Lion of Babylon (19 page)

“Yes, I agree.”

Farouk started to follow Hassan from the room, then turned back to murmur, “Jaffar told me to place the life of my son in your hands. I did not understand his instructions until now.”

Chapter Thirty-One

S
ameh led Marc into the church's gloomy interior. He already regretted coming. The Assyrian church resembled a cave, dismal and dank. It was anyone's guess how the place had survived the destruction inflicted upon so many Christian houses of worship.

The ancient structure was one block off a main thoroughfare that ran from the Green Zone to Sadr City. Baghdad's largest slum was a hotbed of extremist activity. Sadr City bred a very special type of Shia fanaticism, one that Sameh quietly abhorred.

Saddam Hussein had filled the area with his spies and his secret police and his oppressive terror. Now that Saddam was gone, the powerful mullahs of Sadr City shouted their angry impatience.

The religious leaders of Sadr City wanted a return to a fabled past, a religious state that enforced strict
sharia
, Islamic law. They wanted women confined in head-to-toe blackness, viewing the world through tiny bars of thread. These mullahs were backed by people who had lost all hope, who viewed the future as just a repetition of the unjust past, and so wished to bring all the world down to their level.

Following the Assyrian tradition, the church hall was a large and empty space. Parishioners stood throughout the services, which were mostly spoken in dialects no one but the priests understood. Two oil lamps burned to either side of a smoke-scarred icon. The walls were adorned with prayer medallions left by penitents claiming miracles. These metal circles glittered in the candlelight.

The footsteps of the two men echoed off the stone floors and towering peaked roof. Sameh fit himself into an alcove with a marble bench to the left of the doorway and muttered, “I fear this is a waste of time.”

“Tell me why we're here.”

Sameh described the meeting with Farouk and Hassan, and explained about the note in Taufiq's diary for a meeting at this church. Marc settled onto the bench beside him and asked, “Why did they warn you about protection now?”

It was typical of the American to identify the one unfinished strand. “Something happened the other day.” He described being accosted outside the Persian market.

“You should have told me this before.”

Sameh merely sighed.

“Farouk is right. This is serious business.”

Sameh leaned his head against the cold stone wall. “When my family hears of this, my freedom to decide about America will be lost.”

“Not as completely,” Marc replied, “as if extremists kidnapped your—”

“Don't say it.” Sameh's bark echoed through the otherwise empty nave. “Not ever.”

It was Marc's turn to sigh.

“My family will not say anything directly to me.” Sameh shut his eyes to the gloom. “They respect my wishes too much. They know how important it is for me to feel I am doing all I can to help my nation. But their concerns will grow and grow until the unspoken desires seep into my bones and ruin my nights. And my days.”

Marc was silent so long that Sameh could almost hear the arguments the American was no doubt developing. But all Marc said was, “I understand.”

Sameh opened his eyes.

Marc stared at the floor by his feet. “Every time I left on assignment, Lisbeth filled the air with everything she didn't say. I hated how the unspoken became a barrier between us. But there wasn't anything I could have told her that would make things better. I lived for my work.”

“And yet, in the end, you gave it up for her.”

Marc's nod was almost lost to the church's shadows.

Sameh glanced at his watch. They had been at the site going on an hour. “Perhaps we should—”

Marc touched Sameh's arm. “Someone's coming.”

Perhaps it was just his fatigue that kept him from noticing. Or his greater burden of years. But Sameh thought it was probably the American's honed sixth sense. Because even after Marc silenced him, Sameh still heard nothing. Then, after a breathless eternity, there was the soft scrape of quiet footsteps.

Marc melted into the shadows. Sameh had seen him in action before, yet still he felt a momentary panic. He was mistaken to assume he understood this American, or could claim to grasp what had shaped him. Or what he was doing now.

A yelp at the church's far end drew Sameh forward. An Iraqi protested in high-pitched Arabic for Marc to let him go.

Instead, Marc drew the man through a side door which, until that moment, Sameh had not known existed.

The side alley was fetid as only a poor Baghdad street could be. It had remained unswept for weeks, perhaps longer. A series of dark puddles were no doubt fed by some leaking sewage pipe. Inhabitants of neighboring tenements had added to the stench by piling refuse by their doorways. Clearly there had not been any garbage collection around here during Ramadan.

If Marc noticed the odor, he gave no sign. “Ask him what he's doing.”

The man was in his late thirties and outweighed Marc by fifty pounds. Even so, he plucked futilely at Marc's hold on his arm. “Tell him to let me go!”

Sameh replied in Arabic, “I will ask him to loosen his grip, but only if you are still.”

The man only struggled harder. “This is an outrage! I entered a house of peace!”

“Tell us why, and we will free you.”

“Why do you think? To worship!”

“I have lived in Baghdad all my life. I know this church and its priests and its congregants. I know them better than you do.” Sameh kept his voice calm and steady, as though there was nothing to suggest a reason for panic. “I ask you again, what were you doing here, in an empty church, in the middle of the week?”

The man was in the process of forming another protest when a truck passed in front of the alley's mouth, splashing its headlights down to where they stood. The man studied Sameh's face and said, “I know you.”

Sameh was fairly certain he had never seen this man before. “I am known to many.”

“You are the lawyer. The one who helped the children.”

“This is important to you, yes? That I help the lost and the helpless.”

Marc noticed the change. “What is it?”

The young man glanced over, then said to Sameh, “This is the American, the one on the news, the one Imam Jaffar has spoken of?”

Sameh said in English, “Let him go.”

Marc did as Sameh said, but positioned himself between the young man and the alley's mouth. “What's going on?”

Sameh replied, again in English, “This man has heard of us.”

Marc looked the man over. “He was sent. For Alex. And the ladies. And the Iraqi, Taufiq.”

The man was old enough to have survived his childhood and teenage years under Saddam. He knew how to mask his surprise well. Even so, Sameh was fairly certain hearing Marc speak those names had shocked him.

Sameh asked, “You understand English?”

The young man replied in Arabic. “A little,
sayyid
. Not well.”

“Tell us your name.” When the man hesitated, Sameh told Marc, “Apologize for accosting this gentleman.”

Marc reached out and touched where he had gripped the man's arm. The man flinched away. Marc kept his hand outstretched in the empty air between them. He said carefully, clearly, “If you are a friend of Alex's, we should be working together.”

“Here is what I think happened,” Sameh said in English, very slowly, wanting Marc to hear as well. “You are a friend of the missing four. And more. You share their cause. You came hoping against hope. Just in case. Because here is where they were to gather.” Sameh saw the man hesitate, and added, “As one who seeks to restore the lost and give hope to desperate families, I beseech you. I come as a beggar seeking crumbs. And with every minute that passes, the risks our friends face . . .”

“Enough,” the man said. He pointed toward the alley's mouth. Marc stepped out of the way. The man glanced at both their faces a final time, then said simply, “Come.”

———

They returned to the main thoroughfare. It was approaching eight o'clock at night, but the street was as jammed as at midday, perhaps worse. To their left, a broken water main had flooded the street and eaten away the pavement. Car horns kept up a constant protest as three lanes snaked into one. A pair of wild dogs snarled at the water's edge. The man guiding them glanced over, then away, his worried expression illuminated by headlights.

He led them down a side street that opened into a massive unguarded parking lot. The lot's far end bordered the closest market to Sadr City. The crowds were thick and constant. Their guide led them to the left, away from the market's entrance. He stood beside a pair of trucks and watched. In the distance were remnants of the barrier surrounding Sadr City. The American soldiers had ringed the entire slum in an eighteen-foot-high concrete wall during their surge. It had been immensely unpopular with Sadr City occupants, but in five days the number of suicide bombings in Baghdad had been reduced by two-thirds. The new government continued to pick away at the barrier, using the remnants as a goad to make the slum's occupants behave.

A few minutes passed. A family of four sidled up next to their guide and exchanged quiet greetings. Then the family slipped around the nearest truck. The youngest child, a girl of Bisan's age, cast Sameh a glance as worried as their guide's.

The guide hissed, “We go.” He slipped around the first truck and vanished as swiftly as the family.

Sameh wanted to tell Marc they should turn around. That his chest had tightened to the point where drawing breath actually hurt, as though there were no longer room for air and his heart and his fear. But Marc had already followed the guide. Sameh had the sudden notion that men like Marc were trained to make shadows their friends. Even when the shadows threatened to swallow them and snuff out their life. He would have said something, but his friend was out of sight.

The two trucks were parked so that they formed a passageway. In the narrow space between the trucks and the brick wall was a set of stairs. Sameh knew this because he collided with a rusty handrail. He heard footsteps, and caught a reflection off the top of their guide's headdress. Marc glanced upward at Sameh, his eyes glittering in the dim light. Sameh had no alternative but to follow.

Their guide knocked on a metal door. The man who responded was so massive as to nearly block the light from within. The guide whispered something, and the guard stepped aside.

Sameh knew another urge to turn and flee. Leave the American and this dank entryway and this guide who had refused to speak his name. He did not know how he found the courage to slip past the guard and enter.

Chapter Thirty-Two

T
he five guards inside the doorway seemed rather odd to Sameh. For one thing, they were dressed in a conventional fashion, more like business executives than sentries. They also were very respectful. And something else. Sameh waited in a line of nine people. A female guard checked the women in a discreetly curtained alcove. Marc was in front of him, their guide next. Sameh had time to scrutinize the scene. Even so, he was almost through the security screening before he realized what it was that was so different.

The guards were at peace, even happy.

They checked each person thoroughly. But they also revealed a quiet humor, speaking with the children as they completed the search. They smiled at families they recognized and spoke a welcome. As though they all belonged.

When each person completed the inspection process, the guard standing by the inner doorway hit a switch and the electronic lock clicked. As the guests passed, the guard murmured softly. It was only when Sameh was walking through the inner portal that he made out the guard's words. “Blessings and peace upon you and yours.”

The words so startled Sameh, he stopped to look at the man, and only moved forward when the closing door pushed him in the back. He had just been given the standard Sabbath blessing. Among Christians. Spoken by a guard whose beard and dress suggested he was Shia.

Their guide was more at ease now. He directed them to a second staircase, this one descending in a gentle curve. “We should hurry.”

But Marc halted him. “Back there, you hadn't come looking for Alex.”

The guide looked at Marc, then at Sameh. He said in Arabic, “Your friend is police?”

“Intelligence. Is he correct?”

Marc said, “Alex and the women would know to come here. You went to the church looking for someone else.”

The guide replied to Sameh, “We must have a place where newcomers can come and be monitored. This changes from week to week. How did you get the church address?”

“Taufiq's father found it on his son's personal calendar.” Sameh wanted to ask, Newcomers to
what
? But the man had already turned and started down the stairs.

Their destination was a cool breath from the past. The Ottomans had ruled Baghdad for centuries; precisely how long depended upon who was telling the tale. The sultans in Constantinople had appointed local rulers who had grown increasingly independent. The history of Iraq contained many tragedies wrought by despotic rulers. Saddam Hussein was far from the worst, only the most recent.

The ruling caliphs had built interconnected underground chambers, peaked structures fashioned from rose-tinted brick and supported by iron columns sheathed in more brick. Nowadays they were used mostly as storage areas, for they were windowless and cool and easily protected.

The stairs emptied into an antechamber, where two more guards manned yet another locked door. Once again the arrivals and the guards exchanged the traditional blessing. Sameh saw their guide shake a guard's hand, the guard pat the young man's back. Two friends joined by . . . what?

The door was pulled open and they entered a different world.

The brick-lined room was perhaps eighty paces wide and half again as long. The fluorescent lighting illuminated a large crowd. They were singing, some with hands lifted toward the ceiling. Marc turned and looked at him in astonishment, but Sameh was so bewildered he could not respond. The underground chamber was
packed
.

But that was not the evening's greatest surprise. Not even close.

Their guide turned to Sameh and offered his hand. “The blessings and peace of Jesus upon you, Sameh el-Jacobi. I am Salim Abu Bakr.”

Sameh took the young man's hand, but found himself unable to respond.

The man's name was Sunni.

Sameh had been led into a church. Past guards who were Shia. By a Sunni. In Baghdad.

The young man seemed to find humor in Sameh's silence. He smiled, then turned and offered his hand to Marc. He stumbled over the greeting in English, yet he did his best.

Marc shook the man's hand, fumbling at the words himself.

The front of the hall contained a waist-high stage holding a lectern and several chairs. Sameh's mind was a jumble of disconnected thoughts as Salim ushered them forward, down the central aisle, and into seats midway to the front. Sameh saw a few faces he vaguely recognized but could not place.

Then Marc nudged him. “Check out the family at two o'clock.”

Sameh scouted the crowd and was about to ask who Marc meant. Then the hymn ended, and as the congregation seated themselves, Sameh saw the couple.

It was one of the Tikriti families. The mother held their infant son in her arms. The son Sameh had helped recover.

Sameh was still trying to take this in when he realized Marc had left his seat and circled around the back of the room. He approached the stage from the left side. But his progress was halted by two more guards, whom Sameh had not seen until that moment. Marc lifted his open hands to show they were empty, the easy gesture of a man with a long understanding of risk and danger. The guards still did not let him pass.

Marc pointed to the pastors seated behind the podium. He then reached into his pocket. Instantly the two guards gripped his arms.

The Tikriti father hurried over. He spoke to the guards, gently prying away their hands. Marc spoke to him. The Iraqis shook their heads, then one said something. Marc frowned, but nodded. All the eyes in the chapel followed Marc's progress back to his seat.

The service was in Arabic yet followed a pattern more Western than any Sameh had observed in a Baghdad church. Marc waited until they stood for another song to mutter, “I just wanted to pass a note to the pastor requesting his help.”

“What did our friend tell you?”

Marc glanced at Sameh. “Here is only Jesus.”

Sameh spotted a judge from the central Baghdad court. He stood next to a woman lawyer who handled family-related cases. Both were Shia. The prayer was lengthy, the sermon brief and to the point: Jesus offered the miracle of peace and transformation to all who came to him. From time to time Sameh leaned over and offered Marc a quick translation.

Sameh also saw acquaintances from within the Christian community. As the singing began again after the message, Sameh found himself comparing this gathering to his usual Sabbath service. He was an elder in the church where his father and grandfathers had both served, and countless forefathers before them. His grandfather claimed that the family had attended the same church for over a thousand years. Sameh knew everyone in his church community. He knew their secrets. He had grown up with all but one of the priests. The Baghdad Christian community had endured the Saddam years together. Their faith and the clans were as integral a part of their lives as breathing. As their blood. As their children.

And yet, they were insular by nature. Sameh had often spoken of this with those who cared to listen. They viewed the church almost like a private club. They had survived by going unnoticed. They taught their children to hide their faith. And thus their numbers stayed about the same, year after year.

The priest asked everyone to join hands for the Lord's Prayer. Sameh took Marc's hand, then grasped the man's hand on his other side. He glanced around the room, and saw a miracle. Sunni holding hands with Shia, Christian with Muslim. Praying aloud the words. As one.

Suddenly he could not stop weeping. The men to either side, Marc and the stranger, released his hands so Sameh could cover his face. Both men placed a hand upon Sameh's shoulders. American and Iraqi. Consoling him. Praying.

Sameh wept for himself, for his family, for his nation. They had all endured so much. The divides of religion and tribe and history. All the wounds of his beloved land. They hid so much, even from themselves, for to speak of these things only invited despair and futile rage.

And yet here and now, in this place, the impossible was happening. Sameh dragged in a ragged breath, struggling for control. Only then did he realize that the two men still gripped his shoulders. There with him and for him. Together.