After twenty minutes, Singh turned off on I-95. He took the next exit and they entered what seemed to be a forest.
"Your depot is in the wilderness?"
"Less than a mile…"
They approached a huge complex with high barricades and several large concrete cubes. Ari barely contained his gasp of amazement.
"Oh, no," Singh chuckled. "O'Connor's is not so grand. This is the UPS Tri-City terminal. We're a little deeper in the woods."
A minute later Singh arrived at a modest imitation of the UPS monstrosity. He braked as a semi chugged out of the gate and turned left, headed for 95. The only indication that this belonged to O'Connor's was an almost timid logo on the side of the cab. The trailer presented a blank galvanized façade.
"One would not know this from any other tractor trailer on the highway," said Ari.
"It's a low-profile operation."
"A hijacker would have difficulty distinguishing these from any other trucks."
"That might be intentional," said Singh, "but I am not privy to corporate strategy."
"The gates are wide open," said Ari, hoping to sound like an insurance adjuster. "There are no guards."
"After five we post one or two men at the entrance," Singh answered. "There are guards inside the main bays and one in the customer entrance. They try not to delay shipments. The few cargoes shipped from here are pre-inspected."
"Like Customs?"
"Well, no, it's not that intrusive. Please…the profit margin includes my salary."
"And mine, as well," Ari shot back just as his cell phone began to ring. Singh pulled up in front of the Customer Service door. "One moment," he said to Singh, hopping out of the Cadillac and inspecting the phone's digital display. It was Lawson. Ari pressed the answer button.
"Ari?" came Lawson's gruff voice. He found speaking a painful, disheartening chore.
"I believe it is so," said Ari.
"Cut it out. Why didn't you call me with your report last night? You spoke to Mrs. Sadiq, right?"
Ari had been busy riffling through endless images of slaughtered Iraqis, downing glass after glass of whisky—when he wasn't drinking directly from the bottle. He had completely forgotten to call Lawson.
"I apologize for my remiss-ness," said Ari. "Yes, I spoke with her. I have at this moment arrived at her trucking depot."
"Good. Perfect. Because we just got another call."
"Another hijacking?"
"You're the man on the spot. Tell me the situation, how they're reacting. Any hint of 'business as usual' and I'll stop payment."
"I will see what I see."
"That's good. And if you see anything out of whack, let me know. Ask them for a look at their manifest. It might be Greek to you, but if you push them and they push back, that says a lot."
"I know some Greek. Modern Greek."
"That's swell, you bogus Eye-Tie."
"I am not bogus—"
"Did I say 'bogus'? I meant 'bonus'. There's a big bonus if you can pin the scam on them. They're in the middle of a nasty lawsuit, did I tell you?"
"I have been so informed by both Mrs. Sadiq and yourself."
"I know I can count on you, Ari," said Lawson. "As soon as you're out of there, give me a call."
Ari rang off and turned to Singh, who was adjusting the semi-crushed dastar on his head. The turban matched his bespoke single breasted navy blue suit. He was immaculate, the perfect natty executive. He could have been president of the company.
"You must tell me the name of your tailor," said Ari.
"Who told you I have a tailor?"
"Your gigantic stature allows only a custom design."
"My tailor is my own business."
"I comprehend," Ari smiled. He treasured Madame Mumford, the French cook who served him a perfect meal at least once a week. He had no intention of sharing her…although she had missed two weeks in a row. Evidently, Singh felt the same way about the man or woman who could perfectly accommodate his inordinate dimensions. Ari continued: "We must make haste. There has been another hijacking."
"That phone call?"
"The insurance company, CVG, has already been informed. The loss was last night."
"Kuthay da puthar!" Singh swore, storming up the steps to the office.
Inside, a counter stretched the length of the room. It seemed O'Connor's was also involved in doorstep deliveries. Although there were no customers in the room, the setup suggested pickups for customers who had received delivery slips. A lone Arab guard sat at a desk behind the counter. He stood.
"Hello, Mr. Singh…" His courtesy melted like wax from a decorative candle when he saw Singh's scowl. "You have heard…"
"And why is it I heard from the insurance company…" He nodded at Ari. "…before I hear from the office?"
"The night shift called Mrs. Sadiq at around 11, as soon as the driver was able to contact us."
"Oh…" Singh had himself told Ari he was not involved with the trucking business. There would have been no reason to contact him in the middle of the night with the news. Rather than admit to being unreasonable, he deepened his scowl and began guiding Ari to the back entrance. Then he stopped and whirled on the guard. "Why are you not doing your job?"
The guard stared at him for a moment, then jumped. "Sir!" he called out to Ari, holding up a clipboard. "Please…guests must sign in."
With a downturned lip Ari returned to the counter and wrote down his name and the time of his arrival. The guard handed him a Visitor tag which he clipped to the lapel of his jacket.
"Only one guard," Ari commented as he and Singh passed through a locker room.
"There are more at night, but there have been no thefts on the premises," said Singh. A loud complaint echoed through the rear of the building and Singh stopped dead. "Tareq is here."
"Does that present a problem?"
"He will influence the loading crews and drivers."
"You mean he will throw turmoil into the situation?" said Ari.
"As you can hear, he believes he is still in charge. You must ignore him. No matter what, remember that this business is owned by Shrimati Sadiq. The court has decided—at least for now."
As Nabihah had emphasized several times the day before. There was no question of receivership. There were no stockholders. And there were no outstanding loans, which meant the banks weren't involved. A huge amount of seed money had appeared magically from somewhere to begin O'Connor's Freight Lines. If it came from overseas (as Ari was certain it must have), the government would certainly take an interest. Any amount over $10,000 had to be declared to Customs, and the startup for a trucking company must be in the tens of millions. Ari had listened closely to Nabihah for clues. His best guess was that she or Tareq Sadiq had the inside track on some ready cash. Yet it was Ari's opinion that a truly wealthy individual would not lower himself to the daily operations of a freight company. Was Tareq, the alleged founder of the company, merely a front man? That would explain his absence from the mansion. Tareq had not only lost his business, but his house, as well, because he no longer controlled the purse strings—if he ever had. And if someone in Egypt was expecting to turn a profit on this American investment he would not be pleased by a profligate hireling who had thrown away so much cash on a mansion.
"Mrs. Sadiq made me cognizant of the situation," Ari told Singh, who burst through the wide swinging doors leading out to the loading dock.
Ari was the master of the poker face, the false front, the impassive assurance. He was trained to lasso the sudden surprise, the unanticipated ambush, the unexpected face when one turned a corner. When his talent and training failed, as it did every blue moon, he froze in place. As he did now.
There were around two dozen men crowded along the elevated dock, and within the space of two seconds he recognized two of them, both Iraqi:
Baqir al-Rubaie and Khaled al-Khufaji. The first had been arrested for drug-trafficking. The second for a particularly egregious transgression against l
ineage (fornication with a police lieutenant's wife).
He had met neither man face-to-face. Their names, faces and crimes floated up from the files of Abu Ghraib, where he had briefly been in charge of the Records Division. It took only a morning of flitting through the index cards for him to unwillingly memorize the records of the prisoners. A captain, on witnessing this, had whispered to Ari that he must be the next step in human evolution. Some Middle Eastern schools taught Darwinism in their high schools, but most Muslims rejected the theory. Ari reprimanded the officer, though not very sternly. He found it puzzling that other people did not have photographic memories. And then, one day, he had come across a physics textbook. Within three pages he was at a complete loss. How could people know that stars were composed of such and such elements, and that they were 'redshifting'? It was then that he realized that certain talents came unbidden, that he had been chosen by unknown forces to be a specialized freak of nature. Was he being chosen by God? Or punished? Even atheists could conjure such questions.
Would he be recognized by the two dockhands who glanced his way? Although he had never confronted them, a portrait of Ari had circulated throughout the streets of Baghdad, identifying him as a traitor to Islam. Anyone who assassinated him would be rewarded with a billion virgins and assorted other heavenly bonuses. Based on that very accurate piece of art (the result of Ari angrily revealing himself in Sadr City) a prisoner at the Powhatan CC had immediately identified him. And that was why he froze.
Luckily, most of the employees were focused on the fierce man at the center of a ferocious invective cyclone. Tareq Sadiq had honed up on his American vernacular.
"The pig-ass court made its decision three months ago, and what's happened since? Four fucking hijackings! The decision is on appeal. Do you hear that? On appeal! I will soon be back, and this hijacking bullshit will come to an end. I hired every man standing here…" Tareq turned to the serious-looking Arab standing close to him. "…including you."
Ari suspected the main target of this verbal assault was Badawi Bahrani. Tareq would automatically dislike the foreman his wife had set in place to run everyday operations. Bahrani did not appear to take offense at the abuse from his former (and possibly future) boss. He stood stoically, like one of the monolithic heads of Easter Island, gazing not at the present but at a hopefully more benign future. This seeming indifference only stoked Tareq's fury. A half head shorter than Ari, he still towered over Bahrani, his face hovering like a thundercloud over the small man. Although a bit on the fleshy side, Tareq's chest and arm muscles threatened to burst out of his shirt. He could probably hammer nails into a coffin with his bare hands. It was obvious why Nabihah had chosen to hire Singh and Yilmaz as bodyguards. He looked more like the product of the tough Imbaba neighborhood than a swell from Garden City, which only reinforced Ari's suspicion that he had married into wealth. But what member of Cairo's Gezira Sporting Club would allow his precious, scented daughter to marry such an oaf? The thought caused a little 'ping' in the back of Ari's mind. A member of the Sporting Club would be horrified if his daughter showed up for cocktails at the Shepheard's Hotel on the arm of this creature. Right there, in the midst of the Makram Ebeids, Abazas, Serageldins, Boutros Ghalis and all the other Egyptian Rockefellers…a thug! No, something even worse, from the distant headwaters of the Nile…a gorilla! Tareq's pale complexion notwithstanding, his simian roots were undeniable.
What better way for a loving father to rid himself of this blight than to stuff the unwelcome son-in-law with cash and ship him off to far shores? That would entail losing his daughter in the process, but hell, if she wanted to see her parents, she was but a connector away: Richmond-Raleigh-Cairo.
But Nabihah did not seem inclined to fly home, whether for a brief visit or otherwise. She was staying put, standing her ground, publicly ripping the fiscal loincloth from her coarser half. This was not something she could have gotten away with in Egypt. Like all great generals, she understood the benefits of favorable terrain.
Her husband was learning the drawbacks of success in a strange land. Tareq must have found it inconceivable that his wife could wield so much power. And yet here he was, gasping defiance in the face of American jurisprudence.
"How could this happen?" Tareq shouted. Annoyed by Badawi Bahrani's unreactive surface, he turned to the cringing dockworkers, an audience truly impressed by his bluster. "Which one of you is in on this, heh? One of you Yids sold our transponder codes? Heh?"
Well, Ari thought, you couldn't accuse them of much worse than being members of a kibbutz.
"If I find out who it is, you will find your guts strung out from Giza to…"
He had been rotating slowly as he spoke, like a flour mill grinding the husks before him into powder. Then he turned far enough to see Ari…and his voice floated away in a gruff current.
Nabihah had noted Ari's resemblance to Gamal Abdel Nasser right away. Many others had preceded her. An Egyptian would be the most inclined to drop his jaw on seeing him. Nasser had been the classic tough guy with a kindly face. While he was loathe to employ his Mukhabarat (General Intelligence Directorate) against his own people, when push came to shove he could crunch some nuts. Tareq's throat throbbed visibly for a moment.
But Nasser was dead. Everyone knew that. Even a few Americans knew it. Tareq collected himself and demanded: "Who the hell are you?"
"He is a representative of the Central Virginia Group," Singh answered.
"Already?" Tareq sneered. "You look like you escaped from the den of forty thieves. What, they're thinking to send a crook to catch a crook?"
Truly, Tareq had absorbed American culture to the brim.
"I am only here to assist—" Ari began.
"You mean you're here to rob my company…my company…of its just compensation."
Ari shifted uncomfortably. There certainly seemed to be a lot of animosity directed at the insurance industry. Perhaps he should have turned down Lawson's offer. There was no difference between Nabihah's attitude and her husband's. Were they really such a bad match? Perhaps businessmen shared the same genetic code.
Singh stepped forward and looked down at his employer's husband, who now seemed perceptibly…small.
"Sir, this is not your place."
"It's as much my place as yours," Tareq smirked. "You think you're too big to take on? Think again."
"Let me think," said Singh, who thought all of a second. "Yes, I am too big for you to take on."
They faced off. Ari, a masterful judge of manflesh, estimated Tareq would last roughly three seconds against the Sikh. Unless a few of Tareq's former employees interfered. Then the fight might last up to five seconds. Ari had already calculated his own odds against the giant. Really, the only way to confront such an implacable force of nature was to use guile…and plenty of it. He would win…but just. Not that he cared to test the odds.
But Tareq had the blind optimism of the incorrigible entrepreneur. He took a step towards Singh. "You think you scare me?"
"It is not my intention to scare you, sir. It is only my intention to convince you of the error of your assumptions. You are behaving as if you were the employer of these men, when in fact you are not. Admittedly, facts are flexible, but until this fact changes, it is not for you to browbeat Shrimati Sadiq's employees."
Right. Even if he could take on Singh, Tareq understood that the force of law could unsheathe its flaming sword and reduce him to a nonentity. Which, at the moment, he was. A fact hard to swallow.
"Be it understood that I am not an employee of this company," said Singh, turning to the dockworkers. "I have no caste or say. However, I am an employee of Shrimati Sadiq, and she would take it seriously amiss if you gave heed to this man's rantings."
Many eyes had shifted in Ari's direction when Tareq spoke to him. Right off, Ari spotted an additional member of the exclusive Abu Ghraib club of miscreants and scofflaws. He, too, was startled by Ari's resemblance to the former President of Egypt. Beyond that, there seemed to be
no additional awareness. Ari's inward sigh of relief was qualified. Humans were by definition capable of second thought. A second thought on the part of one of the three ex-inmates would be all that it would take to pin him.
Singh continued: "Mr. Ciminon will undoubtedly wish to question some of you. You will cooperate with him in the same manner as you would with Shrimati Sadiq…or me."
That was enough. The workers on the platform began to shift away from Tareq, even as they behaved as though he was the most tender, the most understanding boss they had ever had.
"'Ciminon'?" Tareq shouted. "What kind of name is that?"
"Italian," said Ari. "I come from Syracusa. A plain city of calcareous rock, but most wonderful history. The world wonders at its ancient ruins."
"I'll ruin you."
"It is your privilege to attempt such in this land of opportunity."
"You're about as Italian as my elbow."
"The wonders of emigration are wondrous to behold," Ari responded, once again inwardly cursing the cover story Karen Sylvester had foisted on him.
He could see why Nabihah liked him. He could also see why she loathed him. Ari had seen too many fawning American men to disavow the virtuoso male-ness of Arabs. You want to prove what you mean? Then die for it! That was the Arab way. Ari had perused some history books, and apparently that had once been the American way, too. You diss me? Guns at dawn, in the meadow of your choosing. That was the manly way. But civilization was half female, and it had determined otherwise. Guns at dawn? You're under arrest!
Damn.
Rana, Ari's wife, would have been the first to condemn the all-or-nothing death wish. 'Let's invoke a little reason here, shall we?' But the penalty she had paid for this belief had been grievous in the extreme. Mutilated beyond repair…. Why couldn't Ari kill someone for that?
"You have appealed the judgement of the court in this matter," said Singh to Tareq. "Your patience might be rewarded. Allow Mr. Ciminon to conduct his investigation without your interference. If his company fulfills its obligation, it might benefit you…if the court decides against your wife and in your favor."
The Shelter for Buttered Women Page 8