The Prisoner's Wife

by Gerard Macdonald

  Shawn, too, found himself lying flat, nursing his injured leg. Grabbing the pistol, face to the fallen man, he saw this was an operative he knew: Gordie Slade, a onetime Langley colleague. There was history here, too. Gordie had started off disliking Shawn until Shawn briefly dated Gordie’s twenty-year-old daughter. Then dislike turned to hatred.

  CIA assassination squad in Egypt, Shawn thought. They sure as hell kept that quiet.

  “Gordie,” he said, trying to stand, “what the fuck are you doing?”

  Slade eased himself from the floor, gently flexing his injured arm.

  “Give me back my gun.” Shawn held the weapon out of reach. “Double tap, if you want to know.” Slade touched his temple. “Boom, boom.”

  Shawn passed back the weapon. “Double tap on who?”

  Slade moved to the iron balustrade. Looking down to the lobby, three floors below, he cocked the Springfield. “He’s a terrorist. Name classified.”

  “If it’s Ahmed al-Masri,” Shawn said, “he’s not down there.” He pointed back toward Samir’s apartment. “Al-Masri went out a window. Onto the roof, I’d guess.”

  Gordie headed down the stairs. Over his shoulder he said, “I could arrest you, Maguire.”

  Shawn stood, massaging his leg. “For what?”

  “Obstructing me.”

  Shawn followed down the stairs, limping a little. “Slade,” he said, “if you want to try that, you need to be a lot smarter than you were when I knew you.”

  * * *

  Outside the apartment building, Shawn looked for Danielle. There was no sign of her. Or of Ahmed al-Masri.

  Which, Shawn thought, was not in any way a good thing.

  27

  CAIRO, EGYPT, 30 MAY 2004

  Somewhere in Cairo, Shawn believed—somewhere in this multifarious city—Ahmed al-Masri held Danielle hostage. That was how he figured it as he stood undecided, at a loss, in the narrow alley of Qasr Badawi. The thought of kidnap made him momentarily nauseous. Memories came floating up: memories he’d tried to forget. A missing friend, a hostage, death by decapitation.

  A severed head, startle-eyed and staring.

  He stood for a moment on the sidewalk outside Samir’s apartment building, shaken, fearing for Danielle, helpless amid the noise and color and jostle of the market.

  In another town, he might have called the police, but here? Samir was a cop, and what could he do? Shawn had no faith in Samir’s ability to rescue Danielle, or anyone else.

  The police sharpshooters—if they were police—had vanished. As had al-Masri and Danielle. Shawn had no idea which way they’d gone.

  Behind him, Samir came around the corner of the building, looking to left and right: an animal emerging, fearful, from its burrow. “Mr. Maguire,” he said. He came close, his voice low. “You know, sir, what this means? Americans know I had Ahmed in my apartment? If my people learn of it—”

  “What?”

  “I will lose my job,” said Samir. “Why?” He answered his own question. “Because he is on the list, Ahmed. Your list, our list. Terrorist.”

  Shawn grabbed Samir’s arm and pulled him from the alley, through the teeming square. “Tomorrow, son, you worry about your job. Right now, we’re keeping Danielle alive.” He looked around him. No traffic came this way. “We get to some road, we catch a cab.”

  “Sir? Cab to where?”

  “Where al-Masri lives.”

  “I don’t know where he lives.”

  “Hundred bucks says you’ll remember. Which way? Where’s a cab?”

  Samir, pointing, headed down a muddy track beside a litter-filled canal. Shawn followed, his heart beating faster than it should. Ignoring his injured leg, he ran, overtaking his guide. Coming around a bend, he found the narrow path blocked by a slate-topped billiard table—God knows how it got there. Four city kids were in midgame: one now lining up a shot on the tilting, still-perfect baize. Between a clay-brick wall to the left and the canal to the right, there was no way around. Shawn leaped onto the table, scrabbling for a foothold, hurting his leg, as the baseball-capped boy shot for a pocket. The table rocked. Shawn spread his arms, trying to balance. The table slid, smooth and sidelong, to the mud-brown water.

  As it sank, Shawn hauled himself from the canal, fending off skinny boys. Shouting and laughing, they attacked him with their cues. Back on his feet, wet and stinking, Shawn ran east. When he looked back toward Samir, he saw the boys weren’t following: Knee-deep in mud, they tried to lift the massive table. Beyond them, another figure. Even at this distance, Shawn recognized the fallible marksman with the pink phone. In one swift movement, the boy nearest the bank angled his cue between the gunman’s legs. Shawn saw the man spread his arms as he dived, yelling, toward the canal. There was a single shot, then a second.

  Someone screamed, a high wailing yell.

  Shawn turned a bend in the track and ducked beneath a bridge. Boys, sniper, and table were lost to sight. “The way that guy shoots,” he called to Samir, “the boy should live.”

  Samir said nothing. He had no breath left for speech. He pointed ahead as they reached El Gamaliya. The street here was filled with yelling men, carrying signs. Though he read no Arabic, Shawn understood, from crude images, they were protesting the price of bread on which, he guessed, they lived. Toward the edges of the crowd, uniformed police clubbed any head they could reach.

  Shawn waved to the driver of a black-and-white taxi brought to a stop by the riot. When Samir caught up, shielding his face from fellow policemen, Shawn pushed him into the car.

  To the taxi driver, he called, “Wait.” To Samir he said, “Brother, if you don’t remember al-Masri’s address, believe me, I’ll tell your boss what you were planning with that guy. Don’t say you were shooting the breeze. I know who he is. We both know. Like you said, al-Masri’s on your list, he’s on our list. He’s roadkill. He organized the fucking embassy hits. Our guys died.”

  To the driver, Samir said, “El Sagha.” Then something else, in Arabic.

  The man drove, draping his wrists over the wheel, the way a wolf might, if a wolf were driving a cab. As the car turned right, passing Salah ad-Din, Samir said to Shawn, “Ahmed denies he was involved in those bombings.”

  “Tell the cops, not me.”

  “I am a cop.”

  “Okay. Tell your boss. Tell Mukhabarat. See what your job’s worth. See what your life’s worth. My guess, al-Masri’s holding Danielle as a hostage. What do you think?”

  Samir shrugged. “Maybe. Try her mobile phone.”

  Shawn stared. “Say what? This guy’s al Qaeda. Works with Zawahiri. He’s not going to leave her with a phone.” He flicked through speed-dial numbers on his own phone and pressed the call key.

  He listened, then said, “Jesus, Dani, talk quiet, okay? You’re in his apartment? Listen, we know where you are. He’s doing what with a laptop?” He listened, then said, “Crushing it? Okay, forget that. Not our problem. We’re on our way to pull you out. Cops may get there first. If there’s shooting, don’t do any brave shit. Stay down. Run, if you get a break. Keep cool. Love you.”

  It was the second time he’d said that.

  Breaking the connection, he told Samir, “Get the driver to go faster.” Then he said, “You’re right. He’s careless, al-Masri. He’s destroying his laptop. Tough work. Dani’s still got her phone.”

  “Not careless,” Samir said. “Frightened for his life. Those men in my building have nearly killed him. Maybe they will follow. It could be they know where he lives. Today, the man might die.”

  “Who gives a damn?”

  “Your girl might die.”

  “If she does,” Shawn said, “someone else will, too. Maybe him. Maybe you.”

  The taxi stopped. Samir pointed. “Here is the place.”

  Shawn looked out at a tall gray concrete-block building, each balcony hung with white garments and bright-colored cloth, stirred by a breeze from the Nile.

  “Which floor?”

  �
�Second.”

  “What vehicles do you guys use when you’re not in patrol cars?”

  “Police? Ford Transit.”

  “Like that one, parked there? Okay. Tell the driver, make a U-turn. Tell him, stop real close to that door. Then tell him, wait. He doesn’t move. Got it?”

  Somewhere, a muezzin called for midday prayers.

  On the far side of the road was a makeshift mosque, hardly more than an alcove set back from the street. The building, once a warehouse, was now in ruins: a mess of rusting steel. Off the street, someone had used mud bricks to build a low barrier, four feet high, closing off part of the industrial ruin. Men ran to enter this place of prayer. Shedding boots and shoes in the street, they knelt behind the wall. All were barefoot, foreheads touching ragged prayer mats.

  Samir spoke to the driver in Arabic. The man obeyed, turning his taxi, parking close to the curb. Leaving him with sheaves of worthless pounds, Shawn left the car, keeping low. Moving as fast as his limp allowed, he approached the street door of al-Masri’s building. Inside, the ground floor hall was white tiled, blank and empty, the only decoration an urn filled with fading strelitzia flowers. A black-clad figure—a woman—sat unmoving on the lowest step of a concrete stair. Under a hood, in shadow, her face had the shape of a man’s. Expressionless, she watched Shawn as he passed her, running up the stairs. On the second floor he stopped a headscarfed maid carrying a bundle of towels.

  “You speak English?”

  With her free hand, the woman held up a close-spaced thumb and forefinger. “Little.”

  “I want a man with’—Shawn gestured—“long hair. Beard, like this—black, with gray.”

  The maid pointed behind her, to the corridor’s second door. Shawn took a breath. He hit the woodwork with his good shoulder and bounced off, bruised.

  When they do that in movies, he thought, the goddamn door breaks.

  He hit the door again. This time, the jamb did give: The door swung wide. Danielle lay prone on the uncarpeted floor—her feet bound, mouth gagged. As far as Shawn could see, she was uninjured. When he released her, she took deep breaths, sat up, and pointed to a blue-painted inner door. “He’s in there.”

  “Alone?” She nodded. “He’s got the laptop?”

  Cocking his Makarov, Shawn approached the blue door. Danielle spoke with sudden urgency. “God, Shawn—get down. He’s got—”

  The upper half of the blue door splintered, shattered by a spreading hail of shells. A window fractured; glass, like a sheet of ice, slid to the floor and cracked in two. Standing lamps blew to pieces; on a mantelpiece, a liter of vodka vaporized in a mist of spirits. Shawn crawled back across the floor, away from the shattered door. Grabbing Danielle’s wrist, he dragged her to the corridor outside. He was trying to catch his breath. “I guess,” he said, more to himself than to her, “the end of that sentence was a ‘Kalashnikov.’” At a limping run, he went for the exit stairs, looking back to check that Danielle kept pace. “Something I never got used to,” he told her, “is being shot at with submachine guns.” Forgetting his injured leg, he went down the concrete steps three at a time. “Move,” he said. “We need to get out of here.”

  Danielle followed more slowly. “You’re leaving al-Masri?”

  “Believe me,” Shawn said, “I wanted his laptop more than him. Could have done a deal with the Company, if I’d got it. But—” They were in the building’s lobby. The black-clad woman, who was now a man, was heading outside. From his robe he drew what Shawn saw was an American .38 Magnum.

  “But—what?” asked Danielle, watching the robed man.

  “But I know when I’m outgunned,” Shawn said. “An AK’s not that accurate. If it’s on automatic, that doesn’t matter too much. Ten rounds a second, you’re going to hit some damn thing. Which could be me.” He held open the building’s steel-lined entrance door. “I want to see what’s happening here.”

  * * *

  Outside the apartment building Samir stood by the taxi, looking upward. The gray structure loomed over them, its eastern wall blank and rough, unfinished. From the top story, wide joists—balks of darkened wood—projected outward, like cannons from a warship.

  On one of the joists stood Ahmed al-Masri, a puppet, a dwarf, black against a cloudless sky. Balancing; swaying; edging outward.

  Samir backed away from the building. “I believe Ahmed will—he will—I believe he is about to jump.”

  “To the next building?” Shawn asked. “From there? No way. No chance.” In his mind he measured the angle for a shot. He wasn’t sure he could do it. With a rifle, perhaps. Not with a handgun.

  Danielle’s lips were moving. No words came.

  Now there were other black-clad men kneeling on the building’s roof. CIA hit squad, Shawn thought, awaiting an order to shoot.

  Al-Masri, arms wide, balancing like a man on a tightrope, came to the end of the beam. He stood there a moment assessing the gap, poised in space. Even from where he stood, Shawn could see the man was shaking.

  “No,” he said again to Samir. “No. Never make it.”

  Afterward, Shawn was unsure whether he heard a shot before or after the young man jumped, in a high parabola that did take him to the next building, but not to its roof. Shawn saw al-Masri grab at a balcony rail, startling the old woman who stood there gathering armfuls of washing. As she backed away, into her apartment, the rail tore from its mooring, sending the Egyptian downward—a tiny flailing figure, black against an Egyptian sky, falling, and falling, and falling.

  Shawn bundled Danielle into the back of the still-waiting taxi. He said, “I have your passport.”

  Samir climbed into the shotgun seat. Shawn looked back to see what was happening behind them. A curious crowd had gathered, gazing down at the terrorist’s shattered body. The cop with the pink Nokia stepped forward to put a single shot in the head of the corpse.

  “That range,” Shawn said, “he can handle.” To Samir, he said, “Tell the cab guy to turn. Tell him, don’t go past the Transit. Don’t drive fast. Then tell him, take us out to the airport.”

  The taxi was driving along the banks of the Nile when Danielle asked, why the airport? Where were they heading? To Peshawar?

  Shawn shook his head. “I really don’t want to do that.”

  She asked why.

  “Memories,” he said. “Peshawar, I have memories. Guy called Raphael Ramirez. He died there.” He paused, then said, “I helped to kill him.”

  28

  PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN, 18 JUNE 2000

  Shawn had had some bad weeks, but the week Rafe Ramirez died in Peshawar was the worst he could recall; the worst in a bad twelve months.

  The year started well—Shawn was settled in the Agency, promised promotion—but now Lala was demanding a divorce, for reasons she was prepared to list, and did list, with the help of a hungry female lawyer. Alcohol and pills and assorted flirtations all figured in Lala’s accounting. She moved out of the family home in Brandywine; by court order, it had to be sold. When Shawn found a buyer, Lala refused to sign. The house wasn’t in great shape, due to fights at the messy end of the marriage, but she thought it was worth way more than what was on the table.

  Shawn called his soon-to-be-ex-wife where she was living with her new boyfriend, an unemployed actor called Chet. When Chet worked—not often—he specialized in action movies. His acting ability lay in his arms: a great set of delts and pecs. Without irony, he called himself an action hero. Shawn asked to speak with Lala, not the hero. He tried to stay polite. He told his wife the house would go to the bank if not sold by the end of the week.

  Keeping his voice down, he said, “You know what repossession means? Should I spell it for you, you dumb bitch?” At which point Lala hung up the phone. It was Rafe Ramirez, the good buddy, who got her talking again. Rafe who organized the house sale. Rafe who sat in sad bars, hearing Shawn rehearse his troubles with marriage, and with women.

  Late in ’98, the two men went separate ways. Rafe was dropped i
nto Iraq to check on what might be a nuclear weapons program. Shawn was posted to Sudan to keep an eye on assorted bad guys. Among them were bin Laden and al-Zawahiri, camping there, though not yet seen as a serious threat.

  When the Agency closed down its Sudanese operation, al Qaeda dropped off the map for a time. Shawn was sent to Afghanistan, crossing the Pakistani border from Peshawar, delivering lethal weaponry—Stingers—to what became the nucleus of the Taliban. He was there, in Pakistan, at the end of the year when terrorists blew up American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Langley brass were, as ever, blindsided. After Sudan, they’d lost touch with al Qaeda, but now they made a guess that Afghanistan—bin Laden’s new base—figured in the mix.

  Rafe was pulled out of Iraq and sent to meet with Shawn in Peshawar, on the Afghan-Pakistani border. Conventional wisdom held that if there was any one place to gather intelligence on religious terrorism, that place was Peshawar. Unlike most conventional wisdom, this was, in fact, the case.

  Shawn and Rafe took rooms at the Rose Hotel, in Khyber Bazaar, on Shoba Chowk. Rafe had a young sidekick learning the trade: a southern kid from outside Little Rock called Dodie Sale. He had some proper Arkansas-type name, but Shawn never remembered what it was. Most of the time Rafe just called the kid “fuckwit.” Dodie called his boss Chief or—if he was feeling lucky—Jefe. Between the three of them, they picked the Rose Hotel partly because there was not a lot of choice in Peshawar among places that had not been bombed, and partly because the hotel had a restaurant where all sorts of people came to eat, and some of those people likely had information about the embassy bombings. Getting it was a whole other issue. Shawn didn’t wish to criticize his friend, but Rafe spoke no Arabic. Not even basic. Even if he had, extracting information from foreigners was not one of Rafe’s skills.