The Prisoner's Wife (32 page)

The crowd parted before the soft-topped, slogan-painted Lincoln and closed behind it. As Shawn watched, the ragtop rolled down. From this distance, Nashida Noon, standing in the open car, looked tiny, her head covered in a Parisian Hermès scarf of blue and royal purple. Restless, expectant watchers stirred and murmured. Movement flowed through the crowd like wind through wheat. Nashida raised her arms; the bands fell silent; the crowd breathed and sighed: a collective exhalation of breath.

Someone passed the prime minister a microphone. She began to speak. From the crowd, men answered her, echoed her. Different words, Shawn thought, but what he was hearing took him back to when he was a kid: to revival meetings among pinewoods, testifying to God in white-painted wooden chapels. He scanned the square. Tremors ran through his arms to his hands. He'd never done a shot like this. Not midcrowd.

How in hell, Shawn wondered, how in hell do you shoot if you're shaking? How do you pick a single assassin from a crowd of thousands?

What does happen if you kill the wrong guy?

Shawn glanced behind him. Now only Hassan was in the room. If anything went amiss, neither Bobby or Calvin would be called to witness.

By the sound of it, by the pitch of her voice, Nashida Noon was reaching the climax of her speech. Again Shawn—staring through his rifle's sight—scanned the magnified crowd. He could see no exceptionally tall man. If this assassin stood directly behind the prime minister's Lincoln, he'd be free and clear. He could take out the woman anytime he wanted. In the confusion the man—if he lived—would walk away unharmed.

If the guy came up on
this
side, facing the prime minister—if he stood between Shawn and Nashida—

He couldn't do it, Shawn thought. He couldn't kill a man. Not a father with a baby.

Then—Jesus God—
there
he was—Shawn could see the man—unusually tall—robed in white—he looked the double of the one who murdered Rafe … and Shawn was aiming—

—now a red dot danced on the back of the white-robed figure, and this man—tall, loose-turbaned, bearded, head and shoulders above his neighbors—raised a baby, or something that might be a baby—raising it high in the air, thrusting the bundle toward the open car, toward Nashida—the laser dot stilled: Shawn took a breath; still himself—there was the sound of a shot, which seemed not to come from Shawn's rifle—the white garment stayed in the crosshairs, now splashed with a darker red, and—a reflex—his rifle did kick, and Shawn knew that this time he had fired—or fired again—at that same moment, someone deep in the crowd released a cage of white doves—and Shawn saw the tall figure start to sink like a holed ship, weakening, bending long legs, strength flowing out of him—and as the doves fluttered upward, the man sank in the crowd—still with the baby-bundle held high above his head as if to save it—and, as he fell, there was a woman, a hijab-shrouded woman, instinctively grabbing the baby as it went down and then—in horror, or dismay—who could say?—tossing the creature, the device, the bomb, whatever it was, away from her, backward, into the crowd—and now Nashida Noon's bulletproof car was moving on, through the crowd, the car's roof rising, people parting like the sea—and, as the crowd drew away from the fallen figure, Shawn looked left to where light glinted on glass. On top of a parked bus stood what first seemed to be a young boy, holding binoculars. As Shawn adjusted his rifle's sight, bringing the figure into focus, he saw that what he'd thought was a child was in fact a ragged-bearded dwarf, gesticulating as the crowd swirled and ebbed around the bus. Now the dwarf stared upward, his gaze fixed on the window from which Shawn had fired. The rifle's sight magnified his face. Transfixed, Shawn held the dwarf's gaze: watched as he raised a tiny arm, pointing at the window—pointing at Shawn.

Calvin was back in the whitewashed room, shouting.

“Say what?” Shawn refocused.

“I said, great shot. Now give me the damn gun. The boys are going to trash it.”

Shawn passed the scope-sighted rifle to Calvin. He said, “There's a guy down there, dwarf, standing on a bus. He saw me shoot.”

“Not the only one,” Calvin said. He pointed to Hassan, holding a small video camera. “If our Paki friend didn't fuck up, we have us a hit movie here.” He laughed. “New star—Shawn Maguire, sharpshooter.”

Shawn saw that Bobby was back in the room. There were things he wished to say to his friend, but no words came.

Bobby said, “Shawn, terrific—pick one bad guy in a crowd. Now, move.” He pointed to the door. “We want you out.”

“Wait a minute,” Shawn said. He found his voice. He was shaking. Below him, in the square, men bent over the body of the fallen man. Beyond them, he could still see the dwarf on the bus roof, staring upward. “I have a question,” he said. “The president here—he's still our guy? On the payroll?”

“Why?”

“Why am I asking?” Shawn pointed after the prime minister's vanishing motorcade. “Next week, that woman's in office.”

Bobby opened a bottle of Johnnie Walker. It was all the whisky you could buy in this town. Shawn saw that his friend, too, was shaking a little. “If she lives.”

In the square below, the crowd began to disperse. Men bore away a white-robed body.

“Okay,” Shawn said. “The lady's in power, it's good-bye Mr. President. Is that right?” Bobby nodded. “So you lose your man? Your asset?”

Bobby nodded.

Shawn pointed to the square. “Then why not let that guy throw the damn bomb?”

Bobby said, “You know Nashida's flying to Rawalpindi.”

Shawn went to the basin to wash his hands and his face in cold water. He stood there for a while, turning the tap, looking at a portrait of the president, working something out. He said, “Rawalpindi. That's ISI turf.”

Bobby poured himself a drink without offering one to Shawn. “So,” he said, “do the math. What's it tell you?”

“Paki intelligence assassinates Nashida—”

Bobby finished his drink fast. He stood, considering whether or not to pour another. His diet allowed one measure of alcohol per day. He said, “Go figure. President has to act. Good-bye to the invisible soldiers. Good-bye ISI. We keep him, lose them.”

“And lose her,” Shawn said. “Jesus—you mean we just saved the prime minister—fuck it,
I
saved her—so ISI does a hit in Rawalpindi?”

Bobby shrugged. He made a decision; poured a second drink, calming his nerves.

“What kind of screwed-up deal is this?”

“I'll tell you what kind of deal it is,” Bobby said. He came up close to Shawn, breathing whisky. “You know, I know, those guys, Inter-Service, they control nuclear production. Come on, we all know that. We leave them alone, they'll hand out warheads all down the Arab street. Picture this, son—Khan and Co. dish out nukes like blueberry fucking muffins. Sooner or later, these things'll get to al Qaeda.” He crossed the room and took Shawn's arm. “We have 9/11 rerun—next time, it's nuclear. You know what I'm saying? Small device, big enough. Good-bye New York. Adios. Hasta luego. So. Here's the deal. We weigh, against the city of Manhattan, the life of one reasonably corrupt female politician who, we know, has already given nuclear secrets to North Korea. A woman who, if she lived, would have been prime minister of Pakistan. With all that implies for the U.S. of A.” He placed a plump hand on Shawn's shoulder. “Moral equation, son. Above your pay grade.”

“If I go public? Talk to the press? Put this fuckup on the Web?”

Calvin was listening. “Please,” he said. “You know the answer. You won't be alive long. You saw inside our jails. Think Cairo—think Fes. Guys hanging from hooks? Remaining time on earth, Shawn, would be deeply unhappy.”

“If I were you,” said Bobby, checking the time, and breathing deeply to help his heart, “at this point I'd get my ass out of here.” He pushed a small package into Shawn's jacket pocket. “Something else you can do for us,” he said. “Do it for Uncle. Hold the girlfriend.”

“Danielle?”

“Indeed. We don't want the lady leaving town. Not before we talk with her. Call me when you've hooked her up to something heavy.”

*   *   *

Going downstairs, Shawn felt weaker than he had in years. Tired now, exhausted, he rubbed a wrist across the dampness of his eyes. Leaving the stationery office, he closed its red-painted door and heard the tumblers of its electronic lock fall into place. Outside, still air swam with heat.

On a cobbled street, Shawn checked the package Bobby had given him: Agency-issue plastic handcuffs, in powder blue. He was returning them to his pocket when, behind him, a man started to scream. In Shawn's head, the screams echoed, bouncing around his aching skull. He turned. At the end of the alley stood the tiny wild-bearded man he'd seen, minutes before, on a bus roof in the crowded square. Now the dwarf ran—still screaming, arms waving—at the head of a white-robed mob.

Their wild cries—
Allahu akbar—
counterpointed the midget's howl.

For a moment, Shawn considered the Makarov he carried, thought of backing into a doorway, shooting it out, and knew, in the same moment, that dog wouldn't hunt.

Not with these men, these numbers.

Turning, he ran, stumbling down a rug-lined alley, praying the crowd had cleared. Glancing back, he saw that the stump-legged dwarf moved with surprising speed, still screaming as he ran. From behind him men fired shots: .303 was Shawn's guess. Hard to be accurate when you run with a long-barreled gun. Which might not matter, Shawn thought, as he searched for an exit. In this place, there were other ways of ending a life.

Already, he was slowing, limping, his breathing hard in the heat, legs still pained from the knife attack in Fes. At this rate, within minutes, the zealots would have him, and then—Jesus God, what then? Not something you want to think about.

In the dust and humid air Shawn struggled for breath. His throat's lining burned; his lungs were on fire.

Glancing back, not watching his feet, Shawn collided with a smoking brazier. Tipping, it strewed burning coals and kebabs across the pebbled street. From somewhere, a woman wailed. Shawn turned his head toward her and fell forward into a shallow excavation: a reeking pit of Peshawar's ancient pipework.

Shawn picked himself up to run again, ducking at the sound of another shot, knowing as he did that the shot you hear is not the shot that kills you.

High over rooftops, an onion dome swam in aureoles of evening light, stirring memories of a conversation somewhere, sometime, with someone—

Then he knew. Staggering, fighting the pain in his legs, Shawn ran through a maze of unpaved paths toward the golden mosque. Gasping for air, turning down a litter-strewn alley, he collided with the solid frame of Alfred Burke.

“Hey, hey,” said Alfred, stepping back. With sudden violence, he pulled Shawn through a wood-framed arch, closing nail-studded doors behind them both. “Hold your horses, son.”

Shawn was listening to sounds in the alley. In silence, the handyman led the way through the empty rooms of a derelict structure that might once have been a riad. The building's walls were holed, its floors littered with shards of concrete, deep in dust. The only domestic objects were barbells leaning against a stuffed and brindled feline on a high marble plinth. The wildcat's fur had been eaten away by whatever eats fur. It made the thing look mangy. In its mouth, it held a fish.

“Came with the house,” said Alfred, nodding at the animal. “It's a fishing cat.”

Shawn turned to look at him.

“Does what it says on the tin. Swims rivers. Catches fish.”

Alfred shoved Shawn forward when he wished to stop. In a walled garden of dying cactus, the two men paused.

Alfred watched as Shawn tried to regain his breath. He said, “You look like shit.” He raised a thumb. “Heard what happened. Nice bit of shooting. Take out a raghead, middle of a crowd. Seriously doubt I could do that.”

“He was a bomber.”

Alfred nodded. “They told me. Any of these meshuggeneh see where you're shooting from?”

Faintly now, Shawn heard high-pitched screams. “One did.” He pointed back toward the alley. “Fucking dwarf. That's him you're hearing.”

Alfred laughed. “Dwarf?” he said. “
Dwarf?
You serious?”

Shawn nodded.

“You pick 'em, don't you?” Alfred renewed his grip on Shawn's arm. “Right, mate. Move.”

Within a mud-brick outbuilding, Alfred opened the door of a rusty dark-windowed Lada and pushed Shawn into the shotgun seat. As his legs bent beneath him, Shawn grunted in pain.

Taking his time, the handyman eased himself into the car's driving seat, his joints stiff. On one knee, he set an aging—but, Shawn guessed, still functional—.38 Smith and Wesson.

Shawn's breathing slowed. He shook his head, trying to clear it. “Christ,” he said. “How the hell could I do that? What the fuck possessed me?”

“Do what, exactly?”

“You know what happened. I killed a man back there.”

“Well,” said Alfred, “you're not the first. Cain, for instance. In the Bible.”

They sat in silence awhile, listening to the distant sounds of the street.

Shawn wiped away sweat; tried to breathe deeper; tried to still the beating of his heart.

“We're driving?”

Alfred shook his head. “Not right this moment,” he said. He tapped the dashboard. “You're wondering about the motor. What can I tell you? Blends in. Ragheads drive this crap.” He tapped the glass and shrugged. “They like black windows. Fine. Suits me.”

Shawn nodded, thinking this through.

“Let's say I forgot you lived by the mosque.”

Alfred shrugged. “What's it you carry?”

“Nine-mil Makarov.”