The Ambassador's Wife (9 page)

But it never occurred to him he could lose her like this. It was supposed to have been him. This is why he has ten bodyguards; he is the target. The FCO hadn't even been sure that Miranda needed close protection at all. What were they thinking? If an ambassador was a target, surely his wife was at an equal risk? Why has this not occurred to anyone? He cannot stop hearing that shot. It was all he heard. He doesn't know who dialed the phone that second time, Miranda or Mukhtar or someone else. He had answered and heard only the blast of a rifle and some muffled noise before the phone had been shut off. It could have been a warning shot, he constantly reminds himself. The shot itself does not necessarily mean that someone is dead. He
cannot contemplate that. Cannot begin to contemplate anything so final.

T
HE ENTIRE EMBASSY
has been mobilized. Tucker and the team set out with both armored cars as soon as the call came in, driving to the area where the cars were parked and fanning out from there along the route the women had taken. Finn had demanded to go with them, but Tucker was unmoving on the topic. “With all due respect, sir, the last thing we need is the distraction of looking after you while we're trying to find her. Not to mention the fact that I cannot knowingly drive you into danger.” Tucker could not forgive himself. If only he hadn't allowed Miranda to go. If only he had personally gone with her. He and the men had walked for hours without finding a trace of the women. None of the locals they questioned had seen them. How was that possible? Someone must have seen them. A group of Western women was not inconspicuous, no matter how modestly they were dressed. Mukhtar's radio seems to be working, but no one answers it.

Finn had spent part of the evening meeting with ministers and local police officers, while Leo, his defense attaché, worked with the local military. None of these meetings has filled him with confidence. But he hasn't stopped moving, hasn't stopped calling and organizing and brainstorming strategies. He has not broken down, has not wept, has not delegated any of his duties. It occurs to him that Alastair and the others have only just landed back in the UK. Will they now return? He isn't sure. Sometimes they send different men. Or women. There are women officers these days, though Finn hasn't met too many of them.

Cressie rolls onto her stomach, her right arm curling around Corduroy and dragging him underneath her body. Her right cheek presses against her cot mattress, her bottom in the air. She breathes so quietly that Finn has to lean close to her face to reassure himself that she, at least, is still living. He cannot bear the thought of walking out of this room. To leave this room is to return to the echoing emptiness of the rest of the house. To the devastating tidiness of Miranda's side of the bed. To thinking. And to work.

JUNE 7, 2007

Miranda

It looked
just
like a light switch: a small white plastic square set into the wall next to the bed. The room was dim, and Miranda was tired. So how was she to know? It was Thursday, the start of the Mazrooqi weekend, but Finn had gone into the embassy to finish up some work, leaving her slumbering. She had not woken up in this room very many times, and never alone. So when she slid from the sheets to stand, her sleepy fingers fumbled for the nearest switch, and pushed. A short, piercing beep was the only response. The room stayed dark. That didn't bode well. She stood naked next to the bed, puzzled. But hearing no further noises, she made her way downstairs in search of lime juice. There was no point in getting dressed. She was alone in the house and it was warm. Besides, there was something a little thrilling about walking naked down such an elegant staircase, in a house usually bustling with overdressed people.

Her cell phone rang before she was back upstairs. “Sweetheart, are you all right?” Finn, sounding out of breath, phoning from the embassy.

“I'm fine,” she said, setting the glass of pale green juice down on the table next to the bed before she spilled it. “Why?”

“One of the house panic alarms has gone off—”

“Oh no…” Her stomach started to curl into itself.

“Did you hit an alarm?”

“Well, um, it looked
just
like a light switch…” She wondered how much trouble she was in.

“Well, Tucker is on his way over to reset the alarms, so let him in. Probably useful for you to know anyway.”

“I'm really sorry. But you might have mentioned it was an alarm; it really looked so much like—”

“It's all right, but six armed men are about to break down the front door, so you might want to get downstairs.”

“Oh god, I'm not dressed!” Just then the house phone began to ring, and she heard a pounding on the front door. “I have to go!”

“Go, go. They are just going to want to check the house, so let them do that.”

“Okay, okay. Shit, I'm really sorry.”

She put the phone down and reached for the closest things she could find to put on, a green Indian blouse and black skirt left on an armchair. Pulling the blouse over her belly as she ran down the stairs, she reached the bottom just as the front door flew open and several dark men with machine guns stormed the front hall. Immediately, they moved toward the living room and kitchen, their eyes searching the upstairs balcony for intruders. A rosy-cheeked British man with short-cropped blond hair led the team of invaders. This must be Tucker. She hadn't met him yet; he had arrived in Mazrooq only recently, to take over the training of Finn's close protection team. Hell of a way to introduce herself: her clothes wrinkled and twisted around her body, her corkscrew curls standing out from her head in every direction, her face still creased from sleep. And obviously too dim-witted to know what a panic button was. She had so hoped that they'd get along.

“I am so, so sorry!” she said. “I'm afraid this is all my fault.”

“No worries!” Tucker smiled at her, his blue eyes still glancing around the house. “At least this way I finally get to meet you. You must be Mira.”

“How did you guess?”

“Tucker.” He shook her hand before continuing. “Actually, we've never tested that particular button, so now at least we know that it works.”

“Looks that way.”

“We just have to check the house anyway,” he said. “In case there is someone in here making you say things.”

“Okay,” she said, feeling incredibly foolish. “Go ahead.” Not that anyone was waiting for her permission.

He ran upstairs, and she apologized to the CP team as well, in her halting Arabic. They were kind, saying
“mafeesh mushkila”
(no problem!) before going off to search the corners of the house for terrorists. She sat down at the bottom of the long marble staircase, her head in her hands. She obviously wasn't quite prepared for her new life.

Of course, her new life hadn't really quite started. She was still in between lives, in between homes, in between security regulations. And in Finn's life, she didn't officially exist.

AUGUST 14, 2010

Miranda

It is dark when Miranda opens her eyes. Her left hip aches from lying on the earthen floor. She can feel a thin mat underneath her, but it offers no cushion. She wonders how long she has been here. How is it possible that she had actually fallen asleep? As she pushes herself up, her palms pressing into clammy grit, she feels the dampness of her shirt against her skin. Her body doesn't understand what has happened, dumbly continuing to churn out milk. She puts a hand to her breasts, lumpy and swollen under her bra.
Cressida
. Tears prick the backs of her eyes, but she wills them away. To cry would be to admit that this is real, that this isn't just another nightmare. But then the memory of the night before flashes through her in all of its horror. Could it have really happened? But even as she asks herself the question, she knows the answer. Knows that this is what she has been waiting for, ever since she met Finn. How could she have ever for a moment thought she could get away with that life? But then how stupid, how narcissistic of her to think of this as some kind of personal punishment. She isn't the only one who has been punished. Kaia and Doortje. Their husbands. Their children. Mukhtar. Even if they are alive—and they probably are, she tries to convince herself—they may still never make it home. Do the kidnappers know who they are, where they come from? France and the Netherlands generally pay ransoms, but the British and Americans do not. Is this why the other women were dragged from the truck? Why she has been separated from them? Because her homeland won't pay to get her back? While she isn't worth money to them, they could certainly use her to make a political point.
If
they know who she is. Is there anyone terrorists hate more than Americans and the British?

Her stomach drily heaves, as if she could somehow vomit out the
shock and sorrow. Slowly, her arms trembling, she pulls herself into a sitting position, her back pressed against the wall of what appears to be a small stone hut. It's cold, and she reaches for the thin blanket that had been draped over her and wraps it around her shoulders. It stinks of male sweat and prickles with some kind of animal hair. She spits a mouthful of sour bile toward the wall and blinks, shapes appearing as her eyes slowly adjust to the darkness. The room is empty, save for a thin, dirt-caked carpet spread across the back. There are no windows, but through the open doorway she can see the pale light of dawn. Just inside the doorstep is a round black lump that Miranda eventually decides is a woman, sleeping. Her guard. She wonders if the woman has a gun, and decides that she doesn't. Surely the men are close enough to run to her aid should Miranda try to make a break for it.

She must try to think, but her brain is a carousel of horror and she cannot make thoughts line up in an orderly fashion. Her mouth is dry and she longs for a glass of water. What happened to her backpack? She tries to remember. There was water in her backpack. Images come to her as she sits, her head tipped back against the stones. Mukhtar, slipping to the ground. The phone, skittering away over the stones. The thin, wispy mustache of the teenager with the AK-47 who had prodded them toward that first house and later into a truck. Or what she assumes was a truck. They had all been blindfolded. The pressure in her breasts is distracting. Miranda reaches a hand between the buttons of her shirt and unsnaps the nursing bra to squeeze out a bit more of the milk. How long will the milk be there, undrunk, before realizing it is no longer needed? She stops herself from pursuing this line of thought. Finn will come for her, or will send someone for her. It is possible that she will be with Cressida again before her milk disappears. It is possible that her life will continue. Isn't it? After all, she is still alive now. Cressie will be distressed without her milk, but this is a relatively minor worry at the moment. Finn is there. Finn will take care of her. He will not let her go hungry. He will sing her to sleep. Miranda has faith in little else, but she has faith in this.

She refuses to think about how Cressida must feel about the absence of her mother, about how long she could be gone. The craving
for Cressie's weight in her arms, her petal-soft skin against her stomach, is so fierce it steals her breath.

T
HEY DROVE FOR
most of the night. The men had kept all of them in the small house near their picnic site until dusk, and then herded them onto the back of a truck. A tarp had been pulled over them and fastened. They hadn't spoken. It wasn't possible over the grating of the engine, the flapping of the old, slick tarp, and the wind in their ears. Frozen with terror, they had simply tried to roll close to each other, to touch as many parts of each other as possible, elbows to waists, ankles to knees, heads to shoulders. It was cold, unbearably cold, in that truck after the others were gone.

She doesn't know in which direction they had traveled. They could have gone west, into the mountains, or north, toward the rugged rebel-held province, or east, toward that vast empty desert. Had they gone through the mountain pass, that treacherous gateway to the North? It is possible. It had been freezing in the truck. She doesn't think they have gone south. At some point they had been handed over to different men. She knows this because the voices changed, because the man commanding her into this hut last night was not the man who led her to that first house. There are dark implications to this handover. Implications she doesn't yet feel strong enough to contemplate.

As the sky grows brighter, she inches toward the door to peer out. But when she moves, the woman in the doorway rustles and abruptly sits. She wears both a
hijab
and
niqab
, so her face is almost completely obscured. It is too dark to see her eyes.
“Sabah al-kheer,”
she says, straightening her
abaya
around her.

“Sabah anoor.”
Miranda is so surprised by the cordial greeting that she responds automatically.

“Feyn ana?”
she says. Where am I?

The woman makes a clicking sound with her mouth and shakes her finger back and forth.
No no no
. She follows this with a torrent of Arabic too fast for Miranda to comprehend. Miranda's Arabic
is nearly conversational, but only if it is spoken slowly and clearly. Finally, she recognizes a phrase.

“Ana Aisha,”
the woman says.

“Like the wife of the Prophet,” Miranda says, holding out her hand.
“Ana.”
She pauses. Surely she shouldn't use her real name?
“Ana Celeste,”
she says. It is the first name to come to her.

“Antee Francia?”
says the woman, ignoring her hand. You are French?

Miranda responds a second too slowly. Is that what they had decided? Are the French really hated less than the Brits and the Americans? Figuring that pretty much no one is hated more than the Americans, she finally nods. “
Aiwa
.” Yes. Then, too late, she remembers that French nationality hadn't saved her friends.