ARAB (30 page)

“Bashir? You know where he is?”

“No. Thought you might.”

“No idea,” Nick said.

Isaac searched Nick’s face for signs of deception. He probably knew Nick was holding something back. Nick didn’t give a shit. “That man we spoke about, the official at Cairo airport, Bindari….”

“I remember,” Nick said, cautioning himself not to say things about Bindari that Bashir had told him, feeling a protectiveness he couldn’t explain.

“His name has cropped up. We’ve learned from one of the
muccabarat
’s assets, who also spies for us, that this airport official, Bindari, was in regular contact with General Saraaj, right up to the day Saraaj was killed. And we’ve linked his name to Uthman al-Ajami, from a few phone calls. This Ajami is a pretty busy guy.”

“And there’s the connection to Jaradat,” Nick said.

“May not be relevant.”

“It’s easy to believe that Jaradat was reaching for Bashir through Faisal Ibrahim….”

“Well, apparently we have only a woman’s word for that,” Isaac said. “Apparently a vindictive woman lashing out. But let’s leave Jaradat out of the equation. We’d have no chance to legally implicate him. For political reasons we wouldn’t even be able to mention his name. It’s this Bindari I’m interested in. Who else could have obtained clearance for Bashir Yassin to land in Cairo in an unscheduled flight? Bashir took off from an airstrip that General Saraaj resurrected. Saraaj is killed, the landing is switched to Bindari’s airport…. So, we can easily connect Saraaj, Bindari, Yassin, and this woman Bryce, put them together in a conspiracy. Our people scared her out of Brazil. She makes a phone call to Bindari or Uthman Ajami and they bring her to Cairo. Only a corrupt pilot would take that job—one of their own.”

Isaac reached into his jacket pocket for his cigarette holder. Nick raised a hand. “Please don’t.”

Isaac shrugged, lowered his hand to his lap.

Nick said, “You think Bindari had Saraaj killed?”

“Let’s just say it appears he’s benefited from the general’s death. Who else could have arranged to slip her through customs and spirit her off to Rawdah? It looks like she’s the prize that’s been snatched away from the dead general.”

“How do you know she’s on Rawdah?”

“Your Captain Huzayfi found the elusive cab driver. Ten minutes after the Captain dismissed him, we learned where she was and sent a man there who learned—and this will please you—that she left the Meridien Hotel with two women from the American embassy.”

That was a surprise. “She’s Rio Rita.”

“Helene Bryce.”

“So they don’t need Bashir Yassin any more … unless they expect him to doctor the president’s plane, which sounds—”

“With all the publicity about this, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell he’ll ever get near that plane.”

“So he’s become expendable?”

“Yes. And that means we’d better find him before Bindari does. And before Yousef Qantara does. We can’t learn anything from a corpse.”

“And once you have him, then what?”

“Come on, Nick. You know I can’t arrest anyone in this country. There’re laws against it. Langley would have my ass. We’re at war, man.”

Then why do it, Nick thought, but didn’t say, didn’t want to get involved in too deep a discussion of Bashir’s destiny. Instead he asked, “You think the
muccabarat’
s looking into this?”

“Why else would Yousef Qantara go rough on Habib except to find out the real reason you’re in Egypt? Whether it’s this or something else, who knows?”

“You think Shkaki was looking for me?”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you…. They found a card key to your suite in his pocket.”

Nick didn’t believe Isaac had forgotten anything. His moves were always calculated.

“Think it was planted?”

Isaac laughed. “I don’t know about that. But somebody had to have given it to him, somebody who’s gunning for you.”

“How would he know where to find me?”

“I believe your Captain Huzayfi is looking into that. The
muccabarat
could get a key and silence whoever gave it to them. Lots of ways to get keys.”

“You talk with him?”

“Never met the man,” Isaac said. “My question, Nick, is why did Habib kill him.”

“To protect me is what I heard him say, and I believe him.”

“Not to eliminate a witness. I can’t imagine the
muccabarat
hiring Shkaki as a hit man.”

“You seem to be dancing around the idea that Habib was working for Yousef Qantara.”

Isaac smiled. “They wouldn’t have tortured him to death if he was one of them. No, I’m wondering whether it might not have been you Shkaki was looking for.”

“In my suite? You think Bashir Yassin was hiding in these rooms?”

Isaac laughed. “What gave you that idea?”

And that’s why you paid me this visit, you prick. “Want to check the bathroom?”

“Come on, Nick. I’m just doing my job.”

*

Around eight that evening, Nick was sitting with Aziz Al-Khalid at a table in a restaurant on Gezira glancing idly over rooftops at lighted windows in high buildings on the opposite bank of the Nile, lights that reflected like wobbling tiles on the moving river.

“I really seem to be burdening you with apologies, Nick. But Sana truly wanted to come….”

“No problem,” Nick said. “Tell her I miss her. Been a while.”

“She gets tied up in these charity things….”

Nick gave that a nod. He was only half listening, couldn’t get thoughts about Habib out of his mind. Nor, apparently, could Aziz.

“I wish I had known him better,” he said. “He seemed like a good man.”

Nick gave that a few seconds, glancing past Aziz at a wide expanse of glass through fronds of a potted palm, tall buildings out there on this crowded half of the island. The endless expanse of the growing city beyond them, a city that seemed so hateful to him now.

The brown hand and white sleeve of a waiter slipped in front of his face and lifted the plate he had finished using, the sweet taste of
Aysh es-Saray
lingering pleasantly in his mouth.

He looked up. “Thanks,” he said.

The waiter smiled, probably only guessing what Nick had said. They were speaking English—Aziz’s choice for privacy reasons.

“It wasn’t to talk about Habib that I invited you here,” Aziz said, “and again I apologize for not coming to you sooner.”

“You’re a busy man,” Nick said. “I understand.” Aziz had told him he was out of town and hadn’t heard about the incident until this afternoon.

“There’s something else.” Aziz raised a linen napkin to his lips, patted them, replaced the napkin to his lap, glanced across the several tables at two security guards standing near the door. “Very disturbing,” Aziz said. “painfully disturbing.”

Nick waited. Aziz wasn’t talking about the security guards.

“We’ve been running a parallel investigation of our friend Bashir Yassin, ongoing even before you arrived, Nick, as I think you know—a routine check on what Yousef was doing. It seems that records at Immigration indicate that a Bashir Yassin—or Yessan, as it was spelled on some of the papers, transcripts in English for the United Nation’s crew—thirteen years old, was admitted to this country in what was called the ‘Jibril Deal.’ Heard of it? More than a thousand prisoners exchanged for an Israeli….”

“Nineteen eighty-four, eighty-five, something like that?”

“One of the many prisoner exchange things.”

“From Gaza.”

“Yes. How a young boy would be thought an insurgent…. Anyway, the important thing is that Bashir Yassin is in this country legally. And Yousef should know that. It’s right there in the record, along with a United Nations sponsorship, a dossier containing school grades, his work record at the airport, his friends and close associates. It’s all there, everything but his recent training in England—not a word about that.”

“Why would he hold out on you?”

“I expect to find out,” Aziz said.

“That’s serious stuff.”

“Yes. And suddenly nobody seems to know where Esmat Bindari is. We think he knows we’ve confiscated his records.”

This elicited a subdued “Wow!”

“I only wish we’d learned this earlier,” Aziz said.

“Isaac thinks it may have been Bindari who hired Shkaki to kill Bashir. He thinks he was looking for Bashir, not me.”

Aziz smiled. “In your hotel?”

Nick gave it a passive shrug, knowing that Aziz wouldn’t press him.

“As to Yousef,” Aziz said, “I’ll be receiving a report from Security in a day or so, and no matter what excuses he gives, he’ll be reassigned. So you won’t have him looking over your shoulder any more. All of this, by the way, is what has occupied me these past two days.”

“Can you prove that Bindari made arrangements at the airport to bring Bashir’s plane in?”

“I’m sure we can, and I’m reasonably sure that Esmat Bindari knows we’re looking into it.”

“So he has good reason to flee.”

Aziz again raised the napkin to his lips. “By the way,” quickly changing the subject, “I was flown to Aswan in the president’s new plane. An improvement over the old one, but an unnecessary indulgence in ‘conspicuous consumption,’ as your Thorstein Veblen might have characterized it.”

“But ‘too much of a good thing is wonderful,’ right? as another American said.”

“Indeed.” And he smiled and turned his attention to what remained on his plate.

“The woman, Helene Bryce,” Nick ventured.

“Yes, I heard. She turned herself in.”

“Will your people question her?”

“We’ll see what develops,” Aziz said. “She’ll doubtless be brought to the States and scared into telling your people what they want to know. She won’t be put on trial, I’m sure of that. Your so-called ‘discovery laws’ would bring too much information to the surface. She’ll be held for a while and maybe prohibited from leaving the country. Nothing more. I doubt she was ever charged with treason. Under your law, and ours, a charge of that magnitude would have to be adjudicated. She’ll be drained of what information she has, then put out to pasture.”

Nick had asked about Helene only to stall for time. Now for the tough one.

*

“Does this mean you’re no longer interested in finding Bashir Yassin?”

“Oh, no,” Aziz said. “I’m sure he has a lot to tell us. But you want to return to Afghanistan? Thought you hated the war.”

“I do, all aspects of it. But I want to get back to my men. Protecting their lives … at least helping to.”

“That’s what you’re fighting for?”

“It’s all I care about. I don’t think anyone knows what anyone’s fighting for. Resistance to change, I guess.”

“On both sides,” Aziz said. “My great hope—in fact, what sustains me through all of this—is that this war will ultimately prove beneficial, that it will serve to dissolve the barriers that have kept our worlds apart for a thousand years.”

“It’s not the crusades all over again?”

“That kind of imperialism is in the past, Nick. Look what happened between the United States and Japan after the agony of World War Two. They’re building Toyotas in Tennessee, and playing baseball in Tokyo. They call it ‘basuboro,’ I’m told.”

Nick smiled and went back to what he had come here to discuss. “Bashir’s not involved in anything, Aziz. You may think I’m naïve, but I’ve spent several hours with him. He’s just an ordinary guy with no idea what’s going on, let alone being involved in anything subversive. Right now I don’t know where he is, but it’s possible that Shkaki was looking for him, not for me. Somehow he could have found out he was in my suite.”

A glint of amusement touched Aziz’s expression, sitting there, self-contained and inscrutable, maybe a bit patronizing, like Isaac Roach.

“I wanted to be sure there was no plot against you. It’s why I didn’t turn him over to Isaac. It’s why I’ve stayed.”

Nick thought he heard an “um hum,” but maybe not.

“If Shkaki was brought back into Egypt as an assassin, it had to be by an ‘underground railroad,’ and that means a well established organization—the guy, after all, was an insurgent, doing his dirty work here and able to break loose from that army jail.”

“And it wouldn’t be Faisal Ibrahim’s Soldiers of Allah,” Aziz said. “Or the Egyptian Jihad. They wouldn’t bring in a foreigner to handle their dirty work.”

“The one person Bashir knows to be behind this whole change in his life—piloting and whatever else they’ve wanted him to do—is Esmat Bindari.”

“Training for what?”

“Possibly to doctor the president’s new jet, the one you just flew in.”

“Doctor it how?”

“Rig the air-conditioner to malfunction in mid flight is what the FBI suggested. I don’t think they have any evidence for that, just a guess. But it was electronics, or avionics, I think he said….”

“He was told to do that?”

“No. It’s that he was assigned to work on the president’s jet—plucked out of a crew of ordinary mechanics for that special training in England. He was thrilled by the promotion but not entirely convinced it was merited. He wasn’t told to do anything. It’s just the FBI brought up something that had happened a few years ago in the States. Just speculating.”

“And it was Esmat Bindari who plucked him out of the crowd, as you say?”

“Apparently, and guided his movements from start to finish. And that could explain the torturing in Mokattam. It would be the only criminal act he was destined for. They wouldn’t have tortured him just to transport a woman out of Brazil.”

Aziz nodded, went on eating. “Well, we know, and I assume your CIA knows, that Bindari was in regular contact with General Saraaj, right up to the General’s death, which we have ruled a homicide.”

“And that, you think, links him to Bashir’s flight to Brazil?”

“We know Bindari was in contact with the people who helped Helene Bryce escape. Not hard to pin that on him.”

“You’ll arrest him?”

“If we can find him. A lot of flights take off from Cairo airport, and he could be on any one of them under an assumed name.”

“You were that close to him?”

“It’s why I tolerated Yousef for so long,” Aziz said, and raised his napkin and held it at his lips as though to end the conversation.