The Prisoner's Wife (23 page)

Shawn was watching the young man. “Quite a speech,” he said at last. “Ahmed al-Masri, right? I know who you are. You speak very good English.”

“I was brought up in Manchester.” Now the man smiled through a black beard peppered with gray. “Manchester, England.”

“I've heard of it,” Shawn said. “Like I've heard of you.” He nodded at Danielle. “This lady's husband is Muslim. Maybe that's why you should help us.”

Danielle said to Samir, “Please. I've not seen Darius for almost two months. I think about him just—I wonder how he is—”

“It's normal,” said al-Masri.

“I worry that he's being hurt. Wherever he's held—”

Again, there was silence.

Finally, Samir said to Danielle, “It's true, your man is here. I believe he came by small plane. Gulfstream, I think. From Morocco.”

“From Fes?”

“Indeed. I heard.”

Danielle was writing fast on a page of her diary. “Has he been hurt?”

Samir considered her. He shrugged. “Why else do they send him to Egypt, if not for that? Did Mr. Maguire not tell you? It is what we do. It is, perhaps, our expertise.”

“Can we see him?”

“I have no idea. You know what they say. It is not my department.”

She tore out the diary page and passed it to Samir. “Could you please give that to Darius? Please?”

“I have no idea if I can do that,” Samir said. “I do not have access to all parts of the prison. Where Americans are boss, I cannot go. Besides, I have heard your man will be moved again. You know—these people, these frequent flyers—they do not stay long in one place.”

“If Darius is moved, where will he go?”

Samir shifted his attention from Danielle to Shawn. “You, sir, you will know where, more than I.” He hesitated, glanced at his companion, then said, “Peshawar. Often, for them, Peshawar is next stop.”

Al-Masri, checking the time, stood suddenly. “Till tomorrow,” he told Samir. “The same time.” To Shawn he said, “One day, you must tell how you know me—and what you know.”

“I can tell you the last bit part,” Shawn said. “Embassy bombing in Dar.”

Al-Masri smiled. “A rumor,” he said. “There was not ever proof.” As he spoke, there were two echoing shots, in rapid succession, shockingly loud in the building's enclosed space.

Before Shawn could move, Samir disappeared. Al-Masri went the other way. Shawn followed Samir out the door, extending an arm to keep Danielle inside the room. She ducked under it and came into the corridor, running toward the stairwell. Looking over the metal balustrade Shawn saw, three floors below, that the robed man who first opened the street door had pocketed his pink phone. Fitting a silencer to what Shawn thought was a Baikal semiautomatic, the man moved into a position from which he could target al-Masri as the running man came toward him down the winding stairs. Seeing the marksman below, al-Masri bent double, made for the building's outer wall, opened a long window, hesitated a long moment looking down, then jumped. Danielle, coming fast down the stairs behind him, paused at the open window, looking out. From behind Shawn came the sound of booted feet. Turning, Shawn saw a tall man running, holding a familiar weapon. A reflex action, Shawn stretched out a leg, forgetting the knife wound from Fes. Pain shot through him, thigh to spine. The tall man, moving fast, tripped. Unable to break his fall, he went down like a falling tree. A crack of bone as his shoulder hit concrete. The handgun, a 1911, skidded across the floor.

Shawn, too, found himself lying flat, nursing his injured leg. Grabbing the pistol, face to the fallen man, he saw this was an operative he knew: Gordie Slade, a onetime Langley colleague. There was history here, too. Gordie had started off disliking Shawn until Shawn briefly dated Gordie's twenty-year-old daughter. Then dislike turned to hatred.

CIA assassination squad in Egypt, Shawn thought. They sure as hell kept that quiet.

“Gordie,” he said, trying to stand, “what the fuck are you doing?”

Slade eased himself from the floor, gently flexing his injured arm.

“Give me back my gun.” Shawn held the weapon out of reach. “Double tap, if you want to know.” Slade touched his temple. “Boom, boom.”

Shawn passed back the weapon. “Double tap on who?”

Slade moved to the iron balustrade. Looking down to the lobby, three floors below, he cocked the Springfield. “He's a terrorist. Name classified.”

“If it's Ahmed al-Masri,” Shawn said, “he's not down there.” He pointed back toward Samir's apartment. “Al-Masri went out a window. Onto the roof, I'd guess.”

Gordie headed down the stairs. Over his shoulder he said, “I could arrest you, Maguire.”

Shawn stood, massaging his leg. “For what?”

“Obstructing me.”

Shawn followed down the stairs, limping a little. “Slade,” he said, “if you want to try that, you need to be a lot smarter than you were when I knew you.”

*   *   *

Outside the apartment building, Shawn looked for Danielle. There was no sign of her. Or of Ahmed al-Masri.

Which, Shawn thought, was not in any way a good thing.

 

27

CAIRO, EGYPT, 30 MAY 2004

Somewhere in Cairo, Shawn believed—somewhere in this multifarious city—Ahmed al-Masri held Danielle hostage. That was how he figured it as he stood undecided, at a loss, in the narrow alley of Qasr Badawi. The thought of kidnap made him momentarily nauseous. Memories came floating up: memories he'd tried to forget. A missing friend, a hostage, death by decapitation.

A severed head, startle-eyed and staring.

He stood for a moment on the sidewalk outside Samir's apartment building, shaken, fearing for Danielle, helpless amid the noise and color and jostle of the market.

In another town, he might have called the police, but here? Samir was a cop, and what could he do? Shawn had no faith in Samir's ability to rescue Danielle, or anyone else.

The police sharpshooters—if they were police—had vanished. As had al-Masri and Danielle. Shawn had no idea which way they'd gone.

Behind him, Samir came around the corner of the building, looking to left and right: an animal emerging, fearful, from its burrow. “Mr. Maguire,” he said. He came close, his voice low. “You know, sir, what this means? Americans know I had Ahmed in my apartment? If my people learn of it—”

“What?”

“I will lose my job,” said Samir. “Why?” He answered his own question. “Because he is on the list, Ahmed. Your list, our list. Terrorist.”

Shawn grabbed Samir's arm and pulled him from the alley, through the teeming square. “Tomorrow, son, you worry about your job. Right now, we're keeping Danielle alive.” He looked around him. No traffic came this way. “We get to some road, we catch a cab.”

“Sir? Cab to where?”

“Where al-Masri lives.”

“I don't know where he lives.”

“Hundred bucks says you'll remember. Which way? Where's a cab?”

Samir, pointing, headed down a muddy track beside a litter-filled canal. Shawn followed, his heart beating faster than it should. Ignoring his injured leg, he ran, overtaking his guide. Coming around a bend, he found the narrow path blocked by a slate-topped billiard table—God knows how it got there. Four city kids were in midgame: one now lining up a shot on the tilting, still-perfect baize. Between a clay-brick wall to the left and the canal to the right, there was no way around. Shawn leaped onto the table, scrabbling for a foothold, hurting his leg, as the baseball-capped boy shot for a pocket. The table rocked. Shawn spread his arms, trying to balance. The table slid, smooth and sidelong, to the mud-brown water.

As it sank, Shawn hauled himself from the canal, fending off skinny boys. Shouting and laughing, they attacked him with their cues. Back on his feet, wet and stinking, Shawn ran east. When he looked back toward Samir, he saw the boys weren't following: Knee-deep in mud, they tried to lift the massive table. Beyond them, another figure. Even at this distance, Shawn recognized the fallible marksman with the pink phone. In one swift movement, the boy nearest the bank angled his cue between the gunman's legs. Shawn saw the man spread his arms as he dived, yelling, toward the canal. There was a single shot, then a second.

Someone screamed, a high wailing yell.

Shawn turned a bend in the track and ducked beneath a bridge. Boys, sniper, and table were lost to sight. “The way that guy shoots,” he called to Samir, “the boy should live.”

Samir said nothing. He had no breath left for speech. He pointed ahead as they reached El Gamaliya. The street here was filled with yelling men, carrying signs. Though he read no Arabic, Shawn understood, from crude images, they were protesting the price of bread on which, he guessed, they lived. Toward the edges of the crowd, uniformed police clubbed any head they could reach.

Shawn waved to the driver of a black-and-white taxi brought to a stop by the riot. When Samir caught up, shielding his face from fellow policemen, Shawn pushed him into the car.

To the taxi driver, he called, “Wait.” To Samir he said, “Brother, if you don't remember al-Masri's address, believe me, I'll tell your boss what you were planning with that guy. Don't say you were shooting the breeze. I know who he is. We both know. Like you said, al-Masri's on your list, he's on our list. He's roadkill. He organized the fucking embassy hits. Our guys died.”

To the driver, Samir said, “El Sagha.” Then something else, in Arabic.

The man drove, draping his wrists over the wheel, the way a wolf might, if a wolf were driving a cab. As the car turned right, passing Salah ad-Din, Samir said to Shawn, “Ahmed denies he was involved in those bombings.”

“Tell the cops, not me.”

“I am a cop.”

“Okay. Tell your boss. Tell Mukhabarat. See what your job's worth. See what your life's worth. My guess, al-Masri's holding Danielle as a hostage. What do you think?”

Samir shrugged. “Maybe. Try her mobile phone.”

Shawn stared. “Say what? This guy's al Qaeda. Works with Zawahiri. He's not going to leave her with a phone.” He flicked through speed-dial numbers on his own phone and pressed the call key.

He listened, then said, “Jesus, Dani, talk quiet, okay? You're in his apartment? Listen, we know where you are. He's doing what with a laptop?” He listened, then said, “Crushing it? Okay, forget that. Not our problem. We're on our way to pull you out. Cops may get there first. If there's shooting, don't do any brave shit. Stay down. Run, if you get a break. Keep cool. Love you.”

It was the second time he'd said that.

Breaking the connection, he told Samir, “Get the driver to go faster.” Then he said, “You're right. He's careless, al-Masri. He's destroying his laptop. Tough work. Dani's still got her phone.”

“Not careless,” Samir said. “Frightened for his life. Those men in my building have nearly killed him. Maybe they will follow. It could be they know where he lives. Today, the man might die.”

“Who gives a damn?”

“Your girl might die.”

“If she does,” Shawn said, “someone else will, too. Maybe him. Maybe you.”

The taxi stopped. Samir pointed. “Here is the place.”

Shawn looked out at a tall gray concrete-block building, each balcony hung with white garments and bright-colored cloth, stirred by a breeze from the Nile.

“Which floor?”

“Second.”

“What vehicles do you guys use when you're not in patrol cars?”

“Police? Ford Transit.”

“Like that one, parked there? Okay. Tell the driver, make a U-turn. Tell him, stop real close to that door. Then tell him, wait. He doesn't move. Got it?”

Somewhere, a muezzin called for midday prayers.

On the far side of the road was a makeshift mosque, hardly more than an alcove set back from the street. The building, once a warehouse, was now in ruins: a mess of rusting steel. Off the street, someone had used mud bricks to build a low barrier, four feet high, closing off part of the industrial ruin. Men ran to enter this place of prayer. Shedding boots and shoes in the street, they knelt behind the wall. All were barefoot, foreheads touching ragged prayer mats.

Samir spoke to the driver in Arabic. The man obeyed, turning his taxi, parking close to the curb. Leaving him with sheaves of worthless pounds, Shawn left the car, keeping low. Moving as fast as his limp allowed, he approached the street door of al-Masri's building. Inside, the ground floor hall was white tiled, blank and empty, the only decoration an urn filled with fading strelitzia flowers. A black-clad figure—a woman—sat unmoving on the lowest step of a concrete stair. Under a hood, in shadow, her face had the shape of a man's. Expressionless, she watched Shawn as he passed her, running up the stairs. On the second floor he stopped a headscarfed maid carrying a bundle of towels.

“You speak English?”

With her free hand, the woman held up a close-spaced thumb and forefinger. “Little.”

“I want a man with'—Shawn gestured—“long hair. Beard, like this—black, with gray.”

The maid pointed behind her, to the corridor's second door. Shawn took a breath. He hit the woodwork with his good shoulder and bounced off, bruised.

When they do that in movies, he thought, the goddamn door breaks.

He hit the door again. This time, the jamb did give: The door swung wide. Danielle lay prone on the uncarpeted floor—her feet bound, mouth gagged. As far as Shawn could see, she was uninjured. When he released her, she took deep breaths, sat up, and pointed to a blue-painted inner door. “He's in there.”

“Alone?” She nodded. “He's got the laptop?”

Cocking his Makarov, Shawn approached the blue door. Danielle spoke with sudden urgency. “God, Shawn—get down. He's got—”

The upper half of the blue door splintered, shattered by a spreading hail of shells. A window fractured; glass, like a sheet of ice, slid to the floor and cracked in two. Standing lamps blew to pieces; on a mantelpiece, a liter of vodka vaporized in a mist of spirits. Shawn crawled back across the floor, away from the shattered door. Grabbing Danielle's wrist, he dragged her to the corridor outside. He was trying to catch his breath. “I guess,” he said, more to himself than to her, “the end of that sentence was a ‘Kalashnikov.'” At a limping run, he went for the exit stairs, looking back to check that Danielle kept pace. “Something I never got used to,” he told her, “is being shot at with submachine guns.” Forgetting his injured leg, he went down the concrete steps three at a time. “Move,” he said. “We need to get out of here.”