Haven, page 20
“Kids do dumb things all the time," she muttered.
“Beg pardon?”
“Never mind.”
“Cherokee, child," said the black man named Roy. "They're going to want a doctor to examine you. You sure none of them, like, did anything bad?”
“....The blond man just hit me. That's all.”
Nadia heard the brief hesitation and saw the hand that went to her breast as if to hold the top of her swim suit in place. She saw that the girl was remembering.
“Cherokee, honey? You'd best tell us now. The doctor will know if...if anything's changed.”
But that was not what Cherokee was remembering. In her head she was hearing the Englishman's voice as if from a distant dream. It was after he hit her...he was talking to a camera...using words like "slut" and even "adulteress" but why would say such things about her? He said to the camera that she shamed her father... "that good man, Avram Bandari..." but don't worry about that any longer because, "the slut has now answered to God.”
“Was that man going to kill me?" she asked quietly.
Nadia shook her head. "He was sent to bring you back. By your uncle, I'm afraid.”
“Uncle Gamal? But what good would it do? The only way he'd have a claim over me is if both my parents were...”
“Cherokee...the police. One thing at a time.”
Cherokee stared at her. Her cheeks became hot.
“Don't even think it," Nadia said quickly. "Your mother is fine; she'll be here very soon; we've already arranged for her tickets and papers.”
“But my father. He's not coming with her?”
“Your father is...not free to leave yet. Your mother will explain when she gets here.”
Cherokee looked at her, and then at Jasmine. She thought she saw something in Jasmine's eyes.
“The woman who saved me....I want to see her again.”
“See her how? We don't know who she is.”
“But she'll call you. She said so. I'll talk to her then.”
“Well...we'll see." Nadia straightened. "But for now you need to put her out of your mind. There's no mystery woman, there's no Englishman, no cabin. There's only those two boys who grabbed you and the farmers who drove you back home. Cherokee, honey, are you able to do this?”
“I'll do it. If I don't, she won't call.”
Elizabeth had returned to her home on Marsh Drive. It was getting quite late and there was much left to do. She tried to push Cherokee out of her mind.
She backed her red Bronco out of the car port and replaced it with Martin's Toyota. She took a few minutes to hose down the tires to clean them of off-island mud. Next, she used a spray cleaner to wipe the passenger seat area to dissolve any fingerprints the girl might have left. From the well of the back seat she took Pratt's Nike tote. Her own blue duffel was beneath it. Because of its color she almost failed to notice a piece of blue feather from Cherokee's hat band. She picked it up, fingered it, and put it in her pocket. She would flush or burn it with a few other things.
Inside, in her bathroom, she removed her dark lenses. She next changed her clothing to the dress she'd worn earlier and put all her dangley junk jewelry back on. She took Pratt's camcorder from the Nike tote and stuffed the bag into her duffel. It was foolish to keep it, especially those photographs, but she could not bring herself to destroy them just yet.
Martin, she knew, should be finished with his work and will be on his way back in Pratt's car. He will probably call her on the Englishman's cell phone and ask her to meet him somewhere on the island. He'll realize that Cherokee has described Pratt by now. It won't take Halaby and the rest long to realize that her description fits a guest named Harry Wheeler who checked out of the club that same day. It would not do, therefore, for them to see Martin driving up in a car with the same plates as Wheeler's. It was enough that those two guards had already seen him showing an interest in Pratt's car.
What did Cherokee call them? The Nusaybah Society. The name had rung a distant bell but she hadn't been able to place it until now. It's a woman's name but unlike Aisha or Fatima it's one seldom given to daughters these days. The original Nusaybah was an early Muslim heroine who fought at Mohammed's side in several battles. She saved his life at least once. Had an arm lopped off by a sword but survived. Muslim men don't name their daughters Nusaybah for fear that they'll become insufficiently meek. And it did, thought Elizabeth, seem a militant name for anything so passive as a safe house.
Her bedside phone rang. It was Martin.
“Our friend arrived safely?" he said when she answered.
“Uh-huh. Where are you?”
“Long term parking at your airport. That's where I'm leaving our other friends car.”
“Twenty minutes," she said and hung up.
She would fetch him in the Bronco and drive him back here, then have him take his own car and get over to the Players Club. She would like, this one time, to ask him to stay but he'd best get back and see what's happening there. She could do that herself, come to think of it. She could drive to the airport by way of Cordillo. If she were to see more flashing police lights she would seem to be just a curious passerby who looked in to see the reason for all the excitement. Martin won't mind waiting a few minutes more.
Once again she went out through the East Sea Pines gate and turned onto Cordillo Parkway. Approaching the Players Club, she did see police cars but their strobe lights this time were quiet. She wet her lips and pulled into the lot. There were three cars in all, two of the State Troopers and one of the Sheriff's Department. Near them was a van with the logo of The Island Packet on its side. A female reporter and a young male photographer were trying to question a deputy. The deputy said little. Mostly, he shrugged. A number of guests who had taken a late swim were watching from behind the heated pool's hedge. A half dozen more stood nearer the police cars. Some were chatting with one of the troopers. More shrugs.
All at once two more troopers emerged from the entrance at the top of the Players Club ramp. They were talking to a woman who Elizabeth recognized from the clippings she took from the cabin. She looked very tired but not overly distressed. In fact, just now, she managed a smile as she touched one officer's arm. The officer, who had chevrons on his sleeve, seemed more sympathetic than grim. He whispered something into Nadia's ear then walked down the ramp to where the reporter had been waiting.
Some nearby guests were craning their necks to hear what the sergeant was saying. Elizabeth could hear nothing from where she had parked but she could almost tell what was said by their manner. The sergeant made gestures that seemed to convey that some misunderstanding had occurred. The reporter shrugged and nodded as if to agree that nothing worth telling had happened. The reporter and photographer went back to their van, the photographer dismantling his lights as he walked.
Elizabeth watched the van drive off and approached a forty-ish couple who'd been listening. "What happened?" she asked. "Do you know?”
“Just some kid, some girl," the man answered. "According to the cop she was out drinking beer and got into an argument with some other girl. She got beat up and was afraid to come back here.”
Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. "The press and three squad cars for that?”
“Well, she missed her bed check and that woman up there panicked.”
The man's wife frowned, annoyed at his dismissal of a justified concern. "A lot of these kids at the tennis school are rich," she told Elizabeth, "so the woman in charge of them was afraid she'd been kidnapped.”
“But the girl did turn up.”
“They took her to the hospital a few minutes ago. An assistant instructor went with her. She didn't look bad, though. She had a nice pair of shiners but seemed mostly embarrassed. They'll check her out to be sure.”
“Kids," clucked Elizabeth.
“We all did out share of foolish things," said the woman.
Elizabeth wished them a pleasant stay and returned to her Bronco. She was just a bit startled by the story. As she'd hoped, there was no mention of the girl being taken or of anyone trying to lure Nadia off the island. But it didn't explain how an adolescent cat-fight led to the bridge being blocked and to police cars converging on a farm outside Bluffton. The police aren't stupid so there must be two stories, this one concocted for public consumption so as not to alarm the tourists. She would need to call Nadia, sooner rather than later, to find out how much the police had been told.
Nadia Halaby, quietly furious, had returned to her second floor office. On the wall were a dozen framed photographs of women. Only two were still living; most of the rest had suffered terrible deaths as the price of trying to help their Muslim sisters. She wondered how soon her own photo might join them.
She sat at her IBM desk top computer and brought up the file marked "Nusaybah." She typed out a message and selected the addresses to which it would go by E-mail. The message was short, it was only two questions. "Are any of your people on or near this island? Do you know of a woman called Martina?" She watched for ten minutes as the answers came in and crawled across the bottom of her screen.
“No one from here. What has happened?”
“Not us. Don't know a Martina. Do you need us?”
“Not from here. Have you checked with our sister societies?”
She replied that the matter was under control. She thanked them and called up a new group of addresses, two of which were in England and France. Their responses were similar. She sat for a while, drumming her fingers. At last she touched the keyboard and called up the file marked "Bandari." She scrolled past Aisha's biographical data to the section relating to next of kin. Avram Bandari was the first name she saw. She had known for three weeks that he'd been shot to death in Cairo. Leyna, Avram's wife, her old friend, called and told her. She asked, however, that she say nothing to Aisha but to please be all the more vigilant. Leyna said she was coming. She'd tell Aisha herself. The healing will be faster if they wipe each other's tears. But she should have arrived by midweek at he latest. Nadia dreaded the thought that it might now fall to her to tell Aisha that neither of her parents would be coming. And that still another photograph would now hang on her wall.
Also listed was the number of Avram's Swiss lawyer. She thought about faxing him with her suspicions but that was pointless until she was sure. Further down, at the bottom, was the name of Avram's brother, Gamal.
“But forget about him," Leyna had told her when she first enrolled Aisha two years ago. "Don't ever call him as next of kin.”
“Avram and his brother are not close, I take it?" It struck her that she had never set eyes on Gamal. No photographs of him in Avram's house, no visits, not even on Leyna's birthday one year at a party that half of Cairo attended.
“He is never to know where she is," Leyna told her.
Nadia told her she had no wish to pry. "But you came asking us to provide a safe haven for Aisha. I need to ask; a safe haven from what?”
Aisha's mother took a breath that was weary and sad. "Gamal hates my husband just for being what he isn't. He hates me for merely being Avram's wife but he turns into jelly if I smile at him. He's weak, he's corrupt, and I think he's delusional but that's not what makes him so dangerous. While he lines his own pockets in his government job he has also been playing the Islamist card by pandering to the worst of that bunch. Don't ever let him get his hands on Aisha.”
“This is all the more reason I should know about him. Get me a picture so we know what he looks like. For now, let's start with his name and address.”
Nadia, at the time, was not especially alarmed. The Mid-East had no shortage of men like Gamal but, thank God, it had more men like Avram. The Gamals of that world are the predatory elite. They are men who are strictly out for themselves but they try to hedge their bets against the Islamists coming to power. Some do it by squirreling money abroad and some by trying to reserve box seats at home in any new fundamentalist regime. She'd known men who each day rub their foreheads with sandpaper to develop the callus the devout get from praying. But for two years she'd given little thought to the brother until Leyna called to say he'd been killed. A week after that she got a call from the network to say that Leyna herself was in hiding. This was after an ugly confrontation at the funeral and especially after Avram's will was made public. The network heard rumors that Pratt had been hired but assured her that Leyna was safe. She had fled to Alexandria and would leave the country as soon as new papers could be brought to her.
Nadia's fingers were drumming again. In her mind was the image of Aisha's battered face and of the Englishman who must have been Pratt. A part of her blamed herself for what happened. She knew that she should have been more vigilant.
“Nadia? There's a phone call.”
She had not heard Roy knock. "From the network?”
“From a woman. She says you'll know who she is.”
TWENTY
Elizabeth had called with Pratt's cellular phone as she drove Martin back from the airport. Martin had objected, he said let it go, but that was before she let him look at the tape.
“What exactly have you told the police?" she asked Nadia.
“Martina? Who are you? Who sent you?”
Elizabeth almost smiled at the use of that name. She ignored these questions and repeated her own. As Nadia answered she held Pratt's phone so that Martin could hear the story she had told, an account that involved drinking beer with two boys...who took her for a ride...wouldn't let her out of their truck...she poked the driver in the eye so he stopped and beat her up...no, they touched her but that's all they did. The police, said Nadia, were annoyed, they were skeptical, but inclined to leave well enough alone.
At this Martin mouthed, "Good advice" to Elizabeth. At the part of the story that spoke of a farmer who supposedly drove Cherokee home, she looked at Martin with a questioning shrug. Martin knew where that came from. He mouthed the word "Pratt.”
“From a farm out near Bluffton?" Elizabeth asked Nadia.
“Yes, the Wiggins farm. You were there?”
“No, we weren't, but someone was hoping you'd be. I gather you're worth a lot of money.”
“That someone...who called here...was he Cyril Pratt?" Nadia said the name as if she were spitting.
“Was is correct. He's gone now.”
“There were two men with him. I hope you will tell me that they're all more than gone.”
“I will tell you that the three are no longer a concern. Do you know about Cherokee's parents?”
The line went quiet. "Leyna too? How?”
Elizabeth told her what she'd seen on the tape, that her skull had been crushed by the uncle. She repeated in a mix of English and Arabic what had been said between the mother and the uncle. Her account was interrupted several times by soft moans. Nadia had to swallow before she could speak.
“Martina...if you'll meet with me...if we can just talk...I swear on my life that I would never identify you.”
“How is Cherokee doing? Is she holding up well?”
“She is made of good stuff. She'll be fine. But she wanted to talk to you if you did call. She'll be very upset that she...”
“There will be no more contact." Elizabeth cut her off. "We'll be out of the country by morning. But if you let anything else happen to that girl, you might see me once too often.”
Elizabeth broke the connection.
“Done with your usual sensitivity," said Martin. "What country, by the way, are we going to?”
“You're going, not me. To wherever your Maria is waiting for you.”
“Maria would at least have let me finish my dinner. I left a full glass of wine on your table.”
“Martin, is there a Maria or not?”
He hesitated, then sighed. "There is for me somewhere, I hope.”
Elizabeth drove in silence staring ahead, past all the landmarks that were part of her new life. Nothing seemed to look quite the same. At a light she came up behind a blue Ford convertible like the one that her Doctor friend, Jonathan, drove. It was not his car, it had Michigan plates. But she wondered if she'd ever walk and talk with him again, have lunch with him again, play golf with him, go dancing with him or whatever. And at the moment, sadly, she didn't much care. What she wanted at this moment was a thing she couldn't have. She wanted to be with Cherokee Blye. To be there to hold her when she learns about her parents. To walk with her, talk with her, afterward. he wanted to be with a brave little girl who knows at some level what she's capable of and who thinks that she's wonderful all the same.
“Martin?" She touched her hand to his arm.
“Here's your knife, by the way. It will need a good cleaning.”
She ignored the Jambiya that he placed on her lap. "If you'd like to stay over at my house tonight...”
“You'd best get some sleep." he told her.
“What I'm saying...there's no need for you to be in your room. No one will care now who's there and who isn't.”
Kessler knew what this was from other nights in their past. He knew what it wasn't as well. And she confirmed it.
“I...would not be much good for you," she said staring at the road, "but if you'd care to stay I would have no...objection.”
Kessler took her hand and touched it lightly to his lips. "I will tell you," he said quietly, "what is good for me tonight. What I want is to see you take that hot bath you mentioned and bring in your glass of wine with you. After that I want you to fall sound asleep. That's what would be good for me tonight.”
Her eyes became moist. "I won't sleep, I don't think.”
“Then I'll be there to talk. Or to maybe play chess or backgammon with you. When you want me I'll be lying out back in your hammock. I'll teach you the names of some stars.”
She was silent again for several long moments.
