Body of Lies (38 page)

The image of her was clear and perfect, and in a rush of certainty, Ferris did something impulsive. He removed the dental bridge from his pocket and laid it down on the dirty rug of his secret compartment. If he kept the poison, he would be tempted in his fear to use it; and if he used it, he would give up not just life, but love. He would die for nothing. He had made a promise to Hoffman to protect the secrets, to kill himself before he betrayed things that might kill others. But keeping that promise would mean breaking another that now surmounted it. He pushed the poison farther away, deeper into the blackness.

T
HE TAXI
halted suddenly, and Ferris heard a murmur of Arab voices. His driver was addressing someone he called "Captain." Ferris caught an edge of fear in the driver's voice. The door opened and then slammed shut, and he heard footsteps around the car. Something was wrong. The captain was shouting at the driver, in the way of military officers who know their power in the moment is absolute. The border was closed, said the captain; it was too late; the driver knew the rules. The driver kept repeating a name. Abu Walid said it was okay. Abu Walid said no problem. Ask Abu Walid. Ferris heard the sound of boots on the pavement, the voice of the driver protesting that it was a mistake, and then they were both gone.

Ferris remained huddled against the floorboard of the taxi. He was frightened, in a new way. What if he died right there--or just as bad, was taken away, put in a Syrian jail and then sent back to Jordan? Alice would surely die: The kidnappers would be waiting for Ferris in Hama, and when he didn't arrive, they would kill her. That was the worst thing, Ferris realized--not his own death, but Alice's. The only meaning his life had now was the possibility of saving her. If that were lost, then he would kill himself and be done with it.

The wait stretched to many minutes. Ferris heard occasional shouting in the distance, from what must be the captain's headquarters. Ferris's head hurt from breathing in the dust of the road and the fumes of the gas tank. His legs throbbed from so long in the cramped position. The pain had grown from a prickly feeling of pins-and-needles to sharp spasms in his joints and muscles. He began to think he would prefer anything--capture, even--to this pain. But he knew his mind was playing tricks. In comparison to the pain he would feel later, this was just a pat on the cheek.

Ferris waited. It might have been thirty minutes, an hour. In the dark of his crypt, he lost his sense of time. With the engine off, there was no heat in the car, and the January night air was bitterly cold. He couldn't move to warm himself, so the chill crept into his bones. Ferris wanted to die, but even more, he wanted Alice to live. He felt for the poison and remembered it was gone, deep into the recess of his hiding place. He was glad to be rid of the temptation.

He heard more shouting, from a voice that sounded like the captain's; and then the submissive voice of his driver, and heavy footsteps approaching the Mercedes. The driver had given him up. He sounded meek as a mouse now; Abu Walid hadn't bailed him out and, in the glare of an interrogation room, he had decided to give up his passenger so that he could live to smuggle another day. The footsteps got nearer, the metal studs on the boots clicking against the pavement until they were next to the car. A door opened. They must be opening the back door; in another instant they would be hauling Ferris out of the compartment and it would be over.

But the driver was opening the front door. In his wheedling voice, he was thanking the captain, telling him that Abu Walid would be very grateful for the captain's help, and wishing that God grant the captain long life and good health, and the captain's sons, good health to them, too, yes, sir, thank God. The door closed. The key turned, and the ignition sparked to life. The driver put the Mercedes in gear and pulled away from the border post, calling out a last pliant farewell.

They stopped for a customs check, but it was perfunctory. Ferris was frightened when he heard the trunk open, but it closed just as quickly. A customs man thanked the driver for the carton of cigarettes and waved him on.

T
HE TAXI
rumbled along for another twenty minutes, moving slowly through the narrow streets of Dera'a and then faster as it connected with the main highway again. Ferris heard a whoosh of air each time the Mercedes veered left to pass other cars and trucks. He worried that the driver might keep him in this box all the way to Hama, but the car at last began to slow and swerved to the right. Ferris heard the crunch of gravel under him as the taxi pulled onto the shoulder and lurched to a stop. The driver opened the back door, pounded three times on the seat above Ferris's head and then tugged up the seat. Ferris couldn't move at first, his legs and arms were so stiff. The driver had to pull him from the compartment. He gave Ferris an old cap to cover his face and a frayed wool jacket of the sort a Syrian taxi driver's friend might wear, and sat Ferris next to him in the front seat. Ferris didn't think until later that he had left the poison behind in the secret compartment. He didn't try to retrieve it.

T
HEY DROVE
through the night. Damascus was crowded and noisy, even at midnight. The Palestinian refugee camps that lined the southern edge of the city were twinkling with the sweet fellowship of the poor. The coffeehouses were open, the men tugging at their narghilehs and blowing out clouds of smoke; the bakeries were selling fresh pastries and sweets for those with a late-night sweet tooth. In the cinder-block apartments down the narrow alleyways of the camp, you could see the flickering blue lights of the television sets, each with its own satellite dish, connecting people to a modern world they loved and hated at the same time. When they reached the city center, people were still out strolling. Many of the women along the sidewalks were dressed primly in headscarves and shapeless smocks; others were done up like tarts, in low-cut blouses open even on this winter night. A few made eye contact with Ferris. Perhaps they really were prostitutes, but Ferris knew that in Muslim eyes, it didn't matter whether they were paid for their services or not. They were defiled by the ways of the West.

After they left Damascus, Ferris dozed off for a few minutes. He awoke suddenly with the image of Alice bound and bloody in a basement. It wouldn't go away. They stopped for food and coffee at a place the driver knew, just south of Homs, which he insisted was clean, but when Ferris went to use the toilet, it was a hole in the floor that stank of shit. It was nearly three
A.M
. The next big city north on the highway after Homs was their destination of Hama. Ferris told the driver he wanted to rest until six-thirty in the restaurant parking lot. The police wouldn't bother them there, and he didn't want to get to Hama so early that he would have to wait conspicuously for the rendezvous. A few other cars were stopped in the lot; he wondered if any of them were Hani's men. Ferris dozed again, fitfully. He was awakened by first light. The orange rim burst over the barren landscape to the east, turning the nearby sky from purple-pink into bright yellow-white; he wondered if he would live to see another sunrise.

T
HEY REACHED
the center of Hama around seven-thirty, still too early. Ferris told the driver to drive to the northern suburbs and then turn back. As they drove, he looked at the buildings along the road. Some were ruined shells, and he realized that this must be one of the neighborhoods that had been destroyed when Hafez al-Assad rolled his tanks into the Muslim quarters of the city nearly three decades before and fired at point-blank range, leveling the houses and destroying anything inside. The Muslim Brothers had fled to caves and tunnels in the old city, near the river, but they had been driven out by flame throwers, gas and bullets. This was the world that had created Suleiman. The hatred that had been spawned here was now focused on America and, this day, on Roger Ferris.

The driver parked the taxi at the bus stop near the Orontes River. Ferris sat in the car and watched for Alice. It was nearly eight. He told the driver he was going for a walk and that if he didn't return in two hours, the driver should leave without him. He gave him a hundred dinars, which he knew was too much, but what was he going to do with money when he was dead? He got out of the car and began walking toward the ancient wooden wheels that spooned water from the river and deposited it into the town's aqueducts. He looked all around, wondering where Hani's men might be, if they were there at all. Better not to look too curious. He put his head down and turned up the collar of his jacket against the chill. His bad leg was stiff from the long, cramped ride, and he was limping more than usual.

It was a cloudless morning. The winter sky was azure at the horizon, rising to a deep royal blue. Ferris sat down on a bench by the Orontes, near the entrance to the biggest of the waterwheels. The river was a placid blue-black, and in the stillness you could see reflected the old Al-Nuri Mosque and the other stone buildings that lined the banks; in the bright morning sun, the wooden wheels had a golden glow. He sat for ten minutes, then fifteen, scanning the riverbank. There were more than a dozen waterwheels arrayed on the two sides of the river, and he couldn't be sure where she would be. He got up once and made a tour of the area and then returned to his bench. He had the sense that he was being watched, but he couldn't tell the touts and vendors from the terrorists.

Ferris was squinting into the morning sun when he saw a group of Arab men approach the
norias
from the western side. A woman was with them. She was wearing a long black dress and a headscarf, but there was something about her walk that made Ferris look twice. He rose and moved toward the group, which was now about seventy-five yards away. As he did so, the group stopped and parted. One of the men said something to the woman, it was like an order, and she removed her scarf. The man gave her a little push and then he and his friends ran away, so that she was standing alone by the riverbank.

Ferris moved more quickly toward her, so that he could see her face and be sure. In an instant that stopped time, he knew that it was Alice. The blond hair, the graceful body, the wide smile as she sensed that she was free. They must have cleaned her up, but Ferris didn't want to think about that. All he knew was that she was free. He called out her name and began to run toward her, but his bad leg was wobbly and he stumbled and fell. In the wind and street noise, she didn't hear him, but that was all right. She was free.

As Ferris moved toward Alice, he saw three Arab men, not like the others, but well dressed, converging on Alice. They were much closer to her, and Ferris could hear one of them calling out Alice's name. He was frightened for a moment, but he realized that he recognized the voice, and as he looked more closely, he saw that it was Hani. The Jordanian had traveled north overnight to rescue Alice himself. Ferris cried out her name again, but Hani had reached her now and had his arms around her, and he and his men were leading her toward a van that was parked nearby. She seemed relieved to see him, almost as if he were a lost friend. Ferris shouted as he tried to run on the gimp leg, but a Syrian policeman moved toward him, thinking that in his cap and ragged coat Ferris must be a Syrian, so he slowed. He called out, but she couldn't hear. Now Hani was opening the door of the van, and Alice was in the back seat with a guard on either side, and the van was backing away.

Ferris stopped calling Alice's name. The van was moving quickly, back toward the Damascus highway. Tears came to his eyes. The impossible had happened. The kidnappers had been true to their word. So had Hani, in his promise that he would protect her when she was released. The only piece of the bargain left unfulfilled was Ferris's. He thought about running, but he knew that Alice would be vulnerable until she was out of Syria. He needed a trick, a ruse, something to buy time. They were waiting for his call. He took out the cell phone and then put it back in his pocket. Let them wait. He felt a dark contentment, for he knew now that Alice would survive, no matter what.

34

HAMA / ALEPPO

T
HE CELL PHONE RANG
five times before Ferris answered. An Arab voice asked if this was Mr. Roger Ferris, and he said yes. "We are waiting for you, sir. Why you have not called, please?" Ferris apologized and then hung up. He didn't want to die if he didn't have to. He stood up from the bench and began to move away, wondering in which direction he could run. But as he took his first steps, he saw two bearded men in winter parkas walking toward him.

Ferris reached for Hani's electronic pager; it was in the pocket where, until a few hours before, he had kept the poison. He pressed the button of the mock-lighter once, and then again. The two men were on either side of him now. He felt the blunt muzzle of a gun against his ribs. The man holding the gun had bright eyes and a face that was hammered gold, the color of wild honey. He looked Egyptian. Ferris thought he recognized his face from the agency's mug shots of Al Qaeda operatives, but he couldn't be sure.

"You are Ferris?" asked the Egyptian.

"Yes." The gun pressed deeper into his side at the confirmation.

"This is no trick?"

Ferris shook his head. "No. This is no trick. You did what you promised. I will do what I promised."

"And what is that? What will you do for us?" queried the Egyptian. He had an odd smile and a cruel set to his eyes. He was trying to hide a lifetime of hatred.

"Wait and see," said Ferris. He looked for Hani's men out of the corner of his eye, but he saw no one. They were taking care of Alice. That was all he had asked them to do; he was expendable. That was the deal. But Ferris was truly frightened now, smelling the acrid garlic breath of the two men and knowing that he was slipping into their control. He wanted to scream, or bolt and run, but he knew that would only hasten his death and he had resolved to hold on to life as long as he could.