The Amateur Spy (35 page)

“Can you go a little faster?” I shouted to the driver.

Mila needed to pack and get moving, the sooner the better, even though she and my parents had never really hit it off. To my folks, Mila was still the quiet Balkan girl whose family had made such an unseemly ruckus at our wedding. But for now they offered the safest possible refuge. I would phone them as well. It had been months since we spoke, so I owed them a call anyway.

We crested the hill onto Jebel Amman and were approaching the Third Circle on Zahran Street when the driver slammed on his brakes. A policeman signaled for us to halt while two more pulled a wooden barrier into the street to block traffic.

“What’s going on? What is this?”

For a moment I was certain I was about to be arrested, the whole plot uncovered from top to bottom in a night of intense questioning on the Eighth Circle. But the policemen had no further interest in us, and the traffic piled up behind us. Drivers honked horns and shouted questions out their windows.

“What’s happening?” I asked again.

My driver shook his head in consternation and turned on the radio. Another ambulance raced by, and the police pulled the barricade aside to let it pass. The radio jolted to life, but the Arabic was so frantic and the reception so staticky that at first I couldn’t make sense of it. The driver went very still and clutched his worry beads.

“A bomb,” he said. “No, two of them. Maybe three.”

“Where?”

“The Hyatt. Three bombs at the Hyatt.”

Now I began getting a sense of the radio report as well.

“Bombs at two other hotels as well,” I said. “The Radisson and the Days Inn. My God, is anyone…”

“Yes. Many dead. Very many. I am sorry, but I do not think we will reach your house anytime soon.”

I pulled a ten-dinar note out of my wallet, double what I owed, and placed it in the driver’s palm with a sympathetic pat of his hand. He nodded as if he understood. This was not about generosity. It was about shock and compassion. The machinery of terror had finally gone off right here in Amman. I thought immediately of the people on the fringes of Omar’s organization, of Nabil and his shadowy contacts, and even the woman from America, Aliyah Rahim. Everyone was so quick to dismiss the doings out in Bakaa as harmless political maneuverings, but now I wondered. And of the many questions barreling through my mind, the most disturbing was this: Had I done anything that, inadvertently or not, might have tripped one of the switches to set things in motion?

I stepped away from the taxi and began to run.

33

A
liyah heard the terrible news only four hours before her scheduled flight to Washington, and once again her best-laid plans began to fall apart. How horribly ironic, she thought, if a bombing in Amman made it impossible for her to stop a bombing in Washington.

Just before hearing of the disaster, she was sitting at the house of Khalid II—or Nabil, as she now knew him—having eluded the doctor’s watchers in the hotel lobby after days of careful planning. She had come to regard the two men as “the shepherds.” She had even told them about her nickname, eliciting a smile from the larger one.

For several days she had let them believe she was entirely at their mercy. They drove her to restaurants, to shops, and to the Roman Theatre downtown, even buying her admission ticket and then fending off the predatory “guides” before dropping back a respectful distance to let her enjoy the site in relative solitude.

Having won their trust, she then set out to deceive them. On the final day of Eid al-Fitr, a Sunday, she announced after returning from an escorted walk that she wished to take a nap and watch televsion. She switched on the TV in her room to a volume that could be heard outside her door, tucked her hair beneath a scarf, put on a raincoat and a pair of sunglasses, and then slipped down an emergency stairwell to a rear entrance that led to the hotel pool, where she strolled past puzzled sunbathers to an outdoor stairway that led into the rear parking lot. She walked to the back of the lot, cut through an alley, and emerged on a side street, where she ducked into a café and phoned for a taxi to take her to Khalid II’s house in Bakaa.

Once again he was gone, and once again his wisp of a wife was reluctant to speak. But the woman did agree to pass along Aliyah’s handwritten message. Aliyah then returned to her room by the same circuitous route. Khalid II phoned her that night. He told her his real name and said that he was in hiding. The details were too complicated to discuss over the phone, he said, but perhaps in a few days the danger would pass. He reluctantly agreed to meet her at his house on Wednesday evening, just after dark. More important, he promised to do what he could to find out the information she needed. He also agreed to arrange for a neighbor who drove a taxi to take her to the airport later that night, after their rendezvous.

Aliyah then sneaked downstairs by her secret route to the hotel business center, which had resumed its non-holiday hours after sundown. She arranged an online flight reservation for late Wednesday night, on a connecting flight via Frankfurt that would depart after midnight.

And then, there she was, seated in Nabil’s house, not yet aware of the news that would change everything. She was watching television. It was an aging Philips model, a black-and-white with rabbit ears and fuzzy reception. Her viewing companion was Nabil’s young daughter, Jena, who was tucked against her knees while coloring the faces of tigers onto scrap paper by the pale glow of the screen.

Nabil’s wife, who had yet to give her name and had blushed when Jena gave hers, flitted from chore to chore in the background like an agitated bird, washing dishes and tidying cushions, and obviously hoping that her husband would arrive soon. He was already more than two hours late.

The TV viewing was downright bizarre—Martha Stewart demonstrating how to make dishes she had cooked in prison. It would have been strange even at home, but watching it here with Arabic subtitles, while seated on the cool slab floor of a shack home in a refugee camp, made it seem like one of those surreal dreams she would have described to Annie Felton. “Perhaps you fear losing your domesticity,” Annie might have said. “Maybe you think your actions are endangering your family.”

Aliyah checked her watch while Martha popped a cookie sheet into the oven. It was 9:30 p.m. Her flight would depart at 1:30 a.m. Her bags were packed and had already been taken to the home of the neighbor in the next block who would drive her to the airport. She had told her two watchers back at the InterContinental that she was tired and wanted to eat in her room. She had then called room service. When the food was delivered, she dumped the contents into a trash can and placed the tray outside her door. Then she switched on her television and departed down the back stairwell.

But now she was wondering if she was cutting things too close. It would take at least an hour to reach the airport from here. And even if Nabil were to show up now, she supposed he would need at least half an hour to teach the necessary lesson on how to disarm a bomb.

Airport security and customs would mean further delays, and this was a flight she couldn’t afford to miss. The senator, so far as she could tell from news accounts she had been monitoring several times a day, was still alive. But you never knew when your luck might run out. She decided to wait another twenty minutes.

That was when the TV announcer broke in with an urgent bulletin: Bombs at three hotels. Scores dead. Through the blue fuzz she watched a chaotic scene of ambulance crews rushing bodies to the curb. My God, was that someone’s arm on a table? She wanted to cover Jena’s eyes. The announcer said something about a wedding party, how awful. Then they cut away to grim-faced policemen with berets and machine guns, setting up a barricade. She wondered if the airport would remain open, or if she would even be able to get there. After 9/11 some of their friends had been stranded for days in other cities without a way home.

A few minutes later she got her answer. The borders were closed and so was the airport. A curfew was in effect. Aliyah’s heart sank. A bombing tonight, and who knew, perhaps another bombing in a few days in Washington, and then her husband’s face would be the one on everyone’s TV screen.

The image flickered to another hotel. More bodies. A woman’s voice shrieked incoherently in the background. A pushy policeman shouted for everyone to move back. The announcer said something about suicide bombers. “They are almost certainly to blame.”

Behind her, Nabil’s wife dropped a bowl to the floor with a thundering crash.

Aliyah looked again at the screen, this time with a new sense of horror. Could that be where Nabil really was, piled among the dead, his body torn to pieces by an explosion from his chest? No, Aliyah thought. It wasn’t possible. Why would he have scheduled their appointment for tonight if he knew he was doing this? Unless that was simply part of his cover. But surely he wasn’t the type, was he?

Aliyah placed a hand protectively on Jena’s small, warm back. The girl was still coloring happily, oblivious to the television. Nabil’s wife swooped in to pick up the girl and cradled the thin body to her breast in a deep and despairing hug.

“Mommy, I was coloring!”

“It’s all right, dear. It’s all right. Your father will be home soon.”

Then, like an answer to their prayers, the door opened. But the sight that greeted them was not at all what they had hoped for.

34

I
trotted from the Third Circle toward the Hyatt, which loomed in the darkness like an upended cruise ship in a wash of bright lights, strobed by flashes of red. Sounds of moaning and sobbing were everywhere, and as I approached I saw a hotel luggage trolley—the fancy kind with a big brass bar across the top—being wheeled to the curb like a hospital gurney, piled with victims.

People wrapped in white blankets straggled out of an emergency door to the side. Just in front of me stood a man talking on a cell phone. He seemed to be intact, but his suit looked as if someone had hurled a bucket of red paint on it. Without warning he dropped to his knees and wailed in grief. I stepped forward to help but was preempted by two women who seemed to know him.

On one of the luggage carts I saw a body, barely recognizable as human except for the bright shards of clothing and a shock of dark hair at one end. Wisps of smoke rose from its smoldering flesh like steam off a roast.

I had come here hoping to help, but the scene had overwhelmed even my capacity for macabre chaos. It was clear there was little to be done except get out of the way for the ambulance crews, which were still arriving. So I headed back toward the Third Circle. I was a little more than a mile from home, and decided to walk there as fast as I could.

A black Mercedes pulled to the curb, and out stepped four men dressed much like the two who had escorted me earlier that day to the Eighth Circle. They passed without a glance. My little chat over tea already seemed like an event from another era, but the scene reminded me that soon the security roundups would begin, if they hadn’t already.

I reached the house in fifteen minutes. All the lights were off at Fiona’s, and I wondered if she was okay. The Hyatt and Radisson were popular for events that attracted foreigners and expats.

I dialed the number for Athens. Mila answered on the first ring, as if she had been waiting by the phone.

“Freeman, are you all right?”

“So you’ve heard?”

“It was just on TV. It’s horrible. This can’t be connected with your work, can it?”

Leave it to her to intuitively zero in on my greatest fear. For all my anxiety over our separation, it was a fresh reminder that she still knew me better than anyone, perhaps because she had seen me at my lowest and weakest moments.

“No, of course not. But listen to me, Mila. You have to get out of there. It has nothing to do with tonight, but you need to leave Greece as soon as you can.”

“But, Freeman—”

“I’m serious. Those people who ran you down the other day, there will be others just like them. So go. As soon as you can get a flight.”

“To where?”

“America. My parents’ house in Massachusetts. Any way possible.”

“But my visa. You said that—”

“It’s not the Americans who are doing this. It’s—” I hesitated to say the word on this line, especially with all that was unfolding across the city tonight.

“It’s what?”

“Other people. I can’t say more about it now, and I’m sure you know why. But you should leave. By air, land, or sea. However you can do it. Then stay with my parents until I can join you. Because this time I can’t do anything to protect you.”

“This time?”

Shit. How had that slipped into the conversation?

“Or anytime. I’m babbling. Just go. Tell me that you’ll leave, that you’ll get out of there as soon as you can.”

“Yes, I’ll try.”

“Trying’s not enough, Mila!”

“All right, then.” A pause, two beats. “I’ll do it.”

“Good. I love you.”

“And I love you. It’s not too late, is it?”

Did she mean too late for her escape or for our future?

“No, there’s still time.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I am. See you in Massachusetts.”

“Good luck, Freeman. God be with you.”

Yes, but whose God? Everyone here would soon be calling on one God or another for either aid or vengeance.

As soon as we hung up, I switched on the television just as another ambulance flashed across the screen, this time in front of the Days Inn. The body count had begun. Thirty and rising. I picked up the phone to call Omar’s house.

Hanan was frantic. She said he had gone to Bakaa hours ago, after speaking with Dr. Hassan. He had been angry and upset. Something to do with Nabil. She hadn’t heard from him since.

“Nabil?”

“Yes. Nabil was in some sort of trouble. Omar had to find him before it was too late. Then I heard about the bombs and now I can’t reach him. Either his phone is off or—oh, my God, I don’t know what to think. He could be anywhere. He could even be—”

“It’s all right, Hanan. If Omar said he was going to Bakaa, then that’s where he is, okay? Cell phones don’t always work out there.”

“It’s just that, well, you’ve been around him. You must have noticed.”

“Noticed what?”

“Omar. The way he’s been acting. Not that he would ever tell me what’s going on. Has he told you?”

“No.”

“But you’ve noticed it, too, haven’t you?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. It’s Nabil who has me worried right now, considering what’s happened.”

“You don’t think that—”

She didn’t dare finish the sentence.

“I don’t know. But I’m going to find out. I’m going out there.”

“To Bakaa?”

“I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything about Omar.”

“This can’t be a good time to be moving around the city.”

“Probably not. Call if you get any news.”

“Be careful.”

The first thing I did was retrieve the gun from the dresser drawer. No ammo, of course, but sometimes just showing the barrel was enough. I then raced across Jebel Amman in the Passat to the Internet café to tie up a few loose ends, in case I ended up stranded in Bakaa without access to either the Internet or an international phone.

The owner was locking up early, but grudgingly let me in when I pleaded that it was an emergency.

“The whole night is an emergency,” he said, shaking his head in despair. “Ten minutes. Then you must go.”

I booted up one of the desktops while he stood at the darkened register, his face ashen. To my relief, Mila had fired off a message only moments earlier, with the good news that she had already booked a flight to Boston. She would depart in the morning.

I sent a quick e-mail to Massachusetts with the details, asking my mom and dad to meet her at the airport. I was about to log off when I saw that a new message had arrived that very morning from Chris Boylan, titled simply “Update.” I felt a stab of worry. Had he, too, paid a price for my indiscretion?

His message consisted only of two words, “Interesting timing,” followed by an Internet link highlighted in blue, which I clicked on immediately. A brief article from a newspaper Web site in Munich popped onto the screen. It was dated yesterday, and Norbert Krieger’s name was in the first line. My German was rusty, so it took a few seconds to make sense of the rest. Then I gasped in disbelief.

It was an obituary.

Krieger had been found dead at his office. Not murdered, just dead. Or so the story said. Then again, my employers were extremely talented, so who could say for sure. Black magic, I thought, and I was the apprentice wizard recklessly casting spells. I had conjured up the name of a man in Munich, bandied it about in a few incantations, and then—presto—he turned up dead a thousand miles away.

The shopkeeper cleared his throat, impatient to leave, so I logged off. He waved away my dinar and I climbed back into the Passat, still in shock. What an evening. And who knew what bad news awaited in Bakaa. I had to get moving.

I ran into two roadblocks before even making it out of Jebel Amman. Finally I escaped the hilltop via a steep, narrow alley that cut across to a side street through the edge of downtown. From there I twisted downhill and gradually made my way out of the city like a mouse through a maze, turning around and starting over each time my way was blocked. Eventually I slipped onto the highway to Bakaa well past a cordon of barricades that the police had set up around the rim of the city.

Bakaa was in chaos. The main drag was impenetrable, which meant reaching Dr. Hassan’s office was out of the question. By using side streets and alleys I was able to drive within a few blocks of the field office. I parked the car and set out on foot.

At the office there was a commotion outside the doorway, although everyone in the crowd was looking back across the street. I pushed through, barely able to open the door against the crush of bystanders. I flipped a light switch, but the power had been cut. Then I saw Omar, seated in the darkness next to a typewriter. He wasn’t making a sound.

“Where have you been?” I said. “Hanan is worried sick.”

“I just reached her. She’s fine now.”

His voice was a monotone, the flat register of utter defeat.

“What is it?” I asked. “Where’s Nabil?”

Omar slowly shook his head.

“I was too late,” he said. “Something terrible has happened.”

I braced myself for the worst.