The Command (22 page)

“Interviewed how?”

“The usual. Drill 'em and grill 'em. I gave them a good working over.”

Aisha had been there. He'd had one of the kids crying. But none had confessed to knowing anything about the missing weapons and explosives.

“These are military members? Marine or navy?”

“Two marine, two navy. Their NCO's a gunnery sergeant. He reports to a supply corps lieutenant. You probably know him.”

“The NCO, the OIC, they have access?”

“Not alone. It's a two-key system.”

“So you've got absolutely nothing?”

“We've just started, Commander,” Aisha told him. She kept her eyes on the road. More than once, she'd caught him staring at her. “We did the first-pass interviews, that's all. We'll let them stew a little and call them back in.”

“Well, don't let it go too long. Anybody you like?”

A storekeeper second had avoided her eyes all through the interview. He was cool, didn't know anything, but he'd shifted on his seat to avoid confronting her, even when it meant facing Diehl. He was from Detroit. His name was Childers, but the others referred to him sometimes, she'd noted, as Jaleel.

“There might be one,” she said, glancing at the rearview. The cross street to the palace was coming up. She got in the right-hand lane and signaled.

“Who? Which one?”

She didn't want to answer that, both in case she was wrong, and in case she was right—in case they had to take the man to court-martial. Better to keep what they suspected to themselves, until they were ready to bring charges. And as it turned out, she didn't have to, because a faultlessly uniformed constable in white gloves was swinging
open the gates to the palace. “Here we are,” she said brightly, and pulled in.

THE ministry was new and white, like every government building on the island. When she'd got here she thought at first it was like coming home. More like home than Harlem, with the kids yelling and throwing dirty snowballs when she and Zara walked to the madrassa. Here she heard Arabic in every shop and street, accented differently than the Nation taught it, but still the fluid lovely language the angels spoke, laced with compliments and whimsy and the familiar words of the Prophet, peace be upon him. An administrator from the Awali Hospital had asked if he might take her to lunch. She'd daydreamed about leaving her job and living here.

So sometimes it felt like home. And then there were times when it didn't, not at all.

Like when she'd been bending over a dead body, and children had thrown mud clods at her. Calling her “American devil.” How had they known? Of course, of course, the huge white car.

Hooker got out, and she started, recalled from her thoughts, and followed the men inside.

THE conference room had been furnished by the Swedish consortium that had built the palace. It was all blond laminate and recessed lighting. There was a back-projection screen for briefings. Steaming silver urns and trays of cookies and succulent Iraqi dates waited on a side table. The servants, or waiters, or whatever they were, were straightening chairs and offering coffee and tea. Hooker went straight for a paunchy, sharp-bearded Arab in a spotless silk thobe. Aisha got coffee, checking out the room as she sipped.

The men wore uniforms, business suits, or the white robe and headdress. She was the only woman. The Bahrainis had a few in their charities and their labor and social affairs ministries, but they didn't appoint them to the security organs.

Bahrain was an Arab state, but it had hosted first the Royal Navy and then the U.S. Navy for many years. The air force had operated from the base at the south end of the island during Desert Storm. To the tourist, the island looked free and open, with its glamorous hotels and night clubs where liquor flowed. To business, it was a haven. When it became obvious the island's oil reserves were running out, the government
had created a free-trade sector that pulled shipping companies, banks, and merchants in from all over the Mideast.

She hadn't learned any of this from Diehl. He didn't care about anything outside the walls of the base. In fact, he'd made cracks about the locals she hadn't liked at all, although she hadn't said anything. No, she was just the good little Muslim girl… She'd picked it up talking to the locals, mainly wealthy Sunni women she met in town, in the stores, when they made
salat
together in the little prayer areas in the malls. She loved to shop and buy clothes for her mother and her aunts, and there were beautiful modest fashions here and what else did she have to spend her money on? The women were surprised to hear she was American, and outspoken in setting her straight. The rest she got from her own reading, the local papers,
Al-Hayat,
the
Gulf Daily News,
the
Middle East Economic Digest.

For the less well-off residents, especially the Shi'a, things were more tightly run. The State Security Court could detain persons without charge or trial for up to three years. The Security and Intelligence Service had hundreds of agents and there were rumors of torture. But the emir hardly ever executed anybody, enjoyed a joke, and—she'd heard from a flight attendant she ran into one night at the Al Hamra— enjoyed the women he invited to his personal beach, far from the eyes of ordinary Bahrainis.

A stir at the door announced a stiff, graying man in a British army uniform. Major General Sean Gough had headed the SIS for twenty years. He surveyed the room, talked briefly to a dark-browed man she recognized as the liaison from the U.S. embassy, and thus, she figured, the CIA chief of station.

Then he saw her, and immediately came across to bow over her hand. Cold blue eyes studied her from a foot above her head. “Sister Aisha,” he said in fluent, Saudi-accented Arabic.
“Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatu.
How good of you to join us again. You and the commander are most welcome.”

“Thank you, General.”

“Unfortunately I have an unpleasant issue to raise. Either with you, or—perhaps—”

“What is it, General?”

Hooker, back from his conversation with the Arab. He didn't look happy to see them together. “Good morning, General.”

“Commander.” They shook hands. Gough said, in fluting British English, “About to remark to your charming young protégée. Hearing unsettling things about the security on your base. More precisely, the
security of your explosives. Not good news for those of us responsible for keeping the lid on the kettle, so to speak. Eh?”

“Sir, I'd like to—”

“No, no, Commander. Not in front of the natives. Call you this afternoon. A cozy little chat. Eh?”

Gough winked at her and turned away. Aisha could tell Hooker was furious just from the set of his fingers on the china cup. She moved away in case it should shatter.

To bump into Major Yousif. The SIS man smiled down.
“Ya Naqueeb Ar-Rahim,”
he said, addressing her by a police rank.
“Ahlan, ahlan.
Welcome, welcome, a happy occasion. It seems to be written we are to meet again and again. Why do you think that is?”

“Maybe because we're both cops.”

“You're the first Arabic speaker the Americans have sent us. Fortunately for us, the CIA has not yet reached that level of expertise.”

“They just haven't told you,” Aisha said. “Pretending you're stupid is an old American trick. You'd be surprised how well it works.”

He chuckled. “Oh, no. I've been taken in all these years.” He didn't have an unattractive laugh, like some men. She noted he didn't wear a ring, either.

“Not to ask questions where they're unwelcome, but how well do you get along with the Americans? Or I should say, the other Americans?”

“Fine. We're used to looking different, different religions and nationalities.” This wasn't exactly what she thought, but you didn't tell a host country security agency anything that didn't reflect well.

“That's hard to imagine. We Arabs have what I have often thought of as a centrifugal tendency. But then, our colonial history, the boundaries we were left with … and then the tragedy of Palestine. So you're both Muslim and American.”

“I don't see why I can't be both.”

“You must have your own opinions.”

“I certainly do.”

“May I ask what they are?”

She decided to change the subject. “What did you find out about the man who died in the Quraifa? You were supposed to invite me to the autopsy.”

“I'm sorry. It slipped my mind you wanted to be there. It was routine. What did I find out about him? Nothing, I'm afraid. That's why I never got back to you. The passport was false.”

“The Bahraini license?”

“Real, but not his. Reported lost some time ago.”

“So the decedent found or stole a driver's license, and used that name to get a base ID?”

“The base ID was false, too.”

She said, surprised, “It was real. I checked it.”

“A high-quality forgery. Clearly so, under ultraviolet. We weren't sure either, until the lab report.” He caught her expression. “Correct. Someone on the island is making forgeries good enough to fool your gate guards. We're trying to find out who. We're still trying to find out who this man was, too, and why he was here.”

“Will you keep me informed?”

“Always.”

She thought, And yet you didn't tell me any of this until I asked. But then someone was saying, “Shall we take our places?” and she nodded and went back to sit with Hooker and Diehl.

Alternating between English and Arabic, the security minister read a long address from the crown prince. It was about popular participation and economic reform, and how necessary these were if the country was to move to a higher level of productivity. How citizens had to motivate themselves through education and innovation to build a modern society. How governmental officials had to set an example in morality and sincerity and be prepared to make sacrifices… She tuned out and stared out the window at the fingernail of distant blue visible far out over the nodding palms and the roofs of the city.

The boilerplate over, one of the departments briefed on a resurgence of unrest among the Shi'a. Israeli suppression of the Palestinians had put hate for Israel and America in the air. Here that translated into resentment of the ruling family. He warned everyone to be alert for riots and possibly new acts of terror. Next was a report from what seemed to be an unofficial Saudi liaison, or perhaps he was official— everyone seemed to know him and he wasn't introduced, so she couldn't tell. His report was about the spread of religious extremism, but his definition of “extremism” seemed vague. The first part was in English; the second, Arabic. She could follow most of it, though she missed a word here and there. The Arabic segment was about “poly-theist” missionaries, and how to “welcome” them—actually, how to block their activities and find pretexts to ask them to leave the country. The Saudi seemed concerned the Bahrainis weren't taking the problem seriously.

Aisha caught Gough's glance, evaluating how she was taking it. She
smiled back. Caught a blank look on the face of the CIA man—it was going past him—a politely interested expression on the face of the security minister.

For a moment she tried to imagine the tightrope
he
must be trying to walk. On one side, literally, they were right across the causeway, the Saudis. On the other, the British and Americans. The Iraqis threatening from up north. The Iranians, coreligionists of the Shi'ite majority, across the Gulf. On one hand, bazaar fundamentalism, whipped up by the repression and house-bulldozings in Israel. On the other, pressure from the steadily educating middle class to democratize. Beneath it all, the knowledge that soon the oil would stop flowing and Bahrain would become again a barren, waterless desert.

No, she didn't envy him at all.

LIKE all Arab meetings, when it was over everyone scattered instantly. In seconds the room was empty. Diehl tilted his watch. “Half the fuckin' day shot in the ass.”

“You don't need to use language like that, Bob.”

“D'you copy any of that? What they were sayin'?”

“Most of it.”

“Anything worth hearing?”

“It'll all be in my report,” she said.

Hooker came back from talking to a heavyset white man she thought was FBI. “Let's go. We've wasted enough time here.” He still looked furious, and she knew it was about the missing explosives and guns, and even more, that Gough knew about them. Which meant he had sources of information inside the base.

“What were you talking to the general about?” he wanted to know as soon as they were in the car.

She said, startled, “To Gough? Nothing. He was just showing off his Arabic.”

“Did you tell him about the thefts? And that Yousif, you had your heads together for a long time there.”

“I did
not
tell them about the thefts, or anything else. Do you really think I would—”

“Bob, you were there, did she say anything?”

Diehl stirred uneasily. “Uh—they were talking Arabic—”

“I did
not
say
anything
about that,” she said. “That is internal need to know and I would
never
discuss it with anyone off base. With
anyone.
If you don't believe that, sir, we'd better have a private talk.”

“No, no, forget it.” He sat back.

She jerked the car around, almost sideswiping a taxi, so mad she could spit. At both of them; Diehl hadn't even pretended to defend her. The security officer muttered something, some halfhearted apology, but by then she was taking deep, even breaths, forcing it down, down. To where his instant assumption—that because she spoke Arabic, because she was Muslim, because she was black, she was not to be trusted—could not hurt her at all.