Lion of Babylon

by Davis Bunn

  But even the diminished clamor remained a torture. Every voice carried the pain that shredded his nation’s soul.

  Sameh and Aisha taped the children’s photographs to the walls of his office. The plan was to bring in one family at a time. Grant them the chance to examine the pictures. Name their missing child, describe any identifiable marks, and phone this through to someone at the hospital.

  But the din outside Sameh’s office drilled a massive hole in this plan.

  Sameh had enough experience with distressed parents to know they wanted their child back more than anything in the world. So much, in fact, that some would be willing to lie. Claim a child that was not theirs, irrationally trying to fill the vacuum at the center of their universe.

  Which was when Marc appeared in the doorway and announced, “I have to go.”

  “You mean, now?”

  “Duboe called. He says I have to meet him. Immediately.”

  Through the open door, Sameh saw a riot in the making. Leyla moved up beside Marc. “But you are needed here.”

  “Major Lahm will have to assign his men.”

  “They won’t be able to handle the situation as well. These people obey you.”

  “I have to do this. Duboe made that absolutely clear. Lahm has a car waiting for me. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  When Marc slipped away, the din began to increase in volume and tension. Sameh sensed the place might erupt. Lahm’s men were no match for an army of frantic parents. He was still struggling with this dilemma when the unbelievable happened.

  The chaos beyond his door went silent.

  He and Leyla and Aisha exchanged astonished glances. Leyla slipped away, then reappeared to announce, “The Imam Jaffar is here.”

  – – Jaffar arrived with two young clerics in tow. Sameh checked the hall behind the trio, searching for the vizier. Jaffar said, “My father asked all his advisers to join him in Najaf. May I request a few moments of your time?”

  “Please, you are welcome.”

  “We do not wish to impose upon you.”

  “How can a visit by the imam be an imposition? Besides which, I owe you an apology. I should have at least phoned to tell you what has happened.”

  Jaffar waved his words aside. “Tell me how we can help.”

  Matters were swiftly arranged. One of the dark-robed clerics accompanied Aisha down the long line of waiting families. Any family whose child had been missing for more than a year was separated out, their details taken, and sent home. Jaffar’s authority cloaked the entire assembly in a quiet solemnity. Even so, Aisha and the cleric both aged decades listening to the stories, seeing the beloved and worn photos thrust into their hands, hearing the broken pleas.

  Leyla and a second cleric began leading one family at a time into Sameh’s office. Jaffar spent quite some time there, studying the photographs attached to the office walls. He did not speak as he lingered over the small frightened faces and the couples frantically scanning the walls.

  Finally he motioned for Sameh to join him in the outer office. “So many tears.”

  “And these are the fortunate ones.”

  “Fortunate. Yes. Fortunate.” He searched the office. “Is the American here?”

  “Alas, he was called away by his embassy.”

  “Pity. Major Lahm says he was of great help. I had hoped to meet him.”

  “He will be most disappointed to have missed you.”

  “You trust him.”

  Sameh nodded. “I do.”

  “May I ask why?”

  Sameh searched for one point that might summarize all he was coming to admire about Marc Royce. “His wife died three years ago. He sacrificed his profession to be with her. He carries the loss with him still. And yet it has not left him bitter. He cares deeply. He feels the pain of those who are suffering.”

  Jaffar studied him for a long moment. “Major Lahm tells me this Royce is a friend of the missing American man.”

  “Alex Baird. They worked together. They are part of the same church in America.”

  “He too is a believer?”

  For Sameh, the world seemed to stop. All the background noise vanished. The weeping couple in his office, Leyla’s soft voice, the murmurs rising from behind his office door, the harsh sunlight bathing them through the window to his left. All gone. There was only room for the imam’s intense gaze. The word hung in the air between them. Believer.

  Jaffar must have read the shock in Sameh’s face, for he added, “That is the term the Americans use, yes? I seek only to acknowledge what so many of my associates prefer to ignore. That their beliefs are important to them. As important as ours are to us.”

  “Indeed.” Sameh sought a further response but could only come up with, “Marc Royce’s faith is his own. But he strikes me as sincere. About everything.”

  Jaffar turned his back to the office and asked softly, “Do you have news about the other matter?”

  “Nothing direct. Only one possibility.” Sameh described the conversation that morning, about Hassan and the gardener.

  When he was done, Jaffar frowned at the dust motes dancing in the sunlit air. “Hassan el-Thahie is known to me. He is Sunni and he had ties to Saddam. Which means many of my associates will carry their distrust of him to their graves.”

  Sameh replied, “Hassan strikes me as a man seeking to rise above his past and carry our entire nation with him.”

  For the second time that day, Jaffar surprised him. “I agree. Though I must ask that you do not share my opinion with anyone else.”

  “Of course.”

  “You say the American came up with this possible connection?”

  “He and Major Lahm.”

  “I would like to meet with this man.”

  “I will make it happen. Without delay.”

  “And I will make some inquiries of my own.” Jaffar lowered his voice further. “If you have anything to discuss about this matter, do not do so in writing or by phone. We should meet in person. And take great care. There are people in power who do not want us asking these questions.”

  Sameh felt the old familiar chill seep into his bones. The imam’s words brought back all the fears of the Saddam era. “Why should the authorities be so concerned about one more kidnapping?”

  Jaffar offered Sameh his hand and a smile that did not touch his eyes. “That is one of the questions we should never speak aloud.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  T hree hours later, Sameh left his office and entered the old town on foot. His destination was quite a ways off, and the day was blistering hot. But he needed time to sort through his thoughts, and he did some of his best thinking while alone in a crowd. Just another city dweller, walking and breathing the city’s fearful and frenetic energy.

  The imam had left one of his aides to help maintain the orderly procedure. A few of the families had allowed panic to color their claims, but nowhere near as many as Sameh had feared. Most who could not find their child on his walls left voluntarily, after handing over photographs and depositions and tearful pleas. Sameh carried their desperation with him as he walked.

  The entire group had been processed in three hours. The families had brought photographs of their own, along with written lists of distinguishing marks and characteristics. They had all been through such procedures endless times before. The photographs were compared and the hospital phoned when a match was made. A nurse was on duty to check the child in question. As Major Lahm had thought to number both child and photograph, this took very little time. Once confirmed, the families were told to arrive at the hospital the next morning. A number of the children had been so traumatized they had required sedation. The doctors wanted to keep them all under supervision for another day.

  By the time Sameh had left his office, all but four of the children had been identified. For those four, no family members had come forward. Which presaged a different tragedy. But that would have to wait.

  Sameh passed Tayeran Square and rem
nants of the city’s most ancient walls. Baghdad had been erected upon ruins that predated Babylon. It originally had followed the Persian design, a series of tight collectives, similar to guilds but structured as separate villages. One for carpenters, one for goldsmiths, another for healers and herbalists, and so on. One village farther north had been reserved for those noncitizens described by the Koran as “People Of the Book,” meaning Christians and Jews. The old city was vibrant again, the war damage not so much erased as joined to a myriad of more ancient scars. The traffic was chaotic, the smells and sounds and people a vibrant mix.

  Sameh crossed Nafura Square and took Kifah Street. His route took him by one of modern Iraq’s many anomalies, a brand-new Persian market sprawling around the sides and rear of the Al-Gailiani Mosque. Sameh was astonished at how fast the market had grown. Sheikh Abdul Kader Al-Gailiani, a tenth century Shia leader, was buried across the street from where Sameh stood. It remained a pilgrimage site, and Persians were bused in on government-run package tours. Sameh had no problem with pilgrims, Persian or otherwise. But his sentiments toward the Iranian regime and their ultra-orthodox clergy were something else entirely.

  Initially, this market’s traders had served the Iranian pilgrims. But increasingly these unlicensed hawkers offered everything from Persian mountain honey to Iranian toothpaste to boxy air-conditioners to diesel generators. All at prices below anything manufactured locally or brought in from the West. This was possible because the Iranian government secretly offered these traders a substantial bonus.

  The deeper the United Nations sanctions bit into the Iranian economy, the more desperately these traders and the Persian manufacturers clung to the Iraqi market. Tehran subsidized the pilgrim bus services, charging the traders pennies for their transport. They doubled the number of vehicles in service. These days, more than half the buses coming from Iran carried no pilgrims at all. Seats were stripped out to increase the space for products. Freezers, motorcycles, even sacks of Persian cement were coming through border stations as “pilgrims.”

  Iran’s largest bank had opened an office across the street from the mosque, despite the fact that it was under UN sanctions for its ties to Iran’s nuclear program. Another bank on the UN watch list had just acquired a building near the market’s ever-expanding northern border. Sameh knew this because his closest friend in the legal profession had handled the building permits. Sameh was always very careful never to publicly voice his opinions. Iran’s spies were everywhere. But he refused to do business with them. He would rather bed down with a nest of vipers.

  Iran had sought to oppress and dominate Iraq for more than thirty centuries. The two nations had fought war after war. Sameh was a passionate student of history, and he knew Iran’s habit was to smile and embrace, then slip in the unseen blade.

  But their poisonous influence was far more immediate, far more dangerous. Iran was home to the most strident and conservative strains of Shia Islam. Their oppressive regime stifled everything Sameh held dear. The Christian minority of Iran had been crushed, expelled, reviled, decimated. In his opinion, Iran’s current government was Iraq’s most dangerous enemy. This stroll past the new Persian market was Sameh’s chance to take the pulse of a plague carrier.

  He rounded the corner leading to Sheikh Omar Street, where the market spilled over the curb and slowed traffic to a snarled mess. Suddenly he was surrounded by young bearded clerics, all wearing the starched garb of Iran-style conservatives. When Saddam Hussein had tried to eradicate Iraq’s Shia majority, most scholars and clerics had fled east to Iran where they had been welcomed. An entire generation of Iraq’s clerics had studied their theology in Farsi, rather than Arabic. The clerics who surrounded Sameh wore black trousers, scuffed black shoes, white shirts buttoned to scrawny necks, and scraggly beards.

  One of the students revealed awful teeth as he hissed, “There is a dagger pointed at your heart.”

  The cleric was in his early thirties, a bad age for fanatics. It meant he would never be recognized as a leading scholar yet was still young enough to volunteer for foolish acts. He also spoke Farsi. In which Sameh was fluent. Even so, Sameh responded in Arabic, “Sorry, brother, may I be of service?”

  The man switched to heavily accented English. “We know you are facile with languages. We also know you are a betrayer of the worst kind. One who is disloyal to his own people.”

  Sameh again replied in Arabic, raising his voice so it carried to others forcing their way around the tight cluster of clerics. “You want my watch?” Sameh lifted his hands in the manner of a supplicant begging for the attention of passersby. “Take it, please, it is yours.”

  Two of the younger clerics dragged down Sameh’s hands as their spokesman switched back to Farsi. “If I wanted your watch, I would have cut off your hand. Which is the proper fate of all thieves.”

  Sameh knew it was very unwise to bait a man with a knife. But he had not survived Saddam to be frightened by this bearded mob. “Brush your teeth.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You would die for that, except I was ordered to stay my hand. And I obey orders, unlike traitors like you. But here is an order you will obey, thief. Stop your investigation into the missing young man.”

  Sameh’s voice lost its edge. “Whom do you mean?”

  “The eldest son of el-Waziri. He is an apostate and deserves his fate.” The cleric’s gaze shone with pleasure from shaking Sameh’s composure. “Leave this alone. For the sake of your family. Go back to begging the Americans for crumbs. For myself, I consign you to the dark and the void.”

  Chapter Twenty

  A police officer and Sameh’s niece accompanied Marc down to the street. The officer personally flagged him a taxi, then shrugged off Marc’s attempt at thanks, as though this was a service he did for all visiting foreigners. Leyla instructed the taxi driver to let Marc off across the square from the hotel. She explained to Marc this was safer, and clearly the police officer agreed. Leyla let him go with a quiet warning to take great care. Her farewell carried a distinct Baghdad flavor.

  Duboe’s phone call had instructed him to go to the Palestine Hotel. The high-rise building dominated one side of Ferdous Square and was surrounded by concrete antitank barriers. The access points were patrolled by guards with Kevlar vests and submachine guns. Outside the barrier, a crowd of mostly Iraqis waited to be processed and searched. Inside the barrier, two more guards manned a sandbagged fifty-caliber machine gun.

  The square was packed, the traffic awful. In the distance, Marc saw the massive head of Saddam, lying now on its side and covered in refuse. A pair of Iraqis stood grinning in front of the fallen statue while a third took their photograph. Beyond them, a burned-out tank stood as sullen testimony to the city’s troubles. The vast square was lined with buildings and shops and a police station and cafes.

  Marc started toward the hotel when someone called his name. The sound was so bizarre, he assumed he was mistaken. Then it happened again. “Hold up there, Royce!”

  A figure swiftly weaved through the crowd wearing a baseball cap pulled down low, sunglasses, a shapeless blazer, and dusty trousers. But something about the man triggered a recent memory. Marc said, “You’re the leopard.”

  “Say again?”

  “The guy in the Rhino with me. Slipping into Baghdad.”

  The guy responded with a mere twitch at the edges of his mouth. But Marc knew he liked the tag. “I’m headed down the street and around the corner and into a place I know. If you want to stay alive, you follow.”

  He was gone almost before the words were formed, gliding through the massed foot traffic like smoke. Marc did his best to keep up, moving at a pace one notch below a full run. They left the square and went down a major thoroughfare, turned onto a smaller street, then entered an alley so narrow it remained in perpetual shadows.

  The leopard found his way into a locals-only cafe filled with smoke from a dozen hookahs. He walked to the back wall, mirrored so he could sit with his back to
the street and still survey everything that was going on. He pointed Marc to a stool and said, “This place caters to the crowd that doesn’t like the Ramadan fast any more than I do. You gotten sick of mint tea yet? It’s either that or coffee thick as oatmeal.”

  “I’m supposed to be meeting-”

  “I know all about that, sport. Why do you think I’m here?”

  The leopard moved to the counter and ordered in what to Marc sounded like passable Arabic. He returned with the teas and a plate of cold flatbread. He settled on the stool next to Marc and offered him a hand that felt like stone. “Josh Reames.”

  “Are you special ops?”

  He had a grin that mocked. “Where I go, baby, that ain’t nothin’ but words for the body bag. You dig?”

  “You’re a ghost operating outside the official remit.”

  “Roger that. I’m not here, and we’re not talking. Only, I got to tell you, I like what you did, saving those kids. And I like even more how you gave the ’Racks credit. Me and my crew, we dig knowing there’s an American civvie working the local scene, who’s not hunting the spotlight back home.”

  Marc gave that a moment, then asked, “Why are we sitting here?”

  Reames lifted his tulip glass by the rim between thumb and forefinger. He blew softly, sipped, then said, “The guy you’re supposed to meet inside that hotel, he’s not on your side.”

  “You mean Barry Duboe?”

  “Not him. The man who ordered Duboe to set up this meeting.”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “You’re lucky. Jordan Boswell is not your basic embassy stiff. Boswell’s clawing his way up the Washington ladder and doesn’t care how many good joes he leaves in the dust.”

  “Does this mean you’re an ally?”

  “Long as you’re looking for the missing three, you bet.”