The Prisoner's Wife (22 page)

They were going downmarket now, he and Danielle, following the prisoner's trail. Missing Abbasi's final payment, Shawn was short of money. This hotel, on Ar Rihani Street, was cheap, noisy, unclean. It was all he could afford. From Mohamed Farid—a throughway two blocks over—came cacophonies of sound. Shawn had once heard that Egyptian drivers believe in the magic of noise: Honk loud enough, long enough, traffic will vanish. Road space opens up; jams disappear. Not, Shawn guessed, something evidence could disprove.

At least the noise wasn't gunfire. The last time Shawn was on duty in Cairo, guarding men who made a treaty with Israel, armed men had tried to terminate him and Bobby Walters. It was just outside the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square. Bobby saw the men coming and pulled Shawn into the museum's entrance, saving his life. They lived. Not everyone did. Nine tourists died that day in crossfire between security police and bin Laden's companion, the Egyptian al-Zawahiri.

Shawn lit up his watch to check the time. It was late. He found it harder and harder these days getting to sleep without sex or drugs. He'd searched his travel bag for pills but nothing to make him sleep or relieve his pain. Across the room, he heard Danielle's calm and regular breathing. Almost two months, he figured, since she'd had sex. He kept waiting for the night when she'd no longer deny her need, the night she'd leave her bed and come to his. True, they'd briefly shared a bed in Morocco, but that, Shawn knew, was because he'd been hurt. Helpless and sexless.

Shocked and scared, if he were honest. It was hard for him to admit, but the street attack in Fes frightened him. The fact that he hadn't seen it coming, had no sense of danger. He was getting old, he thought: bad guys, young killers, catching up on him.

Now he lay awhile in a waking dream, trying to arouse himself with fantasy: trying to recall desire for the fleshless body of Ellen Reynolds. Her narrow ass; her wandering mouth.

When his watch told him it was two in the morning, and when sleep seemed no closer, Shawn left his bed and went to Danielle's. Pulling back the sheet that covered her, he stood for a moment, looking down. In sleep, her T-shirt rode up over the hinge of her thighs. She murmured something, some words he couldn't catch.

When Shawn shifted his gaze upward, he saw Danielle was awake now, motionless, her eyes wide—later, he thought he must have imagined this—like the red-eyed gaze of a night-roaming wolf he'd once caught in a spotlight, high in the Southern Rockies.

Filled with unreasoning fear—a crazy sense of panic—Shawn backed toward his bed.

Danielle spoke without raising her voice.

“If you ever try that,” she said, “if you ever touch me when I don't want to be touched—if you ever try that, I will kill you. It's a promise. You're stronger, I know, but sometime you'll sleep. I swear, I will kill you.”

She turned away then. Shawn saw her pull up the sheet, her face to the wall, hair spread promiscuously across a pillow. Again, her breathing was even. Hard as it was to believe, she seemed to be sliding back to sleep.

In his own bed, Shawn lay awake. His fears ebbed, exposing deep-seated disturbance. Once again, he thought of quitting the beautiful she-wolf across the room. Walking away. Then, in the heavy heat of the Cairo night, he remembered Danielle once more as he'd first seen her—first wanted her—as she stood watchful and beautiful in a Parisian apartment.

He was not yet ready, it seemed, to leave this city. Or the prisoner's wife.

 

25

CAIRO, EGYPT, 30 MAY 2004

At first light, Shawn slept. He woke when Danielle, in shirt and chinos, came again to sit on the edge of his bed, placing coffee on the table beside it. Lost in her own thoughts, she said nothing about the past night. She seemed calm, untroubled. Had Shawn not recalled the embers of her eyes, what passed between them in the darkness might have been a disturbing dream, dissolved by day.

Danielle drank a concoction the color of mango juice, with something pink—grapefruit?—added in. With fingertips she touched his bare chest. Her voice was gentle. “I'm curious,” she said. “My guess, you've slept with many women. Am I right?”

This would not, Shawn thought, be an easy conversation. He went back through the years to his initiation: a first clumsy coupling with Miss Catfish, on the floor of a dog-trot shack, somewhere in the pinewoods of northern Alabama.

“Well,” he said. “Women. There've been a few. We're talking thirty-some years.”

“These women—the ones you had—where are they now?”

“Who knows?” he asked, thinking back.

“Someone knows,” she told him, “but not you.” She put her hand beneath his unshaven chin, tilting his aching head upward. “Do you ever wonder why I would wish to be one of them?”

“What do you want me to say, Danielle? What did I do?”

“You tried to rape me.”

“Let me tell you about last night,” he said. “I never touched you. I don't frighten easy, Dani, but for a minute there, you scared hell out of me. Your eyes, Jesus God. If it comes to forgetting, I doubt I'll forget you.”

She was reflective. “Okay,” she said, “okay. But there's a part of your life you'll have to deal with one day. If you live.”

He was silent, suppressing what he might say.

“Now,” she said, “tell me about this place.”

“Cairo?”

“Cairo. Tell me how we reach the jail. How we get in. It is seven weeks now, they have Darius.”

“Fifty-one days.”

“He must think I forgot him.” She put down her glass. “You have—what did you call him?—an asset here?”

Shawn turned his mind to the day ahead. “Samir Aziz.”

“When do we see him?”

He tried his coffee. It was cool now, black and sweet and strong. He wondered where it came from.

“Samir? I tried him. His cell phone's dead. Or the network's down. This town, who knows?”

“You have an address?”

He nodded.

“Go shower, then.” When he hesitated, she said, “Don't be shy. For what it's worth, I've seen you naked.”

Shawn slid out of bed, hands covering his groin, and went to the bathroom. Behind him, he thought he heard her laugh. So far today, he'd found nothing amusing.

 

26

CAIRO, EGYPT, 30 MAY 2004

When Shawn last saw Samir Aziz, before 9/11, the man had lived off Muhammad Naguib Square, in a side street, an alley, behind a cloth market. He pictured it now: rack after rack of used clothes blowing in a warm breeze from the Nile. All the garments newly washed and ironed, all bargains. He'd bought a shirt there once—a good shirt, clean, blue denim, seventy-five U.S. cents.

Now, out in the street, in the heat, amid the hectic traffic of Mohamed Farid, Shawn stopped a black and white and red-brown taxicab. The red, he saw, was rust.

Getting in, Danielle paused. “How far away is your man? Your asset? Can we walk?”

He eased her into the aging Lada and gave directions to the souk. “You ever tried crossing a Cairo street?”

“They must do it.”

“Sure they do. Watch.” He pointed as the taxi turned right, passing Bab al-Futuh. “Look there—that guy—see what he's doing now? Walking through five goddamn lanes. Five lanes, solid traffic.” He heard Danielle's intake of breath. “Like he doesn't see it. He's saying, ‘Come on, hit me, I lived a good life, I believe in God, I believe in paradise, I'm ready to go.'” Again, he heard her breath catch. “Look at
this
guy. Just heads on out—cars coming right at him. Like they don't exist. Trucks touching him, three lanes to go. I'm not that brave. I didn't get to the age I am so I'd die crossing roads in this town.”

Nine minutes later, the cabdriver nosed through a group of waiting bearded men to stop in Sharia al-Muski. The man pointed to the meter. “Sir, eight pounds, please, Egyptian. From now, you must walk. This place here, I cannot drive.”

Out of the dying Lada, scanning the market, Shawn said, “You see what he means.”

*   *   *

In the shadow of Ibn Tulun, the clothes market spread before them in rainbows of color. Scattered among the clothes sellers were aging shoeshine men, hunkered by their stands; robed youths pushing carts piled with strawberries and lemons; women seated on the sidewalk, guarding vast baskets of mint and parsley, and tubs piled with eggfruit, herbs, and garlic. There were onion stalls, coffee stalls, barrows of lettuce, casks of tomatoes, hanging bags of oranges, sweet and bitter, rolls of bright-patterned cloth. At the borders of the market, donkeys tied to lampposts drooped grizzled heads, ears flicking at flies.

Cages loud with singing birds hung high above the sidewalk.

Taking Danielle by the hand, Shawn led her through the square. Men preparing for a wedding used wind machines to air the kapok that poured from an old and unstitched mattress. Women watched, nodding, missing nothing. Grandmothers, hooded and patient, sat in plastic chairs; girls danced together, laughing, touching ringed hands in the carefree street. Permeating all, a smell of spice and sweat and sewage.

In the distance, minarets reached for heaven.

Danielle stared about her. “My God,” she said, “I know Morocco, but this—this is chaos. Do you have any idea at all of where you're going?”

Shawn edged between a donkey-drawn tea wagon and a seller of used shoes. “I remember places. I've been here before. Once. Somewhere, there was an alley”—he turned into a dark declivity—“on the right, this, I think, could be…”

A six-story building, pink tiled, its windows glass bricked and metal framed. At random, Shawn pressed an unnamed bell.

Youths—one holding a baby like a rugby ball—rode through the alley on motor scooters, swerving around dancing women. In a gutter lay the body of a brindled cat. A boy bounced a balding tennis ball against a wall beside them. After a time, a nail-studded door was opened by a young man in cloth cap and galibaya. He spoke softly into a pink Nokia phone. Pointing to a spiral staircase, he held up four fingers.

“Fourth floor, I guess,” Shawn told Danielle. “How does he know who we are? And why does he have a handgun?”

The young man still shouted into his phone. Shawn started to climb a marble-stepped staircase.

She said, “I heard. He was talking of an operation. Whatever that means. And he had no gun.”

“Trust me,” Shawn said, “he did. That's a thing I notice. Even with guys wearing sheets.” He paused on the first landing, rubbing the small of his back, breathing hard. “Stairs,” he said. “It'll get to you one day. Climbing these damn things. Remember where you heard it first.” He started moving again, more slowly. “You'd never guess I used to be a quarterback.”

“That's true,” she said. “I never would.”

On the third flight, Shawn paused again, holding the stair rail, looking down to the hall far below. “Something I read someplace—time you get to my age, your lung capacity's down to half what it was.” He started climbing again. “Which I now believe.”

She stopped, two stairs higher, looking back, laughing. “Should I give you a hand?”

“Get out of here.”

He climbed a little faster then, trying not to show his age, stopping at a door that had been kicked in, then patched with unpainted plywood. He knocked and waited. There was a sound as if someone inside the apartment were moving furniture. Eventually, the door was opened by a middle-aged man wearing crumpled khakis and an Afghan cap. He stepped backward a pace, about to speak, then changed his mind.

“Samir,” Shawn said. “Good morning. You don't remember me.”

The man glanced behind him, then looked down the hall. He said, “I do. Who is this?”

“Danielle Baptiste. A friend. Not police, not FBI, not intel. French American. Can we come in?”

Samir hesitated, then stood aside. The room was small and filled with too much furniture. Wooden-latticed windows—
mashrabiya
—filtered subaqueous light.

“Ahmed,” Samir said, introducing a black-bearded young man who sat alert on a torn leather couch, watching the visitors with interest. “Mr. Maguire, how can I help you?”

“D'you mind?” Shawn said. “I had some trouble recently.” He backed out the still-open entrance door, looking up and down the empty corridor. He closed the door, crossed the overcrowded room, opened a door on the far side, and checked that the room beyond was empty. Then he sat on the unstuffed arm of the chair Danielle had taken.

Samir pushed a chair against the door.

Shawn said, “This lady's husband is Darius Osmani. Thirty-something Iranian, works in Europe.”

Danielle said, “Did.”

“Did work in Europe. We think now he's a frequent flyer, being held somewhere—somewhere in the city. Maybe by your people, Samir. Mukhabarat, I mean.”

“There is more than one.”

“Son, don't dick around. You know what I mean—Dairat al Mukhabarat. I'd guess, if we asked nicely, they'd say they were helping my people. Which, of course, they do.”

The two Egyptians exchanged glances.

“Enhanced interrogation,” Shawn said.

Someone tapped on the door. Samir opened it a crack. Shawn slipped the safety of his handgun, went to the door, and checked there was no one in sight. Samir returned to his seat. There was silence. Then Samir said, “I should tell you, sir, that I assisted you—your people, as you say—I assisted you in the past. But now, no more.”

Shawn considered that. “Okay. Tell me. What went wrong? Didn't we pay you?”

“The way you treat men of our faith is what went wrong,” said the young man on the couch, breaking in. “Here in Egypt. In Iraq. Afghanistan. Kashmir. Palestine. Chechnya. You expect that we should—we should simply accept this? We should stand by, we should help, while you”—he pointed at Samir—“and his people, you torture us? Kill us?”