A Gentleman's Game

by Greg Rucka

  Yemeni women, on the other hand, moved through their days hooded in their black baltas, shapeless cotton coat-slash-cloak combinations that effectively hid any body beneath. Almost all of them wore veils as well. It was deception of an entirely different sort, a public modesty in the face of a private vanity. Chace knew for a fact that most of the women she’d seen on the streets wore midriff-baring tops and tight designer jeans beneath their baltas.

  Chace rolled the map once more, offered it back to Hewitt. “Anything else?”

  “Sorry, that’s all. When I left it this morning, Hebshi and Faud were still at the house, though I suspect they went to the Great Mosque for their morning ziryat.”

  “Why the Great Mosque and not the other one?”

  “I would think its name would tell you everything you need to know. It’s truly spectacular, what little I’ve seen of it, and I’ve seen very little, and I’ve been here two years, now. It was built sometime around A.D. 630, when the Prophet was still living, just after Islam had come to Yemen. Man like Faud, I can’t imagine him being content to worship anywhere else.”

  Chace considered that, then nodded. “You’re a perceptive fellow, Mr. Hewitt.”

  He lifted the case in his hand, smiled again. “Perceptive enough to know that I’m desperately hoping I won’t be seeing you again.”

  “It’s mutual, I assure you.” Chace followed him down the hall, unlocked the door so he could exit.

  “Best of luck,” Hewitt said.

  Chace locked the door again after he’d left.

  •

  She started the walk through the Suq al-Milh, literally the salt market, though as far as Chace could ascertain, salt was a very small part of what was for sale. In truth, the suq seemed comprised of dozens of other, smaller markets, with vendors selling everything from silks to jewelry to uniquely curved tribesmen’s daggers called jambiya. It was warm but not uncomfortable, and Chace assumed the sky was blue, but Ron’s projected rain hadn’t come, and as a result, clouds of dust hung endlessly in the air, kicked up by foot traffic or, worse, vehicle traffic.

  Chace made her way through the noise, jabbered conversations, and blasts of music played from boom boxes, bootlegs sold by vendors. Men sat in the shade at the sides of the streets, talking, smoking, chewing qat, others walking hand in hand, showing their friendship. A few were armed, sporting antique carbines and rifles, weapons left over from the Ottoman occupation that had ended in 1911, as well as the modern Middle Eastern mainstay, the Kalashnikov AK-47.

  She drew the eyes of everyone, some briefly, others longer. Chace found it necessary to remind herself that she was a curiosity, even in her modest dress. Near Bab al-Yaman, two very excited young boys ran up to her, shouting in Arabic, “Welcome to Yemen!” and then repeating it in English before darting away again.

  “Shukran,” she called after them, then paused on the street, trying to reorient herself. From the hotel, the minarets and structures of the city were clearly visible. Standing in the Old City, however, the houses were crammed together, built five and six stories high, and blocking any view of the horizon. From where she stood, the Great Mosque could only be a few hundred meters to the west of her, but looking around, she saw no sign of it.

  An older man, in futa, shirt, and jacket, passed on her left. “Haram,” he growled. “Haram.”

  Chace glanced down, couldn’t see what had caused the offense. Her skirt fell to her boots, the only skin she was showing at her face and her hands.

  “Ismahlee,” she said, trying to apologize, not certain why.

  The man stopped, gestured roughly at her face with the back of his hand, then moved back into the crowd. Chace reflexively put a hand to her head, felt the scarf in place, ran her fingers along its edge. Some of her hair had crept loose at her temple, and she quickly tucked it back into place.

  Crisis averted, she thought, and made the turn north out of the square, and instantly became certain that she was being followed.

  The street narrowed, and the air thickened with a collision of spices: cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, pepper, mint. Chace passed a group of three women, clad in black, and she identified them as San’ani from the red and white eyes marked on their black veils. She offered them a smile, saw the lines curve at the corners of their eyes as they answered the expression with smiles of their own, and then continued moving north, threading through the stalls and shacks. Over the sounds of the market, she heard a speaker blaring the muezzin’s call, glanced down, and pulled back her sleeve enough to read her watch. Noon call to worship.

  Almost immediately the flow of traffic altered, and Chace moved along with it until she saw the walls surrounding the Great Mosque. Traffic was flowing through the main doors, mostly men, but she noted several women wrapped in baltas, veiled in the traditional black shar-shaf or the painted lithma, moving with them, unmolested and mostly ignored. She took it in as best she could without pausing and, alongside the main entrance, from across the street, stole a glance at the revealed interior, glimpsing the colonnaded inner hall and beyond it the fountain and ablution pool. She looked away before anyone could take offense, moving on.

  Three Toyota SUVs were parked on the street, six men standing with Kalashnikovs by the vehicles, posture bored while trying to remain watchful. From their dress, Chace picked two of them as locals, wearing the futa-jacket combination most Yemeni men favored. The others stood in drab and worn fatigues, their heads covered with white and checkered kuffiyah, either leaning against the cars or watching the street.

  She didn’t break stride, looking past them, continuing north. In her periphery, she saw them mark her passage, one of them gesturing, a couple of them speaking. The irrational fear that they knew who she was, what she was doing, why she was there, raced through Chace’s mind before she shoved it aside.

  The thought moved, but reluctantly. There was always the possibility that she had been blown, that somehow, some way, Faud or someone else knew she was coming. A weakness in the local network, a wrong word, or something more politically motivated perhaps, a scuffle higher on the food chain in London, Tel Aviv, or Washington, D.C., and that could be all it would take.

  She was still being followed.

  She crossed Talha Street, made her way past the strangely empty front of the Center for Arabian Language and Eastern Studies, stopped at a sidewalk café that was nothing more than three rickety tables with cracked wooden chairs outside a storefront. There were three men settling at another table, and the owner emerged and went to them first, taking their order before giving Chace his attention. It was the hierarchy, men first, women last, and tourist women somewhere in between.

  “Is-salamu ’alaykum.”

  “Wa ’alaykum is-salam,” Chace responded. “Mumkin sha’i talqim.”

  The owner smiled, showing crooked and clean teeth, delighted with her attempts at the language. “You speak English?”

  “A little. Ana italiya.”

  “No, no italiya, but English tammam. Tea?”

  “Shukran.”

  He moved back inside, and Chace smoothed her skirt, making certain that nothing more offensive than her ankles could be seen before looking over the street. The three men were watching her, as interested as the proprietor, if not as friendly, and she avoided eye contact and did not smile. It was the appropriate response, and they turned their attentions back to one another.

  Her shadow was across the street, bartering with a vendor for a bottle of water. Male, mustached and bearded, by his dress Yemeni, but Chace didn’t trust that. Certainly not European, and nothing in his appearance linked him to the group she’d seen clustered at the SUVs.

  The proprietor brought her tea, took her riyals in exchange. She sipped from the small glass, the tea hot enough to burn her hand if she held on for too long, and incredibly sweet.

  Her shadow had moved down the street, back toward the Center, drinking his water. He wasn’t clumsy and he wasn’t obvious, but now she was sure he was tailing her, simp
ly because he wasn’t doing more than waiting. When he raised his bottle, sunlight reflected off the watch at his wrist and she noted that he wore it face-out rather than face-in.

  She considered, the thought that she’d been blown again rearing its head, and this time she had to give it more attention. There was no London backup, and there was to be no further contact with the Station. Either the tail was local, perhaps part of the Faud-Hebshi connection, or he was another player, maybe Mossad.

  Or he could be neither and is just looking to kidnap me, Chace thought, and for the first time became aware of the Walther tucked beneath her shirt. She’d left the suppressor in the room, wedged into the hollow of one of the bedposts, but the gun was so small and so light she’d felt safer bringing it with her than leaving it behind. Its shape made it harder to conceal, and there had been the chance, however remote, that the opportunity to kill Faud would drop in front of her.

  The opportunity clearly hadn’t, but all the same she was glad she had brought the gun.

  The proprietor returned, cutting in front of her to clear the now-empty cup. “Kayf halik? You are fine?”

  “Fine, yes.”

  “More? Another tea?”

  “No, thank you.”

  The proprietor seemed disappointed, but the smile remained as he again left her alone.

  The tail had disappeared.

  Of bloody course, Chace thought, and she rose from the table, moving back onto the street, resuming her way north to the Handcraft Center, and in particular, to the Women’s Branch within to do some needed shopping.

  19

  Israel—Tel Aviv, Mossad Headquarters, Commissary

  8 September 1919 Local (GMT+3.00)

  “She went shopping?” Borovsky demanded. “The British agent went shopping? Doesn’t she know Yemeni silver has been shit since Operation: Magic Carpet?”

  “Yosef doesn’t think she was after silver.” Landau switched the gas on beneath the burner, waited to hear the flame ignite. It took three clicks of the ignition before the gas caught. He moved away from the kettle, began searching the kitchen for Nescafé. “He thinks she was making a walk-through of the suq.”

  “The suq is fucking huge, Noah, you don’t just walk through the suq in a day. Hell, you can’t cover the suq in ten days, and even if you could, the stalls change.”

  Landau found the instant coffee in the cupboard above the sink, along with powdered nondairy creamer and sugar. There was also dishwasher soap, a stack of paper plates, and a can of condensed milk.

  “Doesn’t anyone ever clean this room?” he asked.

  “Write a fucking memo.”

  Landau sighed, found a clean spoon in the sink, began loading coffee, sugar, and creamer into his mug. “I don’t see why you’re getting so worked up.”

  “I’m getting worked up because she doesn’t have the time to waste.” Borovsky began pacing the cramped break room. “El-Sayd will only allow a small window, it’ll be a fucking cunt hair wide, that’s what it’ll be, it’ll be nothing. And if this British bitch is out trying to get a deal on silks, she’ll miss it.”

  “But that’s not what she was doing.” Landau frowned at the kettle, readjusted its position on the burner. His wife had hated it when he’d done that, always telling him it would take twice as long the more he fiddled, but he couldn’t help himself. There was an optimum place to sit on the flame, and until the kettle was there, he wouldn’t be happy.

  “You keep saying that. So you tell me, what was she doing?”

  “She’s going to hit them in the Great Mosque,” Landau said, and readjusted the kettle’s position.

  Borovsky stared at him, then tapped his temple. “No fucking way, we wouldn’t even do that, and we’re fucking desperate.”

  “She’s going to hit them in the Great Mosque,” Landau repeated. “Or at least she’ll try to. It’s the only place where she knows Faud will be without armed protection.”

  “They still have bare hands, Noah. They’ll tear her to pieces.”

  Landau shrugged and said nothing. The kettle was finally beginning to creak, the heat accelerating through the metal.

  “Crocker, you think he would have her do that?”

  Landau shrugged again.

  “Stop being a fucking cipher! I work with you, you can share a little insight.”

  “You’re Intelligence.” Landau grinned. “Be intelligent.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Has el-Sayd left Cairo?”

  “As of thirteen-ten today, yes.”

  “Then he’ll be in San’a’ by morning at the latest, presuming he goes direct. He’ll want the meeting with Faud as soon as possible thereafter.”

  “At the mosque.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking, and I’m certain that is what she is thinking as well.”

  The kettle began to whistle. Landau flicked off the heat, filled his cup with water, watched the freeze-dried grains blossom into something approximating coffee. He stirred the water with his finger, ignoring the pain.

  “Either she’s a genius or she’s fucking insane, Noah. If you’re right, she’s one or the other.”

  “Perhaps we should ask Yosef to find out?” Landau said, and tasted his drink, and wasn’t surprised to find that, despite all the sugar, it was still bitter.

  20

  Yemen—San’a’, Taj Sheba Hotel

  8 September 2059 Local (GMT+3.00)

  Chace returned to her room to find that the maid service had been and gone. She checked her tells on the bedpost and on her luggage, saw that both were still in place, and only then stowed her purchases in the closet. She put the Walther beneath one of the pillows on the king-size bed, grinning at the cliché, then took off her long skirt and draped it over the back of the desk chair.

  She’d purchased two liters of water in the suq before returning, and a can of Canada Dry Ginger Ale, and spent the rest of the afternoon working her way through them and her second-to-last pack of Silk Cut, watching the television. The Taj Sheba had a satellite link, and the channel selection was good. She caught up on the news with CNN, then switched to Al-Jazeera, trying to follow their broadcast. When she’d had enough, she surfed until hitting one of the few Yemeni stations, which was showing a local boxing exhibition. The audience at the event was enthusiastic, men and women.

  At seven she turned off the television and got back into her skirt but decided she would forgo the head scarf. Again hiding the Walther beneath her shirt, she headed down to one of the Taj Sheba’s two restaurants for dinner, the cafélike Bilquis, where they were offering, bizarrely, an Italian-food theme night. Chace took a seat away from the entrance and the kitchen, where her back was covered by the wall and that allowed her a view of the room.

  She ate a passable mushroom risotto, thinking that, if anyone asked, she could claim to be comparing it to the one they served back home at the Trattoria del Gesumin in Como. Music from the Bilquis’s companion restaurant, the Golden Oasis, was just audible through the walls, the band playing a mix of Mediterranean traditional and pop.

  Chace was on to the coffee when her shadow from earlier in the day entered and was seated at a table three up from her, along the same wall. She didn’t make him as the tail until he’d put his order in with the waitress, who was one of the only non-Europeans she had seen going uncovered. No balta, no veil, just a long black skirt and an off-white top, hair drawn tightly into a bun behind her head. When the man returned his menu to the waitress, the sleeve of his shirt crept past his wrist, showed his watch face out, and Chace remembered and gave him a second look.

  Definitely Mediterranean, but now in more European dress, casual but nice. A rather plain face, and his beard and mustache were thinner than Chace had thought at first, and neatly kept. She watched as a glass of Coke, no ice, was delivered to his table, and when the man raised it to drink, he inclined his head toward her in a mock toast.

  Chace grinned, put out her cigarette, and finished the rest of her much-too-sweet c
offee. She signed the bill Adriana Maribino, separated her copy from the original, folded it down twice, and then pinned it against her palm with her thumb. She rose, thanking the waitress as she began clearing the table and, when she passed her shadow, dragged her hand along the edge of his table, leaving the copy behind.

  Then she went to her room and waited.

  •

  He took thirty-seven minutes, and when he knocked on the door, Chace repeated the same process for letting him inside as she had with Hewitt, with a minor variation. This time, as soon as he entered, she quickly stepped from the bathroom and jammed the suppressor, now securely affixed to the barrel of the Walther, against the side of the man’s neck while kicking the room door closed with one foot.

  Gun still in place, she pushed him against the wall, then held him there as she threw the locks again.

  “You dropped your receipt,” he said. He said it in English, and his accent was American. He raised his right hand slowly, showing Chace the flimsy sheet pinched between his index and middle fingers.

  “Grazie,” she said. “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Simon Yosef. We have a mutual friend.”

  “I have lots of friends.”

  “This one lives in Tel Aviv.”

  Chace moved directly behind him, pressing her left thigh between his legs, forcing his stance wider. She moved the barrel of the gun from the side of his neck to the base of his skull, then reached around his front and began running her hand through his clothes, over and then inside his shirt, then around his waistband, then into his pants. She found a billfold, a pack of Camels, and a green plastic lighter. All three were tossed to the floor. She moved the search lower, up one leg to the crotch, then down again. On his left leg she found a snub revolver in an ankle holster, and she took that as well.