off to spend some time with his sons, Djamila followed Lori Franklin to the country club, where she got into the car of a man who was not her husband. Djamila followed them to a motel. She suspected that that was where the woman was heading now. After all, it was a bit difficult to play tennis without a tennis racket, and Franklin’s was still hanging on a peg in the garage.

  Men were clearly not kings in America, Djamila had concluded after only a few weeks in the States. They were fools. And their women were whores.

  After her charges’ nap she took them to the park, where they played to exhaustion. Djamila smiled as she watched the oldest boy take great pleasure in running circles around his brothers. Djamila wanted sons, lots of them. And then her smile faded. She doubted that she would ever live to become a mother.

  She fed the boys snacks from a picnic basket she’d prepared. After that, Djamila had to chase down the oldest boy, Timmy, to retrieve her cell phone and car keys from him. He’d done this before whenever she left her purse in a place he could reach. She didn’t mind; all children were curious. She loaded the boys into the van, where they immediately fell asleep. Then she took out her rug and performed her midafternoon prayer next to the van. She had brought a small bottle of water and a pan with her to perform her ablution.

  While the boys slept, she drove all around Brennan, Pennsylvania. As had often been the case in this area, the town existed because the railroad gods had long ago decided to put a station stop here. These trains carried some passengers but mostly coal and coke to the steel mills and the eastern ports. Now Brennan was rebuilding itself into a posh suburb of Pittsburgh. The town had quaint shops and restaurants, regentrified homes and a sparkling new country club.

  Djamila stopped often to take pictures with a small digital camera no bigger than her index finger. As she did so, she spoke into a small recorder, describing things that should have held little importance to a foreign-born nanny shepherding three slumbering boys around; however, all of it interested her. Then she covered the outlying areas, paying particular attention to road configurations.

  Finally, she pulled up in front of a beautiful fieldstone estate that was set well back from the road and behind a low wall of locally quarried stone. Such a pretty home, she thought, but far too big. In America everything was too big: from the meals to the houses to the cars to the people. The only things that weren’t big were the clothes. Djamila had seen more butts, breasts and bellies in the last few months than she had seen in all the preceding years of her life. It disgusted her.

  Give Djamila the jilbab and a khimar to cover her body, give her even three other wives to compete with, over such “freedom.”

  She frowned as she glanced at the sleeping children. Yes, her employers disgusted her with their money and loveless marriage. Even the children in the backseat in one sense disgusted her because they would grow up one day and believe they ruled the world simply because they were Americans. She put the van in gear and drove off.

  Djamila would report in ton
ight on her computer, at the movie site. According to her memorized schedule, the chat room for this night dealt with a film called To Kill a Mockingbird. It was a strange name for a movie, but Americans, she knew, were strange. Yes, strange, violent and, most frightening of all, completely unpredictable.

  CHAPTER

  16

  OLIVER STONE HAD RETURNED to his cottage and attempted sleep, but the night’s extraordinary events rendered that act impossible. He built a small fire to battle the chill in the air and sat and read until dawn, though his thoughts continually wandered to the death of Patrick Johnson. Or rather, murder. Then he made some coffee and had a bit of breakfast. After that, he spent the next several hours attending to his duties in the cemetery. As he weeded, cut the grass, cleared debris and cleaned off aged tombstones, he focused on how close he and his friends had come to losing their lives last night. It was a feeling he’d had many times earlier in his life, and he’d learned to deal with it. Now it would not go away so easily.

  After he’d finished his work, he went inside the cottage and showered. Looking at his appearance in the mirror, Stone made a decision; only he didn’t have the necessary tools to implement that decision. Caleb and Reuben would be at work by now. And he just didn’t trust Milton to do the job properly.

  There was really only one alternative. He headed to Chinatown.

  “Adelphia?” Stone called out. It was forty-five minutes later, and he was standing outside her apartment, which was situated over a dry cleaners. “Adelphia?” he said again. He wondered if she’d already gone out. Then he heard approaching footsteps and Adelphia opened the door, dressed in a pair of black pants and a long sweater, her hair pulled back in a bun. She looked at him crossly.

  “How you know where I live?” she demanded.

  “You told me.”

  “Oh.” She scowled at him. “How did meeting go?” she said irritably.

  “Actually, there were a few surprises.”

  “What is it you want, Oliver?”

  Stone cleared his throat and launched into his lie. “I’ve thought about your advice about my appearance. So I was wondering if you could give me a haircut. I suppose I could do it myself, but I’m afraid the result would be worse than how I look right now.”

  “It is not so bad you look.” This comment seemed to slip out before the lady realized it. She coughed self-consciously and then gazed at him in mild surprise. “So, you take my advice?”

  He nodded. “I’m going to get some new clothes too. Well, new in the sense that they’ll be new to me. And shoes.”

  She looked at him suspiciously. “And the beard? That thing that makes you look to be, how you say, that Rumpelstein person.”

  “Yes, the beard will go too. But I can shave that off myself.”

  She waved dismissively. “No, I do. I have dreamed many times of disappearing that beard.” She motioned him into her apartment. “Come, come, we do it now. Before your mind it is changed.”

  Stone followed her in and looked around. The inside of Adelphia’s apartment was very clean and organized, which surprised him. The woman’s personality seemed far too impulsive and fractured to manufacture such order.

  She led him into the bathroom and pointed to the toilet. “Sit.”

  He did so while she busied herself with getting necessary instruments. From where he was sitting Stone could see a shelf in the hallway that held books on many subjects, a few in languages Stone did not recognize, though he had spent many years traveling the world.

  “Do you know all those languages, Adelphia?” he asked, pointing at the books.

  She stopped assembling her tools and looked at him suspiciously. “And why would books like that I keep if I could not read them? Does my apartment look so big that I keep things I no use?”

  “I see your point.”

  She draped a sheet over him and knotted it behind his neck.

  “How much cutting is it you want?”

  “Over the ears and off the neck will do nicely.”

  “You are sure of this?”

  “Absolutely sure.”

  She started clipping. Finished, she combed his hair into place, gelling down a few stubborn cowlicks. Next she attacked his thick beard with her shears, whittling it down quickly. Then picked up another object.

  “It is this I use on my legs,” she said, holding up a lady’s razor. “But it will do too for your face.”

  When he saw what he looked like in a small mirror Adelphia handed him after she’d finished, Stone almost didn’t recognize his reflection. He rubbed at facial skin he had not seen in years. With the bundle of long, scraggly hair and beard gone he noted that he had a long forehead with stacks of wrinkles and a smooth, slender neck.

  “It is a nice face you have,” Adelphia said sincerely. “And your neck is like baby’s skin. Me, I have got no nice neck. It is old woman’s. Like the turkey. ”

  “I think you have very pleasing features, Adelphia,” he said. Stone was still looking at his face in the mirror, so he didn’t see her blush and quickly look down.

  “You have visitor last night.”

  Stone glanced up at her. “A visitor. Who?”

  “A man in suit. His name it is Fort, or is something like that. I not remember exactly. He say to tell you of his coming by.”

  “Fort?”

  “I see him talking to those men, the ones across the street. You know him, Oliver. The Secret men.”

  “The Secret Service. Do you mean Ford? Agent Alex Ford?”

  Adelphia pointed at him. “That is it. A big man he is. Taller than you.”

  “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “Only that he say hello.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Do I look like keeper of time? I tell you he say hello.” She hesitated. “I think it is midnight he come by. It is nothing else I know.”

  His mind now preoccupied with this latest news, Stone hurriedly rose and took off the sheet. “I would like to pay you,” he began, but she waved this offer away. “There must be something I can do to return this kindness.”

  She glanced at him sharply. “There is a thing you can do.” She paused and he stared at her curiously. “We get the café sometime.” She added with a scowl, “When you not have big meeting in middle of night.”

  Stone was a little taken aback but decided what was the harm in talk and coffee? “All right, Adelphia. I guess it’s time we did things like that.”

  “Then that is good.” She put out her hand for him to shake. He was surprised by how strong her long fingers were.

  As Stone walked along the streets a few minutes later, he thought about his late night visitor. Alex Ford had been closer to Stone than any of the other Secret Service agents. So his visit could be simply a coincidence.

  Stone headed to a nearby Goodwill store. There, with the money Reuben had given him, he purchased two pairs of dungarees, a pair of sturdy walking shoes, socks, shirts, a sweater and a faded blue blazer. The clerk, whom he knew well, threw in two pairs of brand-new underwear.

  “You look years younger, Oliver,” the man commented.

  “I feel it. I really do,” he answered. He returned to Lafayette Park with his purchases to make a quick change inside his tent. However, as he started to enter his little sanctum, a voice called out.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going, bud?”

  Stone looked up to see a uniformed Secret Service agent staring at him. “That tent’s already occupied, so move on.”

  Stone replied, “Officer, this is my tent.”

  The guard walked over to him. “Stone? Is that really you?”

  Stone smiled. “A little less hair and a little less beard, but, yes, it’s me.”

  The guard shook his head. “Who you been to see, Elizabeth Arden?”

  “And who is this Elizabeth woman?” a female voice cried out.

  They both turned to see Adelphia striding toward them and looking at Stone accusingly. She was still d
ressed in the same clothes as earlier, but her hair was now down around her shoulders.

  “Don’t get your conspiracy theories in a wad, Adelphia,” the guard said playfully. “It’s a spa where you go to get all pretty. My wife went there once, and let me tell you, for what it cost, I’ll take the woman just the way she is.” He chuckled and walked off, as Adelphia edged up to Stone.

  “You would like to go for a café now and talk?” she asked.

  “I would love to but I have to meet someone. However, when I get back.”

  “We will see,” Adelphia replied in a disappointed tone. “I too have things to do. I no can wait for you all the time. I have job.”

  “No, of course not,” Stone said, but the woman had turned and stormed off.

  Stone slipped inside his tent, changed and put the rest of his newly acquired clothes in his knapsack. He wandered through the park until he found what he was looking for in a trash can: the morning newspaper. There was nothing in the paper about a body being discovered on Roosevelt Island; it had obviously occurred too late to make the morning edition. He found a payphone and called Caleb in his office at the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress.

  “Have you heard anything, Caleb? There’s nothing as yet in the papers.”

  “I’ve had the news on all morning. All they’re saying is that Roosevelt Island is closed due to an investigation of an undisclosed nature. Can you come down here around one o’clock so we can talk about it?”

  Stone agreed and added, “You’ve taken precautions?”

  “Yes, and so have the others. Reuben’s at work but he called on a break. I spoke with Milton. He’s staying inside his house. He’s really terrified.”

  “Fear is a natural reaction to what we all saw.” And then Stone remembered. “Uh, Caleb, you might not recognize me immediately. I’ve changed my appearance somewhat. I felt it necessary because I was the most likely to have been spotted by the killers.”

  “I understand, Oliver.”

  Stone hesitated and then added, “Since I’m fairly well presentable, would it be possible for me to meet you in the reading room instead of outside the building? I’ve always wanted to see the place, but didn’t want to, well, embarrass you at work.”