Lion of Babylon (4 page)

Chapter Five

F
rom the air, Baghdad's airport did not look like a gateway to the new Iraqi Republic.

What it looked like was a city. A fortress city. Designed to keep people
out
.

The pilot invited him to watch their approach from the cockpit's jump seat. Which meant Marc had a fine view of the tanks and guard towers anchoring the perimeter fence. One gunner tracked their jet with his top-mounted machine gun, all the way from horizon to landing.

Carter Dawes said, “I guess that was just his way of making us feel welcome.”

They were met by a camouflaged Jeep with a sign:
Follow me
. When Carter Dawes saw where the flight tech was leading his plane, he laughed out loud. “Whose party did you crash?”

Two soldiers in battlefield dress and flack jackets waved the jet to a halt. Arrayed around the plane was a V-shaped reception committee. Armored Humvees were fanned out to either side of the plane's nose. These were joined by a phalanx of troops in battle armor and desert fatigues. Dawes said, “At least their guns are pointed the other way.”

Dawes left the copilot to wind down the engines, and released the jet's stairway. As Marc stepped out into the dusty sunlight, Dawes said in farewell, “Don't lose that card.”

Soon as Marc stepped through the jet's doorway, the heat slammed him. The sun was a dull red ball on the eastern horizon. Seven in the morning local time and already the temperature was well over one hundred degrees. Two F-15s roared down the runways, the light from their afterburners making them look like they were melting before Marc's eyes. The stench of jet fuel coated his tongue.

A human bulldog with a shaved head stood grinning at the bottom of the stairs. “Sorry about the welcome wagons, Mr. Royce. The base came under mortar fire just before dawn. First time in a month. My name is Barry Duboe.” He pointed Marc to a dusty Tahoe with blackened windows rumbling beyond the armed perimeter. “Come on, let's get you settled.”

When Marc was seated inside the Tahoe's air-conditioned cocoon, he noticed the grit. A patina fine as milled flour already covered him from head to foot. “Are you military?”

“Lesson one inside the Sandbox, Mr. Royce. If you don't know, you're probably not authorized to ask.” Duboe put the Tahoe into gear and pulled onto the perimeter road. “The thing is, though, I owe Ambassador Walton some serious debts.”

“I've heard that a lot,” Marc replied.

“So to answer your question, I'm deputy head of station for the CIA.” He halted for a parade of three F-15s rumbling throatily toward the runway. “Alex Baird was a good buddy. Walton found out I was asking questions and hitting stone walls for my troubles. How he knew, I have no idea. But he called, and I answered, and here you are. Now you know everything.”

They drove for another ten minutes. Long enough to leave the runways and the trundling aircraft behind. They entered a military settlement that resembled every U.S. base around the world. Except, of course, for the sand. But military precision would not be defeated by some paltry desert. The buildings might be fronted by yards of grit instead of lawn, but their perimeters were still bordered by rocks, each of which had been laboriously painted white by enlisted personnel doing punishment duty.

Duboe halted the Tahoe in front of a prefab structure of corrugated metal and tight windows. Two industrial-strength air-conditioners gave off a fierce hum. “Five-star guest accommodations. Canteen to your right as you enter, stocked with ready meals, a coffee maker and a microwave. Showers to your left. You're in room twelve. The key's in the door.”

Marc remained where he was. Waiting. For what, he had no idea. But he sensed that Duboe was not done.

The man's lips were a thin slash in a fighter's face. He spoke with the deliberate purpose of a boxer throwing punches. “Here's the thing. I know you want to hunker down, do some serious jet-lag coma. But the situation is not in our favor.”

Marc saw no reason to mention he had slept his way across the Atlantic and the Med both. Instead, his mind was caught by two words. “
Our
favor.”

Duboe liked that. “Did Walton really fire you?”

“Three years ago.” The memory still seared. “Canned me and dumped me on a Baltimore street.”

“Then what happens but Alex Baird goes missing, and Walton comes to you.”

“Hat in hand,” Marc confirmed. “I admit it is a curious thing.”

“Guess it's safe to assume Walton didn't fire you for incompetence.”

Marc heard the unspoken question, and knew he had no choice but to respond. “My wife had a stroke. I took a leave of absence to care for her. She hung on for nine months. Walton got tired of waiting. She passed on ten days after my dismissal.”

“I'm sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks.”

Duboe inspected him, his look as intent as a sniper's aim. “About an hour after Walton asked for my help, I got a call from the deputy to the U.S. ambassador here in the Sandbox. The deputy gave me two choices. One was, I could stop asking questions and keep my career. The other was, I keep looking for Alex and the deputy would fit me out for a steel box. The deputy's name is Jordan Boswell. If you ever hear that man has you in his crosshairs, run.”

Marc stared out the front windshield at the dancing heat. “You're saying if I stop for a rest, Walton's enemies will have time to lock me in and send me back.”

Duboe smiled, revealing teeth ground down to small white nubs. “Maybe Walton was right to choose you after all.”

“I'm here to find Alex. Not sleep.”

“Go shower and change into street clothes. A backpack's on your bed. Take essentials and one change of clothes. Leave the rest, including your laptop and GPS, phone and anything else that might be used to track your movements. The room is yours for the duration.” He slapped the Tahoe into gear. “You've got one hour.”

Chapter Six

S
ameh el-Jacobi drove a sixteen-year-old Peugeot 405, acquired during the last days of the Saddam regime. Members of the dictator's power elite had driven the Mercedes S-Class, the only people in Iraq allowed such a car. No policeman ever halted an S-Class, for fear the driver or the person in the back would roll down a window and shoot him dead.

Lower echelons in Saddam's regime had driven the Peugeot 405. Like Sameh's own vehicle, most were a vague off-white in color. Sameh had never liked the cars. As far as he was concerned, they came off the factory line looking thirty years old.

During the embargo that had followed the First Gulf War, the regime had bought cars from Malaysia, the only country willing to ignore the trade restrictions. Those Protons had arrived by the shipload, two thousand automobiles at a time. Everyone in Iraq considered the Proton the most awful machine ever to be graced with four wheels.

The regime had ordered its bureaucrats to drive the Protons. To refuse such a directive was to sign their own death warrants. So the Peugeots had been sold off and turned into taxis, family sedans, or sliced into date trucks. Over time they became more and more ugly. The Peugeot might have been hated, but they were never permitted to die. They simply grew cancerous.

Sameh's 405 had been owned by a midlevel bureaucrat in the Al-Mukhabarat, one of the three former intelligence services. His elder brother had fled Iraq, like many other Iraqi Christians. Fifteen years ago, Christians had made up seven percent of Iraq's total population. Now they formed almost half of all Iraqi refugees. The Christians who remained were increasingly targeted by Muslim extremists. Their numbers continued to decline.

The bureaucrat's brother had first fled to Jordan and then to the United States. This had placed the Mukhabarat officer in a very dangerous situation. Naturally he could not risk contacting a relative who had gained a coveted green card and now called Iraq's sworn enemy his home. But the official loved his brother dearly. And he had learned that Saddam's regime was operating spies within the U.S., targeting these same Christians who had been forced through persecution to flee their homeland. Sameh had used an American lawyer as a channel to warn the brother. As payment for services rendered, the bureaucrat had sold Sameh his Peugeot for five thousand dollars, a fortune during the embargo. But it was also less than half what he could have received on the open market.

The car's air-conditioning did not work. The suspension was pillow soft. The wheels all wobbled. The steering wheel bucked and shivered whenever Sameh risked going faster than thirty-five miles an hour. It drove like almost every other car in Baghdad, which was, barely.

Baghdad was established by Caliph Al-Mansur in the eighth century and lay seventy miles from the ancient capital of Babylon. The Tigris River split the city into El-Karkh on the west and El-Rasafah on the east. Centuries of poetry had been written about the two sides of Baghdad and the hearts lost by lovers peering across the liquid divide.

Historically, Baghdad's rulers all had built their palaces in El-Rasafah. Saddam Hussein, however, had launched his official domain and his Baath Party headquarters from El-Karkh. There was much quiet humor about how all Saddam's problems had started with this first mistake.

Sameh's destination this morning was an office building near Zawra Park and the Zoological Gardens, about half a mile from where the Baath headquarters had been located. As usual, traffic was awful. The Green Zone, the city's sector where the Americans had established their headquarters and where the prime minister's offices were now located, stood between Sameh's destination and the river. The closer he came to the Green Zone perimeter, the more traffic solidified. He had given himself three-quarters of an hour for the two-mile journey, and he arrived a half hour late.

A male office worker stood where the blast walls segmented the building's entrance from the main road. Sameh knew the man was not a guard because he did not wear a bulletproof vest or carry a machine pistol. Sameh flashed his lights and rolled down his window. The man scuttled over. “The lawyer Sameh el-Jacobi?”

“It is I.”

“God be thanked. Salaam, your honor. Salaam.” The man opened Sameh's door and motioned him out. “The family awaits you.”

Sameh knew a moment's deep concern as the man slipped behind the wheel. “My car is unwell.”

“I will treat it as gently as I would my own. Which also suffers the city's ailment.” The man popped the trunk lid so the guards could begin their inspection, then pointed to the front door. “Please, your honor. The family is most anxious.”

Sameh walked the canyon formed by twelve-foot high concrete blast barriers. Where the barricade met the building's front stairs, he endured a body pat-down and a search of his briefcase. He climbed the steps and entered the building's refrigerated wash. He stood there a moment, plucking his shirt from his chest and breathing the too-cold air. A young woman signed him in and led him upstairs.

His client was a Sunni and former Baath Party official named Hassan el-Thahie. Unlike many of Saddam's lackeys, Hassan was an extremely intelligent and crafty businessman. After the Gulf War, when Saddam's inner council began their suicidal defiance of the West, Hassan el-Thahie had used his business connections in Jordan to contact the American embassy. For three and half years he spied for the Americans, risking his life to funnel information westward. As a result, Hassan had been permitted to retain his businesses.

Hassan's offices were on the building's top floor. Seven stories up was high enough to look out over the snarled traffic and the demolished party building to the Green Zone and the river beyond. Normally Sameh would have taken a few moments to enjoy the view from behind the safety of blast-proof windows. But not today.

Sameh returned the businessman's greetings, then bowed over the hands of Hassan's wife, his grandmother, and eldest son. The lad had been taken out of university to offer support during the family's crisis. The strain on their faces was something Sameh would never become accustomed to, in spite of the dozens of times he had taken on this kind of task.

He stopped by the desk temporarily assigned to Sameh's ally, a retired police officer. Sameh used the officer for negotiations with kidnappers. Unfortunately, these days Sameh had a great deal of work for the officer. The gray-haired gentleman shook his head in response to Sameh's unspoken query. The kidnappers had not yet called.

Sameh had dreaded this meeting with the el-Thahie family and had not slept. His eyes felt grainy and his neck ached. He refused the offer of tea or coffee. Both would only have further upset his stomach. He gave half an ear to the family's soft chorus of woe. In truth, all he could hear was the distress his news would cause. That they had hired a gardener who likely had rewarded their trust by kidnapping their son.

To Sameh's vast relief, his news was postponed by a knock on the door. The young assistant entered and said, “Please excuse the interruption, sir. There is a phone call.”

Hassan said, “I specifically ordered us not to be disturbed.”

“Sir, forgive me. But the call is for Sameh el-Jacobi. Your honor, the woman Miss Aisha says that you have received an urgent call from the embassy.”

This was enough of a shock to silence even the grandmother's tears. “The
American
embassy?”

“Yes, madame. She says it was from the senior official.” She glanced at the slip of paper in her hand, then mispronounced, “Dobob?”

“Duboe,” Sameh corrected, already on his feet and headed for Hassan's desk. “May I use your phone?”

“There is an empty office next door.”

“That will not be necessary.”

The young woman said, “Miss Aisha has left the number.”

“Thank you, but that is not required.”

His response astonished the family yet again, as it suggested a level of personal contact few people outside the government ever had. But the assumption was incorrect. Sameh knew Barry Duboe's number because he had phoned it repeatedly over the past four months. He had left several dozen messages and never heard back. Until now.

The assistant CIA chief of station answered midway through the first ring. “Duboe.”

“This is Sameh el-Jacobi returning your call.”

“Hey, Sameh, how're tricks?” The agent turned his name into something that sounded like Sammy. Which irritated him. And Duboe knew it.

“I have been trying to reach you,” Sameh said. “For some time now.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. But here's the thing, Sameh. You'd already used up your chits and weren't offering anything new that I wanted.”

This was something Sameh couldn't help but like about the man. Barry Duboe was aggressive, bullish, loud, and perpetually angry. But he was also bluntly honest. Given an Iraqi's habit of politely promising the moon and delivering nothing, Sameh found the man's brutal frankness to be positively refreshing. “So why are we talking now?”

“Because for once I've got a favor to ask. What do you say? Put your side of the balance sheet back in the green.”

“I'm listening.”

“Come to my office at the embassy.”

“With respect, that is not possible. Recently the extremists have placed watchers at all the Green Zone access points. If I come, they will know me, and I will be killed. And I won't do you any good dead.”

The American laughed. This was something else Sameh enjoyed about Barry Duboe, how he used his bark to defuse a situation.

Duboe said, “So where do you want this meet to go down? And don't tell me the middle of nowhere after midnight. I want a place I can get to inside half an hour. And it's got to be secure, you hear what I'm saying? Safe enough I don't need a guard detail to check out the bomber at the next table. You need to pretend I'm bringing the ambassador along.”

“Right now I'm in a meeting.”

“It's now or never. Remember that tune? You were in the States when that was big, right?”

“Perhaps ten years later.”

“Whatever. The clock is ticking, Sameh. Either you help me now, or I go to the next name on my list.”

“It's always urgent with you Americans.”

“Is that a compliment or an insult?”

“Both, I suppose.”

“So is this a yes or a yes?” The man actually broke into song. “It's now or never.”

Sameh turned to the window so he could hide his smile. “I know just the place.”

When he had given directions to the restaurant, Duboe came back with, “My man in Baghdad. See you in thirty.”

Sameh took his time hanging up the phone, ensuring his smirk was carefully hidden away. “With sincere regret, I must attend to this gentleman's requirements.”

But the little group already was up and preparing to usher him out. Sameh shook hands with each, then replied to Hassan's unspoken plea. “Of course I will ask the American official for help. How could I not? But I want you to do something for me in return.”

“Anything.”

“Contact your friends in the Iraqi government.”

The businessman made a face. “I have tried. You must believe me. But just now there
is
no government. The parties have been quarreling since the elections. And of course there are so many missing children.”

All this Sameh knew. “Do not approach them with any request. Simply let them know I am trying to help you. Make them ready to receive me, in case something arises.” He offered his farewells, then made as if to be struck by a sudden notion. “Can you give me a recent photograph of your gardener?”

In response, the family worked through a lightning series of emotions. Sameh cut off the inevitable questions about why he might need such a thing before they could be formed. “All I have is his passport, which is nine years old. I need something more recent. Perhaps you have a photograph where he was in the background.”

“But why—?”

“I will of course tell you if I know anything for certain. Right now, I am simply searching for clues.” Sameh started for the door, then turned back to add one final word. “Hurry.”