Haven, page 21
“You're a good man, do you know that?" she said to him at last. "I mean, look at your life, all things that you've done, and you're still a really good man.”
“Elizabeth...”
“What's wrong with me, Martin? Why do I keep hating?”
He didn't answer because she asked the wrong question. The question that was really in her heart was more like, "Why do I have feelings for a young Muslim girl and how is it that a Muslim admires me of all people?”
There's no irony in this. It's a question of need. As for how to stop hating, the girl, Kessler feared, would not be much help in that either. This is even if to see her again was not out of the question. That girl is about to be told about her parents. She will learn to hate the way Elizabeth learned. With Elizabeth it began with murdered parents as well.
“You're better than you know, Elizabeth.”
“How am I better? In what way.”
“You'd better give me Pratt's cell phone and case. I'll throw it in someone's lagoon, not yours, along with his personal effects.”
“Answer me, Martin. In what way am I nice?”
He patted her knee. "I'll tell you while I'm helping with the dishes.”
The call had left a chill down Nadia's spine. This woman, this Martina, was as cold as a grave and she had ended with a threat that Nadia resented even though she knew well that she deserved it. And tonight or tomorrow she must break Aisha's heart. Roy, whose true name was Ahmad, had listened. He came to her chair where she sat at her computer and he hugged in a way that was not Islamic but the hug gave her strength all the same.
“Do you think she did kill them? All three?" she asked him.
“Oh, they're dead. I just hope she hid the bodies real good. We don't want some dog digging up Pratt's body and trotting along with a hand in its mouth. But on second thought, she didn't have much time. Maybe she still means to do that.”
“Still do it when? She said she's leaving the country.”
Roy grunted. "That is what she said.”
“Well...why do you doubt it? They've done what they seem to have come for.”
A thoughtful frown. "If she's not from around here, not from the sisterhood and not even Muslim according to Aisha, why should she care what you told the police?”
“So she wouldn't get stopped at a roadblock?”
“Yeah, but why would that matter if nobody knows what she looks like? Ask me, she wants this to blow over.”
Nadia stared at him. "You're saying she lives here.”
“I'm saying she might. Either way she was here long enough to watch Pratt. If she knew where Pratt and the others would take Aisha, she must have had him under surveillance. She might have wanted Pratt for herself for some reason. But if that's true, why wait until he took Aisha and then have to bring her back here? Why wouldn't she just go out to that cabin and put a few holes in his head?”
Nadia wasn't sure she was following. But Roy, like Sam, in their lives before this had learned the workings of dangerous minds. That last was what Roy would have done.
“I don't know," she asked him. "Why wouldn't she?”
“Lots of people on this island. They come from all over. My guess, there's more than just you worth a bounty. I'd say she spotted Pratt and was keeping an eye on him. I'd say she wouldn't have bothered Pratt as long as it's not her he's after.”
“But she did, Roy. Why?”
The big man shrugged. "This is reaching, I know, but I wonder if she didn't know Aisha already. I wonder if that's why she couldn't show her face.”
The phone made her jump. Nadia snatched at it hoping that it was Martina again, calling to say she would meet after all. But the call was from Jasmine. She said that the doctor was finished with Aisha. She's fine and can come home but she should have an armed escort. She asked that Roy or Sam come pick them up.
“I'll do it," said the man who's Muslim name was Ahmad. "I want to hear more about this friend of hers anyway.”
He went out and Nadia was alone with her computer. On its screen, highlighted, were the names of Aisha's parents. Avram and Leyna seemed to pull at her eye; it was almost as if they were trying to speak. "Take care of her, Nadia. Tell her about us but don't say we suffered. Tell her that we're both now with God and we're happy. But tell her that our spirits will be with her as well. Every day of her life she should know that we love her. Every night while she sleeps we'll stand guard at her bedside.”
She would tell her these things and hope they give comfort. It was much what Nadia's dear father had told her on the day when breast cancer took her own mother's life. But for now she did not need to talk to ghosts; she did not need to haunted by names on a screen. She reached for the switch to turn the thing off when her eye found a name at the bottom of the list. The uncle, that bastard, Gamal. At this moment he's probably waiting in Cairo for word that his niece and his dead brother's fortune were his to use as he pleased.
On an impulse that she knew was better resisted, Nadia picked up the phone at her elbow. She punched out "OO" and asked the operator who answered to connect her with Directory Assistance for Cairo. A few minutes later - fast service for Egypt - she had the number of his town house on the Nile Corniche and another for his office at the Ministry of Development. It was then that her better judgment took hold. It was, after all, not yet morning in Cairo. To call him, she realized, would serve no useful purpose. She had enough on her mind as it was.
But her mind taunted her with a picture of Gamal, his fat belly rising beneath silken sheets. In Cairo the chants of a thousand muezzins would soon be calling the faithful to prayer. Gamal wouldn't hear them. Those men never do.
All their windows are sealed against the street din of Cairo. He'll wake when he wants and rub his forehead until it's pink so that everyone will think he's been praying on a rug and will know that he must be a good Muslim. After that he will look into his mirror and smile because he thinks he is soon to have all that he's coveted.
Nadia's fingers, as if they had a will of their own, began working the buttons of her phone. She listened to static and the ghosts of other voices and then the harsh rasp of an Egyptian phone ringing.
“Yes...yes?" came the voice. "What has happened?”
He had answered in English as if he'd expected the caller to be speaking that language as well.
“You're expecting Cyril Pratt? Well, he's dead, you coward, you miserable pile of shit.”
“What? Who? What...what?" was all he could stammer.
“They're all dead. All three. All three of them died after telling us everything, you murdering hypocrite, you sole of a shoe. We have people in Cairo who watch everything you do and they'll know if you send any more. But you won't have time, you diseased and putrid pig, because now it is you who will be hunted. Oh, we're not going to kill you, at least not at first. First we will disgrace you because we have the tape that shows you crushing the skull of your brother's good wife. It convicts you out of that brave woman's mouth and it tells how you stick your limp cock up boys asses. I think before we kill you we'll cut that off first and the hand that murdered Leyna after that. We'll let you live with a stump where your right hand is now until it's time to send the rest of you to hell.”
She heard only a squawk before she slammed down the phone. Her heart was pounding. She needed time to catch her breath. She had done a foolish thing and she knew it. But then slowly she smiled for the first time that day. She wished now that she'd said those things to him in Arabic. Curses soar such much more grandly in Arabic.
Kessler told Elizabeth what she needed to hear.
In fact a good deal of it was true.
She was certainly a lady; you couldn't have a better friend; she was utterly feminine when she let herself be. She could stand, however, to bite her tongue now and then. He was tempted to say that what she needed was a puppy because people like Elizabeth need something to care for. But that would have led to thoughts about babies which a Hezbollah bullet had denied her. And that would have led back to thoughts of the girl which is what put her in this mood in the first place.
Kessler filled her tub for her and added half a container of bubble bath which he discovered under her sink. The granules were purple, the scent was of lilacs. You learn something new about Elizabeth every day. He brought in a radio which he tuned to a station playing classical music and set a fresh glass of wine by the tub. She smiled when the saw the foot high mound of bubbles and asked him to turn his back as she undressed. This, he knew, was not modesty in the usual sense. She did not like anyone, even him, to see her scars.
“Stay with me a while," she said as she settled. "Why don't you go get your glass?”
He did, and he thought it was nice that she asked but he would rather have had time to himself. He wanted to make one more call on Pratt's phone before the phone took a bath of its own. He supposed that it could wait a little longer.
He had gone through Pratt's bag and especially his notebook while he waited for Elizabeth to come get him. The garment bag had yielded nothing of interest, just some changes of clothing and a toiletries kit. He had weighted it with rocks and tossed it in a bog near the airport. He was learning to appreciate this low country landscape. It slurps up whatever you drop.
The notebook, however, was a mine of information. There were several pages of names, all women, who Kessler presumed to be runaways. More than half were followed by the names of children who apparently were traveling with the mothers. Quite a few of these had already been caught. Pratt would scrawl the word "Done" across their listings and usually he'd write in a date. Most, however, were still at large. After many of these Pratt had added notations saying where they might be living now, what names they might be using, and who might be protecting them. Some of the assumed names were Arab-sounding but many had adopted Italian names, Hispanic names, or even common American names.
A considerable number were believed to be living in New York City and under the protection of the Nasreen Society. Nasreen, said Pratt's notes, was the name of a woman who died a martyr's death some years back. The Nasreens are mostly Sunni Muslims with male as well as female members and quite a few American blacks, most of whom are recent converts to Islam. Others were clustered in Southern California. The group there was called the Sisters of Fatima. Fatima, Pratt wrote, was one of Mohammed's wives. The women in this particular group were all Shiites and most had escaped from Iran.
The smallest cluster was on Hilton Head Island and its group was called the Nusaybah Society. Pratt's notes didn't say who or what is a Nusaybah. These, like the group in New York were Sunni Muslims and the two appeared to be closely allied. Within that cluster were two names Kessler recognized, Nadia Halaby and Aisha Bandari. Aisha was a.k.a. Cherokee Blye. Penciled in near the latter was a "Monica Blye" whom he knew must have been the girl's mother.
Other pages dealt with sister societies that were headquartered all over Europe. His notes indicated that their addresses kept moving because fear of reprisals was constant. Not all ran safe houses. Some were merely support groups to help them get used to Western ways. Some ran extensive underground railways to get women out - Pratt had drawn crude maps of two of them - and then provided free legal help afterward. But the act of going to a Western court was, by itself, enough to call for a death sentence. It meant that you'd gone over to the infidel, and that was apostasy, and the punishment for apostasy was death. So, even if you won in court you'd have to enter some Muslim version of a witness protection program.
Pratt also had some notes on the uses of a fatwah. Kessler himself had always thought, at least since the Salman Rushdie affair, that a fatwah was something like a mafia contract. Elizabeth explained that it's nothing of the sort. A fatwah, she explained, is simply a religious opinion. You could, for example, ask your local sheik if a Muslim can ever eat pork. The answer would be yes but only if he's starving and has access to no other food. Afterward, she said, he'd be expected to atone for it by feeding someone else who was hungry. Most fatwahs, she said, are meant to be helpful and, coming from Elizabeth, this was quite an admission.
Another example: say a Muslim needs to take out a loan but Islam forbids the paying of interest. The Koranic injunction was actually against usury but most clerics read it to mean any interest at all. The religious opinion or fatwah might be that if someone gives you the use of his money it's all right to give him a gift in return. Just be careful that it isn't excessive and that you call it something other than interest.
Pratt, of course, was not concerned about usury or whether it's lawful to have sausage for breakfast. His questions all had to do with killing. The Koran, or at least his reading of it, lists a great many offenses for which the transgressor should be killed. It rules out the killing of unwanted children and discourages the killing of other Muslims but after that it doesn't draw much of a line. It says you shouldn't kill without a just cause but there's no guilt in killing someone who has wronged you. These would seem to cover a great deal of ground. But in order to make sure that there is no guilt attached, the trick is to find a sheik or a mullah who says so. What Pratt had learned is that if you don't get the answer you want from one sheik, you can keep asking others until you do. That done, and especially if a reward is thrown in, it's no problem to find a Muslim who will do the killing for you because now it's not murder and he can't be blamed. On the contrary, he'll become a hero on earth and can expect to be rewarded in Paradise.
“A most convenient religion," noted Pratt in the margin.
Elizabeth, by the way, also once pointed out that the Muslims haven't cornered the market on fatwahs. She said Orthodox Jews issue fatwahs as well. She said that the assassin of YItzhak Rabin almost surely had the blessing of some militant rabbi. She said Christian fundamentalists are no exception either. Witness the justifications some ministers have offered for the murder of doctors who agree to do abortions.
Say what you want about Elizabeth, thought Kessler, but you can't say she's not evenhanded in despising them. Also say what you want about Cyril Pratt but you can't say he didn't do his homework.
This applied to the activities of Lawrence J. Tarrant as well. Pratt's notes were cryptic; Tarrant was simply "T", Bandari was "B" and there were other notations that, given the context, must have referred to the Libyans. Whatever they were up to, Pratt seemed to have been excluded and this made him all the more curious. He deduced over time via this or that clue the nature of this thing which he said keeps on killing. It's a special kind of bomb, or at least the ingredients, that's designed to turn cities into ghost towns. Pratt's notes indicate there are several. Wherever they are, Tarrant can't get his hands on them and "A" was going to destroy them.
“A" stands for Aisha? No, it must stand for Avram.
Kessler had decided he would not tell Elizabeth. Not about Tarrant and not about this bomb. It's no use upsetting her now that she's thinking that this actually might quiet down. Kessler wasn't sure that he believed it in any case. The Lockerbie bombing was certainly Qaddafy but that, at least in Qaddafy's view, was an act of retaliation for the raid on Tripoli that killed his infant daughter two years earlier. A Pan Am flight is one thing but a city is another. To attack a city would be an act of war. If one single finger pointed back to Qaddafy, Libya would cease to exist in a week.
There no harm in Elizabeth knowing about Gamal because the uncle is in Cairo and out of her reach. Tarrant lives, however, in a suburb of Washington, a distance from here that is temptingly accessible. Pratt's notes give several numbers where he might be reached and even his home address. Elizabeth might decide to drop in on him one night for his role in making Aisha an orphan.
But as for this bomb, she won't believe it either. Even if she did he doubted she'd care as long as it stayed off her island. Not that she's entirely turned her back on the world but she knows that it's only a matter of time before something like this happens for real. The nuclear genie has been out of the bottle ever since the Soviet Union collapsed and everything in it was suddenly for sale. No Middle East country except maybe Jordan will pass up the chance to be a nuclear power. After countries come tribes, after tribes come gangs until even Hamas has a nuclear car bomb which it parks outside the Knesset in Tel Aviv. It's good to be living on an island.
No, Elizabeth needn't be told about Tarrant. He's just one more dealer in death among many. He may or may not have had the girl's father killed; we have only Pratt's word that he did and Pratt hated him. He does, however, pull the uncle's strings. By itself that makes him worth a telephone call to give him a few things to think about. In the business he's in, in the town that he's in, his phone is quite possibly tapped and he'd know that. Kessler hoped that it was. The more ears that were listening, the more that it would ruin his evening.
“Martin?" asked Elizabeth, her eyes getting heavy. "What are you thinking right now?”
“Not a thing. Just enjoying the scent of those lilacs.”
“I know you. You're scheming. You squint with one eye when you're scheming.”
“I do that? Who else knows it?" He feigned dismay.
“Come on, give." She poked him. "Tell me what you were thinking.”
“That I...might stay on this island. For a while. Not long. Just to be sure that you're safe here.”
She traced a finger through a mound of bubbles. She asked, “You were thinking of me?”
He nodded.
She fell silent again for another long moment. "Martin...do you like me? I mean...don't say you love me. I really want to know if you like me.”
“I like you, Elizabeth. I like you very much.”
“Would anyone else? I mean, if they knew?”
You see, thought Kessler? Why bother her with bombs when her biggest concern is whether or not she seems nice. And he knew who she meant by anyone else. "Elizabeth, they'll move her. She's been compromised here. If they're smart they will move her tomorrow.”
“I suppose," she said sadly. "That's what I'd do.”
“But she'd like you," he lied as he rose to his feet. "What you've been wouldn't matter. Now soak.”
