Ambush

by Barbara Nickless

  “Covering my eyes would have been sufficient.”

  Zarif shook his head. “My men were nearby, but even with every precaution, I couldn’t be sure who was watching, or who in the restaurant might talk. I had to make it look good. For both our sakes, you and I cannot be seen as allies. Any story you tell later must be convincing.” He brought his palms together, almost as if in prayer. “There is a great deal at stake, Ms. Parnell. Even more than you imagine.”

  “You’re not just a security guy at a local mosque, are you.”

  The room dimmed as a cloud drifted over the sun. The younger man switched on a lamp. At a sudden pulse of pain, I pressed my fingers to my temples.

  “The headache is a residual effect,” Zarif said. “Would you like some water? Maybe a pain reliever?”

  “Yeah. Opioids with a cocaine chaser.” At Zarif’s look, I summoned a faint laugh. “Acetaminophen or some ibuprofen will be fine.”

  “Of course.” Zarif spoke in rapid Spanish to the other man, who nodded and disappeared through the door.

  “You’re going to tell me what this is all about,” I stated. There was a fluttery anticipation in my chest—why kidnap me unless he had something important to share? Hope is the thing with feathers.

  “I will tell you what I can,” Zarif said.

  The younger man returned with a bottle of water, which he placed on the table along with four orange capsules.

  “Ibuprofen,” he said.

  At a look from Zarif, he retreated, closing the door behind him. I picked up the pills and washed them down with the water, then set the half-empty bottle on a coffee table the size of a city block. “I’m listening.”

  “Three months ago, a man came to me and asked if I would be willing to protect a young Iraqi boy.”

  I straightened. “You mean—”

  “Wait, please. He told me he worked for the American embassy.”

  “He was a spy?”

  “A diplomat.” Zarif smiled. “Probably a spy. It’s how things work. I mulled his request over for a few days, but ultimately I decided it was too risky. We Muslims must walk a very careful line.”

  The feathered creature in my heart went belly-up, feet in the air.

  “Then last month he returned. I told him my decision. He explained that the boy was in grave danger and needed protection, and he could not think of a safer place than with me. Not at the mosque, but in my personal home. Once again, he asked if I would be willing to help.”

  “And?”

  “That is why we are here.”

  A little heartbeat fluttered beneath the feathers. But hope is a dangerous thing, easily crushed. Trying to make it last, I asked, “Why you, Zarif?”

  He spread his hands. “He suggested I might be related to the boy. My family, like this boy’s great-grandparents, came from Shiraz, near the city of Parsa—better known to the world as Persepolis, ancient capital of the Persian empire. So . . . perhaps.” He shrugged. “This man also asked because he knows my home once belonged to a drug trafficker. It is remote and easy to guard. And this little town where I live, it is not too small, not too big. Like Goldilocks. It is not hard to hide one small boy here, with all of my security detail on hand. Especially when that boy can blend with the locals.”

  My head buzzed with questions. Like how the head of security for a small mosque in a small town could afford the former home of a drug lord. And a security detail. And how his possession of such a place could be kept secret.

  But all that could wait. I looked at Zarif with eyes naked with need. My voice came out a whisper. “He’s here.”

  “The hadith says that whosoever alleviates the need of another shall have his own needs lightened by Allah. Last month, this man brought Malik to me and placed him in my protection.”

  I stood so suddenly that I knocked the table. The uncapped bottle of water tilted over and rolled onto the thick carpet. I stared blindly as water glugged onto the floor.

  Zarif reached around me and picked up the bottle.

  I was shaking. “Show me.”

  Zarif rose smoothly to his feet. “Come.”

  He led the way through the vast house—down innumerable hallways and past innumerable chambers—until he reached the back of the house and we entered a large room with a wall of glass on the far side overlooking a pool and garden. Outside, brilliant light from a western sun spilled across the tops of trees and slanted into the grounds, illuminating a riot of shrubs and flowers and making the water of the pool glow an incandescent blue. I followed Zarif across the room. He slid back a glass door, then gestured for me to go outside.

  I stared out into the half-groomed, half-wild place. Some part of me was thinking that if Zarif intended to shoot me, the garden would be the perfect place to do so. I could return as next year’s daisies, or whatever grew here.

  He rested a hand on my arm. “I know you have many questions for him. But remember, he has been through a lot and is still very troubled. He gets angry. He is often fearful. His nightmares are terrible.”

  I nodded, still staring into the garden, waiting for Malik to appear. Zarif stepped in front of me and took my shoulders.

  “You are here not for yourself but for him,” he said. “It’s important that he knows you didn’t intend to abandon him. But your presence here could also open old wounds, raise bad memories. Tread lightly, and ask only what you must.”

  “I can’t make life safe for him if I don’t understand what happened.”

  “It is for that reason that you’re here. He deserves a chance at a normal life, and you seem to be a critical part of that hope.” He loosed my shoulders. “But your presence is also a danger to the privacy I’ve worked so hard to establish. Which is critical in an entirely different way. One hour. After that, two of my men will drive you to the airport. There is nothing more for you in Mexico City. If you are afraid to go home, then go somewhere else. And if you are captured, try to kill yourself before they can torture my name out of you. Those are my conditions.”

  Panic rose in my throat. “It’s not enough time.”

  “I applaud your goals. But I won’t sacrifice Malik for a quest that might turn out to be as futile as the hunt for El Dorado. As far as I’m concerned, he can stay here with my family until everyone who means him ill has grown old and died.” The expression in his mild gray eyes turned flinty. “Will you comply?”

  I nodded stiffly.

  “He’s waiting with his tutor just down that path. I sent him a photo of you, as a final verification that you are what you claim. He knows you’re coming.”

  He stepped aside, and I walked through the open doorway. The warm air draped itself like a shawl around my shoulders. I didn’t look back when the door slid closed behind me.

  Humid air descended like a benediction after the stench of the city, filled with the not unpleasant tang of chlorine from the pool and the earthy scents of flowers and trees and rich soil. Minus the chlorine, this must have been how Eden smelled, before the fall. On the far side of the pool, a brick-paved path as wide as two people led into a dense forest. Pink bougainvillea hung nodding from shrubs taller than my head while, high above, the fronds of palms stirred in a light breeze that didn’t reach the garden.

  I reached for Clyde, needing him beside me. But he was almost two thousand miles away.

  I shook out my hair and rewound it at the nape of my neck, smoothed my wrinkled clothes, then skirted the shimmering pool and started down the path. As soon as I stepped beneath the trees, the temperature dropped as the still-fierce sun became a golden haze glinting through an emerald screen. Two minutes of brisk walking brought me to an open space. I stopped at the edge.

  A boy sat on a bench next to a woman in a long skirt and a hijab. At his feet was a soccer ball that he scooted forward and back with the flat of one foot. He had a book open in his lap and was reading aloud in a high, clear voice while the woman listened. A poem.

  My eyes went to his left arm, searching for final proof. T
here it was—a long, puckered scar, a souvenir from the night his mother was murdered.

  Malik.

  I pressed my hand to my mouth and watched him.

  He was six inches taller than the last time I’d seen him, still thin but even ganglier than before, all elbows and knees. His hair was shorter than I remembered, with a cowlick that stuck up stubbornly in the back. He wore navy shorts, a white E Street Band T-shirt, and sneakers without socks. On his left wrist was a braided leather band, on his right a neon-orange bracelet of the kind usually used to support a cause.

  He fidgeted on the bench, his foot rolling the soccer ball as he read.

  He was just a kid. A regular kid.

  Of course, how many of us wear our traumas on our skin for the world to see?

  His voice broke on a word, and he paused and shook his head, as if to say, Not my fault. The woman murmured something, and he returned to the reading.

  And still I watched, my heart pressed tight against my ribs so that drawing a breath felt like lifting a car.

  Would he blame me for leaving him? Blame me for whatever hardships he’d endured since his mother died?

  What if he didn’t remember me at all? Maybe I was just part of a crazed past of grief and terror he’d rather not revisit.

  I lifted my chin. None of that mattered. I did not matter. Only Malik did. And if my being here could help him in any way, even if it amounted only to letting him know that someone cared, then that was enough.

  I cleared my throat and stepped into the sunlight.

  Malik and the woman glanced up. The woman placed a hand over her eyes to shade them, but Malik stared straight at me, unbothered by the light, desert child that he was.

  He stood, and the woman rose. The woman whispered something to him, squeezed his shoulder, then came toward me. She nodded and walked past, heading toward the house.

  My pulse roared in my ears as I waited for Malik to say something, waited for a light of recognition to go on in his face.

  I took a few steps toward him. Somewhere overhead, a bird punctured the quiet with a long, single trill, then hushed again.

  “Malik,” I said softly, my voice tentative. “You are—” My voice broke. “I am . . . I am so very happy to see you.”

  He remained motionless by the bench, the book of poems still in his hand, his finger holding his place. I approached him the way you would a wild animal, my hands raised, palms toward him, as if he might take flight.

  The book slipped from his hand and hit the ground with a soft plop. “Miss Sydney.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it really you?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Your hair is different. Dark.”

  I laughed a little. “Yes.”

  “You are not a jinn?”

  “Oh, Malik, I am so sorry. I never meant to leave you. I never, I’ve always—” My throat filled, and I struggled to speak. My voice came out as a jagged whisper. “Yes. I am real.”

  He nodded. But other than that quick, light gesture, he made no move.

  “And you?” I asked. “You are real, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not a ghost?”

  “No.”

  “So here we are.”

  I opened my arms, and he ran to me. We held each other as tightly as we could, and soon my shoulder and his hair were wet with our tears.

  CHAPTER 6

  Don’t apologize for what you do to survive. Anyone would do the same.

  —Sydney Parnell. Personal journal.

  We held each other for all too brief a time before Malik pulled free. He picked up the book of poems and placed it on the bench, then grabbed his soccer ball. We stared awkwardly at each other.

  “You want to walk?” I asked.

  He raised his shoulders, then dropped them. Classic preteen. “Sure.”

  The path I’d come on continued on the far side of the glen. Malik led the way.

  “In Iraq, I thought you would come back,” he said. “Every day for weeks, then for months. Even after the American spies came and took me away, I thought you would come for me.”

  Go slowly, I reminded myself. One thing at a time.

  “I tried to bring you with me,” I said. “Do you remember?”

  “I didn’t understand why I couldn’t just get on a plane with you.”

  I laid my hand on his shoulder. “I want you to know this. I tried harder to take you to America than I have ever tried to do anything.”

  He shrugged me off. “But you didn’t.”

  Give the boy a knife.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I didn’t. I hope you will forgive me.”

  “I thought you’d changed your mind.” His voice trembled between anger and anguish.

  “Never.”

  “I thought you didn’t want me.”

  “Oh, Malik, it was my failing, not yours. It’s important you know that.”

  He stopped and regarded me through eyes that were no longer too big for his face, but still huge, with fine brows and thick lashes. Even cut short, his hair tried to find its way into curls. The sketch artist hadn’t gotten him exactly right. He was already handsome.

  At the moment, his measuring gaze was unnerving for one so young.

  I cleared my throat. “Do you like it here?”

  “Yes.” His voice was fierce, as if he expected me to doubt his answer.

  “It’s a long way from Habbaniyah to Mexico. And very different.”

  “Different is good.”

  I wanted to ask him about family. About friends. About all the things we’d talked about in Iraq. But time was water, spilling through my fingers.

  “Malik, I’m trying to figure out some things. Trying to get answers so I can stop the men who are looking for you. You might be able to help me with some of it. Then you won’t have to hide anymore.”

  “That’s why you came? After all this time? So I can answer your questions?”

  “No. Yes.” Dear God, this was hard. “I came to see you, Malik. But also to try and understand what happened. So maybe I can make the world safer for you.”

  I sounded like a B-grade superhero—one without a cape or any powers to speak of. Malik gave my words the response they deserved. He stayed silent.

  “A lot of bad went down in Iraq. I mean, not just the war. And not just—” I hesitated a beat, then plunged on. Pretending something hadn’t happened didn’t erase it. “And not only your mother’s death.”

  He flinched.

  Go easy, Parnell. “You know there are men after you. I want to find those men and stop them.”

  More silence.

  “Do you know why they want you? Are they—I have to ask—are they the same ones who were there when your mother died? Did you see them that day?”

  His eyes slid away. “Strider said I shouldn’t talk about it. Not to anyone.”

  “Strider?”

  “My friend. My real friend. He brought me here.”

  “To the mosque?”

  “Yes. To Mr. Zarif.”

  Strider must be the man in the photo taken by Angelo. “Strider—that’s his last name?”

  “It’s not his real last name. He said it was better to never use his real name.”

  “Do you know what his real name is?”

  His gaze came back. “No.”

  “Do you know where he’s gone?”

  “No.”

  “Malik—”

  “It’s the truth. He wouldn’t tell me.”

  The only Strider I knew about was a character from one of my favorite books, The Fellowship of the Ring. Strider had helped hide the hobbits from the dark riders. Maybe there was a clue in that. Or maybe this guy fancied himself a lost king.

  “Is Strider one of the spies who took you away from the FOB?”

  “No.” Malik began walking again. He shifted the soccer ball from under his right arm to his left. “Those men were very bad. Strider was good. He took me away from them.”

&
nbsp; If he’d driven a stake through my heart, it would have hurt less. “Bad in what way?”

  His shrug was elaborately casual. “They thought I would spy for them. Strider said I was just a tool to them, not a boy.”

  “A child should never be a means to an end.”

  “Strider said that, too.”

  Well, the mysterious Strider and I had one thing in common.

  “So this Strider, he took good care of you?”

  “He was kind. He protected me. He never abandoned me.”

  Maybe committing seppuku would help me feel absolved. I murmured something sympathetic. I wanted to push. To ask all my questions. Tell me about these spies. How did they find you? How did Strider take you away?

  What kind of life have you had for three years?

  And most immediately relevant, What did you see or know that makes the Alpha so desperate to find you?

  I forced my mind to let go of those questions for the moment. It was like dropping into second gear while still doing seventy. “You still like soccer, I see.”

  “I’m really good now.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Mr. Zarif says if I keep practicing, keep working at it, I’ll be able to play for El Tri.”

  Meaning he would stay in Mexico. I forced a smile. “That’s wonderful, Malik!”

  We came to a gate, which Malik opened and led me through, still following the path. The riotous forest gave way to an immense emerald-green lawn where it would have felt right to see peacocks and a group of Victorians playing croquet. In the distance, fifteen-foot walls demarcated the property. Now that we were out in the open, I could see dry, scrubby hills all around. I got the sense that we were up high, among those hills.

  The lack of cover would have made me uneasy, but I’d already spotted men with radios and guns moving near the walls. No doubt there were also cameras, infrared detectors, and multiple alarms. A former cartel home, Zarif had said. Again, I wondered at the source of his money. And his need for security.

  Malik dropped his soccer ball, kicked it high, then raced after it before it could reach the ground. He smacked it with his head, then when it landed again, caught it on the bounce and juggled it back and forth on his knees.