Layover in Dubai

by Dan Fesperman

  But now he could comfort himself with the thought that in a few minutes he would be speaking to Nanette—a familiar voice from saner times, calm and efficient. She would arrange for his safe passage to New York. He heaved a great sigh of relief.

  “What’s wrong?” Sharaf asked.

  “I’d like to make that phone call now, if you don’t mind.”

  Sharaf assumed a grave expression and gingerly placed his cell phone on the counter.

  “I keep my promises, and you are welcome to telephone whoever you wish. But there is something I need to show you first. Here.”

  He pulled a folded paper from his jacket.

  “Your arrest report. I obtained it this afternoon, despite Lieutenant Assad’s best efforts to hide it. Read it carefully, please.”

  Most of it was a rehash of what he already knew—the images from the security camera, the erroneous police spin on why Nanette had nudged him at the door, and so on.

  “I told you. It’s a misunderstanding.”

  “Please. All the way to the end. There at the bottom. See?”

  There was a box containing information about the filer of the complaint. Inside it was a crisp signature with bold loops and slashing verticals, handwriting that was the very model of brisk efficiency. Nanette Weaver, his would-be savior, had filed the charge.

  “She did this?”

  “First thing that morning. Before you were even awake.”

  “Why?”

  “The charitable interpretation would be that she wanted you to be moved out of harm’s way under police protection. Considering all that has happened since, I’m not inclined toward charity, are you?”

  “No.”

  Sam shook his head. He felt lost, confused, and then angry.

  “It doesn’t make sense. Yesterday she couldn’t wait to get me out of the country. And now—”

  “Now she wishes to not only keep you here, but also to make sure you are unseen and unheard, and unavailable to answer any more questions from people like me.”

  “But I don’t know anything. Or nothing more than what I’ve already told her.”

  “She obviously thinks you do. Or maybe she is convinced you have wronged her in some way. Have you?”

  “Not enough to deserve this.”

  “But something, yes?”

  Sam shrugged. They had reached uncomfortable territory, items that so far he had hidden from the police.

  “Maybe.”

  “You’d better tell me.”

  So he did—the whole story of how he had been roped in to keeping tabs on Charlie Hatcher, only to become so charmed that he let his guard down and Charlie was killed.

  “I was sure she was going to fire me. Instead she was completely sympathetic. Or seemed to be. She even, well, don’t take this wrong because of the arrest report, but I’d swear that for a while she was sort of coming on to me. I was drunk, yes. But I’m not stupid, and as soon as she shut things down I left right away. You have to believe me.”

  “I believe you. She was setting you up. That little trick of hers in the doorway—dropping her key card, then nudging your chest. A very clever performance for the security camera.”

  “You’re right. It must have been. But why? That’s what I still can’t figure.”

  “I suspect that she and Lieutenant Assad have worked together before. He used to be with the customs police, and was in charge of cracking down on the transshipment of counterfeit pharmaceuticals, which I know is of great interest to Pfluger Klaxon. Beyond that? Perhaps you said something that raised an alarm. Something that seemed meaningless to you, but was significant to her.”

  Sam shook his head.

  “I was doing whatever I could to help find out who killed Charlie. I even—”

  He realized he was about to incriminate himself.

  “You even what?”

  Sam hesitated.

  “Please, Mr. Keller. In case you haven’t noticed, I am all you have left.”

  He took the plunge.

  “When I first called her from the York, right after Charlie was killed, she told me to take his BlackBerry.”

  “Before the police arrived?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you?”

  “It wasn’t there. It turned up later when they searched his room. But he did have a datebook. So I took it.”

  “Did you give it to Lieutenant Assad?”

  “No. I gave it to Nanette.”

  Sharaf frowned.

  “Then her actions make no sense. Unless … Did you look inside it? More to the point, did you tell Miss Weaver that you looked inside it?”

  Sam frowned in concentration.

  “I did. I mentioned he’d written a few names and numbers. That was right before she invited me to her room. I was delivering the datebook when she dropped her key card.”

  “Meaning she began her charade after she learned you had seen the contents. In that case, it is very important to know what you saw.”

  “Like I said, a few names and numbers. None of it made much sense. But I wrote it all down on some hotel stationery.”

  Sharaf brightened. “The piece of paper in your wallet?”

  “You searched my wallet?”

  “Of course. I am a policeman. But one more question, a very important one. When you wrote these things down did you summarize, or use shorthand?”

  “No. It’s verbatim. I’m an auditor. We don’t take shortcuts.”

  Sharaf beamed a fatherly smile, as if Sam had just brought home a perfect report card.

  “That, at least, gives us a starting point. I will begin calling those numbers as soon as we’re home. Perhaps I will even pay a visit or two before the night is over.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Sam said.

  The words were out before he had time to think. It was partly because his anger with Nanette was coming to a boil. He was also realizing that simply hiding was no longer an option. He needed to fight back, and he had to do it here. Even if he made it safely back to New York, Nanette had probably spread enough poison to get him fired, or even jailed.

  Sharaf was having none of it.

  “I cannot allow it,” the policeman said. “Not with what you are up against. And I don’t just mean the Russians. I saw your Miss Weaver in action this afternoon.”

  “Where?”

  “CID headquarters. I was upstairs for a briefing. She was coming out of Assad’s office, and she looked me right in the eye, like she knew exactly what I was up to.”

  “She can have that effect. What did you say?”

  “Nothing of substance. We exchanged the customary pleasantries and she was on her way.”

  In truth they’d said more, but Sharaf didn’t want to elaborate, partly because their exchange had unsettled him more than he cared to admit. Her directness took him by surprise. Most males in her position would have offered a fake smile and an oily hint of a bribe, or, if they wanted to be threatening, a vague allusion to all the local clout at their disposal. None of that for Nanette. She got straight to the point.

  “Assad tells me you’re responsible for letting our Sam Keller go on the lam.”

  “You’ve been misinformed. The booking sergeant was in charge of his custody.”

  “Well, just so you know the gravity of the matter, Sam Keller stood idly by while a fellow associate got himself killed. And for all either of us knows, he was a participant in the affair. For good measure he then crossed the line sexually with a female superior, probably in an attempt to find out what I know. The sooner he is back in hand, the better for all of us, wouldn’t you agree?”

  With a lesser adversary Sharaf would have continued to play dumb. Using that approach with her seemed foolhardy, even dangerous. It wasn’t just that she represented a powerful corporation (although he knew that would have been sufficient grounds for the Minister), it was that he detected in her a keen and watchful intelligence, plus the patience to deploy it to maximum effect. What’s more, she seemed willin
g to use it toward any end, an advantage he would never enjoy.

  In addition, her manner was so convincing that for a moment he even entertained the thought that she might be telling the truth. After all, how much did he actually know about Sam Keller? Could the young man really be trusted? Maybe he had attacked this woman. Maybe he had cooperated with the men who’d killed Charlie Hatcher. Perhaps Nanette Weaver had information that could help him.

  But by then, Nanette Weaver had already turned on her heel and was heading for the door. Sharaf was on the verge of flagging her down when he noticed Assad watching eagerly from his office, and that was when he came to his senses. Assad’s stupid, leering grin gave away the whole sham, and Sharaf realized he had nearly been duped. A compliment to her talents, he supposed.

  “So you’ve seen firsthand what she’s like,” Sam said. “All the more reason you need my help.”

  “I cannot allow it,” Sharaf repeated. “If I put you at further risk we will both be in trouble. You are neither trained in this kind of work nor accustomed to its dangers.”

  “But I’m stuck here. With nowhere to go and no one to help me.”

  The remark cut deeply. There was no way Sam could have known it, but it was a direct echo from Sharaf’s bedtime reading of Crime and Punishment the night before, calling to mind a line uttered by a desperate drunk named Marmeladov:

  “Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?”

  As if sensing an opening, Sam pressed his case.

  “You’re forgetting that I’m an auditor. I’m trained to look for things that don’t fit. Outliers, anomalies. Particularly on the corporate side, which is Nanette’s strength.”

  “Maybe so,” Sharaf said. “But first we must find you safer quarters. For my sake as well as yours. Fortunately I know the very man who can help, and I am due to see him in the morning.”

  “Good enough,” Sam said. “Count me in.”

  “Then we had better get going, before one of us changes his mind.”

  12

  By the time Sharaf arrived at his favorite old haunt, Ali al-Futtaim had already selected seven dominoes and placed them in his wooden rack, ready for action. But Sharaf was in no mood for a game.

  “Leave your tiles in the boneyard, Ali. No time for that this morning. A life is at stake.”

  “Someone in your family?”

  “Someone under my protection. A foreigner.”

  Ali showed his disapproval by taking a domino from the rack and slapping it into play, a double-six that clicked loudly on the cool ceramic floor.

  “No foreigner takes precedence over our game,” he said. “Especially when you now trail me by three hundred dirhams. Choose your bones and make a move.”

  “Two hundred ninety dirhams, to be exact,” Sharaf said. He placed a forefinger on the lonely tile and shoved it toward Ali, like a tugboat nudging a premature departure back into the docks. He sipped the muddy coffee that had just been delivered by a young waiter, the boy knowing without asking that Sharaf liked his medium with a single sugar.

  “Seriously, Ali. There are urgent matters to discuss. I need your wisdom.”

  “My connections, you mean?”

  “Is there a difference?”

  Both men smiled, as they always did at such remarks. Ali motioned to the boy for tea, and he didn’t put his tile back into play.

  They were seated cross-legged on the floor at their usual spot at the Seaman’s Majlis, or meeting place, which was located in a once fine home with thick plastered walls, a rooftop parapet, and a crumbling wind tower along the banks of Dubai Creek. It was just around the bend from the wharf where, as boys, Ali and Sharaf had put to sea for pearling and smuggling. Like everyone there, they came for fellowship and conversation, removing their shoes at the door and hunkering down on rugs and cushions for card games and dominoes, while waiters delivered tea and coffee on trays of hammered brass.

  It was not a young crowd. Retirees, mostly. Old men whose skin had been stropped to leathery darkness by salt and sun. Sharaf’s single year of seagoing experience only marginally qualified him for admission, although no one would have begrudged the presence of a policeman. The warmth of his welcome had far more to do with the status of his friend. Ali had spent seven years on the water, commanding a smuggler’s boat during his final season—a big twin-engine sanbouk of varnished teak, owned by Sharaf’s father—back in the day when an illicit load of gold hidden in a cargo of dates turned a handsome profit in the port of Bombay. Sure, you might get caught by the Indian authorities, but as long as your own ruler viewed smuggling as business as usual, the only danger on the home front was that some waterfront snitch would report your departure to an Indian spy. That was how Ali, as a seventeen-year-old deckhand, once ended up having to swim ashore in Bombay after his ship was boarded by customs police. He then spent a week making his way cross-country and into Pakistan, where he finally boarded a cargo flight home from Karachi.

  Such resourcefulness was perfect training for his current job as manager of the Dubai Land Office. When he first joined up, the land office was a sleepy outpost where locals went to mark off plots for homes or dispute neighbors’ claims to a few scraggly date palms. Now it was the bustling nexus of Dubai’s most lucrative commerce. Builders, developers, financiers, and con artists of all nations flocked there to stake claims on the latest slice of boomtown wealth.

  The work obviously agreed with him. Ali was trim and relaxed, looking younger than Sharaf even though he was two years older. He carried himself elegantly in a long white kandoura, which made Sharaf feel frumpier than usual in his police greens. As if to soften the contrast, Sharaf always removed his beret when he met Ali at the majlis. It was also a signal to everyone in attendance that the cop was off duty, no matter what anyone there might say or do. What happened at the majlis stayed at the majlis.

  They met there once a week. Ali had always preferred this location over the better-known Fisherman’s Majlis on the beach in Umm Suqeim. For one thing, no one minded that he and Sharaf made taboo wagers on their dominoes. It was a carryover from deckhand days, when Ali taught Sharaf how to gamble against gold runners three times their age.

  Their meetings were often occasions for swapping favors in the local tradition of wasta. Ali sometimes needed help tidying up minor police matters for his moneyed contacts. To keep his own hands relatively clean, Sharaf always referred Ali to one of the Syrian or Egyptian cops with a reputation for reasonable prices. He had the good sense never to ask later about results, and Ali had the manners never to mention them.

  In return, Sharaf sometimes availed himself of aid or information from Ali’s vast network of developers, bankers, and builders. And at the moment he needed Ali’s help in keeping Sam Keller out of harm’s way. So he described his predicament, and even mentioned his recent secret correspondences with the Minister, whom Ali had also assisted on a few occasions.

  “And the Minister?” Ali said. “You say he does not know you are hiding this fugitive?”

  “Please. Don’t say ‘fugitive.’ I’m on shaky enough ground as it is.”

  “This ‘falsely accused individual,’ then. Does that make you feel better? Ah, Anwar. Only you would take a case like this, and it is because you are just like a Bedouin.”

  “A Bedouin? How so?”

  “In the most important way of all. Tell me, do you know why the Bedouin move around so much?”

  “For the grazing. That’s what they would tell you.”

  Ali waved his hand dismissively.

  “A convenient pretext. The real reason is because they are too lazy to clean up after themselves, even though they are masters at making a mess. The moment they find some new place and pitch their tents, they begin to soil it, them and their stinking animals. When it finally becomes too filthy and clotted with goat shit even for them, they strike the tents and move on. And that is what you do. You make a mess by stirring up a lot of the wrong peopl
e, then you strike your tent and move on to the next case, because you are never willing or able to clean up behind yourself. The problem, Anwar, is that the desert is huge, practically limitless, but your department isn’t. Soon there will be nowhere left to pitch your tent.”

  “I never knew you were such a snob about the Bedouin.”

  “You’re ignoring my point.”

  “Where do you get these stupid theories, Ali? From the Egyptian you pay to change court dates, or the Palestinian who fixes your friends’ speeding tickets? I don’t make messes, I clean them up. Can you help me with this young man or not?”

  Ali grinned and slid his double-six back into the starting position.

  “Of course I can. Don’t worry. I will discreetly find someplace where he can stay awhile. We’ll have him resettled by sundown. But tell me—not until after you’ve selected your seven dominoes from the boneyard, of course—what level of camouflage does he require? Because some of the more secure places I have in mind, well, I am not so sure he would find them much more to his liking than a jail cell.”

  Sharaf obliged Ali by selecting seven tiles. He placed them on a small wooden rack that kept Ali from seeing them, then chose a three-six combination and positioned it endwise to the middle of Ali’s double-six.

  “For now it doesn’t need to be so extreme,” Sharaf said.

  “In that case I can probably have a place lined up by …” Ali checked his watch, a massive Breguet with a jeweled rim. “Let us say three o’clock. I will send a driver to fetch him. A sedan with smoked windows, so he can relax and not be seen. Plenty of places to choose from. In fact, there are all sorts of new apartments lying vacant right now. Some of them don’t even have an assigned address yet, that’s how fast things are moving. Far too fast, if you ask me.”

  “You are worried?”

  “When properties are turning over fourteen times before a single tenant moves in, I begin to get indigestion. Or maybe it is from all the truffles and caviar the developers feed me at their groundbreakings. If I were you, Sharaf, I would not buy a new house anytime soon, no matter what Amina wants. That goes double for your sons.”