"French, too?" said Nabihah, her eyebrows waffling gently against her hijab. "I'm impressed. In fact, for some reason, I'm alarmed. I wouldn't want you to trade secret communications with my chef."
"She doesn't speak English?" Ari asked innocently.
"Oh yes. Would you like to visit her in the kitchen? She might like to trade gossip in her native tongue." She paused. "Although, I don't think she's the type who gossips very much."
Ari smiled at the thought. Idle gossip was anathema to the stern woman from Hauts-de-France.
"Do you think it's permissible?" he inquired.
"She'll be the first to let you know if it isn't."
Turning to rise, he found the sour woman staring at him. Nodding apologetically, he quickly slipped away from her gaze.
He found Madame Mumford standing before a stainless steel sink, scrubbing mightily at a sauce pot that he immediately recognized from visits to his own kitchen. She used only her own laboriously seasoned skillets, turning a contemptuous eye on modern culinary devices that shined too much to be useful. She wore a plain blue dress and a virtuously stained apron. Catching sight of Ari, her face slipped into a Gallic mask that could not be interpreted with any certainty.
"It's so marvelous to see you, after all."
She flipped the pot over and scrubbed the bottom. Steam rose from the plashing water. "If you'll remember, Monsieur Ciminon, I told you there would be times I could not adhere to your schedule."
"Your maqluba was superb," Ari said, leaning his back against the counter. "Why have you never served that at my house?"
"It was never requested."
Bill Mumford gave Ari a friendly nod as he brushed past them bearing a plastic trash bag. Ari paused as he spoke to the two men who had acted as waiters. They went out the back door.
"Do you work here often?" Ari asked Madame Mumford.
"Every once and a while," she said after some thought, as though asking herself if the answer betrayed customer confidentiality. "Never dinner, though. The Arabes usually reserve their main meals for lunch."
"So I've heard," Ari nodded.
"Madame Sadiq said she had some guests who would be arriving late. I presume she wanted to make a good impression."
"I am the only one who hires you not to make an impression, but for yourself, alone."
Madame Mumford gave one of her rare laughs, a brief high-pitched yelp that tickled Ari's funny bone. "In that case, the next time I visit, I will let you do the cooking."
"That is what the Fabians call a 'death wish'."
"I think you mean 'Freudians', but it's all nonsense, anyway."
"I suppose you're wondering what I'm doing here," Ari continued as Madame Mumford applied a dish towel to the pot.
"It is none of my business."
"I knew you would say that. But what do you think, in your Freudian mind?"
"I wondered if you had a woman in town," Madame Mumford shrugged. "Now I see you have a harem."
Ari drew back in dismay. "You think such a thing of me?"
"I don't think, I only observe."
"You observe me to be a sex zealot? I weep in horror! I am merely a guest."
"The only male guest in a very large hall filled with women." Bill returned and his wife handed the pot over to him. "Try not to bang it around so much this time. There is a dent."
Bill scrutinized the pot. "I don't see a dent."
"It affects the evenness of the temperature," Madame Mumford continued. "The garlic sauce was not perfect."
"You mean the sauce on the Al-Baik?" Ari protested. "It was perfection!"
"See?" said Bill. "No dent."
"Have you finished packing up?"
"I'm working on it, my cherry."
"Work harder!"
As her husband rushed off, Madame Mumford attacked another dirty pot. She was shaking her head. "All these years and he still doesn't know chéri from chérie from cherry."
All these years and you don't know when your husband is joking, Ari thought, a little sadly. Unless, of course, she was joking, too.
"What do you think of Nabihah Sadiq?" he asked.
"She pays very well. Would you like to know how much?"
"Not really. But I mean, how do you perceive her? Is she stupid? Intelligent?"
"Such a question! I wish I was so smart."
"Is she pleasant to work with, or la vraie salope?"
"She would never use language like that!" Madame Mumford scowled.
"Pardon. I'm just—"
"Tu es trop curieux."
"Nosy? Me? Truthfully, when this day began, I never suspected I would end up here, surrounded by so many women and partaking in your wonderful cuisine."
Madame Mumford stopped scrubbing and turned to face him. The steam had whipped her gray hair into spiky curlicues, enhancing her innate ferocity. "You are up to something, again. I hope you are not being a no-good. And I hope you do not intend to bother Madame Sadiq. I don't know her well…I hardly know her at all. But I like her. I have a sense about these things."
"She is a good woman, then."
"She's as good as she can be," Madame Mumford said.
"Ah," said Ari.
"What does that mean?"
"What does what mean?"
"Your 'ah'."
"It is just something one says."
"Is it? I've noticed you say it very often. It must mean something."
"'Ah' means 'ah'," said Ari, unsettled. "It means that I comprehend your words. That it is what it is. That you have convinced me of the worthiness of your statement and no further discussion is necessary."
"Then why does it sound so much like a question?"
"Does it?" Ari asked, wanting to escape, but trapped by his desire to learn more about this household.
"I don't know about you," Madame Mumford said, returning to the sink.
"I am a blank book," Ari asserted.
"Mr. Ciminon?" came a voice from the other side of the kitchen island. Ari leaned down and saw Nabihah peeking out from under a copper-lined pan. "Can you join me for a few minutes? I would like to have a talk with you."
Ari stood and looked at Madame Mumford.
"Ah," he said, and followed the hostess out of the kitchen.
CHAPTER 8
Sindabad – Baghdad – Iraq
June 8, 2006 - 0045 hours
"That's where Sarah went to school," said Hutton in a tone that verged on the worshipful. They were passing the Technical College. Female students had been plentiful during the reign of Saddam. He had proved a boon to the sexual revolution, if the women involved were Sunni upper class. And so long as neither he nor his sons took it into their heads to rape them. But ever since the great Coalition victory, women had once again been thrust into the back seat.
"What you say conflicts with what I know," Ghaith said to Hutton. "I thought Sarah was poor."
"Her family is in no way rich."
"Well…she must have been highly unusual."
"Yes, she is special. She majored in engineering. One professor told her that if she'd been a man, she would have been at the top of her class."
"And you confirm she was telling the truth?"
"She never lies."
This drew a collective whoop from the other men in the truck.
"See the lady dressed in green, she goes down like a submarine…" Gates sang, quoting a Marine marching cadence.
"Say what you want. I know her. She was willing to pay the price, too. Did you know she spent time in Loose Dogs?"
And Sarah survived? That made her all the more remarkable. Ghaith, who had a photographic memory and who had access to prison records, did not recall seeing her index file. That was no great surprise. Loose Dogs Prison was ancillary to Abu Ghraib and had a separate filing system. He wondered what Sarah had done to deserve such a fate. It might not have been very notable. You could land in jail for blowing your nose while Saddam's entourage drove by.
Hearing a voice in his ear, Ghaith
plugged in the other bud and listened. "Our progress has been reported," he told Gates a minute later.
"Mother fucker!" Ratu shouted, then turned to look at Gates. "Sorry…"
"It be reet," said Gates. "You took the words out of my gob."
"Sarah said mud resistivity is inversely proportional to temperature in degrees Fahrenheit plus 7," said Hutton whimsically as they left the college behind.
"Your girlfriend talked to you about mud?"
"Maybe she's a genius."
"Best to slow down," said Ghaith.
"Geniuses are rare."
"They're even more rare inside this truck. I meant for Ratu to slow down. What is that market up ahead?"
"That's the local Berbeesh," Hutton said.
"An internet café?"
"Everyone goes there, no matter what side they're on. There's been a few attacks, but mostly it's OK. I used to write Sarah from…"
"And you graduated from kindergarten?" Ropp said mockingly.
"It's secure!" Hutton shouted. "Everyone has their own password. And it's open until late. No one wants to blow up the main source of communication around here."
"Then why has it grown dark?" Ghaith said, peering ahead.
Ratu caught the hint in his voice and swerved to another side street.
"You put little faith in your armor," Ghaith said to Gates.
"Let's just say I put more faith in avoiding trouble whenever I can."
"Then—"
"No need to respond."
Ghaith plugged the second earplug in. A minute later, he grinned.
"Much swearing," he told everyone. "We dodged another million bullets."
"Why did you say I had to come because I was the only one who knew where Sarah lived?" Hutton asked Gates.
"Because this means more to you than anyone else…unless my Gurkhas start severing heads. They'll get a yip out of that." He turned in his seat and looked beyond his passengers at the convoy. "I saw it in their eyes. They're not as impassive as you might think. Even Al Jazeera isn't out tonight, so maybe they can get away with it."
"But we're not here to—" Hutton began.
"Fuck," said Ropp.
Ghaith heard, too.
Gates again turned in his seat. "Are those Cobras?"
"I'm afraid so," said Ghaith. "What is SOP in a situation like this?"
"We could turn off all these goddamn headlights," said Ropp.
"No point," said Gates. "Those skinny helos see in the dark. I wonder what the Marines are doing out here?"
"The way your men are dressed, they are scarcely distinguishable from terrorists," said Ghaith helpfully. Seeing Gates' expression, he smiled in contrition. "They would not mistake us for insurgents, who rarely travel at night in such numbers."
"With their headlights on," Ropp groused.
The thwop-thwop-thwop of a Cobra's blades grew suddenly louder as it lined up on the street they were on. Hutton began to speak but quickly gave up. The noise was already too loud to be heard over. The pummeling sound grew deeper as it slowed over the column. With its resplendent suite of Sidewinders and cannons, a single gunship could make quick work of the column in less than a minute.
The Cobra suddenly shot off over the darkened buildings. They began to sigh with relief. Then a second gunship eased into the airspace vacated by its predecessor and again their sphincters rose to their throats.
"Pow-pow!"
It was not a weapon, but a voice, blasting from overhead. It was followed a moment later by hugely amplified laughter. The gunship swooped away. The thwopping faded into the distance.
"A fat, juicy target," Ropp mused. "Why didn't they shoot?"
Gates reached out of the truck and slapped the roof of the cab. Carefully balancing himself against the side of the truck bed, Ghaith stood and saw the letter painted on top. He dropped down quickly to keep from falling out.
"We have been marked with a large 'G'," he told Ropp and Hutton. "I presume it stands for 'Gates'."
"You couldn't tell us sooner?" Ropp complained. "I almost wet…actually…"
"I think I said earlier that I'm not sure you Yanks can read."
"We can't read a single letter?" Hutton burst out.
"All the trucks are marked," Gates continued. "We're all right, so long as—"
Ratu braked abruptly as he turned the next corner. They were staring at the business end of a Bradley.
"I knew the Yanks would get me in the end," Gates moaned. "Don't bail! If we run, they'll open up on us."
Would this be enough?
They waited to be blasted off the face of the earth.
Richmond, Virginia
July, 2008
Trucks & Bucks
"Everyone is upstairs," Nabihah said when Ari surveyed the empty dining hall, taking a seat at the long dining table and inviting Ari to join her. All the cutlery was cleared and the dining cloths on the floor taken up. She took up a thermos jug and poured coffee into a small white cup. It smelled delicious. "Italian. The best in the world. You must miss it."
Ari sat and leaned over the cup. "Ah," he said.
"Remind me again…you come from Sicily?"
"Syracuse," said Ari, lifting the cup to his lips and sipping.
"I visited there, once," said Nabihah, lifting her own cup. "A beautiful city. I couldn't count all the cathedrals!"
Ari bedecked himself with a perfect frown. "Perhaps you are thinking of Noto? It is just down the road. All the tourists go there. Syracuse has plenty of history, but it's a dump. No gutters. When the rains come you have to swim door to door. The stray dogs drown in the streets. If you want a dog, just go to Syracuse. You can pick up a hundred in half an hour. Are you sure you didn't visit Palmyra? Now that's a city. Palm trees, the best hotels—"
"It was a long time ago, but I'm sure it was Syracuse. There was a cavern famous for its echoes…"
"The Orecchio di Dionisio," Ari nodded. The lie came so mellifluously that he wondered if he had lived there in a previous life. "I grew up a few kilometers from there. Avoided it like the plague. Too many tourists."
"Tourists like myself," said Nabihah, offering a lovely shrug. She threw back the hood of her hijab. Her black hair flew out in a winsome cascade. "Maybe we passed each other on the street."
"A charming possibility," Ari nodded. "I believe the Fates often cause our paths to crisscross. This leads me to wonder…"
"Yes?"
"Do you think you may have crossed paths with the Namus at some point?"
"In Syracuse?"
"You almost had six of your guests murdered tonight," Ari said glumly. "Coyness is not in order."
"Nor rude gestures," Nabihah scowled at him. "When I asked Karida if she had recovered, she told me what you had done. Really, Mr. Ciminon…the 'Five Fathers'? What did she do to you to deserve that?"
"That is her name?" Ari squirmed and hid behind his coffee.
"She finally told me after she had recovered, Alhamdullah. Well?"
He couldn't tell her that Karida's prayers had gotten on his nerves, that he felt they were criticisms directed at him. "I have the unfortunate habit of insulting complete strangers for no justifiable reason…on occasion."
"That is an unfortunate habit. The Americans call it being an 'asshole'."
"I believe that is the correct phrase," Ari conceded. "But I do such things rarely."
"Oh, I don't know." Nabihah took another delicate sip of coffee. "Suggesting that I might know the Namus might be considered an insult."
"I am merely skinny-fishing," said Ari.
"I'm not aware of what that means, but if you look at the list of victims, you can see all but one of the deaths took place far from here. And while I'll admit Richmond is a small town, it's still unlikely our paths crossed."
There was a loud thump upstairs and she glanced up at the ceiling.
"Trouble?" Ari asked.
"Just my guests settling in," Nabihah sighed. "I know my house must look large to some people,
but I don't have enough space to give all of my guests private accommodations. Most of them have to share."
There was another thump.
"They are adjusting," Ari observed.
"A woman from Abdoun is more likely to have a better set of social skills than one from the souq. They have to learn to mingle with different classes."
"Perhaps the good will rub off on the bad?" Ari said.
Another thump.
"Or the reverse. Now, Mr. Ciminon…"
"Perhaps I mentioned to you…I have been so knockabout this evening that I can't recall…but I reviewed the route of your Truck 21 on the internet. It seems to have been near all of the places where these women…met their accidents."
"You think it's one of my employees?" Nabihah said mockingly. "I didn't think to give you more credit, and now I see I was right not to. I am familiar with all of the load boards. What you would have seen could not be more than two weeks old, and some of these deaths took place many months ago. There are thousands of trucks moving cargo up and down the East Coast every day. To look up my trucks the way you did means you had a preconceived notion that someone in my company was involved. Why would the Namus transport himself that way? Can you imagine a killer driving a semi down a tree-lined suburban lane to commit a crime? People would notice. He would already be in custody."
"Yilmaz certainly noticed that truck blocking your road when she tried to leave this evening. You talked to her on the phone. Did she give you all the details of what happened?"
"She didn't mention that…"
"But she told you someone attacked one of your drivers and made his escape in a car driven by an accomplice? Yes, she did. You have to take this seriously. The Namus, or someone acting on his behalf, was in your place of business tonight. Might I ask…where is Truck 21 right now?"
"It broke down on the interstate outside of Fredericksburg."
Ari mulled this over, recalling Badawi Bahrani's frantic conversation on the phone.
"What is your policy on picking up strangers from the road?" he asked.
"You mean do I let my drivers pick up hitchhikers? Of course not." Nabihah's brow seemed to shift sideways, or perhaps it was a subtle flick of her eyebrow. Ari had ticked off many similarities between this woman and his wife, but this was one of the differences. Rana had never twisted her face that way. Perhaps because she had never lied to him. "I can't account for the independent drivers, though," Nabihah continued. "Sometimes, on long hauls, they'll pick up someone to talk to, just to keep them awake."
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