Lion of Babylon

by Davis Bunn

  “They asked my help in understanding what was truly a holy shrine and what was the screeching of a local storefront cleric.” Sameh worked at keeping the worry from his voice. The vizier’s glare was hot as a branding iron. “If I have made an error, good sirs-”

  “Not at all. This has nothing to do with your fine efforts.” Jaffar gave no sign he even noticed the vizier’s presence. “There is another problem. A very serious one. You know the el-Waziri family?”

  “I have never had the honor of meeting them. But the name, certainly.”

  “Their eldest son, Taufiq, has vanished.”

  Sameh echoed the concern in Jaffar’s voice. “Indeed this is dreadful news.”

  Jaffar went on, “Taufiq el-Waziri has a well-earned reputation for, how shall I describe it…?”

  “He is a firebrand,” the vizier snarled. “A troublemaker. He has earned his fate a thousand times over.”

  Jaffar nodded slowly, as though giving the vizier’s words serious thought. “Taufiq has vanished in the company of a female American nurse.”

  “Like smoke from a desert fire,” the vizier spat out. “A life without meaning. A departure without regret.”

  “Claire Reeves is her name. The American military claims the two have slipped away to Dubai for a licentious holiday.”

  “Scandal,” the vizier hissed. “His family’s good name is ruined.”

  “The family is adamant their son would never do such a thing. But the Americans are not listening. Which is very strange. You understand?”

  “Of course.” The el-Waziris were a major exporter of dates. Before Saddam’s tyranny reduced the country to its knees, two-thirds of the world’s dates had come from Iraq. But what was more, el-Waziri held the Coca-Cola franchise for the entire country. Though much of the American military’s supplies were flown in, el-Waziri’s trucks entered the Green Zone and many bases every day. “For the Americans not to listen to a man with whom they do business makes no sense.”

  “What is there to understand?” The vizier retorted. “The Americans are as shamed as we are.”

  “A family as powerful as Taufiq’s must have connections with the government,” Sameh said. “Perhaps they should seek help.”

  “The family’s allies politely point out that there has been no ransom demand or any announcement from Al-Qaeda that they hold the two young people.”

  “Which always happens,” the vizier added. “There is always the public proclamation. Without fail.”

  “Then the bureaucrats say nothing more,” Jaffar went on. “Shaming the el-Waziris with their silence.”

  “What else are they to do?” the vizier demanded. “These young fools deserve their fate, as I have said all along.”

  “To make matters worse,” Jaffar said, “el-Waziri is one of my father’s major backers. A devoted follower and financial supporter. To have his son and heir involved in a scandal with an American woman is disastrous.”

  Sameh nodded slowly, his motions almost in time with Jaffar’s. The missing young man, Taufiq, had publicly scorned the vizier and the other ultraconservatives, many of whom maintained very close ties with the religious hierarchy in Iran. Taufiq was becoming a leader within the new generation of religious Iraqis. They insisted upon a clean break with the Iranian clerics. Young hotheads like Taufiq claimed Iran was dragging their own country back into the Stone Age and making it a pariah on the world stage. A sentiment Sameh shared.

  Which was why Sameh asked, “How can I help you?”

  His response only infuriated the vizier further. He hissed to Jaffar, “Involving this man, this friend of the kayen tufaily, will poison the waters.”

  Sameh felt a flutter of fear. The vizier had a reputation for carrying grudges for years, then striking hard and deep. The man’s loathing for the Americans was also well known. Kayen tufaily literally meant “parasite creatures,” street slang that branded the user as adamantly anti-American.

  The vizier was saying, “Taufiq and his hareem are in some Red Sea resort, pretending to be man and wife. He is a disgrace to his family and to Ramadan. There is no need to humiliate your father by involving an outsider. We should be in Nejev, where your father will tonight address the Shia nation. Not here. Not spreading the tale further.” He turned to Sameh, his gaze reptilian. “With this one.”

  The vizier was known to have condoned those who persecuted Iraqi Christians. Jaffar’s father had refused to speak out against his chief aide. Jaffar, however, had no time for such trash. That was the word he used when speaking of extremist Muslims who persecuted the minorities within their own society. Garbage.

  Jaffar said, “My father and I spoke this very day.”

  The vizier showed genuine consternation. “He has agreed to this?”

  “I serve as his mouthpiece.” Jaffar turned back to Sameh and showed very real pain with his smile. “Sameh el-Jacobi, will you act on the Grand Imam’s behalf?”

  “Of course,” Sameh replied, wondering if his smile was as much a wince as Jaffar’s. For he knew that he would be paid for this case only with honor. And honor did not buy bread in the new Iraq. “Of course.”

  Chapter Five

  From the air, Baghdad’s airport did not look like a gateway to the new Iraqi Republic.

  What it looked like was a city. A fortress city. Designed to keep people out.

  The pilot invited him to watch their approach from the cockpit’s jump seat. Which meant Marc had a fine view of the tanks and guard towers anchoring the perimeter fence. One gunner tracked their jet with his top-mounted machine gun, all the way from horizon to landing.

  Carter Dawes said, “I guess that was just his way of making us feel welcome.”

  They were met by a camouflaged Jeep with a sign: Follow me. When Carter Dawes saw where the flight tech was leading his plane, he laughed out loud. “Whose party did you crash?”

  Two soldiers in battlefield dress and flack jackets waved the jet to a halt. Arrayed around the plane was a V-shaped reception committee. Armored Humvees were fanned out to either side of the plane’s nose. These were joined by a phalanx of troops in battle armor and desert fatigues. Dawes said, “At least their guns are pointed the other way.”

  Dawes left the copilot to wind down the engines, and released the jet’s stairway. As Marc stepped out into the dusty sunlight, Dawes said in farewell, “Don’t lose that card.”

  Soon as Marc stepped through the jet’s doorway, the heat slammed him. The sun was a dull red ball on the eastern horizon. Seven in the morning local time and already the temperature was well over one hundred degrees. Two F-15s roared down the runways, the light from their afterburners making them look like they were melting before Marc’s eyes. The stench of jet fuel coated his tongue.

  A human bulldog with a shaved head stood grinning at the bottom of the stairs. “Sorry about the welcome wagons, Mr. Royce. The base came under mortar fire just before dawn. First time in a month. My name is Barry Duboe.” He pointed Marc to a dusty Tahoe with blackened windows rumbling beyond the armed perimeter. “Come on, let’s get you settled.”

  When Marc was seated inside the Tahoe’s air-conditioned cocoon, he noticed the grit. A patina fine as milled flour already covered him from head to foot. “Are you military?”

  “Lesson one inside the Sandbox, Mr. Royce. If you don’t know, you’re probably not authorized to ask.” Duboe put the Tahoe into gear and pulled onto the perimeter road. “The thing is, though, I owe Ambassador Walton some serious debts.”

  “I’ve heard that a lot,” Marc replied.

  “So to answer your question, I’m deputy head of station for the CIA.” He halted for a parade of three F-15s rumbling throatily toward the runway. “Alex Baird was a good buddy. Walton found out I was asking questions and hitting stone walls for my troubles. How he knew, I have no idea. But he called, and I answered, and here you are. Now you know everything.”

  They drove for another ten minutes. Long enough to leave the runways and the trundl
ing aircraft behind. They entered a military settlement that resembled every U.S. base around the world. Except, of course, for the sand. But military precision would not be defeated by some paltry desert. The buildings might be fronted by yards of grit instead of lawn, but their perimeters were still bordered by rocks, each of which had been laboriously painted white by enlisted personnel doing punishment duty.

  Duboe halted the Tahoe in front of a prefab structure of corrugated metal and tight windows. Two industrial-strength air-conditioners gave off a fierce hum. “Five-star guest accommodations. Canteen to your right as you enter, stocked with ready meals, a coffee maker and a microwave. Showers to your left. You’re in room twelve. The key’s in the door.”

  Marc remained where he was. Waiting. For what, he had no idea. But he sensed that Duboe was not done.

  The man’s lips were a thin slash in a fighter’s face. He spoke with the deliberate purpose of a boxer throwing punches. “Here’s the thing. I know you want to hunker down, do some serious jet-lag coma. But the situation is not in our favor.”

  Marc saw no reason to mention he had slept his way across the Atlantic and the Med both. Instead, his mind was caught by two words. “ Our favor.”

  Duboe liked that. “Did Walton really fire you?”

  “Three years ago.” The memory still seared. “Canned me and dumped me on a Baltimore street.”

  “Then what happens but Alex Baird goes missing, and Walton comes to you.”

  “Hat in hand,” Marc confirmed. “I admit it is a curious thing.”

  “Guess it’s safe to assume Walton didn’t fire you for incompetence.”

  Marc heard the unspoken question, and knew he had no choice but to respond. “My wife had a stroke. I took a leave of absence to care for her. She hung on for nine months. Walton got tired of waiting. She passed on ten days after my dismissal.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thanks.”

  Duboe inspected him, his look as intent as a sniper’s aim. “About an hour after Walton asked for my help, I got a call from the deputy to the U.S. ambassador here in the Sandbox. The deputy gave me two choices. One was, I could stop asking questions and keep my career. The other was, I keep looking for Alex and the deputy would fit me out for a steel box. The deputy’s name is Jordan Boswell. If you ever hear that man has you in his crosshairs, run.”

  Marc stared out the front windshield at the dancing heat. “You’re saying if I stop for a rest, Walton’s enemies will have time to lock me in and send me back.”

  Duboe smiled, revealing teeth ground down to small white nubs. “Maybe Walton was right to choose you after all.”

  “I’m here to find Alex. Not sleep.”

  “Go shower and change into street clothes. A backpack’s on your bed. Take essentials and one change of clothes. Leave the rest, including your laptop and GPS, phone and anything else that might be used to track your movements. The room is yours for the duration.” He slapped the Tahoe into gear. “You’ve got one hour.”

  Chapter Six

  Sameh el-Jacobi drove a sixteen-year-old Peugeot 405, acquired during the last days of the Saddam regime. Members of the dictator’s power elite had driven the Mercedes S-Class, the only people in Iraq allowed such a car. No policeman ever halted an S-Class, for fear the driver or the person in the back would roll down a window and shoot him dead.

  Lower echelons in Saddam’s regime had driven the Peugeot 405. Like Sameh’s own vehicle, most were a vague off-white in color. Sameh had never liked the cars. As far as he was concerned, they came off the factory line looking thirty years old.

  During the embargo that had followed the First Gulf War, the regime had bought cars from Malaysia, the only country willing to ignore the trade restrictions. Those Protons had arrived by the shipload, two thousand automobiles at a time. Everyone in Iraq considered the Proton the most awful machine ever to be graced with four wheels.

  The regime had ordered its bureaucrats to drive the Protons. To refuse such a directive was to sign their own death warrants. So the Peugeots had been sold off and turned into taxis, family sedans, or sliced into date trucks. Over time they became more and more ugly. The Peugeot might have been hated, but they were never permitted to die. They simply grew cancerous.

  Sameh’s 405 had been owned by a midlevel bureaucrat in the Al-Mukhabarat, one of the three former intelligence services. His elder brother had fled Iraq, like many other Iraqi Christians. Fifteen years ago, Christians had made up seven percent of Iraq’s total population. Now they formed almost half of all Iraqi refugees. The Christians who remained were increasingly targeted by Muslim extremists. Their numbers continued to decline.

  The bureaucrat’s brother had first fled to Jordan and then to the United States. This had placed the Mukhabarat officer in a very dangerous situation. Naturally he could not risk contacting a relative who had gained a coveted green card and now called Iraq’s sworn enemy his home. But the official loved his brother dearly. And he had learned that Saddam’s regime was operating spies within the U.S., targeting these same Christians who had been forced through persecution to flee their homeland. Sameh had used an American lawyer as a channel to warn the brother. As payment for services rendered, the bureaucrat had sold Sameh his Peugeot for five thousand dollars, a fortune during the embargo. But it was also less than half what he could have received on the open market.

  The car’s air-conditioning did not work. The suspension was pillow soft. The wheels all wobbled. The steering wheel bucked and shivered whenever Sameh risked going faster than thirty-five miles an hour. It drove like almost every other car in Baghdad, which was, barely.

  Baghdad was established by Caliph Al-Mansur in the eighth century and lay seventy miles from the ancient capital of Babylon. The Tigris River split the city into El-Karkh on the west and El-Rasafah on the east. Centuries of poetry had been written about the two sides of Baghdad and the hearts lost by lovers peering across the liquid divide.

  Historically, Baghdad’s rulers all had built their palaces in El-Rasafah. Saddam Hussein, however, had launched his official domain and his Baath Party headquarters from El-Karkh. There was much quiet humor about how all Saddam’s problems had started with this first mistake.

  Sameh’s destination this morning was an office building near Zawra Park and the Zoological Gardens, about half a mile from where the Baath headquarters had been located. As usual, traffic was awful. The Green Zone, the city’s sector where the Americans had established their headquarters and where the prime minister’s offices were now located, stood between Sameh’s destination and the river. The closer he came to the Green Zone perimeter, the more traffic solidified. He had given himself three-quarters of an hour for the two-mile journey, and he arrived a half hour late.

  A male office worker stood where the blast walls segmented the building’s entrance from the main road. Sameh knew the man was not a guard because he did not wear a bulletproof vest or carry a machine pistol. Sameh flashed his lights and rolled down his window. The man scuttled over. “The lawyer Sameh el-Jacobi?”

  “It is I.”

  “God be thanked. Salaam, your honor. Salaam.” The man opened Sameh’s door and motioned him out. “The family awaits you.”

  Sameh knew a moment’s deep concern as the man slipped behind the wheel. “My car is unwell.”

  “I will treat it as gently as I would my own. Which also suffers the city’s ailment.” The man popped the trunk lid so the guards could begin their inspection, then pointed to the front door. “Please, your honor. The family is most anxious.”

  Sameh walked the canyon formed by twelve-foot high concrete blast barriers. Where the barricade met the building’s front stairs, he endured a body pat-down and a search of his briefcase. He climbed the steps and entered the building’s refrigerated wash. He stood there a moment, plucking his shirt from his chest and breathing the too-cold air. A young woman signed him in and led him upstairs.

  His client was a Sunni and f
ormer Baath Party official named Hassan el-Thahie. Unlike many of Saddam’s lackeys, Hassan was an extremely intelligent and crafty businessman. After the Gulf War, when Saddam’s inner council began their suicidal defiance of the West, Hassan el-Thahie had used his business connections in Jordan to contact the American embassy. For three and half years he spied for the Americans, risking his life to funnel information westward. As a result, Hassan had been permitted to retain his businesses.

  Hassan’s offices were on the building’s top floor. Seven stories up was high enough to look out over the snarled traffic and the demolished party building to the Green Zone and the river beyond. Normally Sameh would have taken a few moments to enjoy the view from behind the safety of blast-proof windows. But not today.

  Sameh returned the businessman’s greetings, then bowed over the hands of Hassan’s wife, his grandmother, and eldest son. The lad had been taken out of university to offer support during the family’s crisis. The strain on their faces was something Sameh would never become accustomed to, in spite of the dozens of times he had taken on this kind of task.

  He stopped by the desk temporarily assigned to Sameh’s ally, a retired police officer. Sameh used the officer for negotiations with kidnappers. Unfortunately, these days Sameh had a great deal of work for the officer. The gray-haired gentleman shook his head in response to Sameh’s unspoken query. The kidnappers had not yet called.

  Sameh had dreaded this meeting with the el-Thahie family and had not slept. His eyes felt grainy and his neck ached. He refused the offer of tea or coffee. Both would only have further upset his stomach. He gave half an ear to the family’s soft chorus of woe. In truth, all he could hear was the distress his news would cause. That they had hired a gardener who likely had rewarded their trust by kidnapping their son.

  To Sameh’s vast relief, his news was postponed by a knock on the door. The young assistant entered and said, “Please excuse the interruption, sir. There is a phone call.”