The Prisoner's Wife

by Gerard Macdonald

  “She younger than you?”

  “Thirteen years.”

  “Oh, man,” she said. “Oh, man.”

  Shawn unlocked his room and watched from the doorway as Clemency went in to sit on the edge of the bed in which Danielle slept. He was surprised by the gentleness of her movements. She touched her patient’s forehead. “If it’s okay,” she said to Shawn, “I like you outside for a minute, with the door shut. What I have is a rectal thermometer.”

  Four minutes later, when Clemency opened the door to Shawn, Danielle was awake, covered by a sheet, and propped on pillows. Despite the damp cloth held to her forehead, she radiated heat.

  “Hundred three, just over,” Clemency said. “Kind of high. Food poisoning, maybe. Something she drank? But fever’s breaking, is my view.” To Danielle, she said, “Girlfriend, you keep yourself right here, drink a whole lot, don’t eat much, canned soup maybe, sleep when you can. My guess, this time tomorrow, worst gon’ be over.” To Shawn, she said, “You need to go out, buy this girl a bunch of bottled water.”

  “Thank you both,” Danielle said. Her voice was weak. “Can’t remember the last time I was sick.”

  “Not your fault,” Clemency said. “That’s nature, doing that. Working on you. You just go get yourself well.” To Shawn she said, “I’ll walk downstairs with you. Sooner you have your woman drinking clean water, better she going be.”

  In the empty hotel lobby, when Shawn thanked Clemency, she said it was nothing. She gave him her cell number, just in case.

  “I come in tomorrow, check on the lady.” Briefly, she put her arms around him: a sisterly hug. “You take care of yourself, too. Looks like you should get some sleep. Girlfriend going to need you stay healthy.” She waved, ran for the door, and was gone.

  Later, watching himself in a clouded wall mirror, Shawn saw what Clemency meant. Maybe it was worry over Danielle; maybe something deeper. Whatever it was, he didn’t look good.

  * * *

  In the dark hours of the following morning, Shawn woke, wondering what had disturbed him. The room was still and quiet. Turning, he saw what it was. In shadow, Danielle stood by his bed, holding a pillow. She wore his DOES NOT PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS T-shirt; the moon lit her damp and fevered eyes. She could have placed the pillow over his face. Shawn took it, then held Danielle by her upper arms, feeling the heat of her. He turned her around, led her back to her own bed, and covered her too-warm body with a sheet.

  “Dani?”

  She stared at him, wordless. Then her eyes closed.

  Shawn went back to his bed. He lay there awhile, wondering if a slightly built sleepwalking woman would have the strength to suffocate an aging sleeping man.

  If the woman were Danielle, he thought, all bets were off.

  18

  FES, MOROCCO, 27 MAY 2004

  At four in the morning, Shawn woke again. Under a pillow, his cell phone vibrated. He left the bed, went to the bathroom, closed the door, and answered.

  A man’s voice said, “Mr. Maguire?”

  He knew who was speaking.

  “You will remember me? This is Ayub Abbasi.”

  “I don’t know what the hell time zone you’re in, Mr. Abbasi,” Shawn said, keeping his voice down, “but where I am, it’s four in the morning.”

  “The dark night of the soul,” Abbasi said. “In fact, I am in your time zone, and your town. I am in Fes, where my office was.”

  “Was?”

  “Was,” said Abbasi. “I can tell you about that. Right now, I need to see you.”

  “As in tomorrow?”

  “As in now. A man you might know is waiting outside your hotel. It is a walk, rather than a drive. Along the edge of the souk.”

  “What if I tell you I don’t take meetings at four in the morning?”

  “Then I remind you that, for the moment, you are on my payroll, and you are hoping for more money. Don’t be long, Mr. Maguire.”

  Shawn broke the connection and swore. He dressed, checked that Danielle was asleep, took a key, and left the hotel room. The door locked behind him.

  Outside the hotel, the streetlights—if any existed—were out. The moonlit street was empty save for a skinny dog, growling at some dark threat, and two lean cats, bodies tense, squaring off for a fight. Another cat—larger, this one—lay dead in the gutter. From somewhere unseen, Shawn found a thickset man standing to his right, uncomfortably close. That disturbed him: In this business, being blindsided shortens your life.

  Recognizing his companion made Shawn feel no easier. Alfred Burke was a handyman: a paid killer, raised in some violent pocket of southeast London. He’d once told Shawn that on Saturdays he’d attend synagogue, when there was one nearby. There he made peace with his God. The rest of the week, he plied his lethal trade. Alfred undertook deniable assignments for anyone who could afford him. He knew his own value; he was not, he said, a cheap date. He specified cash up front, in American dollars or in euros, whichever currency was, at the time, more valuable.

  Shawn knew of two recent deaths, both prominent men, both garroted, both murders informally attributed to the man beside him. Alfred had not been charged with either killing. Nor had anyone else.

  “Alfred,” Shawn said. “You get around.”

  Alfred said, “Paris last time, right? You was in a car with Mr. Walters.” With an unlit flashlight the handyman pointed toward the souk. “Right, my son, move. Time’s short. We go this-a-way.”

  “Whoa,” Shawn said. “Hold on a minute. Before I go anyplace with you, my friend, I want to know who you’re working for.”

  “Mr. Abbasi, right this moment. He’s paying me. Said he was calling you.”

  “He did.”

  Alfred glanced at Shawn. “You got a problem, don’t you? Trust. You don’t trust me.”

  “Not for a heartbeat,” Shawn said. “Are you holding?”

  Alfred spread his arms. “Pure as a virgin’s tit. Search me, if you like. But you know, and I know, if I wanted to take you out, which I don’t, but just supposing I did”—he held out short-thumbed hands—“this here, it’s all I need.”

  He set off down a narrow lane between high and leaning buildings. Shawn hesitated for a moment, then followed. They were heading east. Here there was a single streetlamp. He kept three paces behind Alfred, looking around him, keeping clear of doorways. Shawn was of two minds about this procedure. At times, he thought the whole precautionary business absurd. Meeting in darkness, undisclosed locations—who needs this shit? Then he recalled three colleagues who decided to scrap the rule book; all died early, unpublicized, and violent deaths in foreign postings. So, for now, he took care, following several paces behind his guide until Alfred stopped, pointing down an alley even narrower than the one they were in.

  “I hate these places,” Alfred said. “I truly do. Still, that’s where he is. The boss.”

  Shawn was inspecting the stonework of the building beside him. A cable set between stones took his attention. “Alfred,” he said, “you go first. I’ll follow.”

  The alley was darker here. Halfway along it, the thickset man knocked with his flashlight on a wooden door set three steps below the level of the lane.

  Shawn waited but heard nothing.

  Alfred opened the door and stood aside, gesturing at the void.

  “You think I’m going in there,” Shawn told him, “you think wrong.”

  “Not wrong, Mr. Maguire,” Ayub Abbasi said from somewhere in the gloom of the cell, a darkness even blacker than the dark outside. “Come down. As a place, it is unpleasant but, trust me, quite safe.”

  Shawn looked around him. His guide had left as quietly as he’d arrived. Shawn had wondered on other occasions how so big and heavy a man could move so silently. He descended three stone steps, bending his head low to enter the cellar, which, he now realized, was not without light. Brick arches receded into darkness. Each arched aisle was, he guessed, lit with a single low-wattage lightbulb hidden by curves of brickwork. One of thes
e bulbs dimly illuminated Ayub Abbasi, seated at a rusted metal table. That and two chairs were the visible sum of the cellar’s furniture.

  Shawn sat in shadow, waiting, and watching Abbasi. The man had lost weight. When they had met in Shawn’s garden, three weeks earlier, Abbasi had worn an Armani suit. Now he was dressed in his native salwar kameez. He could have been a street trader from the souk.

  “Times are hard.” Shawn gestured around him. “This your new office?”

  “It may be,” Abbasi said. “The suite I had in this town was firebombed. If I had been working at the time, I would not be here. You know the quality Napoleon sought in his generals? It was luck. You are looking at a man, Mr. Maguire, whose luck is running out. Or has run out. In that sense, we may be similar, you and I.”

  “Hey,” Shawn said. “Thanks.”

  Abbasi pushed a bundle of dollar bills across the desk. Shawn took them and did a rapid count.

  “This is not what we agreed on. I need money. It’s not enough.”

  “It is not,” Abbasi said. “However, it is all I can afford. In every sense, my friend, I am going downhill. In a few days’ time, I may have less cash. Or none. Tell me about Osmani.”

  “Osmani,” Shawn said. He worked through what he should say. “Not a hell of a lot to report. You probably know, I’m here with his wife.”

  “Osmani’s?”

  Shawn nodded. “Danielle. If you’re going to ask, answer’s no. It’s not a sexual thing.”

  “You would be happy if it were.”

  “Maybe,” Shawn said, “but it’s not. What can I tell you? Agency’s got a hold on Osmani. Picked him up in Paris. They keep moving him. I don’t know why.”

  Abbasi said, “You know better than I—frequent flyer—is this not what they do?”

  “Sure,” Shawn said. “Question is why. Why he’s a flyer—that’s what I don’t know.”

  “Your friends want what I want—those papers he took. Information about Qadir Khan’s network. Proliferation. It is why I am here.” Shawn waited. “You know,” said Abbasi, “and I know, for the Agency, that could be embarrassing. Pentagon finances ISI. They, in turn, finance Dr. Khan, maker of bombs. Seller of nukes. This might come out if Osmani were freed. If he went public.”

  “Isn’t that why you want the stuff?” Shawn asked. “Here’s another possibility. Let’s imagine there’s this businessman, Muslim, he’s got offices in different places, one of them being Peshawar. Convenient site, right on the Afghan border. Now, suppose this person worked both sides of the line. Wanted to give the bad guys a little help with weaponry. A business like that, import-export, it would be good cover, right? Things come in crates—who knows what’s inside. If this same imaginary guy got his hands on a small nuclear device, he could put his jihadi friends into a whole new league. The West has nukes, now jihadis have nukes. Ups the stakes. How’s that for a scenario, Mr. Abbasi?”

  “It makes me think, Mr. Maguire,” Abbasi said, “you should perhaps retire—try writing thrillers. Maybe that will get you out of debt. Though I hear it is a competitive market, violent fantasy. Until then, if you wish to be paid, concentrate on finding Darius Osmani. I am running out of time, and patience. For me, this is, I don’t exaggerate, a matter of life and death. I, too, have my sources. They say Osmani will not be kept here. The Agency will move him soon to Cairo. Egyptian special branch. Mukhabarat. Who may get more results.”

  “Than DST?”

  “Indeed. Different techniques. Extreme interrogation. At that, they are masters, the Egyptians.” Abbasi sighed again. “So I hear.”

  “You sound,” Shawn remarked, “like things aren’t too good.”

  “I told you,” Abbasi said. “Last week, there was a firebomb in my office.”

  “Phosphorus?”

  “So they say. I hear you had the same in your house. Two men have tried to murder me. My assistant was killed. Decapitated. They sent me the video—his head being removed—pour encourager les autres, as your copine Danielle might say. I was trained in mathematics, Mr. Maguire. The University of Chicago, which has a good faculty. I know the numbers. Unless something changes, the odds are I shall not be alive this time next year. Or next month.”

  “Take a vacation,” Shawn said. “Cuba’s nice. They don’t like U.S. agents. Stay off the Guantánamo end of the island, you could be safe.”

  “My problem,” Abbasi said, “I don’t wish to lose. It is naive, I know, but still I believe there should be justice. I don’t like what your country does to my country. I don’t like what my country does to Afghanistan—the corrupt narco state that we Pakistanis, and you Americans, have created. I wish to see Nashida Noon as prime minister. She has many faults, but I wish to see her running Pakistan. I hope to be alive to help her.”

  “Will she make it?”

  “If she lives, of course. You know of our election?” Shawn nodded. “Next week the votes are counted. If the president allows it—if the votes are not rigged, or not too much rigged—then Nashida will win. I want to work with her. We can break the power of ISI. Which, I told you, is one reason I need to know what Osmani knows.”

  Shawn stood and stretched. For himself, he wanted to be in his hotel room. To be near Danielle, to smell her scent. To be back with this sleepwalking woman who had, perhaps, tried to kill him.

  “Your choice,” he told Abbasi. “Myself, I’d be heading for someplace quiet, drinking Cuba libres. But I’ll call you tomorrow. After I see Osmani.”

  “Inshallah,” Abbasi said. “What are you looking at?”

  “It’s taken a while for my eyes to adjust,” Shawn said, “but that box back there looks like a mainframe computer. That other box alongside it looks like a server. Odd things to have in a cellar.” Abbasi looked in the direction Shawn was pointing. “Also I noticed, outside, someone’s set a new aerial into the stonework. Not a thing you’d see, ’less you looked real close.”

  “Which you were doing.”

  “Which I was doing. I just wonder whether the person who bought the server maybe uploads al Qaeda’s information to the Web.”

  Abbasi shrugged. “Who knows? I came to this pit looking for cheap office space. The equipment is not mine.” He wrote the number of a disposable cell phone. “Call me tomorrow. Whether or not you see Osmani.”

  Shawn, making his way to the door, paused. “Are you okay here?”

  “As safe as anywhere in Fes,” Abbasi said. He pointed into the darkness of the cellar. “I have a man back there.”

  “Armed?” Shawn asked.

  Abbasi nodded.

  “Alfred Burke?”

  Abbasi shook his head.

  “An armed guy I didn’t even know about? That makes me uneasy.”

  “If he is not there,” Abbasi said, “it is I who feel uneasy.” He stood, his back bent, holding the table to steady himself. “Follow the edge of the souk, Mr. Maguire. I wish you a safe walk home.”

  19

  FES, MOROCCO, 27 MAY 2004

  As the sun rose over Africa, Shawn was woken by Danielle’s fingers on his lips. She was perched on the edge of his bed, wearing his T-shirt, her fever gone.

  “You were crying in your sleep,” she said. “Saying, over and over, that you want, I don’t know what. So, tell me, what is it you want?”

  He brought himself back to her, to the room of reality.

  “What do I want? Come on. You know what I want.”

  “You Americans. Always now—you want it now—”

  “Since I met you, actually.”

  She laughed. Her fingers on his lips, her voice a whisper, she said, “You have to wait. I will come to your bed. Not now. Not today. But soon.”

  No mention of the night’s events. Of walking in her sleep.

  “Now, Shawn,” she said, “out of bed. Shower. Shave. We’re meeting Younis.”

  * * *

  She sat watching Shawn as he used a shaver. Years back, in Vietnam, he’d had a hell of a time shaving. Tough beard, tender skin,
and no power in the DMZ. Since then, he’d gone electric, hadn’t used a blade.

  “Before you met your husband?” he said. “You never talk about that.”

  Danielle looked up from a hand mirror. “Relationships?”

  “Must have had some.”

  Lip gloss in hand, she shook her head. “Plain girls don’t.”

  Shawn switched off the shaver. “You were plain?”

  “According to Maman. So competitive, that woman—beyond belief. For a time, you know, I hated her. Later, of course, she becomes a person to be pitied.” She finished her Evian and tossed the bottle away. “Living in a world of her own, Maman. Hoping to make it as an actress, to work again—with Chabrol, maybe.” She was silent a moment, then said, “After thirty, for a woman, it’s hard. The camera, you know. It is not kind.”

  Shawn swapped shoes for sneakers. “Your father?”

  “Papa?” She stopped, trying out what she was about to say. “God, he was so good-looking. I think, now, he didn’t like women. Disappointed, having a daughter. When we were in Paris, he used to point out pretty men—never women. My mother said that meant he was faithful to her.” She laughed. “I thought it meant something else.”

  Shawn took the pistol from his toilet bag and checked the loading. “Politics?”

  “For Papa? Of the right, of course. Extreme right. Algérie française, imprison the leftists, deport the Arabs—les beurs, he called them.”

  “And you?”

  “Naturally, the opposite. What can you do, with a father like that? Only react. I was a soixante-huitarde, a girl of ’sixty-eight, years too late.” She began painting clear polish on her nails. “Then Papa left home. I saw him only if he didn’t have to meet Maman—if I was in Provence, or Morocco. If I was here with Benoit—”

  “Benoit?”

  “My surrogate father. Benoit, he was—I guess now they’d call him a radical lawyer. He defended prisoners. Moroccans. He paid the price.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “He is.” She made her fingers a pistol. “Assassinated.” Danielle paused, then said, “This morning we meet a man who”—she made quote marks in the air—“worked with him. Younis. Another so-called radical.”