The Prisoner's Wife (19 page)

“Please,” Shawn said. He was aware of Danielle, watching him. He didn't want her thinking badly of him. “Enough already.”

“No,” Tariq said. “
Falaqa
is easy. Just, you pour water on the guy, you make him walk across salt. That's all. I don't know myself, but they say it is painful, after the feet are beaten.”

Danielle said to Shawn, “Did you do that?”

He shook his head. “I have seen it done.” To Younis he said, “How do we get into the jail?”

“You still have a security clearance? Not canceled?” Shawn shrugged. If his clearance had been revoked, he doubted jailers here would know. “That, and money maybe,” said Younis, “that will get you in. We might both go. There is one man, a client, so-called—once a month they let me see him.”

Tariq moved surprisingly easily, for so large a man. He took the hand of a bearded coffee drinker at the next table and raised the man's arm until he hung like a doll, his feet high off the floor. The man screamed. His companions stared, motionless, expressions congealed like lard.

The waiter stood still. For some reason, the child ran to wrap his arms around Tariq's leg.

A nickel-plated handgun the bearded man was holding fell to the floor. It was small, a short-barreled thing, the kind Shawn preferred. Younis bent to pick it up. “A precaution,” he said. “I hate it when they scream.”

Shawn looked around, checking the room for other weapons.

Danielle threw herself against the mortal bulk of Tariq's body.

“Put him down,” she cried, “God's sake, put him down, you ape! You'll pull his arm out!
Déposez-le! Vous allez déchirer le bras!
”

Over the bawling of the hanging man, Tariq said, “I am human. Don't call me ape.”

“Pardon,”
she said.
“Mais lâchez-le! Lâchez-le!”

Tariq lowered the bearded man. He staggered and whimpered; his freed arm hung limp from its socket. Shawn walked to the terrace and seated himself at a metal table, opposite Hassan Tarkani. The agent's presence in Fes made him uneasy. What, he wondered, brought the man to Morocco?

For a moment, there was silence: each watching the other, and the door of the inner room. “How about this?” Shawn said finally. “Last time we met, remember? You were in my kitchen with your feet on my table. You recall that?”

Hassan sat silent, watching a man who'd come from within the café. Turning, Shawn saw Calvin McCord, unshaven, unwell. He sat on a metal chair beside Hassan and put his feet on another. Shawn saw that the man's hands still shook with the slightest of tremors.

“I was just saying, Calvin, back in England, you guys moved into my house. Uninvited.”

Calvin said, “We did apologize. Why would you bring that up now?”

“Someone left an incendiary device in my roof space. White phosphorus.”

Calvin shook his head. “Hard to comprehend,” he said, “the evil in the world. But hey, you're still with us. You survived. Any suggestion who could have done such a thing?”

“I think,” Shawn said, “it might have been you.” He glanced from Calvin to Hassan, who was attending to the conversation. “Or your sidekick there.”

“Paranoia,” Calvin said. “Did you fingerprint the device?”

Shawn shook his head. “Pay attention. White phosphorus. Burns to ash.”

“There, you see. No evidence. No suspects. Be careful, my friend. In your position—making accusations you can't prove.” He captured Hassan's coffee. “I have a question for you. How does it feel to betray your country? To work for a man like Ayub Abbasi? You know, high on our blacklist?”

Shawn thought about that. “Who put him there?”

“Not important,” said Calvin. “Answer the question, Maguire. Your country's at war. You work for the other side. There's a word for that.”

Hassan smiled. “We have faults,” he said, “but we know which side we are on.”

“How about we trade?” said Calvin. “You tell me what you know about Abbasi. About Dr. Khan and the nukes. We tell you what we know of Osmani.”

Shawn said, “I don't want information. I want access. What exactly is he charged with?”

“Osmani?” Calvin shook his head, clicked his tongue. “Come on. We don't charge these people. You know that. Charge them, you've got lawyers, publicity, fucking court case. We wait until they confess.”

Shawn thought back to a day when Martha gave him a book about a trial—a man on trial for unknown crimes. The prisoner, of course, admits his guilt. How could he not?

Watching Hassan rise and walk to the inside room, Shawn turned back to Calvin. “Confess what?”

“What they wish to confess,” said Calvin. “You've seen it happen. We all have things to confess. You, for example. You call yourself a patriot, yet you steal classified documents. You work with people who have no love for America. Like the girl in there. Like Abbasi. Or”—he pointed—“that lawyer. Younis Khreis.” Calvin touched his cup without lifting it. “You see? Crimes confession could extricate.”

Hassan came back and resumed his seat. “Expiate.”

“Ah, Jesus,” Calvin said. His coffee cup rattled on its saucer. “Will you shut the fuck up? It's my language.”

*   *   *

Hassan watched the giant Tariq, who now stood at the door of the inner room, surveying the street.

“Go after that boy,” Calvin said, speaking of Tariq, “you better be loaded for bear.”

Hassan finished a bowl of nuts and dried fruit. With his mouth full of smoked almonds, he said, “We are all mortal. In any body, hollow points make a hole.”

Shawn imagined that Calvin these days had his own mortality in mind. His vital signs were not good. He guessed this was probably not known to those who might want the job Calvin himself had taken when Shawn was eased out of the Agency. To his own surprise he felt a moment of sympathy for this man who would struggle all his life to emerge from the shadow of his five-star father. He waved to Danielle, who emerged from the inner room holding the arm of her dwarfish godfather. The giant bodyguard followed them.

Leaving a bunch of dirham notes on the table, Shawn joined the group. They walked down the shaded side of avenue Abdelkrim al Khattabi, toward the New Town. The sidewalk was less crowded now, men, women, and animals retreating from the heat.

“You know I am here as bodyguard,” said Tariq. “They will never let me in the jail.”

Back in the café, Calvin watched the group around Shawn. “Off your ass, boy,” he said to Hassan. “Someone needs to see where those guys are going.”

Hassan didn't move. “We know where they are going.”

Calvin picked up his phone, checked that he had a signal, and called an officer in Morocco's Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire. The DST contact was a man you could trust—silent and efficient, trilingual. He was a ranking member of Mossad, though neither Israelis nor Moroccans acknowledged the fact.

“It's that time again, my friend,” Calvin told Levi. “We have us a body to move.”

 

21

DIRECTION DE LA SURVEILLANCE DU TERRITOIRE JAIL, FES, MOROCCO, 27 MAY 2004

The stone-carved gateway in its outer wall was old and ornate, but, within that wall, the jail on the outskirts of Fes looked like a concrete office building. One in bad repair. Only metal shutters and machine gun–mounted watchtowers set it apart.

On the gate was a sign in three languages, forbidding photography.

“Old,” Tariq said, referring to the gateway and its carvings. “Well worked. Marinid architecture.”

From the desert came a warm wind, bearing sand.

“Which is what?” Shawn asked. He kept his distance from the giant bodyguard.

“Marinids ruled this place,” said Younis, who, in hours he had free, studied the city's history. “This was up to the fifteenth century. They had unusual customs, these kings. Among them, burying men and women alive at each of the gates, to protect the city. Gates guarded by the living dead. Which, in the end, like all systems, failed to work. Death does have dominion. End of the Marinids.” He stopped for a moment, considering the jail. “The building, of course, is a modern facade. Behind, all is old. Your people financed it. The facade, I mean, and the cells inside.”

“My people? Americans?” Shawn considered Danielle, pale today in the African sun. “Why not
her
people? She has a blue passport. Why's it always my people when something bad goes down?”

“You can imagine,” Danielle said, “there might be reasons.”

Around the building, within the outer wall, was bare, packed earth. Not even weeds grew. A single twisted fig tree, heavy with fruit, stood on the eastern perimeter. Two men in uniform waited on either side of the jail's main door. Both were young and awkward; both carried submachine guns.

Shawn watched them closely. He distrusted nervous young men with automatic weapons. He'd known a few.

“There is also Israeli money,” Younis said. “We owe a debt to Mossad. They train our people, when they are not killing them.”

“Who interrogates these days?”

“Your military intelligence,” Younis said. “At times, OGA.”

Danielle divided her attention between Younis and the guards, “Excuse me?” she asked.

“OGA. Other government agencies.”

“Basically, Brits,” Shawn said. “They're not like us. Kind of shy of being name-checked, places like this.”

Tariq, smiling, said to Younis, “Sir, I shall wait here. We know they will not let me in.” Holding his son in his arms, he moved to a patch of shade beneath the solitary fig. Set down, the boy searched the ground for the green-black fruit, split with pink, that birds had missed. His father watched as Younis showed identification to one of the soldiers. Moving back a little, still uneasy, fingering his weapon, the man gestured toward the metal door. Younis beckoned Shawn and Danielle. All three entered the building. Moving slowly in the midday heat, the second soldier closed the door behind them. He turned a bored, expressionless gaze on Tariq. One burst of fire, he thought, would stop a man, even of that size.

*   *   *

The jail entrance gave onto a vast stone-floored courtyard. In the middle stood an Apache helicopter whose markings, if they ever existed, had been erased.

Opening off the courtyard was a stone-walled room, buzzing with flies. It was unfurnished except for a plastic desk, two broken chairs, and three filing cabinets, only one of which had drawers. On the desk stood a black dial telephone and a blank-screened, finger-marked computer, beige in color.

Shawn noticed steel hooks in the ceiling.

Behind the desk were two young men in uniform, about the age of the pair outside. They played cards. One had the insignia of a sergeant. Both wore dark glasses and, despite the heat, black gloves.

Pointing at Shawn, Younis said to the sergeant, “This man has worked with your people, in Rabat. In Temara. With Colonel Qasim Behari. You see he has a pass. A nine-zero passport. American.”

The officers laid down their cards the better to examine Shawn's security pass and the documents Younis placed before them. They passed papers between them. One man switched on the computer, slapping its flank without apparent hope, and without result.

Moving with unexpected speed, the sergeant captured a passing blowfly. With an audible crunch, he crushed it in the palm of his glove. He said in French, “The men. Not the woman.”

Danielle shrugged.
“Ça va.”
She moved toward the exit.
“Je vais rester au dehors, à côté de Tariq.”
To Shawn she said, “I'll be outside. You take care.”

“Why?” asked the sergeant, in English. “What is she meaning?”

“If anyone offers you a ride back to town,” Younis told Danielle, “refuse. We shall go together.”

The sergeant said something in French to Younis, and both men laughed.

“What was that?” Shawn asked.

“He says that the woman has very beautiful green eyes, and breasts you could eat, like a mango,” Younis replied. “He says you are a lucky old man, if you take such a chicken to bed.”

“I wish,” Shawn said in English.

“Now,” said Younis, “he brings us down to the cells.”

*   *   *

The sergeant led the way out of the stone-walled office, along a corridor, down timeworn steps to a basement. Here the air was damp, the walls gray-green and, surprisingly, wet. Low-wattage bulbs were trapped overhead in wire-mesh cages. Most were dead. Smells of piss and shit hung on stagnant air.

On each side of the passage, cells were numbered down one side and up the other, the numbers both Hindu and Arabic. Each metal door had an inspection window; all the grilles were unshuttered. From where he stood, Shawn saw that the cells had loudspeakers, and in each, he guessed, was a single, high-powered light in a ceiling recess: standard procedure, he knew, for disorientation. Noise and light to banish sleep.

Through the first inspection window, he saw a naked man, squatting above a pisshole in the floor. Flesh hung loose on the prisoner's bones; his penis drooped. He watched the doorway with the gaze of a trapped animal.

In the next two cells, diaper-clad men hung by their arms, one spread-eagled, as if crucified. From links on their wrist shackles, shining chains ran to bolts in the cell's stone roof. Though weak, the first man was pulling himself up, Shawn guessed, to ease the pressure on his wrists. He'd seen detainees who'd lost their hands when circulation ceased. These two, though, seemed physically intact.

Shawn recalled the hooks in the stone roof of the office above. Perhaps, he thought, there were times when the young, black-gloved solders filled in forms, or fought their lifeless computer, while the prisoners swung above them, turning in the breeze of the ceiling fan.

In the third and fourth cells, two more men hung from hooks. To Shawn, they seemed lifeless, though he knew it was unlikely. The CIA book of rules—standard operating procedure—recommends that dead bodies should be promptly removed, preferably for incineration. Absent crematoria, burial in lime.