"Ya gazma yibn ig-gazma," Nizzar snapped.
"Well, that's pretty rude," said Abu Jasim, taking a deep breath. "I didn't come here to be insulted. But there you have it. I'm the son of a shoe. But you all knew that, already. Now for bygones." He removed one of the bottles and rested the pack on the floor. He began to twist the cap and gave a yelp of pain. "What, not a twist-off? I'll sue the Eastern Brewery Company! Anyone here have a bottle opener?"
"Enough!"
Nizzar, who had been holding a pistol to Nabihah's head, now pointed it at Abu Jasim.
There was a tinkling of glass and his head lurched sideways, blood flying as he fell heavily to the floor.
"Good shot, Wookie Monster," said Lawson into his headset. He listened a moment. "Yes, the target is definitely tits up."
"Shit!" Abu Jasim said, beginning to wipe blood from his bottle. Then he reached over and considerately wiped some of Nizzar's brain from the top of Nabihah's head.
Shit! thought Ari. Now they would never find Sanad, unless one of the other men knew his location…which he somehow doubted.
"That was nasty, I must say," said Abu Jasim, resuming his inspection of the bottle. "As I was saying, to enjoy the full flavor of beer, you must have both hands free…"
Nizzar's men quickly lowered their guns onto the floor.
"Excellent!" Abu Jasim exclaimed. "But here's the problem…there are now seven of you and I have only six beers. No, wait…I must include myself—"
Buffett and everyone else in the hallway stacked into the conference room, yelling "In-bat-ah! In-bat-ah!" While the prisoners lowered themselves onto their stomachs, Lawson advised those outside the building that they could go to Condition 1. Yilmaz burst out of the corridor and ran to Nabihah.
"Mrs. Sadiq! Oh, what have they done to you?"
It was the first non-aggressive emotion Ari had seen from her.
"You may kick the corpse," he told her. "I find that always improves my mood."
Yilmaz gave the dead Nizzar several hard kicks. She nodded in satisfaction.
"Singh! Your knife!"
With only a trace of reluctance, Singh handed her his kirpan. She cut the straps binding Nabihah's hands behind the chair.
Abu Jasim gave Ari a broad grin.
"Your drunken courage is a bastion of idiocy." Ari leaned down and took a beer from the pack on the floor. Going to the nearest window, he braced the top of the bottle against the concrete window sash and snapped off the cap. As he raised the bottle, beer foam sprayed his face.
"I shook up all the bottles before coming in," Abu Jasim smugly informed him. "Lawson's snipers could take out the mugs while they were wiping suds out of their eyes."
"Clever," said Ari, wiping suds out of his eyes. "It never got that far."
"I didn't shake this bottle, though." Sliding a bottle opener out of his pocket, Abu Jasim cracked open the beer in his hand. "Want to share?"
"I do not wish rabies upon my lips," Ari answered, turning towards Nabihah. He could not see her behind the women who had gathered round, caressing the injured woman with soft, worried voices.
"Yilmaz is a wonder…she has a first aid kit under her jilbaab!"
"She knows what she is doing. We should come away and allow Madame some air."
This last was spoken by A'idah, who had so seductively wafted Haiku Eau de Parfum under Ari's nose. Her black cocktail dress wisped crisply as she shifted away from the crowd. She was holding her hand to her nose. Rivulets of dried blood had congealed on her upper lip. Seeing Ari, she smiled—and winced.
"Mr. Ciminon," she said with soft warmth. "You have conjured an army to rescue us."
"You are injured," said Ari solicitously, feeling more sorrow at the disfigurement of a beautiful woman than he had over the mincing of precious artworks.
"I brought it upon myself." And then, with a strange, demure elegance, she raised her knee.
"You kicked one of the assailants in the nuts," Ari smiled.
"It was the least I could do."
"You are very full of pluck," said Ari admiringly.
"I was scared out of my mind." She began to shake and lowered her hand to grip her elbow. Her nose was scarred and most definitely broken. She was breathing through her mouth.
"Alas." He glanced at Nabihah, nodding patiently under Yilmaz's ministration. "I don't understand. They were torturing her and using you as an audience?"
"Uhmmm…"
"I know about the paintings. I see…Nizzar was showing you what would happen to all of you if you didn't tell him where the other paintings were. The ones you sold to Mrs. Sadiq's Avon customers."
"It was so natural. We put on shows, sold perfume, Tupperware…even women's intimate apparel." She made a gesture that was, under the circumstances, astonishingly coquettish. "Guess who modeled the negligees?"
"Ah," said Ari, hoping Abu Jasim was too immersed in his beer to overhear.
"In the middle of it all, we became interior designers. We would bring out a Dia al-Azzawi or Mohanna Durra and tell them how lovely it would look on their wall." Gazing at the women who persisted in remaining around Nabihah, then back at those still too frightened to move, she gave a start. "Where is Karida?"
"My mother is outside, safe and sound," said Yilmaz as she swabbed blood from Nabihah's cheek with a cotton ball.
"Yeah, she's screaming in the van," said Ahmad, entering the conference room through the outside door. "It was driving me nuts. It's all over, right? The shooting? I didn't mean to sit this out, but I was busy—"
Abu Jasim took a swing at his nephew. He missed by a wide margin. Ahmad didn't even have to duck. Ari concluded this was not his friend's first beer of the day.
"A'idah…?" Yilmaz glanced up from her patient. "Could you—"
One of Lawson's men approached with his own first aid kit. But Yilmaz was somewhat possessive.
"You are very kind, but go away before I kill you." She leaned close to Nabihah's face. "Irtahatee?"
'Feel better'? Nabihah did not respond.
"Of course, Yilmaz, I will comfort your mother." A'idah looked at Ahmad. "Where…?
"All the vans in the parking lot look the same," said the young man. "Just follow the noise. You'll find her. I already told her everything was OK. She called me a…hell, why should I tell you what she called me?"
Yilmaz gave a snort.
"Wait, A'idah, do you have any idea of where Sanad is?"
"Sanad?" she asked quizzically. "Why would that matter? He is our art teacher."
It seemed neither she nor the other hostages had seen Sanad and Nizzar together.
"I must go to Karida." A'idah left and Ahmad sidled up to Ari.
"Colonel…?" he whispered.
"Have there been more calls to Sanad?"
"No…not at that number."
"At any number."
"Not that I know of."
"Then go back to your computer and monitor his calls. I must ask these prisoners if they know where he is."
"You mean torture them," Ahmad said, his face showing distaste. "They probably don't know, and anyway, there's no need. I plotted the GPS on Sanad's phone. He's in—"
Ari held up his hand, but it was too late. Both Yilmaz and Singh had overheard. Lifting her hands away from Nabihah's head, Yilmaz stared hard at Ahmad, who shifted sideways into Ari's shadow.
CHAPTER 19
Richmond, Virginia
July, 2008
The Namus at Bay
It was not in Ari's nature to think long and hard about many things. His memory was sharp and snappy, but that did not incline him to flit through his prodigious mental index to dwell upon this or that person or subject. Faiq Someone or Sliman Whoever might leap to mind, but only when he saw them in the street or, occasionally, when they were holding a gun to his head. Among the few subjects that engaged him fully were his wife and son, imprisoned (as he saw it) in California. Against his will, he sometimes thought about Sphinx, the cat who had abandoned him (again, as
he saw it) for a tart little girl up Beach Court Lane. His furry absence against Ari's legs at night had triggered numerous bouts of insomnia.
He also thought of death. Not his own, which was of nominal interest, but of those he had put in the ground (a substantial number) over the course of the years, whether in the line of duty or on what he perceived as the line of duty. He was certain very few of those men would have thought their deaths justified. Sarah's father in Sindabad, for example. He had arranged the death of his own daughter. In his eyes, and those of the rest of his family, she had become a traitor. Even worse, she had stained the honor of the family. That father would have been astonished had Ari or anyone else condemned him to death. Ari himself had been more disgusted by the fact that the man had not had the guts to commit the deed himself.
Until now, Ari had never met anyone who thought they deserved death. And even, at some level, welcomed it. But Sanad Raimouny had looked into himself and seen the rotten core. In Ari's estimation, everyone (but Rana) was corrupt from the crib. It was the universal complaint. You starve people enough, they'll commit unspeakable acts for a bite to eat. You pulverize their minds with a lifetime of dogma—religious or otherwise, it didn't matter—and they will kill, even kill with joy, when confronting an enemy. How do you know they're the enemy unless someone you trust tells you? Ari had never enjoyed killing, but there was no denying the fact that he had sometimes felt satisfaction for a job well done—usually a job condoned by higher authority. When Ari was still Ghaith Ibrahim, Saddam Hussein had smiled in his direction, calling him his 'Kurd killer'. Ari had been young, then, and it had been only natural for him to beam with pleasure. But the aching conscience of years had piled up, and now Ari felt ashamed and accursed for some of the acts he had committed. On the other hand, the murder of a Richmond detective had been a simple, utilitarian act of survival. That cop had threatened to expose Rana's location, which could have meant death for her. And with Ari around, you couldn't do that without bringing death upon yourself.
By all rights, the thought of killing Sanad—which he fully intended to do—should have given him some sense of imminent accomplishment. Yilmaz, jumping up and down impatiently in the front passenger seat of the Cadillac, was filled with glee at the thought of snapping the neck of the man who ordered the torture of her mistress. And Singh, barreling ahead on the highway with his knuckles almost white on the steering wheel, probably already envisioned his hands at Sanad's throat.
And yet, whichever of them got to him first, Sanad would probably greet death with a smile. That thought alone was annoying. But why? Ari had detected a kindred godlessness in the man. For an instant, their psyches had played tag in an ocean empty of meaning. But even atheistical fish had to swim. How did one find propulsion without water? As a young man, Ari had experienced the freedom that came with snubbing God. But every so often the emptiness ballooned and left him hollow. Rana alone gave vibrancy to his life. Yet, as he had learned to his sorrow, she was a slender reed. If her fragile hold on life vanished, how could he replace her? Killing a few dozen Americans might help, since the American military was responsible for her injuries. But after that? Perhaps he could do what Sanad appeared to have done: turn to art.
Well, look where that had gotten him.
Was that what had happened to Sanad? Had he discovered that art, as in Art, was a lackluster stand-in for the holy spirit? In his line of work, he must have found out that art could be as fleeting as a human life. All those masterpieces from the Middle East and elsewhere scattered to the four winds. He was like a man trying to capture straw from a continuously disintegrating bale of hay. Accomplishing this entailed the deaths of his fellow humans—including, Ari reminded himself, those three jolly agents who had been keeping Allah's Oriental Carpets under observation.
It had once been said that life was meaningless without beauty. Now the world worshipped ugliness. But that, too, gave life meaning…of a sort. To Ari's fanciful thinking, Sanad had transformed the beauty he sought into a grisly avocation. It seemed to him that the trend to beauty and the trend to ugliness landed in the same desolate landscape where survival provided the sole purpose to life.
But wouldn't it be better to die surrounded by beautiful things?
No, unless Singh or Yilmaz or someone in one of the vehicles behind them got to Sanad first, Ari would erase this splotch on the human canvas.
Yilmaz turned in her seat and looked back at Ari. "You have a problem? You look funny."
"My problems eke their living out of my soul."
"You have a problem with what we're about to do, I mean? You aren't going to try and stop me from killing that kalet, are you?"
"Why would I do such a thing?"
"Good," Yilmaz nodded. "I just wanted to make sure we were on the same leaf."
"I believe you mean 'page'," Singh corrected.
Yilmaz's eyes rose to the rear window. Abu Jasim was close behind—if Singh hit the brake pedal too hard he would be rear-ended. Even if they got separated, Ahmad had the location on his laptop. Singh had entered those coordinates in his dashboard GPS, while Lawson had punched them into his handheld. Being handicapped, Ari had thought the insurance detective would fall behind. But whenever Singh made a wide turn they could see Lawson's van, with four of his men in the back. The rest had escorted Nabihah Sadiq and her guests back to the mansion, where they would stand guard until Lawson sounded the all-clear. Behind Lawson was Ben Torson in his rattletrap, Karen in the passenger seat and Fred squeezed into the compartment behind her. He could have returned to the truck bed, but complained the lumber had given him splinters.
Far too many inquiring minds, Ari thought. Abu Jasim and Ahmad could be counted on, but what about the others? Karen and Fred would scream bloody murder over any perceived bloody murder Ari might be planning. His merciful execution of the mortally wounded man had already put Karen on high alert for any more outrages. And Ben, too, might try to intercede if and when Ari put a gun to Sanad's head. Then there was Lawson, who was probably already formulating his case against Mrs. Sadiq's little smuggling enterprise. Not to mention transporting allegedly kidnapped women in the back of her trailers. And what about events at the Port of Richmond? Ari had not heard news from that direction for some while. Was that part of another Sadiq venture? Then there were Lawson's mercenaries. How trustworthy were they, in fact? It was no stretch to imagine one selling his exciting story to the press:
MERCS SAVE ARAB HOSTAGES IN THE AMERICAN HEARTLAND.
So many uncertainties fed on each other, compounding Ari's interlocking hangovers.
They were racing east on I-64, the immediate goal being the Mechanicsville exit.
"Be sure not to miss it," Yilmaz snapped at the driver.
"Be assured, such is not my intention," Singh snapped back.
Ari cleared his throat. "Being aware of the full extent of my imprudence, may I remark upon the extreme affection I detect between you two."
There was a long silence in the front of the Cadillac. Then the GPS said:
"In one thousand feet, bear right to Exit 75."
"The Sikhs do not recognize the limits of faith," said Singh. "Only its potential."
"So a Sikh getting together with a Muslim doesn't—"
"You know that it's none of your business," said Yilmaz, glaring at the windshield. "To ask is to risk having one's fingers broken one by one."
"This little piggy might be adverse to such a scheme," Ari scowled.
"'Piggy'? There's also a penalty for—"
One of Ari's phones rang. He lifted the noisy apparatus and saw Lawson's name. Karen must have given the detective the number.
"What kind of opposition do you anticipate?" Lawson asked him.
"It will be very stiff. These are the men who killed those Federal agents. They have seen the images from Abu Ghraib. They will not want to be taken alive."
"The prison system is not as bad over here," said Lawson.
"You forget, I have visited one of y
our prisons."
"Really?" said Lawson. "I've never been inside one. You really think they're as bad as in Iraq?"
"The inmates at Powhatan look like constipated chickens. I interpret that to be the result of torture."
"OK, forget that, for now. What I wanted to know is how many guns we might be facing."
"I confronted three or four at Allah's. That does not include Sanad or the two that will no longer be holding guns."
"You laid them out?"
"They will lay forever." Ari thought for a moment. "Can I get a bonus for that?"
"A bonus for every man you kill? I don't think CVG will go for that. They might contribute to your lawyer fees, if I push hard enough."
"You think I will need a lawyer?"
"I think you need a jailer. But by law a lawyer comes with it. A package deal."
"I do not like the idea of jail. Who will witness against me?"
"Not me or my men. I doubt if Ben will say a peep, and the two in the car with you are probably OK with you right down the line. It's these deputy marshals I worry about. This Sylvester girl might have it in for you."
"She is enamored with me?"
"Not quite…hold on. Singh's making a sharp turn. He's not trying to lose us, is he?"
"It would make for fewer witnesses…" Ari leaned forward. "Sirdar Singh, you are racing like the mad wind. Are you attempting to shake loose our followers?"
"What?" said Singh. "This is how they drive in Mumbai."
Yilmaz barked a laugh.
"I'll bear that in mind," said Ari. "But please remember that Mr. Lawson is handicapped. He might not be able to adjust to your movements."
"All I know is to speed up," said Singh.
"Then this will suffice." Ari raised the phone. "Sirdar Singh says—"
"I heard," Lawson grunted at the speaker phone as he made the next turn. "And I'm not handicapped."
"You have a handicap license plate."
"Who died and made you a—aw shit—"
The Shelter for Buttered Women Page 39