by Chuck Dixon
“I thought I told you never to come back here, you son of a bitch,” the pirate said through clenched teeth in heavily accented English.
“And I thought I told you the best part of you ran down your mama’s leg,” Levon said. Both men froze, eyes locked on one another.
Hector was startled by an explosion of laughter from the smaller man. The pirate grabbed Levon’s arm and yanked the bigger man to his feet and into waiting arms. Levon let out a grunt as his ribs were pressed tight. Manly hugs and bear paw back pats.
“Ortiz, meet Bazît Hassan,” Levon said when they broke their embrace.
Pounding Sufi drums kicked in on the boombox and the girls picked up the pace of their dance as men whooped and fired rifles into the sky.
25
Merry found Lisa waiting in front of the Circle K. It was midway between Calhoun Middle and the high school. Lisa was with some other girls her age. They were standing on the walk at the side of the convenience store, smoking cigarettes. Obeying adolescent protocol, Merry did not join them. She took a seat on a steel bench at the front of the store and watched a young black couple discuss movie picks in front of a Redbox.
The Knox hatchback pulled up and honked. Lisa ditched her cigarette and raced to take the shotgun seat. The bay door slid open to allow Merry into the back.
“Where’s Blaine?” Mrs. Knox said from behind the wheel.
Lisa shrugged.
“I didn’t see him,” Merry said.
“Shit,” Mrs. Knox said. She pulled into an open slot in front of the store and they waited until Blaine showed up, five minutes later. He winced at having to sit in the back but said nothing beyond a grunt. Merry scooted against the opposite window to allow him room to sprawl. He spent the ride home watching the back of Lisa’s head with curious interest. She sat looking forward, eyes on the road as if she were the one driving. Merry sensed something between them. In the end she decided it was teenage stuff and turned her attention to the homes and businesses going by.
There was nothing to do.
She regretted not bringing home something to read. As she was given no homework assignments, Merry left her textbooks in the locker at school. Even though they were boring she wished that she'd brought one of them home just to have something to read.
Carrie Knox made the house rules clear on the drive home. Merry would be expected to keep tidy her half of the room she shared with Lisa including making her own bed each morning. She would also empty the dishwasher and fold towels. She was not allowed to use the phone and the television was off limits except for two hours on the weekends. The rest of her time was hers to do with what she wished.
Merry thought that even a few more chores would at least pass the time. She thought about asking Carrie if she could help with dinner. Carrie was working in the kitchen, a phone held in the crook of her shoulder. Her voice was raised to compete with the noise from the television in the living room where Blaine had a sports channel turned to high volume. It sounded like she was complaining to a person on the other end. How hard she worked. How no one appreciated it. How she'd like to just get in the car and drive far, far away.
Rather than interrupt, Merry went outside to the quiet of the fenced-in backyard. There were few amusements to be had out there. A swing set sagged on a patch of sand. Probably Blaine’s when he was little. It was crusted with rust. There was a tennis ball lying in the grass. She picked it up but it was flat.
A yip from the other yard made her look up. A dog was braced against the chain link fence that separated the Knox yard from the neighbor’s. A big yellow Lab smiled a dopey smile at her. She smiled back and pitched the flat tennis ball over the fence. The dog whirled to chase it and returned to the fence with the ball clamped in its teeth, tail wagging.
Merry plucked the ball from the dog’s mouth and threw it again. The dog bounded away and returned. This time she gave it a scratch behind the ears. The Lab leaned its head on her arm, panting. She threw the ball a few more times before the back door of the house opened and a woman in a bathrobe called the dog in. Merry waved at the woman who simply glared for a few seconds before turning away, the screen door banging behind her.
“Hey.”
It was Blaine at the back door of the Knox house. He held the door open with a put-upon expression meant to tell the world that he was just not into any of this in any way.
“Tell my dad dinner’s ready,” he said.
“Where is he?” Merry said.
“The garage.” The door slammed closed.
Merry opened a gate that let her out onto a driveway that ended at a cinder block garage building. The door was open. Machine sounds came from inside.
“Cool,” Merry said at the sight of an old looking two-seater car up on blocks. The hood was off and the engine compartment was empty. The engine sat on a metal stand at the back of the garage. Greg was at a workbench operating a drill press. Merry waited until the shrill whine of the drill died down.
While she waited she looked at the walls. Among the tools hanging from pegboard panels were pictures of helicopters and jets.
“Excuse me. Mr. Knox?” she said when the drill stopped.
Greg turned, startled.
“Who told you you could come in here?” His words were sharp.
“Mrs. Knox says dinner is ready.”
“I’ll be in.” He turned back to the piece on the drill plate, scraping at it with a rat-tail file.
“You like airplanes and stuff?” Merry stepped closer to look at a framed photo of a helicopter bristling with weapons soaring over treetops.
“I was an engineer at Boeing down in Huntsville.”
"You don't do that anymore?"
“I’m retired on disability.” He sighed and turned his back to clamp the metal piece into a vise mounted on his workbench.
Greg didn't look disabled to Merry in any way except that he seemed lazy. She looked into the car, an open-top convertible. The leather seats had a vinyl cover over them. Strands of wires hung from ports in the dash. Bits and pieces of the car were everywhere. The spoked wheels hung from a beam in the ceiling.
“I helped my daddy rebuild a car,” she said.
“I’m sure you did.” Greg sniffed.
“For real. A ’67 Mustang. It was all torn apart like this one.”
“A Mustang. I guess your father considered that a classic.” His voice had a bitter tinge.
“It turned out beautiful,” she said.
He set the rasp down with a clank and turned to her.
“Look, I really don’t give a shit. You kids are Carrie’s thing. Stop bothering me and run on back and tell her I’ll be along.” A cigarette bobbed between yellow teeth as he spoke.
Merry backed from the garage and walked back down the drive. She could see the tree-lined street at the end of the drive. A feeling floated in her belly that made her lightheaded. What if she didn’t go back into the yard, into the house? What if she just kept walking out onto the street? Turned right or left and kept going until she was blocks, miles, away. Go on the run like she did with her daddy.
Only that took money and she had none.
She was surprised to find herself almost to the front walk. She looked up and down the street. A gust of wind stirred leaves along the gutter. Merry turned back and went into the house. It felt like a walk of miles.
26
“Have they asked for a ransom for your girls?” Levon said.
“They have not. It does not matter. I have no money. No way to pay,” Bazît said.
“Your wife?”
“I only heard that she is dead.”
They walked together between the long rows of refugee tents. The tents were dark. Lanterns off so as to not draw fire from the snipers who crept nightly over the top of the border berm. Radios played softly, music or voices. The neat rows of tents ended at the lip of a broad depression that held the community corral of sheep and goats, closed in by a circle of wire fence and steel posts. The two men sto
pped at the fence line, eyes on the current of woolen backs shifting under the silver moon.
“You came a long way for nothing, my friend,” Bazît said.
“I made you a promise.”
“I did not ask you to. Why should you keep a promise that your country has never kept?”
“It wasn’t my country making the promise. It was me. An oath I took. To you.”
“It is a useless gesture. My girls are gone and no one has offered to take ransom from me.”
“It’s possible though. Daesh can be paid to release hostages,” Levon said.
“It happens sometimes. They text or email using contact information from those they’ve taken.” Bazît crouched. Elbows on knees, fingers steepled before him.
“Has anyone you know been contacted?”
“Oh yes. A few.”
“Any who were in Baiji?”
“What is your idea, my friend?”
“We have no intel. We have no idea where your girls are. Maybe someone taken at the same time could give us a location on them. At least get us close.”
“There is Farhad Aman. He was my supervisor at the oil collection station.”
“An executive? Daesh contacted him about who?”
“His wife and two young sons. Taken the same time as my Kani and Rona. The dogs reached him on his phone. They let his wife speak to him. They asked for a million euros or like worth in dollars. Pounds.”
“He can’t pay?”
“Farhad is paid more than me but is not wealthy. Daesh thought the oil company would pay the price. Not the Chinese. They will never pay unless it is one of their own. They fired him from his job. What is one Kurd more or less to them?” Bazît spat.
“Where’s Farhad now?” Levon took a knee by him.
“Kirkuk the last time I saw him.”
“You could contact him?”
“I could. But of what use is it, Levon?”
“Get ahold of him. Call him. I’ll talk to him.”
“He has no money,” Bazît said.
“Money’s the one problem I don’t have,” Levon said.
27
With Carrie’s permission, Merry made a cheese and pickle sandwich for her lunch the next morning. She added an apple and a napkin to a plastic Target shopping bag. She also found a flannel lined denim jacket in a downstairs closet. It hung on her like a sack and smelled vaguely of someone else’s sweat but it was warm.
She spent the morning thinking of nothing but lunch. Not about the sandwich and apple but her visit to the library.
“You brought your own today,” Coco said. “Good thing. Mine is cottage cheese and orange wedges today.”
Merry made a face.
“Yeah. Pretty bleak.” Coco shrugged.
“Did you remember those books?” Merry said.
“I did!” Coco rooted in a big canvas bag and came up with a pile of three well-loved paperbacks. The Big Sleep; Farewell, My Lovely; and The High Window.
“Do I read them in order?”
“Doesn’t really matter.”
“How long can I keep them?
"Until you're done with them. Trust me; I have plenty to read." Coco's swept an arm to take in the shelves of books around her.
“Do you have a bag or something I can put them in? I don’t want them to get messed up.”
“You don’t have a bookbag?”
Merry shook her head. Coco stepped around a wall behind the counter and came back with a green canvas bag with an American flag patch sewn on the flap.
“All yours thanks to the lost and found,” Coco said.
“But doesn’t it belong to someone else?” Merry said. She took the bag in her hands. It was worn but clean. The flag was faded by the sun and years of washings.
“Been here for years. The kid’s probably in college by now.”
Merry stowed the paperbacks in the bag. She was just finishing her apple when the bell rang ending lunch period.
“Hope you like the books,” Coco said by way of farewell as Merry raced for the schoolyard.
“I know I will!” she called back and burst out into the sunshine.
28
The fat man was a person of many names.
To Iraqis he was Baravan Masri. To Kurds he was Birousk Massa. To the French he was Barteux Macca. To the English and Americans, Barry Marx. He was whatever his customers wished him to be. Muslim, Jew, Chaldean, Sunni, Shi’ite. He was what he needed to be. It was all the same god, was it not? All men lived under the same sun and moon.
Known to all, friend to none. Though no one liked him, they trusted his word.
Baravan Masri sold women.
His customers were husbands, fathers and sons who wanted their wives, daughters, mothers and sisters returned to them. He dealt in human flesh and his clients were aggrieved Iraqis, Syrians, Kurds and Yazidis seeking the return of loved ones from the sex slavery of Daesh. His partners were the emirs of ISIS who sought cash rewards in exchange for surrendering captive women and children back to their families.
The money paid, funds in the millions since the Islamic State swept over Syria and Iraq two years earlier, was never called ransom by Baravan. He referred to the funds as exchange fees from which he took a small percentage. The size of that percentage was never revealed. But the size of the gems on the rings that encircled his fingers told a story of their own.
Baravan’s business was quasi-legal; organized as a non-profit charity in the murky shadow world of non-governmental agencies. That he took a generous salary for his work was little compensation for the dirty work he performed at great personal risk to his ever-spreading hide. That was the way he saw it, in any case.
To the naïve, he was a caring individual who facilitated the freedom of women cruelly captured by dangerous fanatics. Those with both eyes open saw him as he was. A facilitator without heart or soul or any interest beyond profit. Lower than a thief. Worse than a pimp. He traded in misery.
The fat man was smiling through a sheen of sweat as he crossed the lobby to the desk of the bank manager. The dry chill air within the International Bank of Lebanon off Pirman Street in Erbil enveloped him. The fat on the back of his neck shivered like gelatin. Perspiration turned to beads of ice water on his back. He wriggled as the drops rolled into the waistband of his silk underwear.
The manager stood to greet him. It was a greeting as cold as the air inside the bank.
“Mister Masri, may I have a glass of water brought for you?” the manager said with a curt bow. He motioned the fat man into the guest chair set beside his desk.
“With a wedge of lemon, sil vous plait?” the fat man said as he dropped into the chair. A worn leather case rested across his knees. A silver chain secured the handle to a cuff on his wrist.
“Would an orange slice do?” The manager nodded to a young man seated on a stool against a column. He snapped his fingers and pointed to a carafe of water set on a cart against a wall.
“If it is all you have,” the fat man said, displeased and making no effort to conceal it behind a fixed smile.
The bank manager opened a laptop and tapped a few keys while they waited for the boy to bring the ice water. Baravan Masri made of show of examining his fingernails. The boy brought the water, setting the sweating glass atop a paper coaster on the marble desktop. He retreated with a nodding bow. The fat man took a long, noisy sip.
“Your accounts have updated as of this morning. A half million euros deposited in the account for the World Rescue Initiative.” The manager’s mouth curled around the words. The funds came from an unidentified bank in Panama.
“Mm. Hmm.” Baravan nodded, the glass to his thick lips as he sipped.
“I suppose you know what the funds are earmarked for.”
The fat man unbuckled the straps of the leather case and reached within to withdraw a leather notebook. He removed a thick rubber band that held it closed. He thumbed through the pages until finding the one he wanted.
“Would you be
so kind as to read me the SWIFT transfer number?” Baravan said. He touched the cool surface of the water glass to his sweating forehead.
The manager read from the screen while Baravan, lips moving, checked the long string of numbers and letters against the one penciled in his book.
“All is in order. I will need to transfer half of that amount to the following account.” Baravan said. He read a long sequence of numbers and letters from his notebook. The bank manager copied them down on a sheet of paper and read them back. He recognized the prefix code of a bank in Bahrain.
“And the rest of the funds?” the manager said.
The fat man read a new sequence from his notebook. A private bank in the Canary Islands. The manager knew from experience that the half million euros, Baravan Masri’s payment for brokering this ransom exchange, would not remain in the Canary account for more than twenty-four hours. It would be dispersed into other secret accounts from one end of the globe to the other.
“Merci. And abientot,” the fat man said. He replaced his notebook in the leather case before buckling it closed. With an effort, he scooted his chair back on the tiles to stand.
The manager did not stand or offer his hand. He watched Baravan waddle to the bank entrance where a uniformed guard held the door open to the furnace heat without.
The young man left his stool in response to the snap of the bank manager's fingers. The manager pointed to the half-full glass resting on his table.
“Shall I take the glass away and wash it, sir?” the boy said.
“No. Throw it away. I never want to see it again,” the manager said. He closed his laptop with a snap. He would have his wife draw a bath for him and he would soak for hours. He would try and steam away the filth he imagined now covered him from head to toe.
A Red Crescent ambulance screamed west down Highway 2. It weaved around blackened wrecks. Clots of refugees broke up to seek shelter on the verges as it bore down on them. Sniper fire cracked overhead as it closed on the protective berm.