The Bible of Clay (9 page)

Something in the man's voice and look led the veteran desk clerk to break the profession's rules.

"All right, yes, they were going to the airport. This morning they changed their departure date for Amman. Their plane is leaving in about an hour. They came down late, the lady was delayed.
..."

Gian Maria ran outside again, quickly flagged down a taxi, and jumped in.

"The airport, quick!"

The taxi driver, an old Roman, looked in the rearview mirror and proceeded to drive very deliberately to Fiumicino, despite the desperation he must have seen reflected in the face of his fare. But as a priest, Gian Maria couldn't bring himself to chastise the man.

Once at the airport, he scanned a monitor to find the flight departing for Amman. Then he moved as quickly as he could through the crowds toward the gate.

Too late. All the passengers had gone through customs already, and the carabiniere refused to allow him to pass.

"They're friends of mine! I couldn't say good-bye—I'll just be a minute. For God's sake, let me see them!"

The guard was unmoved and ordered him to step back.

Gian Maria wandered through the airport, not knowing what to do or whom to confide in. He knew one thing only: He had to speak to that woman, wherever she was, whatever it cost—even if he had to follow her to the ends of the earth.

As they exited the plane onto the boarding steps, they felt the slap of heat in their face and inhaled air thick with the smell of spices. They were home again, home in the East.

Ahmed, carrying a Louis Vuitton bag, preceded Clara down the steps. Behind her, four men, scattered throughout the queue of passengers, moved forward to keep her in sight, trying to go unnoticed.

Ahmed and Clara had no problem passing through customs. Their diplomatic passports opened every door, and Amman, however much it had sworn loyalty to Washington, had its own foreign policy, which did not include confrontations with Saddam Hussein, even if his policies were not always to Jordan's liking. The East was the East, after all, and the otherwise very Westernized Jordanian royal family were experts in the subtleties of diplomacy.

A car was waiting for the couple just outside the terminal, and it drove them to the Marriott. It was late, so they had dinner in their room. There was still tension between them.

"I'm going to call my grandfather." "That's not a good idea." "Why not? We're in Amman."

"And the Americans have eyes and ears everywhere. We'll be crossing the border tomorrow. Can't you wait?" "Really, I can't. I feel like talking to him."

"God, I'm tired of you doing whatever you feel like. You should be more prudent, Clara."

"I've spent my whole life hearing that I ought to be more discreet, that I ought to be more prudent, and nobody ever told me why."

"Ask your grandfather," Ahmed shot back nastily.

Clara did not respond to that. The truth was, she wasn't sure whether she wanted Ahmed, or anyone, to confirm her intuitions, which had only grown through the years. There were so many loose ends. . . . She'd been born in Baghdad, like her mother, and spent her childhood and adolescence between that city and Cairo. She loved the two cities equally. It had been hard for her to convince her grandfather to let her finish her studies in the U.S. She finally managed, even though she knew it made him terribly uneasy.

She'd loved California. San Francisco was where she'd grown into a woman, but she'd always known she wouldn't stay and live there. She missed the Middle East—its smells, its tastes, its sense of time—and she missed speaking Arabic. She thought in Arabic, felt in Arabic. That was why she'd fallen in love with Ahmed. American boys seemed dull, flat to her, even though they'd taught her all the things that were forbidden to her, as a woman, in the East.

"I don't care," she said finally, reaching for the phone. "I'm going to call him."

She rang the front desk and asked to be put through to Baghdad. It was several minutes before she heard Fatima's voice. "Fatima! It's me, Clara!"

"My darling girl, how wonderful to hear you! Let me call the master."

"He's not asleep?"

"No, no—he's reading in his study. He'll be so happy to hear you." Over the phone, distantly, she could hear Fatima calling Ali, her grandfather's manservant, telling him to call the master. And then he was on the line. "Clara, my dear
..."
"Grandfather
..."
"You're in Amman?"

"We just got in. I'm dying to see you, to be home again. To be honest, Rome didn't go very well." "I know." "You know?"

"Of course I know, Clara." "But how?"

"It surprises you that I know things?"

"No, of course not, but
..."

The old man sighed wearily. "Where's Ahmed?"

"Right here."

"Good. I've prepared a wonderful welcome for you both. Now let me speak to your husband a moment."

Clara held the telephone out to Ahmed, and he took it and spoke for a few seconds with his wife's grandfather. Alfred wanted them back in Baghdad as soon as possible.

First thing the next morning, Clara and Ahmed were in the lobby, waiting for the car that would drive them to Iraq. Neither of them noticed the four men watching them, scattered around the busy lobby.

The night before, the men had sent their report to Security Investigations, straight to Luca Marini. So far, everything looked perfectly normal. Crossing the border presented no problem to Ahmed and Clara, though it did to Marini's men. They'd decided to divide up into pairs and hire drivers to take them across. It hadn't been easy— only Jordanians with family in Iraq, or smugglers, had any interest in going into Iraq.

The drivers had been recommended by the hotel, and Marini's men had managed to persuade them by paying very generously—and sweetening the deal by offering them a bonus if they never lost sight of a green Toyota SUV that had left the hotel ahead of them.

There was not much traffic on the highway to Baghdad, but enough to let them see that it was a conduit for just about anything imaginable.

It was night when they reached Baghdad. One of the cars followed the Toyota to a neighborhood in the city, while the other headed for the Hotel Palestina. They'd been told that was where most Westerners stayed, and they were presenting themselves as businessmen, however suspicious it was under the circumstances that anyone would be going to Baghdad on business.

The green SUV pulled up in front of a pair of wrought-iron gates and waited for them to open. Marini's men didn't stop. They now knew where Clara Tannenberg lived. The next day they'd scope the place out more thoroughly.

The two-story Yellow House, named for its always freshly-painted golden hue, stood proudly in a wealthy residential neighborhood, in the midst of a well-tended garden. Once the residence of a British businessman, it was now guarded by a complement of unseen, heavily armed men in the employ of its current owner.

Fatima was waiting in the entry, sitting in a chair, dozing. The sound of the car door woke her. Clara ran to her and hugged her tight. The woman was a Shiite and had cared for Clara since infancy.

Fatima had been very young when she'd lost her husband and had to go to her mother-in-law's house to live, where she was never welcome, never well treated. But she bore her destiny without a word while she raised her only son.

One day her mother-in-law sent her to the Yellow House, where a foreign gentleman lived with his young wife, an Egyptian woman named Alia. And there Fatima had remained. She served Alfred Tannenberg and his wife, accompanied them to Cairo, where the couple had another home, and above all took charge of the couple's son, Helmut, and then their granddaughter, Clara. At first, the little girl had been frightened of Fatima's black clothing, but she grew used to it and soon found in her the sweetness and affection that her mother lacked.

Now Fatima was an old woman, who had lost her son in the terrible war with Iran. She had nothing now but Clara.

"My girl, you do not look well."

"I'm tired."

"You should stop traveling and start having children—you are growing older, you know."

"You're right, Fatima," Clara replied, laughing.

"Ay,
my girl, be careful that what happened to me doesn't happen to you! I had just one son, and when I lost him I was left alone."

"You have me."

"Yes, my darling, I have you. If I did not, I don't know what there would be to live for."

"Oh, Fatima, don't start. I just got here! Where's my grandfather?"

"He's resting. He was out all day, and he came in tired and worried."

"Did he say why?"

"No, just that he didn't want any dinner. He shut himself up in his room and ordered that he not be disturbed."

Clara knew that Alfred's orders were to be respected by strangers and family members alike. "I'll see him tomorrow, then," she said.

Ahmed went to his room while the two women talked. He was tired. The next day he would go to his office in the ministry, where he had to present a report on the conference in Rome. What a disaster! But he was privileged. He couldn't forget that, no matter how nauseating it was to find himself in such a position. For years now he had been uncomfortable, first when he discovered that his family belonged to a dictatorial regime's elite. But he hadn't had the courage then to renounce the privileges; he'd preferred to blind himself to the consequences of his status by believing that his loyalty was to his family, not to Saddam. Then he had met Clara and Alfred Tannenberg, and his life had fallen irretrievably into the abyss. He had become more corrupt than he'd ever imagined. And he couldn't blame Alfred. Ahmed had voluntarily entered Alfred's organization, voluntarily become Alfred's heir, knowing exactly what that entailed. If his position vis-a-vis Saddam was solid because of his own family ties, he became untouchable when he joined forces with Alfred.

But it was becoming harder and harder for Ahmed to live with himself and even more so with a woman like Clara, who refused to see what was going on around her, living in ignorance rather than facing the truth about those she loved.

Finally he had come to the realization that he didn't love her anymore—perhaps he never had. When they'd first met, in San Francisco, their Arabic heritage united them. They spoke Arabic to each other, had mutual friends in Baghdad, were both archaeologists, and enjoyed the same feeling of freedom and adventure in the United States, although they both missed their country and their people. Clara had had money—a great deal of money—in her checking account, and he himself had more than enough to live comfortably in a spacious loft from which he could watch the sun rise over San Francisco Bay.

Eventually, they moved in together.

When Ahmed's father visited him in San Francisco, he ordered Ahmed to marry Clara. It was a marriage of many conveniences, and Ahmed's father sensed that things in Iraq were about to change. Among diplomats, information flowed freely, and it was clear that Saddam was no longer favored by the U.S. administration. One had to think about the future, and so Ahmed married the grateful, immensely wealthy, spoiled, and overprotected girl.

Clara came into their bedroom, and Ahmed jumped.

She launched right into him. "How can you not say hello to Fatima, Ahmed? You walked right past her without saying a word." "I said good evening. I have nothing else to say to her." "You know what Fatima means to me." "Yes, I know what she means to you." "What's wrong with you, Ahmed?" "I'm just tired."

Ahmed's tone surprised Clara. Lately her husband had been behaving as though he was always upset, irritated with her, and as though she was a burden increasingly hard to bear.

"I know you, and I know something's wrong," she pressed.

Ahmed stared at her. He felt like telling her in no uncertain terms that she didn't know him, that she'd never known him, and that he was sick of her and her grandfather. But it was too late now to escape. "Let's go to bed," he said, turning away. "We both have to work tomorrow. I have to go to the ministry, and I've also got to get started right away on serious preparations for the excavation. Everything I heard in Rome only confirmed there will be a war, even if no one here wants to believe it."

"My grandfather does."

"Yes, your grandfather does. Come on, let's go to bed. We'll unpack tomorrow."

Alfred Tannenberg was in his study the following morning with one of his Egyptian business partners, Mustafa Nasir. They were in the midst of a heated argument when Clara came in. "Grandfather . . ."