City of Veils (33 page)

“I’d be glad to give you a ride,” he found himself saying. “Are you at home?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” he said.

The drive took less time than that, just long enough for him to have a tortured series of thoughts in which he decided that he wouldn’t call Katya, that he would call Katya (but later), that Miriam obviously needed his help, and he was meeting with her under the pretext of helping her find her husband while secretly hoping to get more information from her, which Katya couldn’t have helped with anyway, since she didn’t speak English, and finally, that he had no reason to be doing any of this because he wasn’t an investigator.

Miriam was waiting for him in front of her building, and when she saw him, she waved. The minute he pulled to the curb, she jogged up to the car, climbed into the front seat, and thanked him breathlessly for coming. He took off at once so that he didn’t have to sit there looking shocked.

A
fter giving him the address, Miriam sat back against the plush seat and tried to relax. It was awkward being in the car with this tall, silent stranger who was doing her an enormous favor. So far the only thing he had said to her was “It’s no problem,” when she’d thanked him for picking her up. God knows she was used to reserve in men, but Nayir’s stony silence intimidated her, fraught as it was with implications of cultural differences so vast as to be unfathomable.

When he’d seen her standing at the curb, his eyes had flicked quickly away from her face and landed at that mysterious point above her head that she couldn’t help thinking of as her halo, the spot where pious men rested their eyes when they didn’t want to look at a woman’s face. One of the corner-store cashiers did this to her every time she bought milk. Miriam had once complained to Sabria about it, because the gesture offended her. She thought it meant that she was ugly.

“On the contrary, dear,” Sabria had said with a smile. “You’re so beautiful that to look at your face would be a temptation for a man.”

Does anyone really believe that?
Miriam wondered. Somehow she couldn’t imagine Nayir having lascivious thoughts about her. His halo-gaze seemed more perfunctory than that, something he did out of habit. He hadn’t seemed this way yesterday. He’d been nervous, yes, but his face had been open with sympathy. It was the main reason she’d dared to ask for a ride today.

Now he just looked uncomfortable.

“I didn’t have the money for a cab,” she admitted. “I’ve got to stop at a bank, or an ATM, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure,” he said.

“And I’d be glad to pay you,” she added.

“You shouldn’t even offer,” he said darkly. He seemed offended, so she left it at that.

“Are you still working with the police?” she asked.

He hesitated, then said, “No. Don’t worry about that.”

She nodded, feeling grateful. A few minutes later, he pulled up to a bank and actually got out of the car to come with her to the ATM. “You should put your burqa down,” he said.

“I know,” she said, “but I am by nature the clumsiest person you’ve ever met. You haven’t been injured yet, so let’s keep it that way.” She left him to determine the exact meaning of those words and went to the ATM. While she stood at the machine, he came and stood against the wall beside her and turned his eyes to the ground.

“Where am I taking you?” he asked.

“SynTech,” she said. “It’s where my husband works.”

He kept his gaze on the street, but she could feel his attention zero in on her in the subtle shift of his shoulders, the sudden tension in his neck. “Is it an American company?” he asked.

“No, but one of his bosses is American. The other one is Saudi.”

“Do they know that you’re coming?”

“I didn’t make an appointment,” she said. “Why?”

He looked away as she punched in her PIN. A moment later, he said, “Have you told them about your husband’s disappearance?”

“Yes. They weren’t very helpful. They didn’t know anything.”

“Then why are you going there?”

She stuffed the money in her wallet and retrieved her card. “I have a feeling they know something,” she said stubbornly, heading back to the car.

Nayir waited patiently for a break in the traffic, then pulled onto the highway. She watched the world speeding by, league upon league of generic apartment buildings, flat, ugly office towers, and sprawling factories. The overpass into the city gave a view of the skyline, an expanse of sleekly modern buildings, billboards, and a sky heavy with vehicle exhaust and industrial by-products. The smell that poured through the windows had an acrid stench that made her think of rotten rice, of things that could kill you through your bronchial tubes. A few minutes later they passed a ship graveyard and the odor intensified, greasy like a swamp. Old ships lay atop one another, splintered and decayed, the foreground colored by the marine blue of weathered sails.

“You said your husband picked you up from the airport,” Nayir said, “and that he disappeared right after you got home.”

“That’s right.” She kept her eyes on the window.

“Don’t you think it’s odd? If he wanted to run away, why wouldn’t he just leave you at the airport?”

“I don’t know.” She tried to sound sufficiently uninterested in the problem, and it seemed to work because he dropped the subject at once. But she could still feel his attention warming the side of her face like a heat lamp.

As they drove, she lost all sense of direction. They coursed down long boulevards lined with palm and maple trees, where traffic flowed relentlessly like blood, seldom pausing for street signs or pedestrians but shuttling forward by an automatic impulse, like a beating heart. They maneuvered into side streets, cutting through capillaries to large veins beyond. Finally, on a street that was quiet and bare, Nayir pulled up to a parking lot in front of a plain brown office building. A shiny metal sign in front read
SynTech Corporation
in English and Arabic. She stared at the building with interest; she had never been to Eric’s office before.

“Are you going in alone?” he asked.

She looked around in a gesture meant to say
Do you see anyone else here?
But she stopped herself midway, realizing it was rude. “Yes.”

“It might be better if you had an escort of some kind. A man.”

“Are you volunteering?” she asked. He looked perplexed. “Are you saying that you —”

“Yes,” he said. “I’d better come with you.”

As they got out of the car, she could feel the moral responsibility pulsing off him. It made her feel like a little girl, and she oscillated somewhere between gratitude and annoyance. As they were approaching the building, he stopped abruptly.

“I
know,
” she said, raising a hand. “I should put on my burqa.” She sighed and spent a moment fastening the scarf over her face. “Just do me a favor,” she said.

“What?”

“Try to make sure I don’t trip on anything.”

Looking worried, he led her into the building.

They entered through a large revolving door. Almost at once, her cloak got stuck in the turnstile and she was forced to take it off and go back around to fetch it. Inside, she checked it for rips and put it on again while Nayir stood a few feet away, eyes raised desperately to the ceiling, a blush creeping up his neck.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “Not every woman gets used to these things.”

The floor was polished and smelled strongly of bleach. At the end of the lobby, a security guard sat behind a desk so high that he had to walk down three stairs to pass them a clipboard. Nayir signed his name and handed it back. Then the guard came down with a handheld metal detector, which he passed over Nayir’s body. He ignored Miriam completely. When he was finished, he said, “Sixth floor,” and motioned vaguely to the left.

Nayir went down a corridor and Miriam followed, struggling to see through her burqa. She felt like a kid in a Halloween costume, tripping blindly along with a basket in her hands. Nayir walked six feet in front of her, and no matter how hard she tried to keep up, he managed to stay ahead. It had always seemed arrogant to her, making a wife stay behind like a duckling, another reminder of her public inferiority. With grim reluctance, she could now appreciate the usefulness of having someone lead the way.

They reached an elevator. Two men were waiting but, seeing Miriam, they let her and Nayir get into the next elevator alone. Nayir thanked them and pushed the button.

When the door had slid shut, Miriam said wryly, “That was nice of them.” Seeing that Nayir wasn’t going to respond, she asked, “Do they really think women are that awful, that they can’t be in an elevator with me?”

“They did it out of respect,” he replied. He seemed pleased and a bit surprised, as if such behavior were all too rare these days.

“It makes me feel dirty,” she said.

He kept his eyes on the glowing panel of numbers above the door. “You’re used to something different, then.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said. “That men don’t treat women with respect in America?” He looked slightly wounded, and she hated herself for getting so angry.

“You’re right,” she conceded. “I’m used to something different.”

The door opened, but it wasn’t their floor. No one stood in the hallway.

“What’s your husband’s name again?” he asked, pressing the elevator button again.

“Eric, but they call him Abdullah.” She felt foolish in her burqa, the little hem puffing forward every time she spoke. “You know, I think I should do this myself.”

“You shouldn’t,” he said bluntly, glancing at her.

This time she pulled off her burqa, and his recoil probably gave him whiplash. She knew she was pushing it, but even as she felt guilty, a part of her wanted to grab his chin and force him to look at her. “This is about my
husband,
” she said.

The elevator door finally slid shut, and Nayir looked relieved.

“If they’re hiding something,” he said carefully, “they’ll tell me more if I’m alone, and if they think I don’t know you.”

He was right, she knew, but she also suspected that the real reason he didn’t think she should be there was that she was a woman.

“What I mean to say,” he went on, “is that they might know things that they wouldn’t tell you.” His expression made it clear that he meant “man” things.

“You think Eric was cheating on me?” she said. She gave a soft, derisive snort, but her insides felt leaden. “Well, even if he was, why would they tell you that? Isn’t it a capital crime for a man to cheat on his wife?”

He seemed to be mulling something over, because he didn’t reply. The elevator door opened with a
bing
, and she refastened her burqa, this time to hide her entire face. “Wherever you go,” she whispered, “I’m coming with you.”

SynTech occupied the entire sixth floor. An enormous central office extended back to a row of panoramic windows that faced a collection of drab apartment buildings. A male secretary sat immobile behind a glass desk.

Miriam’s first thought was that it didn’t seem like the sort of place where bodyguards would work. She had somehow imagined that there would be more men in uniforms, a glimpse of old military fatigues, cold coffee, and boxes of ammunition stacked on a shelf. The office smelled of floor polish and bleach, and the people who worked there kept it neat enough that nothing spoiled the clean lines of the modern furniture.

With a gentle nod, Nayir motioned for her to take a seat on the hard-looking sofa in a waiting area off to the right. She considered it but decided it was best not to maneuver around the coffee table.

Nayir approached the secretary and asked for Abdullah Walker. The man shot him a frightened look. He put up his finger and rose nervously, striding across the room to an office door on the left. He tapped on the door. There was a muffled answer and he went inside. A moment later he came out and motioned for Nayir to come forward. Miriam scurried after him despite the secretary’s disapproving stare.

The office was a bright room with a thick Berber carpet and mahogany chairs. The air was cooler in here, the smell crisp and inviting. The man behind the desk looked slightly misplaced among the palatial appointments. Miriam recognized Taylor Shaw, Eric’s American boss. He was a tall, burly, Paul Bunyan figure with a gigantic slab of a face, a bushy shock of blond hair, and a pair of rough-hewn hands that were always in motion. She had met him at a party on the American compound but they had been introduced only briefly. Shaw was one of those gregarious, whirlwind people who seemed capable of having three conversations at once. In his office, he was naturally more subdued, but there was still a crackling energy about him.

Shaw didn’t appear to recognize her, but that did nothing for her nerves. Her hands were pale enough to telegraph to most people that she wasn’t an Arab, so she tucked them into her sleeves. She lowered her head and kept her eyes on the floor in an effort to seem as devout as possible. The room was so bright, and her burqa was thin enough, that at a certain angle, Shaw might be able to see the outline of her face.

“Please have a seat,” Shaw said. Nayir and Miriam took the chairs facing the desk. Even though he was American, Shaw knew the local customs, and he neither glanced at Miriam nor seemed to realize that she was there.