The Command (45 page)

Who, when she sat down with him after a quick tour of the ATAC, asked her several pointed questions: how they'd gotten their initial warning, what the relationship was with the local police. He seemed more interested in base security than obscure Islamic religious groups. He didn't know anything about an Egyptian doctor who specialized in bombings.

When they were done, he'd shaken her hand and asked if at some point she might be interested in a double agent operation. She'd almost laughed in his face. It was hard enough being a female, Muslim,
and African-American, without setting loose the rumor she was working for the other side. She said politely she was still new in the counterintelligence world; she'd better not get involved in anything like that until she had more experience.

When she got back to Bahrain, Diehl put her in charge of the Anto-nia case. “Antonia” was their name for an unknown infant found in a Dumpster at NSA. The worst part of it was no one had noticed the baby until the outside contractor had been about to dump the container. Fortunately she was still alive, if dehydrated, and while the little girl recovered at Ibn Sina Medical Center, Aisha was supposed to find out who'd carried her for nine months and then gotten rid of her the day she was born. Bob also wanted to push hard on the drug front before the next ship arrived. She spent a lot of hours sitting in her car outside the stables. A good location for hashish dealing; sailors and marines headed there to ride a “real Arabian horse” after they'd done their bar crawling and bought their rug. And of course there was the usual caseload of thefts and bad checks.

That was what she was doing during the day. In her off hours, she'd decided she needed to find out more about the stranger who'd brought enough hatred to Bahrain to turn four young men into suiciders. Because—surprise—she wasn't hearing anything back from Major Yousif. Except for today's showcase briefing, which had left them all knowing nothing they hadn't known before.

She'd started by just walking around the Makarqah. Like all neighborhoods, she figured, everything depended on who knew you. Families lived above their stores. Grandparents lived with the family. These people were Shi'a, the despised majority in the Gulf Arab states. The ruling families—the al-Sabahs and al-Sauds—considered them superstitious, lazy, and, like as not, disloyal. They were also suspicious of outsiders. She'd shown Dr. X's photo to a few people he might have come in contact with: the local grocer, the barber, the shoe repair shop. Unfortunately, all she had was a visa photo, too small to show detail. It could have been any middle-aged Arab male with a tired look, a sagging eyelid, mustache, and glasses.

Tonight she hoped to make a little more progress.

BY the time she got out to the Makarqah it was dark. It was also Friday evening. Bahrainis weren't the most pious people she'd ever seen, but they kept the sabbath. Along the King Faisal the hotels were sparkling, beacons of the nightlife the foreigners went to.

She smiled to herself, realizing she'd thought just that:
the foreigners.
As if she, herself, was one of the islanders. But that was how she saw herself sometimes, in this strange inverting mirror of a country. Where sometimes she felt more at home than with her own countrymen.

But that didn't mean she felt any sympathy with those who used Al-Islam as an excuse to kill. She parked between the Regency and the Heritage Center and joined the throngs drifting to and fro under the streetlights that lined the corniche. Out here it didn't look all that different from Ocean City or St. Augustine. But as she threaded into the alleys, the light fell away. Here tea shops were filled with men. The murmur of televisions, of women singing came from open windows on upper floors. Men turned as she passed, and she realized this was the first time she'd gone into the Shi'a quarter after dark. And that no other women were out, even in their black burqas.

She shifted her purse, feeling the mass of the loaded pistol. She wasn't afraid. But there were a lot of men out. Some looked like they'd been there all day. Like the brothers in Harlem hanging in front of the stores. She caught the smell of hashish. The gleam of a lifted bottle.

If she'd worn a burqa, she thought, they wouldn't even see her. If she'd been white and blond, they'd follow her with their gazes, but she didn't think they'd actually do anything. But now an older man called out, “Where are you going, whore?” and her hand tightened on her purse strap. She pretended she didn't hear, pretended she didn't understand the slurred Arabic.

So these were the followers of Ali. Those who flogged themselves bloody. Their strange festivals and traditions, like Mazzam and Hazara. Their superstitious veneration of their infallible imams. She debated turning back, but the next moment steadied herself. Some jerk had called her a name. That was all. And there was the street she wanted.

Then she remembered. She
had
been here at night: in the back of a truck, in black gear. Then these shops had been shuttered cages. Now they were thronged with men. Their eyes went past her, then jerked back. They gathered at doorways, scowling. She was glad to see the shoemaker's shop. Above it the windows of the apartment were …
lit.

She blinked. Someone was up there.

She stood clutching her purse, wondering what was going on. Could it have been rented again, in the two weeks since the raid? Space
was
at a premium here. Crossing the street, she pushed open the door.

In the heat of the day, businesses often closed; then stayed open
into the evening. Especially during Ramadan, but to some extent through the hot season. After a moment someone coughed in back.

The woman was swathed from head to toe in the black folds of her abaya. Dark eyes examined her. Aisha had spoken to a man before, the cobbler. This might be his wife, his mother, his sister—it was hard to tell from the eyes alone. She spoke first, hastily, in Arabic.
“Kaaf haa-lik,
how are you?”

“Praise be to God, I am well, welcome.”

“I spoke to your… husband before, perhaps he mentioned it to you. I work with the American police, on the naval base. Can you tell me—have you ever seen this man?”

The woman took the photo unwillingly. Glanced at it, then back into the recesses of the store. Returned it, saying nothing.

“I see you have new tenants upstairs.”

“They're from the neighborhood.” The woman glanced over her shoulder again.

The cobbler came from the back, wiping his hands on a rag. “Hello again,” he said, in English. “American policewoman. My wife has not seen this man you look for. Why you come back?”

“I see you have new tenants.”

“Family. No more I rent to strangers.”

“I just thought you might have remembered something else.”

He just looked at her, and she understood that if she hadn't told him she was with the police he might have told her more. “Well, excuse me, then.”

She was at the door when the woman said something, too low for her to hear. And the owner said, “Wait. Wait. You are here alone?”

She turned, surprised and a little suspicious. “Yes. Why?”

“You should not be alone,” the woman said, still in Arabic. Clear classical speech, too, as good as Yousif's or Bucheery's. “Wait for me. I'll take you back to the souk. And I have something for you to put on. That we may go safely in the night.”

THE world looked different from behind a veil. Now none of the men looked twice. She and her companion moved through the descending night as if invisible. She'd become one of the shadows. Unseen, but also undisturbed.

She made as if to turn the corner, but the woman took her arm. “Not that way. This.”

“Shukraan.
I was turned around.”

The narrow streets twisted and turned. She realized she was lost. The woman glided like a cat down alleys no broader than their outstretched hands. They smelled of dust and piss. Around her throbbed the intimate sounds of close-lived lives, babies crying, radios, the rhythmic thump of someone beating out dough or laundry. She was walking very fast ahead through a particularly close warren of passages. Then Aisha lost sight of her, black cloth vanishing into black night, and she ran to catch up, suddenly scared.

She ran full length into the men who stepped from the shadows. They smelled of cheap cologne and sweat and cigarettes. They weren't much bigger than she was, but they were much stronger. Three, maybe four of them, and before she could scream they had her hands twisted behind her, her mouth sealed by a rough palm, and she was being dragged backward. She heard the rasp of a wooden door, the squeal of unoiled iron. The ground dropped away in worn, rounded steps, and she smelled old spices, cool stale air, stale breath.

Hands at her face, stripping off the veil. Then binding the black cloth, twisted, over her eyes.

A light clicked on. She couldn't see what it illuminated. She felt a corner against the back of her knees. “Sit down,” a voice growled.

She obeyed, trying to find a seat behind her with her bound hands before she trusted her weight to it. She couldn't stop panting. Her heart was going very fast, and she wanted to pee.

“Allah is great,” she said tentatively, into the waiting silence.

“Indeed He is, blessed be His name. You are truly Muslim?”

“And have been since birth.”

“Yet you work for the Americans.”

“I
am
an American. There are many American Muslims.”

This seemed to be news to her captors. She listened hard to the whispering. She couldn't tell how many were in the cellar with her. She fought for control, trying not to dwell on being alone, trying to tell herself they couldn't just cut her throat and bury her beneath this dusty basement earth that her shoeless foot kneaded gritty beneath her toes.

Obviously the cobbler had picked up the phone as they'd left. But who
were
these people? Her first fear had been Egyptian Jihad, like the suicide boaters. But the Jihad was Sunni. Not likely they'd have adherents among the despised Shi'a.

“Why are you asking questions in the Makarqah?” A different voice from the first.

“I'm trying to find out more about the man who attacked our warship
a few weeks ago. He called himself Doctor Fasil Tariq al-Ulam. I have a photograph.”

“We know who you mean. He was working with bin Jun'ad.”

“With … That's right.” Interesting, because as far as she'd seen in the local press, not one word had been released about local involvement in the incident. She took a deep breath. “And who are you?”

“You don't need to know that. All you need to know is what we're going to tell you.”

“Then I'm listening.” She bent her head, both to show submission and to glimpse something over the blindfold if she could. But the black cloth was impenetrable.

“Tonight you will go to the new madrassa east of the Japanese embassy. Across from the Salmaniya Gardens. Do you know where that is?”

“I know where the Gardens are. At the roundabout.”

“Near the Old Palace,
eiwa.
The street door will be open. In classroom number eight, you will find something that will interest you.”

Madrassas were Islamic schools. She didn't understand what was going on, but if it meant they were letting her out of this basement alive, she'd agree to anything. She was beginning to guess who these rough-speaking men were: local militants and sympathizers orbiting the Party of God. The Hezbollah were certified terrorists. Iranian-backed. But according to the Defense Intelligence threat updates, it had been some years since they'd carried out a verifiable action. There was speculation Iran was tapering off its support.

All that was conjecture, though, and it left her head the instant she was jerked upright and the light snapped off. “Step up,” the rough voice commanded, and she stumbled over invisible stairs back up into the alley. Where she was told to wait for ten minutes before taking her blindfold off.

When she finally dared to reach up and unfasten it, she was alone. Her purse lay at her feet. The good news was her badge was still there. The bad, that the SIG was gone.

By the time she got back to her car her tears were crumbs of salt on her cheeks. She rubbed them off, threw the chador in the backseat, and drove straight to the roundabout in the center of the city.

THE madrassa was the same futuristic, kitschy, Saudi-financed white concrete she was beginning to really dislike. A figure stepped from the
entrance as she approached, trotting off into the night. When she tried the handle, it was unlocked.

She hesitated in the entryway. Fighting the urge to go back to her apartment and chain the door forever. Then sucked air past a self-mocking smile. Her job was too boring? She never got to do any real counterterrorism?

She took a breath and eased the door open. An empty hallway. She tiptoed down it, easing her feet down on the carpet, until she came to the door with the number eight on it. Looked inside, warily, then switched the light on.

Just a classroom. No pictures on the walls. Only a table of the elements. She slid the drawer of the teacher's desk out. Chalk. Pencils. A photocopied sheaf that turned out to be the answer key for a chemistry final. Yeah, there were probably people who'd kill for this. But they were all in high school.

Then her gaze steadied. Remembering a surge suppressor in a wall socket, a blank space on a tabletop.

A Sanyo desktop, not new, not old, plastic case slightly yellowed. It was set up with a battered-looking monitor. She looked underneath. It was plugged in.

Using the eraser end of one of the pencils, she turned the monitor on, then the computer. It powered up, but froze on the Sanyo screen. Which meant the boot sector on the hard drive was erased or inoperative.

Which in turn meant either that it was broken or that whoever had sat at it last had reformatted it.