Escape from Baghdad! (10 page)

“Well, it's for the second part of the favor,” Hoffman said.

“What else you need?”

“I had a chat a couple of days ago with an old guy called Sheikh Amal,” Hoffman said. “Runs a dry goods store in Ghazaliya. Know him?”

“No,” Behruse scowled. “What the hell? Am I supposed to know every old fuck in town?”

“He's an interesting man,” Hoffman said, “in that he, and his neighborhood, were recently victimized by a very weird criminal. Someone called the Lion of Akkad.”

“Never heard of that fucker either.”

“Heard of something called the Druze watch?”

“What?” Behruse flicked his eyes around.

“Just learned about the Druze. Easy name to remember. It's so close to booze. They're like a super secret bunch of heretics. Kinda like Mormons, I think. Arab Mormons. Except they're like a thousand years old, and they don't let anyone join their secret society. They probably know a lot of secret shit, like where the weapons of mass destruction are hiding.”

“What?” Behruse asked.

“I googled them. All true.”

“There aren't any Druze in Iraq,” Behruse shook his head, looking wary.

“Actually, sounds like they are back in Baghdad,” Hoffman said. “And they've lost a watch a lot of people would like to have.”

“Even if they were here, it's not safe to talk about them,” Behruse said.

I'll tell you something for free, Behruse,” Hoffman said. “Said artifact apparently exists, and I know exactly who has it.”

“I don't care!” Behruse snapped. “Who?”

“Man called Kinza. Heard of him?” Hoffman asked.

“No,” Behruse said.

“He's the one who killed Hassan Salemi's son,” Hoffman said. “Know him now?”

Behruse whistled.

“Kinza's a friend of mine. He's hiding somewhere now and probably needs my help. I need you to find him.”

“Hassan Salemi will kill anyone who interferes in this,” Behruse said.

“Hassan Salemi doesn't have any detergent,” Hoffman said. “What, are you afraid of him?”

“I didn't say that.”

“Tell me, friend, what is the Druze watch all about?”

“It's a stupid fairytale,” Behruse shrugged. “And I've heard it before. Every few years some thief comes up with a piece of junk and hawks it around as the Druze watch. Supposed to belong to one of the lost tribes of Druze. It's a watch but not a watch, meaning it's not supposed to tell time but something else. Religious crap. Some people take it seriously.”

“People who pay?”

“Maybe,” Behruse said.

“The right people might find Kinza in return for the watch,” Hoffman said. “Might get him out of Baghdad safely. Him and his friends.”

“It is possible.”

“I can't interfere directly in this, you understand.”

“Something can be worked out, perhaps,” Behruse said.

“I would be very grateful.”

“Detergent grateful or something actually useful?”

“Ha ha,” Hoffman got up to leave. “What exactly are we thinking about here?”

“An Apache,” Behruse said. “I want a gunship.”

8: HOUSE OF MANY DOORS

T
HIS PLACE IS A MAD HOUSE
,” H
AMID SAID FINALLY
. “W
E NEED TO
get out of here.”

They were lost, stranded in corridors. Doors hung in abundance, leading nowhere, sometimes into impossibly shaped rooms or closets or into dark air; painted doors and fine polished teak ones, plain and carved, crazily hinged, sometimes boarded shut from the outside, or the inside, keeping back unimaginable prey within and without. The corridors extended far beyond the outward bounds of the building, inclining and declining at will, at places smartly dressed, and then cobwebbed and musty, sections pocked with shrapnel, until it seemed to Dagr that they were roaming the entire block with impunity, passing unseen through neighboring buildings, catching snatches of their day to day lives, the smell of couscous, a tea kettle wailing against Al Jazeera, some stifled murmurs of illicit sex.

“We should have gone left from the Jar Room,” Dagr said. “I thought I heard the old ladies. I'm sure the living room was just below.”

“Damn your Jar Room,” Hamid said. “What the hell were in those jars, eh? Those women are damned witches. This is a damn witch house.”

The Jar Room was a fixed point of reference, a large ornate door with a tasseled key in the lock, a room that they had found twice in the same place during their wandering, a phenomenon not to be taken for granted in this labyrinth of a house. They had gone inside. The room had been cold, the air heavy and muffled, pressured peculiarly like the graveled bed of some ancient, dank sea. The blue tiled floor was covered in amphorae of different heights, each sealed carefully with red wax and ornate signet, the seal of some magnificent king, the outer clay skins sweating with a ghostly condensate, each jar vibrating
minutely, a susurration of wasp wings growing louder, ever louder. The decision to retreat had been unanimous. In their power-walking haste, they had lost what few bearings they retained.

“I'm telling you,” Hamid said, “I have a peerless sense of direction. I am a trained scout. These corridors have taken us far away from the house. We are going through parallel buildings. And still there are doors. What the hell is behind this locked door? It should be a solid boundary wall. But look below—there is light.”

“It's a safehouse,” Kinza said. “They are supposed to have ways in and out. The whole neighborhood was rebel. They probably built all these damn passages and then forgot about them.”

“Shh,” Dagr held out his hand. “I can hear footsteps. Do you hear that?”

“Damn footsteps. We're being followed,” Hamid said. “I've been telling you it smells of cats. Does it smell of cats? It's that damned Druze. He's come to finish us off.”

“But how can he follow us here? Is he invisible now?” Dagr asked, his voice breaking, for in this dim light, such a thing seemed entirely possible.

“How did he convince those cats do to his bidding, eh?” Hamid asked. “Those were man eating cats, don't forget.”

“Back to the Jar Room, boys!” Dagr turned tail again, leading the route, back again in the direction they had initially retreated from in the first place.

A few more wrong turns and they were somehow on a different level, a floor below the Jar Room, which could be still easily identified, however, by the angry wasping sound rapping out in syncopated volume. Hamid, his gums bleeding from the rhythmic assault, drew his gun, imagining, in his fevered state, a coordinated attack of cats and jars, anticipating how many of each he would shoot down before, inevitably, turning the last bullet on himself.

“Put that away, idiot,” Dagr shouted, taking cover all the same.

The first shot took the ceiling, punching a hole through rotten cement, straight into the Jar Room, the bullet lodging into a great
fat clay vessel that instantly went still, a baritone drone disappearing noticeably from the susurration. The three of them froze.

The section of wall Dagr was leaning on gave way suddenly. Multiple layers of wallpaper tore open, as an ancient, forgotten door caved in on rotted hinges, depositing the hapless professor into an island of calm. He looked around, stunned. He was sprawled over a huge pile of rotting books. On either side of him were haphazard stacks, tottering toward the ceiling like crooked fingers. More stacks behind them, onward for several rows. Through the irregular gaps in the books, Dagr could see that the library had originally been shelved floor to ceiling and stocked in a civilized manner, but the obvious influx of books had long outstripped any attempt to maintain aesthetics. The smell of damp paper was overpowering.

He got up quickly to make room for the others, afraid their entry would set off an avalanche. He glanced behind, saw that Hamid had put his gun away finally. The central isle had shrunk to barely two feet, room enough for them to sidle on, single file, sucking their stomachs in. Dagr studied the books as they shuffled forward. Myriad languages and subjects, jumbled together, old and new. Here and there, he spied attempts at order, some small hand trying to sort by topic or alphabet or author. Futile, of course, for no order was possible in this literary deluge. Forty-watt bulbs guttered from the ceiling every few meters, adding their rotten yellow to the general fug of dust, mildew, and neglect.

The room appeared to be long and careless, winding slightly, as if the architect had not bothered to draw a straight line. Or it might have been the books themselves enforcing this curvature, for the walls were barely visible and it was impossible to tell.

“What the hell is this place?” Hamid asked. “No one's been here for years.”

“Shhh,” Dagr said. “I can hear something ahead.”

They arrived a few seconds later at a makeshift alcove, where the books had been shoveled around to make room for an antique rocking chair. A stable pile of hardbacks served as a side table. Upon the
broad back of a 1957 Encyclopedia Atlas, there rested a faded porcelain cup and saucer.

“Tea,” Hamid said, his gun out again. “Still warm.” He drank it all. “Not bad. Peppermint.”

“Keep going,” Kinza motioned. “Hamid, get your finger off the trigger. We don't need to shoot up a tea party.”

A few meters on and the path narrowed into a barricade, about five feet high and at least eight books wide. Peering over in the dim light, Dagr saw varied signs of domesticity. A rolled up tatami rested neatly against the inner wall of the barricade, topped by a small pillow, and a woolen camouflage army blanket. In the other corner, there was a small electric stove, a Swiss army knife, a tin pot, a tin cup, assorted tin cutlery, and a stack of ceramic plates inlaid with gold floral designs.

Beyond this line, the blockade faded into near darkness, although Dagr could make out some vague emanations of light some distance away, which made him think the interior of this cave was larger than he had supposed. Close by, too, were other signs of life: an indistinct hard cover turned spine up, a cushion with the posterior indentation slowly fading, the faint smell of some kind of canned stew, the burn of kerosene, or lighter fluid, and almost subliminally, a faint tweet tweet of bird chatter.

Hamid, identifying some obscure threat, began to push forward, his gun out in his mangled fist, face swinging side to side in the twilight like a hammerhead shark. He got two steps forward before Kinza clamped a steely hand on his shoulder, yanking him away.

“Professor, if you please.”

Dagr leaned over the barricade, resting his weight on a pile of hardcover Sandman graphic novels.

“Excuse me…Anyone home?”

“Stand ba-ba-back. Away from the wall please.” A hollow male voice, followed by the unmistakable click of a large bore firearm, and Dagr felt the familiar rush of sweat and fear, realizing that no matter how many times he had bullets trained on him, he would never ever get accustomed to that first rush of chemical terror.

Dagr raised his hands and then retreated a foot slowly, fighting down the knowledge that even now, Kinza and Hamid were slinking back into shadows behind him, their own guns out and about, ready to answer in kind, with only Dagr's flesh standing hesitant between this metallic conversation.

“Sorry for intruding,” he said quickly. “Sorry. We came here accidentally. Saw the tea. We can leave if you like.”

“No one knows this place,” the voice in the barricade said. “You are the police. How did you find me? After all this time. Are you the Mukhabarat?”

“Mukhabarat? You mean the Ba'athist secret police?” Dagr peered into the gloom uncertainly. “No, no, the Intelligence Service is disbanded I think. Or working for the Americans these days.”

“You are lying,” the voice said. “Who has the power to disband the Mukhabarat? The president would never allow it.”

“My friend, Saddam is dead.”

“What?”

“Saddam is dead. The whole country saw it on the Internet. We are ruled by American sheikhs now.”

“Impossible. You're lying. You're with them.”

The voice was wild, fevered. Another click, the sound of a bullet being chambered or the hammer being cocked, although the room echoed strangely, and Dagr was not sure whether the sound was in front or behind him, only that the situation was not getting any better.

“I'm not Mukhabarat. I'm not,” Dagr said, sweat on his forehead, more afraid of the men behind him than the one in front. “I'm a professor, I teach at the…I taught at the Abu Bakr university, I taught higher mathematics, in room 208, there were two windows next to my desk, and a lemon tree outside, I could smell it everyday, that smell and coffee, and sometimes students would play the guitar outside, and I loved that room, I met my wife in that room…”

“You were a teacher?” the voice was hesitant, the pressure releasing a bit.