by David Lender
She raised her head slowly. The only way out was to do it. And she realized why: she didn’t just have a bond with Yassar, she loved him. Like a father. She’d do it for him, because she loved him, and her belief in that would sustain her through it, even if it meant she might lose him.
CHAPTER 26
FEBRUARY, TWENTY YEARS AGO. RIYADH, Saudi Arabia. Sasha lay on the bed in Ibrahim’s suite, pretending to sleep, certain she was carrying it off, as she’d been doing for the last six months. Now listening to Ibrahim, Abdul and Waleed talking in the living room before Ibrahim’s nightly party, Ibrahim filling his belly full of scotch, Abdul and Waleed filling his head with fundamentalist rhetoric. She tried to overhear all of it, but was afraid to move to the door. This is impossible.
Since she’d agreed to work with Tom Goddard she’d been frustrated. Ibrahim had been unwilling to fully open up to her since their arguments in Nice. And he was smart enough to speak in hushed tones, or not at all while she was nearby, particularly when Abdul and Waleed visited him.
She was only catching every third word in the other room, and finally decided to move to the door despite her concerns about being detected. If someone came toward the bedroom she’d pretend she was just waking up, staggering around half asleep. Pretty lame. But it would have to do. She slid out of the sheets and removed her panties so at least she could hope for the element of shock, then tiptoed toward the door.
“U.S. military…Air Force…army…training…like the oil companies…” she heard, leaning toward the crack she had left open. She thought it was Abdul’s voice.
“…bombing, they’ll see…” She picked up another snippet, Waleed.
Definitely Ibrahim: “Destabilize…but careful.” She leaned in toward the crack, peered out through it. Ibrahim! Walking straight toward the bedroom door. She felt a blast of adrenaline and ran back toward the bed, threw herself under the sheets. She pretended to sleep, feeling her pulse thumping, wondering if he’d heard her.
Ibrahim walked in, paused as if to allow his eyes to adjust to the light. She noted he didn’t turn it on. He walked over toward the bed, sat down on the edge and stroked her hair. His touch was gentle, and under other circumstances, a year ago, she would have thought he was being sweet. Perhaps he thought he was. He bent over and kissed her. She pretended to awaken.
“Oh,” she said. “Is it time for the party?”
“Yes. We’re leaving soon. Time for you to get dressed.”
She turned herself over, reached up and hugged him. It made her feel unclean, but she thought of Yassar, then tried to relax her body so Ibrahim wouldn’t sense something was wrong. She was getting good at it, particularly when she was having sex with him. It was like going to her job every day, dreaming all the while of somebody who didn’t exist to get her through it. Not as difficult as she thought it might be.
“I’ll get up now,” she said. “I’ll be ready shortly.”
But she was thinking this wasn’t any good. It wasn’t working. Picking up a few words here and there just wouldn’t help. She needed to get something of substance. And now, during Ibrahim’s spring break from Harvard, while Abdul and Waleed were here, she was certain what they were saying was what she needed. The time was right to convince Tom that they needed a different plan, make a change so she could get the evidence. She’d helped Yassar work Ibrahim out of one bad habit; maybe she could do it again, perhaps not so easily, but with enough evidence perhaps she could put Yassar out of jeopardy and get out of here and on with her life. Wherever that led.
Sasha heard the clatter of the typewriters and the teletypes in the communications room of the American Embassy in Riyadh. College-aged clerks, most of them blonde-haired blue-eyed girls, cruised back and forth with papers in their hands and airs of self-importance. She took in the back rooms, the bustling center of activity belied by the facade: the opulent, old-world majesty of the main entry rooms and public spaces, accessible by other diplomats and the occasional American citizen looking for relief from trouble with the Mutawwa’iin.
“What excuse did you use to get here?” Tom asked. He looked at her disapprovingly, as though she were a high school student late with a term paper.
“Nafta and I went out shopping. I’m going to the United States with Ibrahim next week. Spring break is almost over. I need a visa, so that’s why we’re here. We’re with a Royal Guard, and Nafta and he are both in the outside room. I don’t have much time.” She gave him a look that said she didn’t need his paternalistic disapproval.
“I think I can slow the process down so you’ll have to come back in order to get it. More time for us to talk if we need it.” He paused, then nodded at her. “So what’s so important?”
“I need the tape recorder,” she said.
“I told you that was too risky.” He observed her calmly, as if trying to say that the conversation was over.
“I don’t care. It’s not working like this. They’re here now. But I’m only getting bits and pieces.”
“What if you get caught?” Tom said, showing her that studied pace of his, trying to slow the conversation down. “I appreciate your zealousness, but shoot-first tactics won’t cut it. This is a methodical, careful business.” He paused. “You push this too fast and you’ll get yourself killed.”
His words were unexpected, hit her like an insult. Her instinct was to retort back. “Then you and your secret-agent friends will have to start all over again, right?”
“Not only telling me how to do my job, but telling me what I think, too?” Tom said.
She regretted her sharpness, aware now of how stressed she was, and frustrated by Tom’s resistance. “I’m sorry.”
He listened without blinking. “And maybe I’m being overdramatic. But what if you’re caught?”
“My only exposure is on the way in.”
“What about bringing the tapes out?”
“I won’t bring them out. I’ll just listen to them. And report back to you by phone.”
“We’ve never done it that way. They might tap the phones.”
Wasn’t he being overly conservative? Wasn’t he supposed to push her to take the chances? If she got caught, he’d be able to wash his hands of her. Why was he being so obstinate? “Then we’ll do it the usual way. Letters to my ‘friends.’”
He looked at her, seemed to weigh it in his mind, then finally nodded. “Okay.”
“And if I find out anything that’s absolutely electric, I can decide if it’s worth the risk to bring the tape out.”
“Don’t piss me off.”
She wondered if there was something he wasn’t telling her. Or maybe he was paranoid. Or maybe that’s just the way they worked. He’s careful, she reminded herself.
Placing the tape recorder was a problem. Where was the appropriate place? The question plagued her while Ibrahim and she had sex. The subject had distracted her from her customary spirited performance. And that wasn’t the half of it. The timing, when to place it, was a conundrum as well. There was the cleaning staff constantly turning Ibrahim’s suite upside down. Nobody around for a few minutes, then one of the bellgirls coming, or even Nafta.
She felt the urgency of other things, too. Such as staying the favorite, so she could keep her access to Ibrahim, her ability to observe him. There were new, younger girls around, not a serious challenge, but it made her think. A reminder, just as it made her shudder seeing Ibrahim “loan” two of the girls to Abdul and Waleed the other night. She sighed, now giving in to the release after her climax; the release from the pressure and her mental agitation as well. It made it easier for her to focus. She watched Ibrahim.
He was stroking her thigh. Didn’t he suspect anything? Were men so dense? Or was Ibrahim just so arrogant? As long as he was getting what he needed, would he even question anything?
“I thought I lost you in a fog there for a while.”
“Really?” Had it shown? Maybe he wasn’t so obtuse after all.
“Thinking about whethe
r or not that new dress shows off your thighs?”
She cringed at his condescension. “No, just anguishing over a broken fingernail.”
He laughed.
“I got over it,” she said.
“You sure did.” He leaned over and kissed her. Did he have to be so pleasant? She felt a rise of self-reproach.
He patted her on the behind. Good. His signal he was ready to get up. He rolled off the bed.
“Time for a quick shower. Then off to the ministry.”
Sasha waited until she heard the water running, gauging time in her mind. It might take a few minutes to locate the appropriate place for the tape recorder, figure five minutes in all. She got up, still naked, and walked into the anteroom. She eyed the sofa, remembering the radius of the tape recorder—sixty feet. She looked at an end table with a latticed door, never used to store anything. That was it, she’d do it now. She walked into her room adjoining Ibrahim’s anteroom.
A woman stood in the center of the bedroom. Sasha felt the blood surge to her face, the jar of a shock. “Nafta!”
“You’re underdressed, sister.”
Sasha laughed. She kissed her friend on the cheek. She’d get her robe, then go back into Ibrahim’s anteroom and hide the recorder. But what if Nafta followed her in? And what was she doing here? “What are you up to?”
“I didn’t want to be available,” she said. Sasha could see now that she was upset. “For entertaining Abdul and Waleed.” She looked away. Sasha thought she must be ashamed to even be worried about it, knowing Nafta had once been the favorite herself. Nafta turned back to her. “I hope you don’t mind. I figured they wouldn’t look for me here.”
“Not at all.” She hugged Nafta, then put on her robe, with the tape recorder securely in its pocket. “I’ll come back once Ibrahim goes to the ministry. We’ll have a snack.”
Sasha returned to Ibrahim’s anteroom, feeling pain for her friend. Everything quiet, and Ibrahim still in the shower. Good. She opened the two doors of the end table, fingers steady, mind working but her breathing shallow. She placed the recorder inside and hit the switch to the slow speed, remembering Tom said that would allow for four hours of recording. As she closed the doors she heard Ibrahim’s shower turn off, and headed toward the bedroom. Then a lurch. She hadn’t wiped off her prints! No time now, she’d have to do it later. Then she thought, maybe if they found the recorder they might suspect one of the other girls. She thought of Nafta in her bedroom; she’d leave her prints on the machine. If it was discovered, she wasn’t having anyone else arrested in her place.
She removed her robe and slid back under the sheets, but a troubling thought filtered through her mind, destroying the momentary sense of relief that her job was finished: she’d be taking just as much risk retrieving the tapes as planting the recorder. And listening to them. And making the copies and stashing them so she’d have backups for Yassar. She felt an ominous rumble of dread.
Sasha realized she must look as if she meant business, because the self-important U.S. Embassy girl paused to let her pass and enter the conference room where Tom was seated.
“I’m stunned. You won’t believe it,” Sasha said. She had the tape in her hand, remembering her argument with Tom on the phone about bringing it out—about even calling him at all—but it was urgent.
“I’ll believe it.”
“Listen,” she said, as Tom put the tape into the machine and turned it on.
It was Abdul’s voice. “So it’s decided. We bomb the military targets once we have access to the plans.”
Then Ibrahim: “I’ll get them. It may take some time. But I’ll get them. I’ll be back from school in late June.”
Waleed was next: “That’s too long!” Sasha pushed the fast-forward, saw Tom raise his hand.
“Wait,” he said.
“You can listen to the rest of it later.” She stopped the tape, found the next reference.
Now Waleed: “I’m authorized to speak for Sheik bin Abdur. You will be installed as the new head of the Saudi government, afterward. He sees you as a righteous Muslim. He knows both the Shiites and Sunnis will accept you. You’ve been well trained, as well as well schooled in our Islam.”
Next Ibrahim: “What about my father?”
A long pause, some fumbling, then Abdul: “He’ll be retired. A consultancy if he wants it. You can’t fight the will of the people. Of Allah.”
Waleed: “There is no god but Allah!”
Voices—were there more than the three of them?: “La ilaha ilallah!”
Sasha hit the fast-forward again. Next it was a voice she didn’t recognize, somebody on a speakerphone: (faintly) “Ibrahim, you are a righteous Muslim amongst a sea of infidels…We choose you to be the successor to power.”
“Appalling,” Sasha said. She felt her blood racing, now repulsed at the thought of the things she did, her body, her hands…with Ibrahim…Tom had a look on his face she’d never seen before. Much calmer, much more reserved. “Whose voice was that?” she asked.
Tom looked at her, words on his lips. She could see he was thinking, trying to decide.
What does that mean?
“It’s him,” Tom finally said. “Sheik bin Abdur.”
CHAPTER 27
JULY, TWENTY YEARS AGO. PARIS, France. Tom always thought the American Embassy in Paris was more designed for the French than the Americans—those silly narrow doorways a broad-shouldered man could barely get through, the ceiling-height windows that had an effeminate quality about them, and the skinny columns that never carried off the sense of stolidity of good old American thick-stoned bulk, something like the Washington Monument. Nigel fit in there, he thought, looking at him across the table, always the dandy.
Ari, swarthy, hairy and earthy as ever, came up to give him a good-natured hug. Within minutes they were hunched over a polished oak conference table, all business.
“Ibrahim’s out of control, even Sasha’s convinced of that. We need to move our agenda up, way up,” Tom said. “These bastards are better organized than we thought. They’re planning bombings on the American bases at Dhahran and Riyadh. Then hits on the royal family. Disrupt the relationship with their allies, then topple the government. Crazier plans have worked.”
“How soon?” Nigel asked.
“Next week,” Tom said. Ari and Nigel exchanged a sideways glance. “How soon you think we can be ready to move?”
“We can get close enough to do three of them, we think,” Ari said. “And we have a chance to make it look like it was power struggles within the splinter groups and local al-Mujari cells that would implicate other members. Maybe we get lucky and start some infighting within the al-Mujari.”
Nigel was looking at Ari with admiration. “Brilliantly conceived,” he said. “We could get to one ourselves. High up in the, uhm, organization. We think he’s the cell leader.”
“And you’re thinking?” Ari asked Tom.
“They’re planning to install Ibrahim as their new leader. Only one thing we can do.”
“And that is?”
“We light up Ibrahim.” Tom knew better than the others what he was saying. He was already thinking about Sasha, knowing she could handle it, at least once she knew everything. “Ibrahim is the only one on the inside of the royals. Take him out and it stops there for now.”
“How’re we going to do it?” Ari asked.
Tom felt his stomach curling into a ball. He said, “Sasha. She’ll have to do it. She’s the only one who can get close enough. Leave it to me,” he said. “I’ll talk to her. She’s my agent, it’s my job.”
“Unpleasant. The chap she sleeps with,” Nigel said. “Does she love him?”
Ari answered for Tom: “No way.”
“Still, lads, not going to be easy for her.”
“She’ll understand once we tell her everything,” Tom said. “Sleeping with him or not, she’s got the grit to do it.”
July, Twenty Years Ago. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Sasha stepped out of a
limousine in front of the French Embassy in Riyadh. She walked with her head erect, arms folded across her chest beneath her black abaya. A Royal Guard escorted her through the gate and into the building. She’d received Tom’s urgent message and had come to meet him there under the guise of obtaining a visa for her trip to Nice. Her nerves were frayed. Feeling an ache in her legs. As if the strain of maintaining this shadow life weren’t difficult enough, it was compounded by the constraints of being a woman in Saudi Arabia. Not free to come and go as she pleased without one of these bloody beefeaters trailing along behind her. It had gotten wearying. But she was hostage to her desire to protect Yassar.
She knew Tom wanted something more from her; and she’d already made up her mind she wasn’t about to agree to it. She was worn out. Literally months had passed since she’d given him the tapes she felt would be the evidence to go to Yassar. He said things move slowly in this world. But now she was beginning to think things didn’t happen at all. Maybe she’d bring what she knew and her duplicate tapes to Yassar without waiting to learn anything else of what Tom and the others knew.
A French girl wearing a suit led her to a small conference room while the Royal Guard seated himself in the lobby.
Tom was sitting alone behind the conference room table, looking grave. “Hello, Sasha.”
“Hello,” she said. She made certain her tone revealed her annoyance with him. “You said it was urgent.”
“Yes. How much time do we have?”