Way of Escape (26 page)

“Didn't think of it that way before,” said Russ, his stomach suddenly calming down. “Yeah, this is like a vision quest. Never been on one, really, maybe this is what it is.”

“Seems like it to me,” said Freddie.

A taxi horn beep-beeped out in front of the cafe and Freddie pointed with his jaw, “You gotta go.”

“Yes,” Russ Snow-from-Night-Sky agreed, “I gotta go. Take care of my place and my jeep, okay?”

“Sure, ‘course I will. You be careful. Send me a postcard. Or two.” The tall Cheyenne clasped Russ's arm in a mutual farewell. “I envy you. I know inside here,” he clapped the palm of his right hand onto his left breast, “you're doin' the right thing.”

“Thank you, Fred. You're a good friend.” Russ pulled away and grabbing up his big suitcase and shoulder bag, dashed out the door to the waiting taxi.

The night flight from Miami to Frankfurt passed uneventfully for the baron. He awoke as the tires screeched on the tarmac. He had only a two-hour wait until the connecting flight left for Stockholm, enough time for some breakfast and a good cup of German coffee. Before the seat belt sign turned off, he had his gear from the overhead and was ready to disembark. The attendants were too busy with some small children at the back of the plane to notice the big man who was leading the passengers to the airlock.

As the gate extension clunked into place and the airlock opened, Carl-Joran wondered if he needed to call his son again and he decided it wasn't necessary. The boy would be anxious enough and Krister certainly would not dream of being late arriving at the airport. Unless the car broke down or the snow closed the roads or…No, he thought, everything will go fine. Then he would be at the castle and he would face Bonnie.

About the time Bonnie and Trisha were peeking out from under their snuggly duvets and facing an icy cold morning, and Russ's first leg of his journey was landing him in Geneva, and Carl-Joran was pacing back and forth in the waiting area for the SAS flight out of Frankfurt, the vizier of Sheikh Sultan i-Shibl's compound was adjusting his gold turban as he hurriedly strode toward the women's dining area. He had been rudely awakened not twenty minutes before by a guard who had been told by the women's matron that the first wife and oldest daughter had not appeared for breakfast and neither responded to knocks on their doors.

Rida had brushed off the guard with a they-probably-went-riding-very-early.

“Yessir,” the guard replied, not caring one way or another, and ambled back to his patrol duties. But deep inside, Rida knew he had slipped up. He had not looked in on those two last night. He felt that awful sinking feeling in his gut that prefaced something bad, very, very bad. He brushed some lint off his coat, the simple white one as he did not want to bother with all the buttons on the purple one, and composing himself into the strong ogre his role called on him to be, he went into the women's dining area.

The babble of women's voices stilled instantly. Second wife held her breath and looked at the pillows where Jani and Zhara should be sitting at the long table, and weren't. Rida did not say a word. As he turned to leave, he heard a couple of the women giggle. They had no pity, those women. It was as cruel in there as out on a battlefield, as cutthroat as politics. The women showed no gratitude at all for their luxury and protection. He shook his head in censure. What further proof could there be of the inferior personality of women? He hurried down the hall, past the many bedrooms, and to Jani's room.

He called out her name, as he was supposed to do, and when no answer came, he knocked and waited. Nothing. He pushed open the door. The bed had not been slept in, the room was a disaster—clothes and shoes pulled from the closet, tossed on chairs and the bed. At Zhara's room, he didn't bother to call out her name or even knock. He went directly in. Neither had her bed had been slept in. Most telling was the astounding chaos of clothes and tipped over potted plants and ripped rags and piles of shoes. For one fraction of a second, he had hopes that the women had been taken against their will. That idea was squashed quickly. They had been taken all right, but they had gone in disguise and they had gone most willingly. This would cost him his job, perhaps his life. He was doomed.

Thinking on his feet, he decided that before awaking the sheikh, he would mobilize the guards to canvas the merchants and travelers outside the compound wall. Some mitigation in his punishment could come from obtaining every bit of information possible before laying his neck on the block. At the top of his lungs, he shouted for the guards, then he pulled the cell phone from his pocket and called his lieutenant of security.

Within an hour, he knew who had come and gone from the compound yesterday and last night. No motor vehicles, except for the grocery transport, had entered and left the compound. Three caravans—two merchant groups with both jeeps and camels and one nomadic Bedouin group with a camel and donkey caravan had departed. None of the merchants and no Bedouin had entered the compound, or so yesterday's gate guards reported. The last caravan to depart, as night was falling, was the nomadic Bedouin and they had struck out across the roughest terrain toward the northeast. He very much doubted that two very spoiled and pampered women would be riding camels into that territory with wild Bedouin. Thus it had to be one of the two merchant groups with jeeps.

Back in the compound, he went to his office. For almost fifteen minutes he debated whether to tell the sheikh first or call Commander Yusef. Finally, the worried man raised his voice to Allah and begging forgiveness, he also cried, “
Allah u abha!
” (God the magnificent!) hoping such praise would save his butt. Then he called Commander Gurgin Yusef.

Tidewater struggled out of a very intense dream that included powerful strobe lights, hovering helicopters whose rotors buffeted him in the backwash…

“Wake up, Marion!” Arletta, his wife ordered in her most demanding tone of voice. “You have a call coming in.”

“What the hell time is?” he mumbled, sitting up, running his hands across the bald top of his head. “Uhhhh.”

“Quarter after midnight.” She pulled her old terry cloth robe around her with one hand while she pushed the phone into his face with the other. “Your secretary?”

“Fuck. Why did she get a long distance call meant for me? At midnight?” Tidewater grabbed the phone, clicking the talk button as he walked into the bathroom. He took a long piss while Lily frantically explained that Commander Gurgin Yusef in Saudi Arabia was insisting on satellite surveillance now! “Wait, wait,” said Tidewater, stumbling back to sit on the edge of the bed.

Lily did not wait, she went on, “Yusef connected to us by cell phone and radio transmission that always gets shunted to me. Yusef has mobilized an elite search team and they're headed for the i-Shibl compound. He's calling from his Humvee.”

“i-Shibl. The sheikh with the daughter who was taken out of that school in Paris and brought back to Saudi. Okay. I'm with you. And?” Tidewater shook the recumbent form of his wife and, covering the mouthpiece of his phone, barked at her, “Get me a cup of coffee. Strong.”

“Get your own damned coffee, I have to be at a Republican Women's breakfast meeting at six a.m.” Arletta turned further away from her husband.

“Damn it,” the man snarled and finding he was awake enough to walk without stumbling, he headed toward the kitchen as Lily continued, “Both the mother and daughter have disappeared. The vizier, the sultan's vizier, believes they were taken away last night by a merchant caravan. Yusef is certain Emigrant Women had something to do with their kidnapping.”

Uncovering the mouthpiece, calming his voice as he fumbled for a cup and the instant coffee, Tidewater interrupted her monologue and declared firmly, “Patch me through to the commander, Lily.”

“Yessir. Shall I put it onto this phone or your cell phone, sir?”

“My cell phone. As soon as I have clothes on, I'm headed for the office.”

“What should I tell Commander Yusef, sir? About using satellite surveillance?” Lily inquired.

Tidewater punched minutes into the microwave control and pushed the start button. “Should be able to get a linkup. Tell him I'll know more once I'm in the office. I'll need the exact latitude and longitudinal coordinates. Oh, and call Snow. I want that Injun on the computers. He may be a heathen, but he's damned smart. Right? Anything else?”

Lily yawned over the phone, “No sir, ‘cept, do I get overtime for all this?”

“Yes, Lily, yes.” He clicked off the phone and dropped it into its cradle. The microwave buzzer went off and Tidewater grabbed up the coffee and headed back to the bedroom to put on clothes. Jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and his black SWAT team jacket would be best. Without compunction, he flicked on the bedroom overhead light.

“You pig,” muttered Arletta and pulled the covers over her head.

Tidewater's only consideration as he rummaged for his jeans was: should he call the Darughih of Iran yet? Or savor for a while longer the powerful man's ignorance of what was transpiring there on the Saudi desert, almost under his nose? Nothing would make Marion Tidewater happier than to dangle some EW people in front of Sadiq-Fath and out of his reach. Why not? Tidewater put on deodorant, scrubbed his teeth, and brushed the friar's ring of remaining hair. He pulled on a pair of thick socks. He found the SWAT jacket in the hallway, slipped it on, zipped it up. Found his tennis shoes by the back door, pulled them onto his feet and velcroed them shut. Leaving the coffee untouched on the bureau and the bedroom light on to deliberately provoke Arletta, Tidewater hastened out the front door to the Agency car parked in his driveway.

Dr. Legesse had her hands full. Devi sat across from her desk griping the arms of the chair tightly. “It's the same, Doc, we get them in here and then they freak out and want to go home. Fumilao is going nutso. She thinks her husband's brothers are on their way here to kill her and take her daughters.”

“She could be right, Devi,” said Halima, “you know that, you know we
never
underestimate the potential of these men for violence.” Halima leaned forward, “I thought though, that Fumilao and her daughters were doing okay, that they were ready to go with Rachel to the drug treatment center today.”

“They are,” said Devi, “Dr. Bar-Fischer will be here around noon. I mean, these girls can't be any safer than they will be up there on the hill. That treatment center was designed to keep in even the meanest Israeli Defense Force vets with posttraumatic stress and high on speed. It's very tight security.”

“Then let's take a look at what's going on with Fumilao. Is it just her,” asked Halima, “or are the girls upset too?”

“The girls are upset ‘cause the mom's upset, but only Mom wants to go home.”

Dr. Legesse nodded and rose, “Come on, we'll talk with them.”

Esie and Jo, the two Makwaia girls, sat, legs dangling, on the high serving counter in the nearly empty dining room. Another mom, with three kids, was cleaning lunch dishes from her table and getting ready to take the kids to the playroom. She glanced now and then at Mrs. Makwaia, and smiled. She knew that nothing she could say or do would help, although she had been in that exact same emotional crisis herself, back at the beginning of her stay. The doctor would help, that she did know. She gathered up her children and left as Dr. Legesse and Devi entered.

Esie, Fumilao's younger daughter, was crying, sobbing, her tiny pixie face wracked with tremulous shivers. “Don't go back, Mom, don't go back. Jo will be cut, Jo will be cut! You can't do that, Mom!”

Jo's face was of stone, her entire body seemed in rigor mortis, perhaps preparing herself for the ordeal of circumcision that she had, ever so briefly, thought she'd escaped. No words came from her. Her lips were stretched taut in fear.

Fumilao Makwaia, her stout form quaking, paced back and forth, back and forth, brushing aside chairs. “What can I do? Your father's brothers will kill me. They could kill you, kill you both. They will be so angry because I take you away. You will not marry properly, you have been taken from the family, you will be…”

“Gone!” exclaimed Esie, “Gone far away! We wanted that, Mom, Jo wants that. She doesn't want her private parts cut off. She wants to be a real woman. Don't you, Jo?” The young girl screeched, “Not like you, Mom, she wants to be a whole woman!”

Jo frozen mute nodded and at Esie's words, Fumilao shuddered, hugging herself in pain.

Dr. Legesse stepped in front of the pacing Fumilao. “Stop.”

The Ugandan woman stopped, clenched her fists.

“Sit,” ordered Dr. Legesse.

Slowly, in profound emotional turmoil, Fumilao sat on a chair. Both Halima Legesse and Devi pulled up chairs and sat next to her. Halima looked at her watch, then looked at the clock on the wall. Both read ten minutes to one. Firmly, but with utmost kindness, the very tall black doctor took Fumilao's black hands, “When you were back in the village, what happened at noon?”

Gasping for a breath, Fumilao shrugged, “Oh, it is noon in Uganda. I…I…we…go to the mine, we take the men lunch.”

“So,” continued the doctor, “about fifteen minutes ago, you suddenly panicked. The habit of going to the mines is strong, your body and mind were telling you it was time for the women to take lunch to the men. Is that right?”

Comprehension seeped into the terrified woman's soul. “Oh, oh, oh! Yes. Yes. Is that it? I feel I must go to the men, if I don't go, I will be beaten.”

“How many years has this happened?” asked Devi quietly.

“Since I was a small child, for my father, now for my husband and his brothers. Thirty years.” Fumilao shivered. “Thirty years I have walked that path to the mine, taking lunches. Here I am, I cannot go. They will be furious and they will come after me and they will beat us.”