KH02 - City of Veils

by Zoë Ferraris

  She had thought it was Eric, but the voice was all wrong. Too guttural, too deep. She tried to respond. It felt as if the inside of her mouth had been caulked.

  There was a clatter nearby. Her eyelashes fluttered and she took a deep breath. A musty smell hit her throat and she gagged. Coughed.

  “Eric?”

  “Eric’s not here.” This time the voice was a hot whisper in her ear. “But you’ll see him soon.” A hand crawled beneath the back of her neck and raised her head. She tried to open her eyes again, but the lamp at her foot was too bright. The man was lifting her, propping her upright against something warm and hard.

  Her head felt full of sand, and every movement sent it shifting like grains in an hourglass. She became aware of her body part by part. Her arms were twisted behind her back, tied tightly at the wrists. Her hands were asleep. The numbness was somehow painful.

  “You need to drink this.” The man was nudging something into her mouth. A drop of water touched her lips. She forced them open, began to drink. The liquid went down her throat burning like whiskey.

  “Who are you?”

  “Keep drinking.”

  She had to shut her eyes to focus on the water, but it felt good now. She was thirsty.

  “Who are you?”

  He didn’t answer. She opened her eyes. Somewhere along the way she’d lost a contact lens, and now all she could see was a blurry picture, nothing but darkness beyond the single lamp that rested on an end table at the foot of a bed. She flailed but only managed to fall on her side. Her head hit the mattress, causing some commotion from her captor, who leaned over and set her upright again. She tried to remember where she was, but all she could recall was the street, the two African men, Mabus’s house —

  “Mabus?” she croaked.

  A figure moved past the lamplight, a man wearing a white shirt that shimmered at the edges of the light. He moved back into the darkness.

  Black thoughts filled her head—not panic, but a distant awareness of his intention, mingled with despair. She was too weak to fight. She was exhausted, starving, aching all over. There was darkness beyond the lamp, the swell of midnight over the room. She was powerless.

  “Miriam, he told you everything, didn’t he?” he asked. His voice was soothing, American, like the voice of a father who wanted to know that his daughter had been lying, a father who wanted the truth.

  “Eric?” she slurred, trying to buy herself some time, to make Mabus believe she was incoherent, because this was Mabus, she was sure of it now. Where was the memory card? It had been in her purse. No, she had left it at Samir’s house.

  A long silence followed, broken by the sound of Mabus setting a glass on a table. She heard him breathing.

  “Eric?”

  “Eric isn’t here.”

  She opened her eyes and fought the grinding in her head. Mabus paced the darkness behind the lamp like a wildcat. She could feel his frustration.

  She wanted to hurt him, bite him, scream from the pit of her stomach, but the most she could manage was to sit up straighter and force her eyes to focus.

  “Miriam, where’s the memory card?”

  She looked around the room. Shadows played on one wall. There was a recliner chair, the ugly wallpaper of a shabby hotel. Where was the door?

  “I don’t know,” she said groggily.

  “Think.” His voice was edged with anger. “The memory card.”

  His exasperated sigh frightened her more than anything else. A bounce. He knelt on the bed, his hands gripping her shoulders. “Try to remember,” he hissed. “Did you give it to someone?”

  She tried not to inhale his scent—it was making her gag—but she had to breathe. She fluttered her eyelids as if she were half dead and slumped to the side. He gripped her more tightly, yanked her back upright, and pushed her hard into the wall. The pain in her wrists was almost unbearable.

  Adrenaline was waking her, making it more difficult to play dead. His hand gripped her neck; he put his face close to hers.

  “Where is the card?”

  “I don’t know.” She was whimpering. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Crack. His palm was like a steel bar slamming her cheek. The other hand gripping her neck was pressing tighter. She could feel the air thinning, feel her chest convulsing as she struggled to breathe. “You gave it to the police, didn’t you?”

  “No,” she said, choking.

  He smacked her again. “Tell me!”

  She couldn’t breathe. “Okay,” she gasped. He released her neck ever so slightly. She realized she was crying. “They came looking for you,” she wheezed.

  “And what did you tell them?”

  “Noth—” She saw him raise his hand. “I didn’t tell them anything. I just gave them your address.”

  “And where is the card?”

  “I gave it to the police.”

  He seemed to believe her, because he released her throat completely, shoved her hard against the wall, and stood up. “Fuck.”

  40

  The trip to Qaryat al-Faw was a long one. He’d had to head south on the 15 to Abha, then back up on the 10, which had taken the better part of a day. He passed wadis that were a stark, shocking, verdant green after the white and gold of the coral desert. Cows had been grazing on the banks of the river, shallow enough for them to ford, and in the distance the mountains had been a series of lightening khakis and army greens. Then the mountains themselves, switchback roads and sweeping vistas of gray and beige stone. Samir always called it “baboon country,” because monkeys clustered in every jungle valley and dangled from the escarpments. Some had even been known to lay traps on the freeway to stop passing motorists. Nayir could enjoy the view only for a while. There was too much greenery, too many nooks and crags. The mountains seemed to cut out half the sky. Because of these mountains, Saudi was mostly desert. They kept the monsoon rains that fell here from reaching the rest of the country. They always felt like a gateway one had to pass to reach the true goal: the wide, barren, unforgiving Empty Quarter.

  He’d spent the night in his car outside Abha, catching a few hours of sleep before a frightening wind and the threat of rain woke him. At a roadside market he stocked up on food and water. The vendor had a camel-driven sesame oil press, and Nayir went to greet the beast, but it made an ugly gurgling noise in the back of its throat, and he backed away. After performing his ablutions in the parking lot with a bottle of water and kneeling by the side of his car to pray, he ate a quick meal of canned fava beans and set off.

  Only when he began to see camel-crossing signs did his heart open in his chest, his worries lift, and his body seem to start breathing again. Religious signs appeared by the side of the road, and when he passed an Allah Akbar, he said aloud, “God is great indeed!”

  Stopping to figure out how the car’s navigation system worked, he punched in the coordinates Mrs. Marx had given them, thinking as he did so that he was underprepared to go into the Empty Quarter. The coordinates weren’t really in Qaryat al-Faw, a small town on the 177. They were out in the dunes east of the road that led there. The Amirs might have failed him about the desert trip, but they hadn’t failed him in the matter of supplies. The trunk was still stocked with their generous gifts, although he had taken the nonalcoholic beer out of the icebox and filled it with water instead. All the same, he was heading into the great sandy waste of the Rub’al-Khali, where even the Bedouin would warn him against traveling alone.

  As the landscape grew bleaker, his thoughts became richer. He remembered his first night sleeping on the dunes. He must have been five years old. He and Samir had slept in a tent that seemed completely sealed off from the world. His uncle had given him a canteen and a pillow; it was too hot for a blanket. The canteen was full of water, and Nayir had fallen asleep clutching it, in the belief that he had been charged with protecting it. Throughout the night a burning dryness in his throat woke him every few hours, and he sipped guiltily from the canteen. No c
all to prayer stirred him from sleep the next morning, just his uncle sitting up and groaning about the heat. The sun was cresting the horizon when Samir led him outside and showed him the hundreds of tiny tracks in the sand where scorpions and ten-legged desert spiders had tried every avenue they could to penetrate the tent. Nayir had stared at the tracks in awe, feeling for the first time that there was danger in the world.

  Now his thoughts turned to Katya. He still found it difficult to believe she’d lied about being married, but where his shock had once been mixed with pleasure at the thought of her pretense, now he felt only a familiar sadness. Katya had probably been forced to lie in order to get her job. This wasn’t so different from his own habit, a year ago, of carrying around a blank misyar. If he ever found himself alone with a woman, he could write her name on the document and pretend they were married. It had never happened, but he had carried that misyar in his pocket with every intention of lying. And wasn’t Katya’s engagement ring the same sort of falsehood? They were both trying to deceive those who would punish them for sinning. But the greatest sin of their lying lay in failing to acknowledge that Allah sees all things. He knows the eyes’ deceit, and what people’s breasts conceal.

  Nayir had burned his misyar. He wondered now what Katya would do with her ring.

  41

  When Miriam woke up again, she was being dragged out of the backseat of an SUV. Landing on her feet, she saw Mabus standing beside her, gripping her arm. Panic set in at once. She was woozy and had the feeling she’d been drugged. She looked around and saw a house ten yards away. It was small, sand colored, pale against a backdrop of dunes. The sun was up and the heat was intense.

  “Where are we?” she asked, but he was already dragging her toward the house. She stumbled along, her feet still loosely tied with rope. She still had on her cloak, but her headscarf and burqa were gone. She noticed a garage off to the left, its door wide open. Down the hill stood a smaller building, but she caught only a glimpse before Mabus yanked her up to the house.

  He shoved her through the front door and into the relatively cool space inside. The front room was tiny, a large desk and a wall of books making it feel crowded. Above the desk was an old air conditioner plugged into a generator on the floor.

  He led her to the left, to a room beside the garage that contained only a narrow bed. Throwing her facedown onto the bed, he untied her hands, flipped her over like a hog, and retied her wrists in front. “Don’t try to leave,” he said. “You’ll die before you reach the nearest town.” Then he strode back out, locking the door.

  She sat up and struggled to free her hands, but it was too difficult. She could work on her feet, though, and within a few seconds she had managed to unwind the ropes from her ankles.

  From behind the house came a sound like someone scuffling in the dirt. The room’s only window was covered with a wooden grille, and it was impossible to see through it. She heard Mabus’s heavy footsteps cross the kitchen floor and emerge onto the back steps. A muffled cry of surprise from Mabus, then another man’s voice.

  “You fuck! I ought to put a bullet in your head.”

  She strained to see through the grille. All she could make out was shadowy movement, but she thought she recognized Jacob’s voice.

  “Jacob, I didn’t do it.”

  “Bullshit. You killed him!” Jacob said. “You fucking killed him.”

  Miriam felt the room bottom out. She clutched the window frame for support.

  “I didn’t kill him,” Mabus said. “Jacob, believe me, it —”

  “What was he doing out here?” Jacob sounded frighteningly cold.

  “He came to help me with something,” Mabus said.

  “Bullshit. He would have told me if he was coming out here!”

  “I asked him not to.”

  There was a grunt, a tussle. It sounded as if they were fighting: the dull thud of a body hitting a wall, shoes scrabbling on gravel and dirt, the sharp crack of a punch.

  Clap. A gunshot. It frightened her so much she began beating on the wooden grille. “Jacob!” she cried. “Help!” She ran to the door and began pounding. “Help!”

  The door remained shut.

  “Dammit!” The sound of Mabus’s voice froze her. It startled her that he had overpowered and possibly shot Jacob, a highly trained bodyguard. Eric had always said Jacob spent more time in bedrooms than he did at the gym, but Jacob had had a gun.

  She heard Mabus dragging something around the side of the building. She ran back to the window. Mabus was struggling, stopping every few feet, his breathing labored. From the crack at the edge of the grille she could just make out that he was pulling a man’s body. With a horrible start she recognized the indigo blue of Eric’s new shirt. She clapped her hands to her mouth. Not breathing, she stood suspended in shock. Mabus had just shot Jacob. And Eric was dead.

  She stumbled backward, terrified. Her legs were shaking, and she dropped to the bed. Interminable minutes ticked by before Mabus came back into the house. He went through to the backyard again, and she heard him fumbling and grunting. She knew he was dragging Jacob’s body around to the front of the house.

  She stood up unsteadily. He was coming for her next. She looked around for something to defend herself with, but the only furniture was the bed.

  A car door slammed, then another. When Mabus came back inside, his footsteps stopped in the living room. He stood there for a long time. She couldn’t breathe, and she stared at the door, willing it to stay shut, willing herself to survive. Finally, Mabus went back outside. The front door slammed once more, and a moment later she heard the car door shut with a thud. The engine started, and the car took off, kicking up gravel. She heard it driving away and slowly became aware of her body again.

  She ran at the door, hitting it with a thunderous whack. It didn’t give. She stood back and began kicking the door handle with a strength she hadn’t known she possessed. The handle gave way with a loud crack, and the door finally flew open.

  She stumbled through the main room and into the kitchen, pulling open drawers until she found a knife. Using her teeth to hold the knife, she began sawing away at the rope that bound her wrists. She tucked the knife in her back pocket and went racing outside. Mabus’s car was gone. She ran around to the back and saw the blood spatter on the ground where Jacob had been shot. There was a tool shed back here, the door wide open. It was empty. Furrows in the dirt indicated that Mabus had dragged Eric’s body from here.

  Eric’s body.

  She thought she might throw up. Stumbling back into the house, she found a giant container of water in the refrigerator. Nearly dropping it, she poured out a glass, then two more, drinking as much as she could. When she had finished, she left the house.

  The garage was empty. In a panic, she ran down to the only other outbuilding. It was fifty yards away, and by the time she reached it, she was heaving with exhaustion, dripping with sweat. The air smelled heavily of manure. She figured it was a stable, and as she ran past the door, something inside made a noise.

  Jacob had to have come in a car, but where was it? She went to the left of the stable and saw a truck half hidden beneath an old tarp. She stripped off the cover and found Jacob’s pickup.

  She flung open the door and searched desperately for keys. She returned to the house and scanned the dirt near the kitchen door, where Jacob might have dropped them in the attack. But she couldn’t find anything, and every fiber of her body was telling her to get the hell out of there before Mabus came back. Five minutes turned into ten, and she couldn’t wait any more.

  Back at the stable, she swung open a large door on the side and stepped into the cool interior. A camel stood there, looking as if it were smiling at her. She approached it with caution, untied its reins from a peg on the wall, and led it outside. The camel grunted, but it seemed happy enough.

  “You ready to get out of here?” she said, her voice hoarse and shaky. The camel was much too high for her to get onto, so she held its rei
ns and motioned it downward. It complained but after a few more yanks it knelt down, front legs first. She hauled herself onto the skimpy cloth saddle and gave the camel a good kick. It stood up slowly, back legs first. The motion nearly threw her over its head, but she managed to grab on to a peg on the saddle and steady herself as the camel pushed up on its front legs. Once it was standing, it made an excited snorting noise. “You’re my ticket out of here,” she whispered. “Come on, baby.” She gave it a gentle kick and it took off with a surprising lurch, trotting away from the house, away from the driveway, and off toward the dunes.

  “Wait!” she cried. “Wrong direction!” She struggled to turn the beast back toward the road, but no amount of jerking on the reins seemed to help. It was running along with determination. Miriam was terrified. The camel was going too fast for her to jump off, and she felt dangerously high off the ground, twice as high as she would have been on a horse. There was no way to get down without hurting herself. In fact, all her energy was directed at making sure she didn’t fall off. Desperately, she glanced over her shoulder and saw the house growing smaller in the distance.

  42

  The coordinates led Nayir to a barren strip of road. The road itself was paved, and aside from the sun-bleached asphalt, nothing human marred the wilderness. When the car’s navigation told him he had reached the right spot, he got out and checked the location against his own GPS. It was correct, although there was nothing but flat, sandy desert on either side of him. There were low dunes to the west, but to the east they rose in mountainous peaks, slicing swordlike across the land.

  He took his binoculars from the passenger seat and scanned the terrain. Shallow depressions in the land, small whirls of blowing sand, rising waves of mirage-producing heat could all obscure a small campsite or trailer or house, especially if it was white or gold-toned. Standing next to the car, his body was happily soaked in the heat. This was not the tropical wetness of Jeddah, the sticky sweatiness that made him want to shower all the time; this heat was dry and smooth, and the forceful wind, like some giant industrial cleaning machine, whipped the sand against his skin.