The Towers (15 page)

It was incredibly painful, and she was sobbing by the time she could stretch out for the phone, where he'd left it on his chair. She almost slid off the bed, but finally snagged it. Concentrated, and pushed in numbers.

By the time he came back, she'd talked to one of her old staff buddies at House Armed Services, to her former military aide, and to Bankey Talmadge, the oldest warhorse in the Senate. She hid the phone under the pillow and sent her father out for a
Post
. As soon as the nurse was done, she was back on the phone again. Dan's cell didn't answer and all she got at home in Arlington was their answering machine. She tried Nan's number, but there seemed to be a lot of traffic and some of her calls weren't going through. She called two generals and caught one, then talked at length to a political appointee in the West Wing. She was from the other party, but they'd both been DAR State Regents and always gotten along and sometimes even traded favors. Under the table, of course. Girl to girl.

When she was done, she checked the battery. Not much juice left. She tried Dan again. Again, no luck.

She called a three-star woman admiral and then a congressman from Maryland. She called Hanumant Giory's number at Cohn, Kennedy, thinking the call might be forwarded, but got only the “number has been disconnected and is no longer in service” message.

She hid the phone as the door opened again. Her dad, with the paper. She felt nauseated and weak, and it was much harder to read small print with one eye than she'd expected. He offered to read to her. She accepted gratefully and lay back with eyes closed, sipping a glass of water, while he went down the front page and then the international news. Just as she'd gleaned over the phone, the administration was beating its chest about all-out war. Ridiculing the previous administration as weak on terror. She remembered the mountains of Uzbekistan, and those were just the foothills of the Hindu Kush. Pushing a U.S. force into those mountains … the last time the Army had done anything like that was in Korea.

Slowly, through the pain and weakness and confusion, anger rose. This administration would push their own agenda. Channel billions to their patrons. What else was new? Her own family had done the same thing during the Civil War. It was the nature of politics, and of war. But it didn't mean whoever had done this wouldn't have to pay. They
had
to. For all these dead.

The only remaining question was, what role would she play in it?

*   *   *

NOT
until late that afternoon was her dad able to get him on the phone. When her father held the cell to her ear, she almost couldn't speak. Finally murmured, “Is that you?”

“Blair. Been trying to get through.… How are you? Your dad said you were pretty badly injured.”

His voice was so hoarse it sounded like a bad Louis Armstrong imitation. But it was him. He was alive. They traded war stories and commiserated about whatever evil star had put them both at their respective ground zeros. He said he'd gotten out of hospital two days before, stopped by the house for a uniform change, and was now in Virginia Beach.

“So you're back at TAG?”

“For the moment.”

“What's that mean?”

“It means, JCS didn't have any con plan ready for something like this. We're waiting for Higher to come up with one. Once we get that … I can tell you then.”

She couldn't get any more than that, and he probably didn't know any more. She knew the military planning system would be grindingly slow. The administration was making warlike noises, but it would take months to get a sizable force anywhere. Like the buildup to Desert Storm. “But, Dan, you're Navy. Isn't this going to be a land-forces job?”

“Come on, Blair. That's TAG's job, to address emergent threats.”

“Emergent
naval
threats, Dan. Does bin Laden have a submarine?” Her dad was gesturing, looking angry; and she was getting tired; her head was sagging back into the pillow. Abruptly she was exhausted, as if she'd just hiked up Everest. “I've got to get off.… Don't push it too hard, Dan. You always do. And don't
volunteer,
okay? You're not twenty anymore.”

“Look who's talking. I'll try to get up to see you, if they let me. Say hi to Checkie.”

She sank back, resentful. He had a job. She had no task, no position, and with the other side in charge, the war would not go well; they were such fucking amateurs. The pain had been gathering force. Now it was a fire glowing deep in shattered bones, a torch scorching her shattered face. She put a hand up, felt the hard shell of the bandages, forced her fingers away.

“We'll take you home,” her father was saying, gathering up the paper where she'd discarded the sports section, the classifieds. “As soon as you're well enough to travel.”

“Dan and I have a house in Arlington, Dad. Remember?”

“He won't be there. He'll be overseas. And you need to get away, Blair. You're not in government now. You heard Dr. Doen. You'll need more surgery. Need pampering. You can't just plunge right back in.”

She turned her face away. “Into what, Dad? What can I plunge back into? Anyway, you're right—I
am
tired.”

A tap at the door. The nurse, with an injection. She breathed slowly, and little by little the pain retreated. Leaving only the tremendous weakness, the incredible fatigue.

“Can you get the blinds, please? I'm going to just rest for a little.”

They rattled, and the room darkened. She closed her eyes and started to slide into sleep.

A slam echoed through the building. Or maybe she'd imagined it, but she still flinched and tensed, gasping as muscles contracted around broken bones. Just a stairwell door. Or someone knocking over a chair.

A cold sweat broke out all over her back. What floor was she on? How high? She wrung the bedrail, wondering if she could lever herself out if she had to. But then what? She wanted to be on the ground floor. She wasn't going to be trapped again. No more tall buildings. Not ever.

She kept herself from asking her father the floor number. But not by much.

 

5

Sana'a, Yemen

NESTLED
in the comforting folds of a dark blue burka, in the cigarette-smelling, too-soft backseat of the battered, rusting Nissan taxi, Aisha watched the buildings go by. They were in every tone of tan and cream and white, with such intricate, abstract carving the stone sunscreens resembled lace. A string of beads she'd bought in Mecca worked through her fingers. She sighed.

Everything had come apart since 9/11. In the world, and in her personal life. Albert didn't even want to talk on the phone, keeping his answers brief, always in a hurry to get off. Her stomach had been bothering her ever since that first long night in the cellars of the PSO. God knew plenty of bugs were going around Sana'a that tore through an American digestive system; but she suspected that wasn't all that was going on. She hadn't actually seen serious interrogation—oh, call it by its real name, Aisha—before. Maybe other federal agencies had, the notorious Other Government Agency, but not hers.

She'd heard the stories, of course. Few security forces in the Mideast had scruples about “enhanced interrogation,” as the messages from Washington were terming it. The same techniques the Yemenis had employed with the old man and, since then, others the political security service had rounded up, based on his confessions.

She didn't believe she was acting against her faith. These monsters were not fighting for Islam. But that didn't mean that the names the old Salafi had called her didn't tinkle down inside her like shattered glass and lodge there, grinding and bleeding. And how could you trust what someone said when his only motivation was to stop the pain? Beating people to a pulp, then expecting what came out to be the truth—why did you even need a trained investigator?

She shook her head and blinked out the window. No interrogations were scheduled for tonight. The madness of the first week had died down, but the threat remained of an attack against the embassy. Yes, Aisha, she reminded herself,
that
had come out of the interrogations. The DCM had called them in. Find out who's behind it, he'd said. Help the host country target them.

She'd been through one embassy attack, in Ashaara, and had no desire to see another. Whatever it took to stop it, that she would do.

No huge Suburbans or army escorts, either. Not this time.

She was going to investigate this her way.

*   *   *

CROSSING
the street in black embroidered
sharshaf,
the traditional women's outer garment, only her eyes showing. Veiling wasn't law in Yemen, as it was in Saudi or Afghanistan these days, but most conservative women veiled, and it had its advantages. Such as going into the city without sirens and flashing lights and an armed escort. She was armed—the SIG was tucked into a shoulder holster, not her purse, in case the latter was snatched—but other than that, she looked like any of the dozens of veiled shadows shopping, visiting, towing a crying child to a clinic. Not all were in black; the older women wore cover-ups in bright reds and blues. Spindly, dark Yemeni men in white robes and suit jackets strolled by in couples, talking, hand in hand, each with a dagger stuck into his belt. She went down an alley, hooked back to cross her own trail. No one looked at her twice. She walked two blocks at random, making sure she hadn't been trailed, before turning onto the street she wanted.

Like most residential lanes in the old city, this was extremely narrow. No car could make its way back here, so a medieval quiet reigned. The filigreed windows towered up and up, so close on either side someone could reach out from one side and touch the fingertips of one leaning from the other. It would have been picturesque except for the universal habit of pissing in the street, which made her hold her breath whenever the wind died.

She'd met Hiyat through the mosque. She lived in the Old Town and had invited Aisha to come by one afternoon. Yemeni women did chores and shopping in the morning, then got together in the afternoons to drink cardamom tea and eat honey pastries and talk. A
tafrutas
was the same as what her grandmother in Detroit had called a hen party, and the gossip was the same: whose husband was doing what, where to get the best cut of meat, whose son or daughter had gotten in trouble or was about to. The language changed when the women were alone together; got earthier, more colloquial. But she could nearly always follow it, and when they got too deep into dialect, Hiyat had interpreted. Aisha had shown them pictures of Tashaara and her mother and aunts, and of course they had to see Albert's picture too. It had been fun, a break from investigative routine. She'd looked forward to coming again.

This time when Hiyat opened the door, though, she looked surprised. It only lasted for a second. “Aisha, my American friend. Come in, you are welcome here, peace, peace.”

“Peace to you, girlfriend. Hiyat, you look so lovely!”

It was true. Slim as Aisha could only remember being as a teenager, her long, dark hair pulled up to reveal a startlingly pale, long, graceful neck. Hiyat was only in her thirties but already had two boys nearly full grown. Four other women were sitting on the carpets in the diwan—a living room, sort of—the TV blasting music, toddlers fighting in the corner. Aisha said,
“Salaam tahiyah,”
and they nodded back; but they too looked taken aback. She recognized Gaida and Jalilah, who dropped their gazes to cups of tea and plates of cookies balanced in hennaed fingers. Here no one covered up; they were in colorful dresses, some quite stylish. Aisha pulled her own
sharshaf
off and took the low stool Hiyat showed her to.

The shyness didn't last. Soon they were offering her perfume and dates, and asking whether America was going to make war on Muslims. For sheltered women in a backward country, they seemed well informed. They knew the hijackers were Saudi, for one thing. “Salafis,” Gaida said darkly. “They come here and make trouble. We were good believers long before they came, spreading new ideas. They're as bad as the Jews.”

“As the Christians,” one of the other women said, one Aisha didn't know. Hiyat introduced her.

Aisha didn't ask any questions. She just wanted to hear what they thought. She politely declined to have her hands hennaed and, after an hour, decided it was time to move on. It would be a long walk to the mosque. She rose and gathered her skirts, said her good-byes.

Hiyat went to the door with her. Gave her a hug. “You are the only American I know. Tell the others we're not all terrorists.”

“They know that.” Aisha hugged her back, but wasn't sure her words were entirely true.

Her stomach cramped as soon as she was out in the street, making her sorry she hadn't visited the toilet in Hiyat's. She looked left and right, but didn't see anyone who showed any interest in her.

The narrow, twisting lanes of a bread souk reminded her less of Arabia than Central Asia. Vendors' cries filled the dusty air. Men on buzzing, smoking Suzukis bumped past, threading between pedestrians. She walked on ancient cobblestones worn level by centuries of sandals and cart wheels. Pastries and flatbreads lay gathering flies and dust, only cursorily protected by sheets of thin plastic that flapped and crackled in the wind. Cheek bulging with qat, the methamphetamine-like leaf some Yemenis chewed all day long, a vendor bent to serve a man in a red ball cap from a coconut-juice dispenser. The gloomy, mustached president scowled down from billboards, from dusty banners. Schoolboys ran past shouting, playing tag; a tortoiseshell cat with a stumpy tail stalked something under one of the barrows.

Again she circled back, eyeing the alley she'd emerged from. No one she recognized, no one following her.

She decided against another taxi and walked for nearly a mile through the fading afternoon, striding along, heavy purse bumping against her hip. Men's gazes slid off. She kept glancing at her watch. Hardly anybody ever arrived on time, but as the teacher, she owed it to her students to be there at the dot of six.