The Prisoner's Wife (33 page)

“Cap gun,” said Alfred. “Water pistol.” He considered Shawn. “My guess, son, you'd be brown bread by now. Bits of you messing up my street.” He paused a while, then said, “Something else you want to think on. They told me, take you out.”

“Who told you?”

“Who d'you suppose?” asked Alfred. He pointed east. “Your mate McCord. Didn't ask directly, mind you. Troublesome priest kind of thing.” His tombstone grin. “I got the message.”

Shawn was fighting sleep. He forced his eyes open, eying the pistol on Alfred's knee. “And?”

“Be honest,” said Alfred, “I thought about it. Thought, no. Told you, I'm too old for this game. You, too, way you was running.” He paused, then said, “Plus, I'm reading about Jesus.”

“You're Jewish,” Shawn said.

“Just because I don't believe he's the son of God,” said Alfred, “don't mean I ignore him. I read he was dead against killing. Jesus, I mean. Not God.”

“I've never been religious,” Shawn said, “but that sounds right.”

Alfred mused for a moment. “Owes me money,” he said finally. “Mr. McCord does.”

“Problem,” said Shawn.

“For him,” said Alfred. He was turning something over in his mind. “Being against killing don't mean I give up altogether.”

They sat in silence awhile, until Alfred started the car. “Here's what we're doing,” he said. “I drive you back to that shithole where you're staying. You go inside, grab an hour shuteye, so you don't go banging in the fucking furniture. Then you're out the door.”

Alfred pulled the Lada from the outbuilding to the street. He drove with care along the Qissa Khawani Bazaar. Through darkened windows, he watched the thinning crowd. Men made their slow way home, awakening in Shawn memories of his own home. Memories of Martha.

“Told you,” said Alfred, “didn't I? You stay here, someone sure as shit's going to slot you. Bet on it. If it's not your buddies, it's the towelheads. One or the other.” He nodded at passing men. “Silly bastards out there, barking at the moon. Plus,” he said, “these days, I get the feeling, whatever God these guys pray to, someone round here's about to feel His wrath.”

Against his wishes, Shawn's eyes were closing. “If it was you, where would you go?”

“Like you told Mr. Abbasi,” Alfred said, “before he was taken. Spend time in Cuba. Take the bird. Miss Baptist, whatever her name is.”

Catching his breath, Shawn rolled down the darkened car window.

Alfred looked across the car. “Christ. You do want to die, don't you? Roll the fucker up.”

Outside the Indus Grand Comfort Hotel, the handyman pulled the Lada to the sidewalk, killing the engine.

Shawn pointed back the way they'd come. “The Agency,” he said. “What'll happen?”

“To Mr. McCord?” asked Alfred. “Believe me, none of your business.” He pointed toward the hotel's door. “Move your ass inside. Sleep. Then get the fuck out of town.” He restarted the Lada. “Stick around here, son, you're ace of goddamn spades.”

*   *   *

Shawn climbed the darkened stair of the Grand Comfort Hotel. He had the sense of being in a building drained of life: suddenly deserted, as if by men in flight from encroaching plague. He moved slowly, his legs still heavy. He thought of the device keeping Bobby's heart alive. His own heart beat oddly, faster than it should.

On a landing, he sat awhile on a concrete stair, wondering if he'd make it to his room. When he did, the room was hot and empty. Water ran; he guessed Danielle was in the shower. He wondered about the illness she claimed; wondered if he'd imagined her watching presence at the window overlooking the now-ruined American jail.

Sweating, Shawn shed his clothes, letting them lie where they fell, on the floor by the bed. He was too tired to care. Exhausted, drained, he fell to the bare mattress and lay on his back, watching patterns of what might be blood move on the ceiling's whitewash. He saw shapes shift, mutate, fade—now sinister, now benign. Once he saw a severed head. He closed his eyes, shutting out light, hoping sleep might erase the vision of red on a white robe; a man he'd killed sinking in a human sea. A bundle that might be a baby, or might be a bomb, tossed hand to hand, until it, too, sank in the sea.

A distant explosion shook the hotel. Flakes of ceiling plaster fell on Shawn. In his mind, the assassin's face became the face of Nashida Noon. Weeping, burning, dying, she was transformed into naked dreams of Danielle. Who came naked from the shower, standing by the bed, watching this sleeping man and then stretching on the bed beside him. Her body a blessing, a benediction.

Dazed by dreams, unwilling to wake, Shawn lay awhile in her arms, his head between her breasts. There was something in his mind; some half-remembered … something he should—

“Nashida,” he whispered, “Nashida Noon—we ought to—” She bent close to hear him. “They might—”

Quietly then, she said it was over. “It's on the radio. Nashida's dead.” She drew him closer to her naked body. “In Rawalpindi—a plane crash—”

“Jesus God. Too late.”

“Did your people?” she asked. “Did they do that?”

He said something inaudible. She bent her head. “Say again?”

“I said, I love you.”

Danielle raised herself, looking down at him. She kissed his closed eyes, her naked body covering his.

“Could you,” he asked, “could you live with—?”

“Is this”—she bent to touch her lips on his—“is this a proposal?”

Something had changed. He sensed it. She was tender now, more loving than he'd known her; her thighs wet, her body open to his. For a time, she touched him, looking down, her nipples, expectant, brushing his chest. The scent of soap on her skin drowned in the loamy smell of her sex.

He felt the slow shift of her body above him as she leaned across the mattress, searching for something in the clothes he'd dropped. She knew he carried condoms; sex addicts do. Moments later, before he could tell what she had in mind, she fastened a plastic handcuff to his right wrist, the other link to a metal rail of the bed. Moving fast, she was away from him, pulling on underpants, buttoning a shirt.

He jerked his wrist against the cuff—the hopeless tug he'd seen in men who knew they faced darkness and death.

As he might.

Danielle took the short-barreled Makarov from his jacket. Watching him, she weighed the pistol in her hand. “You were going to give me to that man who hurt my husband.”

“To Calvin?” He shook his head. “No. Never to him.”

“Truly? You weren't?” She pointed at his shackled wrist. “Why carry the cuffs?”

He said nothing. What could he say? The cuffs were for her.

She checked shells in the pistol, leveled the gun. “Why would you wish to live with me? A woman who might kill you?”

He knew then how Martha had felt, facing death. “Danielle,” he said, “I wanted—”

In truth, she was all he wanted.

“You just shot a man.”

He wondered how she could have known.

“Would your death not make things even? Eye for eye, your Bible says. A life for a life.”

Your
Bible?

She put down the pistol, pulled her jeans over her hips, and slipped her feet into sneakers. She said, “I'm leaving you, Shawn. We'll take Darius somewhere safe. Someplace he'll be treated for what your friends did.” She brushed hair back from her face. “He's hurt. He's ill. He may not live.”

Shawn tested the strength of the handcuff. “You're not his wife.”

She shook her head. “I lied. I needed him. Needed a believer. He was my operative.” She was amused. “I'm the one they should have taken. Not Darius.”

“What he told Calvin?”

“A mix. Truth, untruth. Nothing your people can use.”

She dropped the Makarov into the pocket of her jacket, watching as he tugged again at the handcuff binding him to the bed.

She bent toward him, speaking quietly. “I'm going over the border. I have to know you won't stop me. Give me to your friends.”

He felt his foolish nakedness. With one helpless hand he covered himself. The plastic cuff bit at his wrist.

“Please,” he said, “Jesus, Dani, don't”—he wrenched at the handcuff—“for Christ's sake, not like this.”

“Count your blessings,” she said. “I'm leaving you alive. There was a time I thought I might not.” She looked around, to see what else she might need. “Later, I'll call—tell the maid to check the room.”

Danielle blew a light kiss and was gone.

Moments later, she was back. “One day,” she said, “if I survive, I might come look for you. Your place, where Martha's buried. Think about it. Tell me if you could live with a terrorist.”

With unringed fingers she made quotation marks around that final word.

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

An imprint of St. Martin's Press.

THE PRISONER'S WIFE.
Copyright © 2012 by Gerard Macdonald. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.thomasdunnebooks.com

www.stmartins.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Macdonald, Gerard.

The prisoner's wife / Gerard Macdonald.—1st ed.

    p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-59180-9 (hardback)

ISBN 978-1-250-01243-2 (e-book)

1.  Kidnapping—Fiction.   2.  Intelligence officers—United States—Fiction.   3.  State-sponsored terrorism—Fiction.   I.  Title.

  PR6113.A255P75 2012

  823'.92—dc23

2011050641

ISBN 9781250012432

First Edition: May 2012