The General and the Elephant Clock of Al-Jazari (25 page)

W
YLIE
and Jackson were back on duty the next morning, and they came in to join the crew for the morning meeting and breakfast. Gabriel was already dressed in the Matrix-ninja killer suit, and he looked ready to sling on a red cape and take on the Ministry of Justice. John had to wonder, watching his lean, elegant form, if Gabriel had been a superhero in another life.

“Wylie, any security issues?”

“No, General.”

“Jen, the XO is going to the Ministry of Justice this morning. No telephone calls out until he gets back and we get a brief on the current situation.”

“We did get another call early this morning, General. It was that man from the Bardo again. I think we ought to invite him over for tea. He sounded very old and very concerned. It’s unusual for an elderly Tunisian man to make a call twice and ask for a favor this way.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll call him this morning. He spoke to you in English?”

“Yes. I had the feeling he used to speak English but hasn’t for many years. He was trying to reach out to us.” She handed him a piece of paper with the phone number and a name: Ibrahim ibn Saeed ibn Ahmad al-Aziz. It was an old fashioned, traditional name. John hadn’t noticed many men use the older form of ibn to note father and grandfather in many years.

“Green? Any fever overnight?”

“No, sir.”

“Then you and Forsyth get some PT this morning after breakfast. I need both of you ready to leap small buildings if need be. Kim and Sam, you work me up a proposal on how we could build the elephant clock. Site, building permission, supplies. This is just a brief, understand? Eli and Daniel, you help after you get back from PT.” He ignored the cheers from the group. “Jen, if you would continue to monitor the social media sites for any change in the wind.” He studied their grinning faces. Good God. They actually thought they could do it. “If you can’t see a way we could actually build the elephant clock in a reasonable time-frame, I expect you to come up with an alternate plan. We need to take a reality check and see if this is even possible. I wasn’t planning to move to Tunisia permanently and set up shop as a civil engineer of elephant clocks. However, if you guys decide that’s what we need to do, I will find a way to make it work. Sam, I want the mind map you drew of all the relatives we’ve been able to identify for Ali Bahktar.”

Gabriel walked back across the room. “I’m going to take Abdullah downstairs so we can have breakfast and a few minutes to discuss our plan.”

“Aren’t you going a little early?”

“Part of my strategy, boss. What is the goal for today?”

John thought a moment. “We must find out who has the decision making authority over the charges, and we must find out who has their passports. Best case scenario? You get the passports and the charges dropped. I’m not going to hold out hope for an apology. But if we get that critical piece of information, and you come back with the passports in your pocket, we’ll be a mile ahead of where we are right now and I can get these boys safely out of the country if the situation deteriorates.” John dug the card Madeline Grant had given him out of his pocket. “You could touch base with Dr. Grant, let her know you’re here and going to the Ministry. She might even go with you.” He watched Gabriel’s dark eyes, his face still and quiet while he was thinking.

“I’ve met Madeline before. I took her for a ride in my chopper, to see the pretty poppy fields in lovely Afghanistan. That was ages ago. I got to stand in the back of the room, looking dangerous, and watch her work. She’s a subtle negotiator. She does this thing where she turns herself into a rock, you know? She says her piece and draws a line and then somehow turns into a rock, totally unmovable, and she gives the impression she is prepared to sit there forever and wait for you to come around to her way of thinking. Maybe I should let her do the talking. That would be even more interesting than what I had in mind, to let a woman take the lead. It will make everyone nervous and off-kilter from the beginning. Now that you have taken on the role of the hotheaded warrior prince, I can be the meditative lawyer-monk who gets you out of trouble. Just so long as I have an opportunity to come face-to-face with that Bedu shit-bird Ali Bahktar before this is over. He will not be fooled into thinking I’m the cool head in our operation, but the others might.”

“I think you have a very cool head.”

“And I think you enjoyed your democracy theater a little too much, General. Men our age need their spleens.”

“Point taken.” Gabriel had studied the bruises on John’s ribs last night but hadn’t said anything, his mouth pressed into a thin line. Several kisses to the most sore spots, and John thought he detected a significant lessening of the pain.

“I know the issue of the blasphemy charges means something, but it is not as critical as the passports, Gabriel. If they give us the passports back, I would interpret that as tacit admission they do not want to proceed with charges and in fact want us gone. Safety may need to play a part in our decision-making.”

“You think Painter’s right, and we just need to take the boys and run?” Gabriel asked.

“I think I don’t want anyone in this room to see the inside of 9 Avril Prison again. I’m getting a bad vibe.”

Gabriel nodded. “Ali Bahktar may be burning with the fever of jihad, but some knucklehead might be thinking about money. That dickhead you bribed to let you into the prison, he’s been thinking about money all this time, wondering if he should have gotten more. And here you are, sitting in beautiful Carthage at a hotel where he has never been able to stay.”

“I agree that we’re walking a dangerous path. If we need to do anything in Tunis to bring balance back to the Force, we need to do it quickly and then go.”

John stared at Kim until he had to stop pretending he didn’t see his uncle, and he came over to John, dragging his feet. “Sir?”

“Am I not getting a hug?”

Kim’s eyes filled with tears, and he threw himself into John’s arms, right against the bruised ribs. “I hate it when you’re mad at me!”

“I wasn’t mad at you,” he said, stroking Kim’s black hair. “I haven’t been mad at you since you lit all those candles in the house when you were seven and set off the smoke alarms, then hid in the closet. And I was only mad then because I couldn’t find you and I was afraid you were hurt. I mean, you could so easily have set your hair on fire to disguise the effects of a bad trim, and then it got out of hand.”

Kim’s head fit perfectly on John’s shoulder, like it had always done, and John felt him giggle against his neck. That odd, unsettled feeling he’d had since last night, when Gabriel had talked to him, like Kim was a stranger he didn’t even know, melted away. Kim was his darling boy, had been since he was six months old. They were okay. “I had the same idea as you, about getting a copy of the book and giving it to the museum.”

“I suspected that’s why you sent us looking for it.”

“You’re my ringer, is that what I’m to understand? My wild card?”

“I’ll be anything,” Kim said. “Wild card, joker, whatever. Just give me something to do. Let me prove myself. Prove to you that my worldview and your worldview together are better than either one alone. You know what I mean? Let’s try to work together. If we had worked together, instead of both off in our own worlds, maybe things would have turned out differently for Billy. Maybe Brian would never have hurt him. And it changed him, Uncle John.”

“I know it did. But you don’t always have control over the outcome, Kim. Maybe I have felt like my job was to keep the world turning, even at gunpoint if necessary, in order for you to have the safe and happy childhood you needed to become a man. To become the person with all the potential you now have to change the world. And there are other ways to do that job. The warrior’s way, that’s only to keep the world safe, so the artists and teachers can start the real change, the changes that will resonate over time. You understand what I mean?”

“I do, Uncle J. But I’m a man now, so your job of keeping the world safe so I can grow up is done. It seems to me that there’s work to be done. It’s time for me to step up. Let me help you change the world. Or you can help me.”

“That’s not the way this goes. You work for me, and you watch and learn. I am Obi-Wan, and you are my Padawan learner. Your formal education is the starting point for what you need to learn to be successful at changing the world, okay? Also, when we finish here, I want you to complete your MFA. You may need that credential at some point, and it’s a good disguise. Lots of interesting potential for a man standing around with a camera. Besides, I hate to think of all that money going to waste.”

“Agreed.”

“What are you doing now?”

“I thought I’d go talk Arabic with Wylie, but he’s going down to the exercise room with Eli and Daniel after breakfast. Abdullah’s going with Gabriel.”

“That leaves me, then. Let’s go over the traditional greeting for an elderly person. We may have someone from the Bardo coming this afternoon. Okay, say this after me: As-salamu alaykum, Ibrahim ibn Saeed ibn Ahmad al-Aziz.”

Kim’s pronunciation, when he said the words, was close to perfect. He repeated the name until he had it memorized. “I brought you a couple of new shirts, Uncle John. Yellow is a color of mourning in Egypt. Blue might be a better choice.”

“Fine, fine. Let’s not go crazy with the credit card, okay? I just got it paid off.”

Room service brought several carts full of breakfast food, and Sam and Daniel checked for bugs on the carts and plates. Kim watched them, his eyes big, until Daniel explained what they were doing.

John picked up his tablet, signed on to the e-mail. The note from David Painter seemed like it might have little flames licking the letters, he was so pissed off.
John, I’ve never known you to drink more than your share of tequila. Have you gone insane, or have you and the Horse-Lord started smoking dope? You have the boys. You have forty-eight hours to have them on a plane home or I am coming to Tunis and I’ll take care of this myself. This is a simple job. Get the boys, get them home. Explain to me what the fuck Yoda has to do with anything?

Sam brought him a bowl of oatmeal and fruit, and John sighed and studied his wild card. “Kim, when you’re working up your proposal for the elephant clock, factor in a time line. We have to be out of the country in forty-eight hours.”

Kim’s mouth dropped open. “Two days?”

John actually wondered if he could take two more days in this hotel room with a crew that seemed to be multiplying by the hour. He looked at Jennifer, piling bacon on her plate. “You’re coming with us.”

“How?” She had enough pancakes with butter to put her on Lipitor in five years. Her wrist was bent under the weight of the food on her plate. Where did she put it all?

“I don’t know yet, Jennifer, but it is not open for discussion. I’m not leaving you here when I go.”

“I see! Where am I going? Back to Albuquerque with you, or are you packing me off to my father like I’m a runaway teenager?”

Sam looked up. “You’re coming back to DC with me.”

She put down her plate, stared at Sam. “It’s so interesting the way you men are going all native on me!” Her hands were on her hips, or what John thought were her hips through the brown sack of a dress. “Do I need to mention that I’ve been in this country for nearly six months working and doing fine before you showed up to rescue me? Suddenly I need to be protected? Suddenly my work has no meaning?” Sam looked at him for help, but John just shook his head. He would have to step up and figure this one out for himself.

Sam came over, held out his hand, and kept it hanging out there until she sighed and took it. “Please come back with me. Just for a little while. Just for whatever small amount of your time you’re willing to give me.”

Jen looked like she was maintaining a high index of suspicion over this plea, and John thought the boy might have overplayed his hand by going quite so pathetic. But he was staying out of it.

Kim was waving his hands. “Okay, guys? We need to get to work pronto. Not a minute to waste.”

“Take time for food and PT,” John said. “That’s the army way.”

“Marines take time for food, PT, and sex. We might have to do it the USMC way now the Horse-Lord is here.” Wylie thought he was being quiet, nudging Daniel, who was grinning like a fool, but John stared at him until he took his plate of food and slipped out the door.

John took the mind map of Ali Bahktar’s known relatives, went back into his bedroom. He made the bed and spread the pages out. He had seen something that was tugging at his attention, but it kept slipping out of his grasp. One of the names? Aabir al-Aziz, way off in the corner. She looked to be a great aunt on the mother’s side. Any relation to the man who had called them from the Bardo? Surely even a donkey prick could have a few decent relations? John was interested to see this man. He picked up his phone and called the number. “As-salamu alaykum. I am calling for Ibrahim ibn Saeed ibn Ahmad al-Aziz. This is John Mitchel.”

The young woman on the phone sounded flustered. “Is that Dr. Mitchel, the American?”

“Yes.”

“I will just get the director, sir, if you could hold the line for one moment?”

The old man’s voice sounded frail, John thought. He returned the formal greeting. “I remember a young student of the classics who spoke very good Arabic, here in Tunis with my old colleague Dr. Omar al-Salim. Is this the same John Mitchel who became General Mitchel?”

“It was my great privilege to study in Tunis with my teacher and mentor, Director.”

“I have seen on the television that the young American men wanted to see Carthage, but they were stopped by a gang of Salafists.”

“Very true. They were thrown into prison and hurt. But all they really wanted was to see the Bardo and to walk among the ruins. One of the young men is named Hannibal. Since he was a young boy, he had a great love for Carthage.”

“There was some question of blasphemy?”

“There was no blasphemy. The boys had a copy of a page from Al-Jazari’s book, the picture of the elephant clock. They had printed it off from the computer so they could look at it while they were walking around.”