FOR JANET
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks, for help, critique, and guidance, to Emma Healey; my editor, Brendan Deneen; his assistant, Nicole Sohl; Farheen Ahmad; Louise Doughty; Peter Buckman; Greg Dinner; Elisabeth Anton; Mary Hardin; Claudia Devlin; Anne Aylor; and Campaspe Lloyd-Jacob.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Copyright
1
PARIS, 9 APRIL 2004
In the spring of 2004, Darius Osmani was disappeared.
In mid-April, in a black Volvo on the rue des Vieilles Boucheries, Hassan Tarkani and Calvin McCord, intelligence operatives, were talking money.
Calvin said, “You tell me what you get, I tell you what I get, one of us going to be unhappy. Trust me. That’s the way it works.”
They were parked without lights in the quatrième, between a shuttered café and a nineteenth-century apartment building. Streetlamps were already lit. In the rain, a pointillist halo surrounded the lights.
“Tell me,” said Hassan, “for the same work, will a man from poor country, will he get less money than a man from rich country?”
“Interesting question,” said Calvin. As part of his training, he’d spent a semester at Michigan State, studying issues in moral belief. “We’re talking ethics, I don’t know what to tell you. We’re talking practicalities, answer is yes. No question, rich guy gets more. ‘To those who have, it shall be given and they shall abound; from those who do not have, even what they have shall be taken away.’ That’s the Bible, right there.”
“This is Christian Bible?”
“That’s the one,” Calvin said.
Both Hassan and Calvin wore tight-fitting black caps, which were in fact ski masks, rolled to forehead height. Calvin, who had a low threshold for boredom, held a hip flask between his knees. He took a drink without making an offer to Hassan. By nationality Hassan was Pakistani; by religion, Muslim. Though Calvin had worked with Muslims who eased the pain with alcohol, his partner wasn’t among them. So far as Calvin knew.
Hassan turned on the car’s interior light to check a double photo—full face and profile—of a man in his late thirties. “What exactly has he done, this man?”
Calvin snapped off the light. “Nothing, far’s I know. It’s what he might do. Same as Iraq—preemptive strike. Lock up the ragheads planning whatever they’re planning, what do we have? I’ll tell you. Peace. Would you say God knew if you did take a drink?”
“Of course.”
“I have this vision of your God,” Calvin said. “He’s sitting in front of like some infinitely giant flat-screen video monitor, keeping an eye on all you camel jockeys. He’s pretty damn sharp. He’ll be eyeballing some chick wearing makeup on this side of the screen, say the right side, or she got her head uncovered, whatever, then, same moment, he sees a guy like you, not you personally, out in left field, you sneak a little drink. Gotcha, says God, quick as a flash. Won’t miss a trick, this guy. It’s like a touch-screen he has up there, he just hits it with his hand and bam, blasts you. Do not pass Go. Get straight to hell. What’s the road name mean?”
Through the rain-spattered windshield, Hassan peered up at a sign. “Old Butchery Street.”
“Appropriate,” Calvin said. “Something I wonder is, why the fuck you speak five languages and me—that’s got more money and more rank and more education—I have trouble talking my own damn tongue.”
“It has to do with color of passport,” Hassan said. “If it is blue, you tell us poor people, ‘Learn American, or we don’t talk with you.’ If you are sorry son of a bitch with green passport, you learn languages or you don’t speak with any person outside of Pakistan.” He touched the side of his wristwatch, illuminating numbers on its dial. “How long?”
Watching the apartments, Calvin said, “Long as it takes. He wants to get laid, has to come out sometime.” He lifted the flask, resisted a moment, and took another drink. His hand shook a little.
In the darkness, his mind wandered.
“Global warming,” he said. “You heard of this? Climate change? Sun getting hotter? Worries the shit outa me. I hate to be the one has to tell you, your whole damn country’s going undersea.”
Hassan said, “You’re thinking of Bangladesh.”
“The hell I am,” said Calvin. “If I was thinking of Bangladesh I would’ve said Bangladesh, wherever the fuck that is.”
Hassan considered explaining the subcontinent’s geography and decided against it. He pointed to the now-opening door of the apartment building.
Calvin was peering through binoculars at a man who stood in the building’s doorway, lighting a cigarette between cupped hands. The match glow lit up his face.
“Snap. That’s our boy.”
Moving as one, Hassan and Calvin rolled down their ski masks. They were out of the car, across the damp pavement, gripping the arms of the figure in the doorway. When the man yelled and tried to back into the hall, away from the black-masked figures, he was borne in the opposite direction, toward the Volvo. He shouted once. Something soft was pushed into his mouth. Though his arms were held, his feet were free. The prisoner had once been a soccer player, a fullback, in Iran. He kicked the black-masked man holding his left arm, kicked again, heard a muttered exclamation. Then something smooth and heavy slugged the place where the prisoner’s skull joined his neck. At the same moment Hassan’s fist hit the young man’s gut, driving air from his lungs. The smooth and heavy thing hit his knees: first the left, then the right.
When his breath came back and his eyes opened, the suspect found his vision fading in and out of focus. Whatever was in his mouth made it hard to breathe. He tried again to kick, but his legs hung limp, like a doll’s.
The masked men bundled him into a car’s backseat.
Hassan followed the prisoner in, gripping his thin neck and binding his mouth with duct tape.
Calvin, in the driver’s seat, pulled the car out, passing a soft-topped Peugeot. He did not turn his head. “Just don’t do what you did with the last one, okay?”
Hassan paused in his work. “I did what, exactly?”
“Get out of here. You taped his fucking nose.”
“Accident, right?”
“Tell me about it,” Calvin said. “Just keep this one breathing.” He made a sharp right turn. “I’m not flying out with a body bag.”
He slowed for a red light on rue Rivoli, then accelerated through green. “Documents?”
Hassan cuffed the prisoner’s hands behind him, bagged his head, then searched his pockets. The man made a sound that, through duct tape and hood, became a muffled groan.
Calvin now wore a black trilby hat. Adjusting it, shielding his face, he turned
on the car’s interior light, so Hassan could read.
“Hate to end up in Bagram with the wrong guy.”
Hassan said, “He can hear you.”
“That’s okay,” Calvin said. “He’s not going to Bagram. Still want him to be the right guy.”
Hassan had found the man’s passport, which was worn and red. “We got him.”
The man moaned.
“Planning to travel?”
“Pakistan. He has a visa. More than one.”
“Won’t be using them,” Calvin said, without looking back. “Not anytime soon.”
Hassan opened the backseat coffee-cup holder. From a plastic cylinder, he extracted a hypodermic.
“This won’t hurt a bit,” he told the prisoner. “It will relax you. Take away the anxiety.”
“Understandable anxiety,” Calvin said. “All things considered.” At slightly less than legal speed he was driving down the boulevards des Maréchaux, heading for the Parisian périphérique. “He must wonder what the hell’s happening. I mean, I would.” When his phone connected he called ahead for priority clearance at Charles de Gaulle.
Again, the prisoner made a sound. To ease injection, Hassan considered removing the man’s outer clothing, then decided not to. Rule was, at destination, three thousand miles away, the prisoner’s garments would be cut from his body and the bagged pieces flown to Virginia for testing. Till then, the guy stays dressed. That was the rule.
Through the prisoner’s woolen jacket, Hassan administered a syringe-full of chemical relaxant. As the hypodermic’s needle entered his arm, the man twitched like a rabbit.
Hassan patted the prisoner’s duct-taped face. “Oh, come on,” he told him. “Didn’t hurt.”
“Clean needle,” Calvin said, from the front seat, “if that’s what he’s worried about.”
“If he is worrying now,” Hassan said, “soon he won’t.” He found the prisoner’s pulse. “Relaxing already, this boy.”
Passing a police patrol, Calvin slowed a little. “He might be worried if he knew where he was going.”
“Fortunately,” Hassan said, “he has no idea.”
2
WEST SUSSEX, ENGLAND, 3 MAY 2004
Three weeks after the disappearance of Darius Osmani, Shawn Maguire stood at the back of a Greek-owned coffee bar in a small English town. Night was falling; the bar was closed for business. Through a doorway he saw a neon-lit meeting room.
This was Addicts Anonymous. A broad church, it seemed.
Shawn had been stopped on his way in by Cody, a shaven-headed man whose flesh stretched thin on his bones. Cody had a dog, emaciated as its master. Thinking back, Shawn reflected that all the serious stoners he’d known had owned dogs. Thin dogs, every one.
The man laid a wasted hand on Shawn’s arm, whispering, “What do you think? You believe these fuckers?”
Shawn had first met Cody a week earlier, at one of these meetings. Then as now, the man had his dog. He was strung out on horse pills and coke. To him, the assembled alcoholics were dead losers. “What is it, these guys?” he asked. “They do a legal fucking drug. Buy it on the main street, every second fucking shop. Come on. Tell me. What they got to bitch about?”
Breaking free of Cody’s grip, Shawn entered the meeting room. Around its walls were taped messages directing troubled souls toward some higher power. HP, for short. On a central table were books, variations on the 12-step gospel.
Shawn guessed there were twenty people, twenty recovering souls, in the room that night. Around that number: In low light it was hard to see. One or two he recalled, without pleasure; the rest were new to him.
In that comfortless room, the addicts sat on plastic chairs, watching a young Anglo-Indian woman perch on the edge of a table at the front of the room. Shawn saw her eyes flick to him, as he took his seat. They’d met before, at one of these redemptive gatherings. He almost recalled her name.
She told the audience, “My name’s Anita. I’m an alcoholic.”
A ragged chorus from the plastic-seated gathering: “Hi, Anita.”
The loudest voice belonged to a bulky guy with a mustache, wild off-white hair, and a jogging suit. Heart sinking, Shawn recalled the guy. Cedric Something. A man who craved attention and paraded his addictions. Both times Shawn had attended, Cedric had recounted an episode—maybe the same episode—in his long-running battle with addiction. Beat the demons one day at a time: That was Cedric’s mantra.
“I’m clean,” said Anita. She spoke slowly, tranced. “I mean, what I mean is, I was clean, like three months. Three months, four days. Five days. This time around I was, you know, counting. Marked them on the calendar, even. The days I was clean. I was just so happy.” She paused. “Then what happens? I get a call from my ex. The things he said—I mean—I’m not perfect, I’m not an evil person—he was so—he was so—the things he said—like threatening—said he knows where I live and—he talked about—” She stopped, then said, “I was so, I was like so upset. Afraid. When I get that way, what I do—always—”
There were tissues on the table.
An older white woman in a floral dress, near the front of the group, said, “Anita, okay. Really. It’s okay.”
“Bullshit,” said Shawn, to himself. “No way is it okay.”
Shawn remembered this woman, the older woman. She’d shared in the first meeting he’d attended. Escaping, she said, the grip of prescription drugs. Watching her, Shawn believed the addiction. Wasn’t so sure about the recovery.
“What I did,” Anita said, “I’m so ashamed, I drove out to the country, found a pub on a back road, never been there before.” She paused, then said, “I mean, no one knew me. Really, no one. Had log fires, this pub. I was going to have just one drink, just the one, make it last, you know? Eat some food, come home—”
Someone in the group—Shawn guessed it was Cedric—laughed, then turned a furious face to those who hushed him.
“I never know,” Anita said. “Never know what it is. Happens every time. I never learn. Minute I have alcohol, somehow, I send out some kind of signal—I don’t know, it’s like turning up a thermostat. The heat. I don’t know, I conjure up guys, wouldn’t look at me if I was on the street, shopping, walking, whatever.” She rubbed her eyes. “I know I wouldn’t look at them. I had this double vodka, straight, rocks, that’s the one I allow myself, I’m just sitting there in a dark corner, hiding away, not checking out anyone, this guy appears from nowhere. I mean, he wasn’t even in the bar when I got to the place, don’t think he was.”
Shawn could see it right there. He knew the scene well. Tribeca, Georgetown, Sussex—same sexual dance, same sad seductions. Now Anita. Even sober, even in go-to-work clothes, she had a darkness, a subterranean sexuality that got his attention every time. He’d spent years on that scent.
* * *
It was basic with AA meetings, rule one, they weren’t pickup places. Shawn had never hit on Anita, or any other woman in the rooms. Then again, he was new to this recovery gig. He’d thought about a pickup. Of course he had. Down the line, maybe—but tonight?
Anita was weeping now. The room was quiet. “We were drinking,” she said. “This guy. I took him home. I—we—I mean—” She stood, pushing herself up off the table. “And I’d worked so hard. Like, I’d been clean for months.” Someone slid toward her the half-empty box of man-sized tissues. “That’s, I mean, that’s all, that’s all I want to say right now, but thank you for—”
Another ragged chorus: “Thank you, Anita. Thank you for your chair”—an expression that had puzzled Shawn the first time he came to one of these coffee-bar meetings. Her chair?
Cedric, the man who’d laughed, stood on tiptoe, mouth open, ready to speak.
Instead Anita, her breathing slower, pointed at Shawn. “I’d like Shawn to share.”
Snap. She remembered his name.
Cedric, put out, sat slowly down. Shawn bent his head. This was a moment he’d hoped to avoid. The three English meetings he’d bee
n to, he’d listened to others tell their histories—alcohol, drugs, sex—all, it seemed, in miniature, scaled down for England. This odd little island.
He hadn’t yet spoken, and hoped he’d never have to. Now they watched him. Waiting.
Anita found a seat at the end of his row. “Go,” she said.
Shawn wouldn’t, couldn’t, stand. He said, “My name’s Shawn. I’m American. I guess you hear that. Born in Alabama. Been living in England a while. Unemployed.” That was the easy part.
Another chorus: “Hi, Shawn.”
“I’m an alcoholic.” Silence. Waiting. “I’m not what you call clean. I’m still drinking. Less than I did. Still, too much. You know what they say—eases the pain.”
Again, silence, in which Shawn felt undercurrents of feeling. Among the saved, a soul impenitent; a man without strength.
“I’m also a sex addict.”
In the shadows, someone sighed.
“I didn’t know that term,” Shawn said. “If I’d heard it a couple of years back, I would’ve laughed. I mean, I thought that’s what you did. Like, excuse the language—I thought, if you’re a man—survival of the fittest—you go tomcatting around, grab whatever tail’s out there. Meet someone hot, a girl gets your attention, hey, do your damnedest, get her into bed.” He paused, then said, “Actually, with me, not that simple. Looking back a couple of years, I’m telling myself, whoa, boy, enough already. I’d gotten married to a woman I always wanted to be married to. Took me twenty-some years to do it. When I put a ring on her finger, I figured she was all I’d need—why’n hell would I go chasing some other broad? But we’re addicts here, you know how it is. I didn’t stop. I slowed down, didn’t stop. I guess—someone told me—that’s what addiction is. You want to stop, and you don’t stop. It’s not easy. You do it that one last time, and it’s never the last time.” He was quiet awhile, then said, “Now, my wife’s gone. I can’t tell her I’m sorry.” He stopped, took a breath. “I think that’s all I want to say.”
A momentary pause, then the chorus: “Thank you, Shawn. Thank you for sharing.”
Cedric was on his feet, taking his chance, telling the group he’d been eleven months clean. Shawn stood. Moving quietly, he left the room. He hoped no one would notice. As he crossed the darkened coffee bar he saw Anita had followed him out.
The Prisoner's Wife Page 1