Circle Around the Sun

by M. D. Johnson

  She told her mother she had to leave for Paris on 9/11 government business, having made sufficient calls to her office in the United States and received enough responses to legitimize her claim. It surprised her how easy it was to lie. Her mother believed her without question and followed the instructions of her husband to make arrangements for Sinead and herself to return home.

  Saying goodbye to her mother, Sinead and Margot Blatz, she promised to be back in Heidelberg in a few days and thereafter to return to Maryland sometime the following week. She contacted the Ansaris from Frankfurt Airport telling them she would be arriving in three hours. She then purchased a prepay cell phone and made a call to the Charge of Station at the British Embassy, requesting her cellular telephone number be given to her biological father, Yassir Shallal, wherever he may be in the continental United States. It was, she said, of a sensitive and confidential nature and concerned a terrorist cell.

  “This is Shallal,” a deep voice on the phone said half an hour later.

  She was immediately intimidated for some unknown reason by the sound of his British accent, and in her own strong Maryland drawl began, “I have news of one of your rogue assets in Afghanistan. I will be arriving in Paris shortly and staying at the Ritz. Meet me there in forty-eight hours.”

  “With whom am I speaking?”

  “Just your daughter! So be there, there’s a good fellow,” she said in an excellent impersonation of her mother. “No doubt you remember what I look like. If you don’t, no big deal, Daddy dearest. I’m sure we’ll stand out next to the locals.” She hung up and boarded her flight.

  Paris, Haley observed, was miserable as hell in the winter. Rain drizzled down as Haley entered the luxury apartment building. The doorman assisted her out of the rain and into the lobby, calling upstairs for the Ansaris to approve her entering the inner section of the building. Security was unusually tight, even for Paris with its high Islamic population. Haley flashed her best smile as her brother’s grandfather opened the door to his spacious apartment and greeted her, kissing both cheeks Euro-style.

  “My dear, what could be so urgent that it’s brought you here from the United States?”

  “Monsieur Ansari,” she began in Pashto, “It concerns my brother.”

  “Please, I am your grandfather too. Have I not always treated you both equally?” he asked her, leading her into the elevator to the third floor.

  “Yes sir, you have. But again, I am here because of Masud.”

  He looked both ways as he left the elevator as if anticipating an attack, then ushered her into the apartment where his wife was waiting. A tall, handsome, black man, possibly Egyptian or Sudanese was occupying a large, comfortable looking antique chair. He stared at Haley and rose immediately to introduce himself.

  “Hello. I’m Idris Farrukh, British Embassy.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said with a grin, “Surely not with a name like Idris Farrukh.”

  “Trust me, the firm is an equal opportunity employer.”

  “Hallah! How nice it is to see you!” The elegant woman in the black Balmain sweater dress kissed her cheek. ”Do sit down. I’ll ring for tea.”

  The years had been kind to the Ansaris. Masud was still an attractive man, although a little heavier and his wife had hardly changed at all from the way Haley remembered her. Humera Ansari’s hair was pinned up severely in a chignon and her style and sense of dress was as usual flawless. The only adornment the older woman wore was a diamond starburst pin coupled with an amber silk scarf that was loosely knotted at the neck, then flowing over her shoulder. She was utterly beautiful. Haley, on the other hand, was wearing jeans and an L .L. Bean sweater, a black leather jacket and combat boots. Hair disheveled, she felt very out of place. She accepted the offer of mint tea gratefully.

  “You can speak freely in front of Idris. He is here officially, as our grandson is a British Subject. I contacted him immediately after you rang. I knew his father, he was a physician in London when we were assigned there in the sixties. I thought he would be the best person to confide in if something was really amiss with Masud.”

  “We’re rather like an extended family after all these years,” Idris added. “Hallah! Such a pretty name.”

  “Yes, it means fast or nimble. I spell it with two L’s, not one. Everyone calls me Haley.”

  “Two L’s like the Jewish sweet bread?”

  “Absolutely,” she replied, taking a liking to this young man immediately. “Sweet just like me.”

  “My brother Masud is working as a doctor in Afghanistan. He’s attached to a Red Cross or Red Crescent backed clinic near Enjil that was once under the supervision of a family friend named Dr. Atiya Shah. Atiya was recently kidnapped and murdered. My brother is no longer safe and I want guarantees that he will be able to leave the country without a problem, should he so desire. Here’s the problem; he met with his father, who is now a friend or advisor to Osama bin Laden, which is the kiss of death as far as the U.S. and British Governments are concerned. My brother has an American Green Card but still has, as is allowed him, British Nationality. One cannot give that up, so I hear. The Americans want nothing to do with him as he’s a Brit, unless he shows up Green Card in hand on their doorstep, and the British are forgetting about him altogether. I don’t want him to be classified as a terrorist sympathizer! After all, what was he supposed to do when he heard from the father he hasn’t seen for years?”

  “But my dear, Ghulam is dead,” his father said.

  “He’s very much alive, Grandfather Ansari,” Haley replied.

  Humera Ansari burst into heartbreaking sobs. “All these years and my son is alive? Not a word from him, just whispers from other people that he is not dead. Now you tell me your brother has seen him? He lives?”

  “Very much so,” Haley went on nervously, not knowing what to expect with her next revelation, “In fact he sent cell phone pictures of Ghulam and his family to my step-father, who was waiting for him in Pakistan. Dad emailed them to me. I’ve got my lap-top with me if you’d like to see them.”

  With minutes she set up her computer and there on the screen, though the cell phone’s 320 x 240 resolution producing a somewhat blurred image, was a quite recognizable Ghulam Ansari with his pregnant teenage wife, his daughter Zahida, and her family. “This is your granddaughter, and her son,” Haley continued, “whom I’ve never met. Her son Amahl is, as we speak on his way to Pakistan with another doctor. They left the area, as bin Laden also felt it was unsafe for them once he fled to safety.”

  Haley identified the others as best as she could remember from the phone conversation with Harrison. “I believe,” she said, “this beautiful girl Haleema is Mason’s step-mother, although she’s actually young enough to be his daughter. I understand that she is a daughter of none other than Osama bin Laden, which makes us all in a manner of speaking, related to the most dangerous man in the world! Isn’t that special?” she added sarcastically.

  “What? Are you sure?” Idris Farrukh stared at them all incredulously.

  “All of this information is based on conversations with my step-father in Pakistan by cell phone. Let’s get real here, every damn security service around had to be monitoring his conversations. So they know this already. My point is, my only brother is going to be left or lost in Afghanistan with a bunch of marauding pre-historic warlords fighting over the spoils of this desolate bloody place and no one will offer him sanctuary!”

  “Does you brother wish to return to either the United States or Great Britain?”

  “My brother doesn’t know what he wants, he’s a romantic,” she said, quoting the term she had often heard her mother use when she described her son.

  “You mean an idealist?”

  “Yes, Idris, I do. He thinks he’s Lawrence of freakin’ Arabia!”

  “What do you expect anyone to do if he’s reluctant to return?”

  “Here’s my plan,” she said in hushed tones, bringing them all together around the tabl
e, and quietly sipping her tea.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-EIGHT

  Haley checked into the luxurious Paris Ritz on Place Vendome. She remembered its ambience from her childhood. There was no other place where she felt so pampered and cared for. At this miserable time in her life Haley Agar felt she deserved nothing but the best and so she had made the reservations from Heidelberg in what her mother considered to be the best hotel in the world.

  She checked her messages on arriving. There were three from Yassir Shallal. Shallal knew the owner of the Paris Ritz, the much maligned Mohammed al Fayed, who was still fighting the British Government to release the records surrounding the untimely death of his oldest son, Dodi who had perished in the fatal car crash that also killed Diana, Princess of Wales. Shallal had tried everything in his power to help him, going so far as to initiate Fayed’s British Citizenship, but all to no avail. It appeared the British Government was offended by the tenacious Egyptian who now owned, among other things the grand Harrods Department store and a football club, and who had continued to rub their noses in his awesome financial success. “More power to him,” Haley said to herself when she saw the suite she had reserved. True luxury! What was it Harrison used to extol constantly…? “A good hotel is like a good woman. Reliable, comfortable and easy to live with!” There is no doubt I could get very used to this, she thought, observing the champagne on ice in a silver bucket awaiting her arrival and the white roses beautifully arranged throughout the suite. There was Shalimar cologne in full sized bottles with all the matching accessories in the bathroom. She admired the luxury of the marble fireplaces and crystal chandeliers hanging from the cathedral ceilings. There were even gold swan fixtures in the bath room, perfect down to the towel warmers. But best of all, there were spectacular views from each window in the entire suite. The staff had turned down the bed, unpacked her new nighties and left delectable Ritz chocolates on her pillow. No wonder the British hated this guy. This was opulence, and the British hated luxury. Decadence was decidedly not ‘stiff upper lip’.

  In the aftermath of her reverie, Haley telephoned her biological father, Tony Shallal, who invited her to dinner. They met in the Vendome Bar amidst the rich oak paneling and plush reddish amber divans. He spotted her immediately. She was taller than he expected, dressed elegantly in a short black Peruvian textile dress with an impressive Pima Jacquard shawl in an exotic Middle Eastern design. Haley looked utterly stunning and Shallal was very proud. It was the first time she had spoken with him extensively, and their initial meeting at first went quite well. He was impressed by what she had become, even without his help and he learned, albeit begrudgingly, that his daughter was an articulate, intelligent lawyer who loved her job with the National Transportation Safety Board. There had, she’d explained without malice or embarrassment, been a failed marriage, and she wasn’t involved with anyone seriously at present. But mostly what he learned was that she loved her family dearly, that despite her brother being the eldest she had always felt responsible for him and that she adored her step-father and worshipped her mother. Tony Shallal recognized that Haley, being cut from same cloth as her mother, would certainly have frequent arguments with Emily, due to the obvious similarities of their nature.

  They talked much of Emily and how she was both admired and feared by her children. Haley pointed out how difficult it was being Emily’s daughter. She went on to explain how she had, for the most part, been in competition with Emily’s accomplishments, not knowing until recently how very fragile her mother was underneath the façade of Earth Mother. Haley reminisced back to the day she begged her mother not to volunteer at school anymore because Emily had been cited in the school yearbook more times than she. Such was the level of her mother’s volunteer involvement. She also told of the time she returned home after a three day weekend with a video of her sky-diving adventure, presenting it to her mother with the comment that this was the only thing mother hadn’t preceded her with. She remembered how surprised she was when, Emily, bursting with pride had telephone all her friends, bragging about Haley’s spirited descent from the plane. All of this gave Shallal remarkable insight into Haley’s home life and just what had given her the foundation to succeed. Haley as an adult realized finally that Emily had worked at being super-mom to ensure that her children never felt different from others. Emily had made certain that in their world everyone would know who they were and how shielded they would be from any form of cultural or racial inequality. By example, Emily had forced her children to compete in the real world by not using their ethnicity as a reason to be second best or take handouts, yet she had still maintained their Middle Eastern background. Emily had instilled in them the ability to succeed because of who they were, not despite of it, and they had both done her proud. As a result, Haley believed in family, she explained, and that was precisely why she was here. She was calling in the debt. Shallal asked if her mother knew she was enlisting his help and she replied honestly, urging him to say, if asked, that any action was of his own volition or the rift between Haley and her mother would be irreconcilable.

  He then dropped the bomb! “My dear, I feel it is necessary to let you know that your brother is in Afghanistan as a result of my initiation and your mother knows this already. For reasons best left unsaid, I made the connections for him to be there.”

  “But why?”

  “We needed someone there we could trust and that’s as far as I can go.”

  “And you’re going to let him stay there, not pull him out now that the Allied Forces are bombing the hell out of everything? I understand it’s a free-fire zone now!” She raised her voice slightly, trying not to alarm the other people in the restaurant.

  “No, it’s not at that level yet,” he answered, trying to calm her down.

  “C’mon Shallal! Surely you know that Atiya Shah the doctor who used to be our nanny was abducted and murdered. Mason has been working at her clinic.”

  “That saddens me, Hallah. She was a good and kind person. The Mujahideen insurgents have no principle. It’s a state of anarchy there right now.”

  “It wasn’t the Mujahideen or rival tribal factions, Shallal, it was your lot!”

  “What are you saying?” he asked her curtly. “We only have an elite force in Enjil, a small group to ferret out al-Qaeda supporters.”

  “My dad has seen a video that was dropped at the clinic. I understand that Mason has seen this as well and is devastated by its content. Atiya, may she rest in peace, was brutally raped and eventually shot. She was in a prison they call ’The Harem’. Mason is looking for blood, that’s why I’ve come to you. He has to be brought back before he really harms someone who’s very big in your organization.”

  “Can you identify the person?” he questioned her in a soft but firm voice.

  “I can tell you all I have heard, none of which I have verified and all of which is third party,” Haley went on “She was abducted on her way to get supplies. She was questioned or rather interrogated by a British dignitary who looked a little like an Arab and was very well-dressed. Ridiculously so, I understand; he even wore cologne. High pitched voice, easily recognizable. My Dad had a good idea who it was just listening to the tape. This bastard filmed it and he can be heard giving the instructions to the others to position her and the like. That vile creature! My Dad claims that he met the son of a bitch years ago at the Embassy. He didn’t like his voice then, he’s kind of anti-Anglo anyway, being a Scot. The guy is the type who says things like ‘faffing about’ or ‘jolly good show’, all those twit Brit sayings that went out of fashion in the fifties. But he is around your age. Dad will explain this all to Mother at some point. She’s not doing well over the death of Atiya. Mother blames herself for this because she’s been financing the clinic for years, draining off funds that were sent to Ghulam Ansari decades ago that she somehow circumvented. The point is, Atiya died brutally and for no apparent reason other than her lack of useable information. She had committed no crime and would have b
een released if they hadn’t gotten rid of her and thereby able to identify your fellow. One of the guards smuggled out the only copy of the rape tape, and your boy is having a shit fit as a result, or so we hear. I don’t know who the guard works for but he tells us there were photographs as well and they have now become public and are being circulated in the markets to rouse the people. The people that she helped are very angry and will not cooperate with the Allied Forces as a result. I’m not a diplomat or a politician, but this will obviously have a bad effect on trying to bring peace to Afghanistan. Who will place their trust in a military force that arbitrarily picks up innocent civilians and ‘offs’ them. That’s terrorism, state sponsored or state controlled but that’s what it is, as you well know. You guys are sending these poor people right back to the Taliban. Taking someone like Atiya into any type of custody completely sabotages allied support. One wonders,” she said, adding a little more to the intrigue, “if it wasn’t intentional. You know as well as I do that there have been rumors going on about that guy for years.”

  “I assume you are referring to Wilfred de Crecy,” Shallal offered the name willingly, confident that it could be no one else.

  “You bet,” his daughter responded, “so here’s the deal. I’ll get you a copy of the video. You get my brother out of danger.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Not good enough, Daddy dearest. You’ll give me your word, or I’ll go to the media with it and blow all of this out of the water. I’ll tell the world how you all took advantage of my brother’s gullibility and hung him out to dry without any cover or even training.”

  “He was trained!”

  “So was my mother, so I’ve been told, and you had your own moments of doubt during the period. After all, you taught some of her classes, didn’t you? The romantic leader in heavy disguise using the name of a poet?”