The Amateur Spy (6 page)

Black had given me the number, but not the country code for Jordan. It had been so long since I’d been there that I had to look it up, which I took as a bad omen. The Middle East wasn’t a place for unsure footing. And even though Jordan’s relative tranquillity made it seem benign to the untrained eye, I also knew that the kingdom’s Mukhabarat, or secret police, would still happily lock you up for the slightest misstep. I couldn’t help but remember a UN human rights report that had come across my desk during the last month on the job, mentioning that a third of all the country’s prisoners were jailed without ever being charged or tried.

On my first try I reached a secretary, who, even though I asked in Arabic, informed me in flawless English that Omar was away for at least an hour. She would soon be my secretary, too, I supposed. When I mentioned my name she seemed to brighten, and told me Omar would call back.

Mila, keeping up appearances, rode her scooter to Kastro to buy more potters’ supplies, and while she was gone I took a walk along the coastal path.

The wind was brisk, bringing with it the earliest trace of what winter might be like, and I zipped up my jacket as shreds of sea foam tore across the thin scalp of grass. A few scrawny goats scurried out of my way, bells clanking, and within half an hour I was chilled to the bone, so I turned away from the breeze and headed for home.

As I neared the door the phone was ringing. I entered in time to see Mila hold out the receiver, a doleful look on her face.

“Omar,” she whispered. “Returning your call.”

His was the voice of my past, and as I heard his warm greeting I supposed he was now the voice of my future. But I couldn’t yet picture him as the well-dressed, graying man in Black’s photo, the one stolen from the posh restaurant. Instead, Omar was still the edgy young man of 1988. There is a photo I have somewhere from those days, even better than the one Black and Gray had. It is of Omar seated on the passenger side of our VW Passat patrol car. His eyes are alert, he is gritting his teeth, and, even though we are at a standstill, his hands are pressed against the dashboard. We were parked on an overlook above Nablus, and I remember the moment as clearly as if it were yesterday because it was one of extreme tension. Below us, on converging streets, were two groups of people in motion, each unaware of the other. On one: noisy Palestinian schoolboys laughing among themselves and swinging book bags. Their dark heads bobbed confidently, the swagger of teens certain that the future had a place for them. On the other: an Israeli Army patrol, six soldiers in loose formation, Galil assault rifles at the ready. They stepped carefully and deliberately. An armored personnel carrier rolled slowly in their wake.

You need only to look at the tension in Omar’s face to realize what was about to take place. Convergence, surprise, then confrontation. Stones thrown and bullets fired. It was like a nightmare unfolding in slow motion, and we were too far away to do anything but watch and, after it was over, count casualties and write our report.

So now, even as Omar babbled on about his grandiose plans and how well I fit into them, I thought I heard in the static of the overseas connection the faint echoes of past gunfire, and couldn’t help but try to decipher whether it was the sound of rubber bullets or of live ammunition.

“So when can I drag you to come here, then? We must talk about this some more, and come to terms.”

I realized that we had been holding an actual conversation.

“How about Wednesday morning? I can make it in on a late flight Tuesday, and we can meet the next day.”

“Perfect!”

He was genuinely thrilled, which cut me to the bone. As we made arrangements to meet, I detected a new message lurking in the static, and this one was altogether more disturbing. It was the presence of a hidden enemy, holding his fire from a concealed position. Now, instead of Omar and I watching the warriors of ’88 move toward an unavoidable collision, we were the ones being observed. And the outcome of this one also seemed inevitable: For a while Omar and I will walk in tandem. Then, perhaps soon, we will collide with someone or something that we have yet to identify. Whatever is approaching, I will be partly responsible for its arrival. But unless I can find some way to change the dynamics, I will be just as powerless as I was in ’88 to stop the oncoming collision. And this time both Omar and I will be in the line of fire.

4

Washington

B
eing a daily player in the high-speed lottery of close calls and near misses known as the Connecticut Avenue morning commute, Aliyah Rahim knew instantly that the Ford pulling out from Morrison Street wasn’t going to make it.

It was a towering SUV with one of those names like Extravagance or Exploiter—she could never keep them straight—and it was about to meet its match in the form of an oncoming L4 Metrobus.

Aliyah instinctively placed her hands against the dashboard of their Volvo while her husband, Abbas, shouted, “Oh, my God!” from the driver’s seat. It was a Monday, they were just south of Chevy Chase Circle, and they were both running late for work.

The next sound she heard was the hiss and groan of the bus trying to stop. Brake lights flared red all around them. Then came a sharp bang like that of a small explosion, and she watched in horror as a shower of glass, metal, and plastic blew out in all directions. The driver managed to turn the Ford enough to avoid being broadsided, but his truck still took a full hit to the rear.

Abbas swerved deftly around the bus, darted into the left lane, and then accelerated as their tires crunched across the crystals of the Ford’s shattered window. Aliyah finally exhaled.

It was fairly predictable what would happen next. The effect of an accident on Washington’s commuter stampede is much like that of a lion attack on a herd of wildebeests. Any driver whose car isn’t felled in the onslaught does whatever he can to keep moving, even if it means skirting the victim’s bumper with scarcely a glance. The survivor assuages his conscience by reporting the matter on his cell phone because, let’s face it, his real responsibility is to the drivers in his wake. Strand not, lest ye be stranded.

By scooting past the wreckage, Abbas initially held to form. But Aliyah knew without asking what her husband would do next, and he did not fail her. Abbas pulled the wheel sharply to the right and eased to the curb, stopping only thirty feet beyond the crushed Ford. She watched him glance in the rearview mirror as if already assessing the condition of the driver. He dolefully shook his head and unlatched the seat belt.

“Looks like two of them up front,” he said. “God help anyone in the back. Call 911.”

Aliyah did as she was told. She usually did, reserving dissent for larger battles with greater stakes, which invariably occurred in the privacy of their home. Abbas may have been raised in America since the age of thirteen—he was now in his fifties—but lately he was resorting more to the old ways of his West Bank hometown of Nablus, where men generally got what they asked as long as they weren’t asking Israelis.

When Aliyah didn’t want to play along, she countered with holding actions and mute refusals. “Passive-aggressive behavior” was what her office friend Nancy called it. But that was just a new label for a longtime female staple in Arab households. Aliyah had left that world behind at a younger age than her husband had. She was only five when the Six-Day War sent her family fleeing for cover from a small village near Jerusalem in 1967, and in some ways it felt like she had never lived there at all. But if Abbas was going to resort to the old ways, then so would she.

So Aliyah now tallied her moments of obedience on a mental scoreboard on which she continually ran a deficit, even though she knew Abbas was probably doing the same, with the opposite result. This became apparent whenever their tensions erupted into open combat. Each would argue as the aggrieved party, with both claiming unpaid reparations.

Take this episode, for example. Aliyah would record it as a moment of submission. Abbas wouldn’t. Not that Aliyah objected to calling 911. Nor did she disagree with her husband’s decision to stop. It was his duty as a doctor.

On the other hand, considering all that their family had endured during the past few years—the slights, the humiliations, and, worst of all, the horrible tragedy abroad that might so easily have been averted—she wouldn’t have blamed Abbas for driving on. Let the other Americans help their own, because they certainly weren’t rushing to her family’s aid.

But by stopping, Abbas reassured her that his professional judgment hadn’t yet drowned in a simmering pool of resentment. That meant there was still hope for him and, in turn, for them. With enough diligence, she might yet find the old Abbas, hiding in the shadows of his anger.

Aliyah had lived with her own shadows in the months following the family’s ordeal, but she chose to return to the light by seeking the solace of worship and prayer, even though she hadn’t been a regular at a mosque since childhood.

She was still not a “good” Muslim in the strictest sense, and did not intend to become one. No five prayers a day except when it was convenient. No mandatory this or that. She skimped on ablutions, still had a taste for both bacon and gin, and wore what she pleased. She believed such matters were trifling as long as your faith was strong. Hers was a searching brand of devotion that sought comfort in unanswerable questions, or in the contemplation of her own smallness on the vast blurry map of God’s majesty. The ritual of prayer instilled calmness and introspection, and the mosque itself offered the kinship of like-minded women. If diet and head scarves really mattered as much as the hotheads said, well, then, let God sort out the details of her punishment later. Because surely God was wise enough to decide that what really mattered was the thoughts in your heart. Intentions and beliefs. Your eagerness to do good.

For a while she had tried to coax Abbas to attend the men’s prayer service on Fridays.

“Please,” he had scoffed. “To do what? Bow my head and raise my voice to some vacant room in the heavens? If there was a God to begin with, he checked out of his hotel room long ago.”

Maybe his job was partly to blame. As a surgeon, he was far too often powerless to save the righteous, yet many times had easily rescued the obviously unworthy. By clipping and sewing the innards of the nation’s top decision makers, he had sliced away the maladies of dozens of unsavory demagogues and liars, many of whom you have probably heard of. By rescuing them, perhaps he now felt complicit in any number of their actions.

Yet he had never lost pride in his handiwork. He still displayed a framed White House letter of appreciation from 1981, when, as a young trauma surgeon of twenty-seven, he was among the doctors who saved the life of President Reagan following an assassination attempt. He was there when the stricken president dropped to one knee in the emergency room and gasped, “I can’t breathe!” And he was the doctor who, three hours later, found the bullet lodged in the president’s chest, flattened to the size and shape of a dime. Although, now that Aliyah thought of it, she hadn’t noticed the White House letter in its customary place the last time she visited his office.

Aliyah punched in the 9-1-1. So much portent to those numbers now, with all they had brought upon this country, this city, her family.

“It’s been reported,” the operator said brusquely.

The pace of Washington never ceased to astonish her, especially in its recent push to do more with less. Even at her office, a national charity that raised money for the poor, there was a huge effort to cut and streamline.

She unlatched the door of the Volvo, wondering if she would be able to bear the sight of the accident. Blood made her squeamish, but as a doctor’s wife she felt obligated to pitch in. The Ford was pinned to a lamppost beneath a huge oak, which was shedding yellow leaves on the wreckage. Abbas had pried open the passenger door and was leaning across someone. Blood dripped onto the pavement.

A police car rolled to the curb between her and the Ford, blue lights strobing. She heard the wail of an ambulance approaching from downtown. Abbas withdrew from the Ford for a second, as if coming up for air. She could never fathom how he stomached all the gore, and she was thankful for the blinding glare of the windshield as the sun emerged from a cloud. Poor Abbas already looked pale and spent, and he still had a long day ahead. She had heard him moving around downstairs very late the night before, the TV droning loudly.

A policeman stepped from the cruiser. He put his hands on his hips and watched Abbas. Next to him was some fellow in a business suit who had drifted down from a Starbucks for a closer look. The drivers still passing on Connecticut Avenue were now at a crawl. The rubbernecking had begun in earnest.

Aliyah was about to volunteer her version of events when the policeman turned toward the man in the suit and asked loudly, “Who’s the Arab guy?”

He said it in the tone Aliyah had been hearing for four years running, a goading note of suspicion that demanded to know whose side you were on. This time she boiled over.

“The
Arab
guy is a doctor!” she said, her vehemence taking the officer by surprise. “He is also my husband, and he saves lives for a living.
Saves
lives. Do you understand this? He is trying to
help
those people!”

The cop raised his hands in mock surrender, but didn’t back away. Then he smiled, which only made her angrier.

“Easy, lady. Just trying to sort out the players. I’m glad he’s here to help. Now if you and this other gentleman could step back, I’ll get the scene under control.”

Liar. A sassy reply rose in her throat, but she didn’t dare. Not after the last time she had talked back to a policeman, two years ago in New York. Their family picture had run on page two of the
Daily News,
a tourist photo filched from the dockside concessionaire of a Circle Line cruise. A bunch of stupid, baseless accusations and a senseless arrest, all because her son, Faris—
a structural engineer,
for God’s sake—had dared to shoot video footage as the boat passed beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. Plenty of other tourists had done the same, but none of them was speaking Arabic, as Faris had been doing with a college friend from Cairo, excitedly describing the engineering wonder of the support towers and buttresses.

The police had hauled them in for questioning, and Abbas’s name had turned up on some watch list, thanks to a donation he had made six years earlier to a Palestinian charity that had since been deemed a pariah and made off-limits for American dollars. Abbas spent two days in a Manhattan jail before he was released, even though no charges were ever filed. No one ever offered an apology because, well, you just can’t be too careful anymore, you know.

Even then Aliyah might have eventually found some way to laugh it off if not for what then happened to their daughter. How horrible to think that the New York photo that brought them such shame was now a cherished relic, because it was the last image of their whole family together, Shereen in the middle, smiling brilliantly into the summer sunlight, the brown waters of the Hudson behind them. Everyone arm in arm.

“I said move back, lady.” It was the policeman again, forceful now.

“Yes, I am moving.”

He nudged her with his right hand, and she barely fought down an urge to push back. Her breathing was all bottled up in her throat, and she stepped briskly toward the Volvo, tears of anger and frustration springing hotly to her eyes.

Of all places for this to happen. It was a block she knew well, having shopped here frequently, and its very nature had always made her feel good about where they lived. Just around the corner was an ATM equipped for seven languages. There was a package store run by Koreans, a restaurant run by Dominicans, and a barbershop run by a Hungarian. The backdrop to the crushed Ford was a kitschy billboard on the roof of the American City Diner. It depicted a 1950s family seated three abreast in a big sedan, all smiles and all white above the script, “There’s no way like the American Way.”

Tell it to this smug asshole of a cop, she thought. She purposely avoided looking at him, and instead sought out Abbas, worried that he might have seen the brief confrontation. Another reason to keep holding back her tears.

The ambulance arrived. Paramedics exited in a rush, followed by the aluminum clatter of a gurney. Abbas spoke a few words to a nodding attendant and then wiped bloody hands on a handkerchief.

She saw that the policeman was still sizing up her husband. The officer then moved forward and said something to Abbas while pointing at her. Her husband went rigid, and color rose in his cheeks. Keep your head, she thought. Don’t take this an inch farther.

Abbas turned toward her as if he had received her mental warning, and their eyes met. Patience, his expression replied. There was a hint of something else, too. Something new. Was it malice or just determination? Maybe both, almost like he was saying, “Don’t worry, I’ll deal with this in my own way. You’ll see.”

Something about it made her go faint for a second, and she put a hand to her chest. Whatever this new emotion of his was, it couldn’t possibly be good for either of them.

Or maybe she was still worried because of what she had found in his top dresser drawer the night before. Some antidepressant, with God knows what sort of side effects. She had seen Abbas sneaking a pill in the kitchen and tracked down the vial later. What’s more, there was no prescription label from any pharmacy. He must have gotten hold of it himself from the hospital, one way or another.

It was just like him to think he could deal with his feelings like a technician, tweaking his body’s chemical supply just as he might repair some patient’s veins and arteries. Instead of talking things out with her or anyone else, he would make everything right through medicine. Study the symptoms, consult a manual, perhaps chat with a specialist. Then find the right tool and make the necessary adjustment.

Worrisome. And so was that look on his face. She resolved to start paying closer attention to Abbas. These were dangerous times, and losing one member of her family was quite enough. Losing another would be more than she could bear.