The structure, called a mudhif, had been erected on a strip of ground made barren by a Western bomb. Its name was drawn from the furthest reaches of Iraq’s history, during the epoch when Abraham was called by God to leave his homeland. Iraq’s civilization had occupied the fertile marshland extending north from the sea. This region gave rise to numerous city-states, including one called Ur, the idolatrous place from which Abraham was told to flee.
The marshlands had no stone and few trees. What they had in abundance were reeds and clay. The most elaborate of their structures, the mudhif, were vast assembly halls floored in brick, with walls and ceilings fashioned from woven reeds. These reed walls could be as much as four feet thick, like a cluster of reed baskets laid atop one another. They were also immensely strong. Halls like this one might be forty feet wide, with soaring sixty-foot ceilings that required no supporting pillars. Six art-deco chandeliers illuminated the space.
Hassan el-Thahie was on his feet long before Sameh arrived at the table. He embraced Sameh in the Arabic fashion, then touched his right hand to his heart in a sign of deep respect, then embraced Sameh again. Such a greeting in this place, surrounded by members of the nation’s power structure and the city’s intelligencia, was a public acknowledgment of debt. Sameh assumed this was why Hassan had requested they meet.
At the far end, two women in headscarves and the traditional flowing gowns stood upon a raised dais and alternated reading passages written by the Imam Hussein and daughter Zainab, founding members of the Shiite heritage. As Sameh took a chair, a gong sounded behind the serving counter, signifying the official moment of sunset. Servants instantly appeared through the kitchen door, depositing tea and a hot porridge called harisa.
Hassan scowled at the steaming bowl and declared, “Hungry as I am, I can’t bear the stuff.”
Sameh felt no such revulsion. “As a child, I lived on it. I could eat it three times a day.”
Hassan slid his bowl across the table. “Be my guest.”
The two women completed their reading and left the stage to resounding applause.
Hassan leaned over and said, “Observe how we are being ignored.”
Sameh looked around. “I see nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Over there is the brother of the justice minister, the man whose career you might have just saved. At the table to your left is the interim speaker of parliament. The long table up by the stage holds three members of the Alliance that could well form the next government.”
Sameh saw only a vibrant, noisy crowd. To his eyes, the scene hearkened back to the best of his memories. For centuries, these literary salons were a staple of Iraqi life, the one place where all the groups making up this ancient nation could set their differences aside-religion, tribe, politics. Here everything was open to discussion and challenge. Shia sat with Sunni, Jew with Muslim, Christian with Zoroastrian. Tribes that were officially at each other’s throats could meet together, eat together, and laugh together. Anyone who violated the mudhif’s peace was declared an outcast for life, and those who detested this melting-pot atmosphere were banned. As a result, the literary cafes became a vital outlet of expression and hope. The places were filled all day, all night, with writers, historians, academics, religious clerics, housewives, politicians. All came, casting aside the chains of their conservative, hidebound society. They talked, if not as friends, at least as Iraqis.
Saddam Hussein had changed all that, along with so much else. Within three years of his taking power, the literary cafes were gone. Those refusing to shut their doors suffered mysterious fires. Some went underground, only to be infiltrated by the dictator’s spies. Visitors who dared speak against the regime simply disappeared.
Sameh looked around the crowded chamber. If he were to ignore the metal detector by the door, the armed guards, and the watchful waiters who were probably also armed, he might actually find a reason to hope.
He turned to Hassan. “Tell me what I am missing.”
“I am a major financial backer of several politicians you see here tonight. I have a great reason to celebrate. My young son is returned to me. So why am I not surrounded by allies wishing to share my joy?”
Sameh rose to his feet. As he did so, several faces glanced over, then swiftly turned away.
Hassan rose to stand beside him. “In my office, you told me to call my allies in the government. You were hurrying to meet the Americans, and I desperately needed your help, so how was I to dispute your orders? Even so, there were two problems with your request. First, as I said, I had already been phoning these people. From the moment I heard my son was taken, I called. And no one returned my calls. What is more, I cannot even establish why they refused to speak with me.”
Sameh could see it now. The tables holding the power elite seemed determined not to look their way. The two of them had become pariahs.
Hassan went on, “I give them financial aid. I ask nothing in return but for Iraq to form a stable government. How could they refuse to help me in my hour of need?”
Sameh continued to probe the chamber’s mystery. “And the second problem?”
“Remember what you said. Talk to my friends in government.” Hussein gripped Sameh’s arm in frustration. “Iraq has no government. They have been struggling to put together a majority since the election. The old cabinet remains in power, and Parliament spends its days wrangling over the crumbs of our future.”
“You think the old regime kidnapped your son? Why would they do this? To fragment the Alliance?”
“I know it sounds crazy. But what other reason could there be?” Hassan released Sameh’s jacket. “Shall I walk over and show you what it means to be a pariah?”
“Stay where you are.” There was nothing to be gained from a public confrontation, though Sameh was curious just how it might play out. “I have no logical reason, but my gut tells me the disappearance of your son and the four adults are tied together somehow.”
Hassan was shaking his head long before Sameh finished relating what he knew, and what Marc and Major Lahm had supposed. “This makes no sense.”
“I agree. But neither does the kidnapping of your son, followed by days of silence. Unless…”
“Yes?”
Sameh shook his head. The idea hovered just beyond his mental horizon, a whisper that he could not decipher. “Anything you might be able to discover would be considered a debt repaid. Anything at all.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
M arc traveled into the Green Zone by way of another Rhino. He saw far less of the journey than when entering Baghdad. The armored personnel carrier that lumbered down the alley and opened its door and dragged him inside was manned by a weary and saddle-worn team. Hands pulled him in, other hands slammed the door, still others pointed him to an empty seat. Marc wasn’t certain they even saw him. Or cared. He was just another package. One more duty to get done before they could head for safety and hot showers and a meal that didn’t taste like the desert.
The troops blocked the windows and spoke only to call out terse warnings, the voices of wired soldiers pushed beyond human limits. They halted by the Green Zone barriers, endured the sharp-eyed inspection by the Iraqis on duty, then trundled around the antitank barricades. Marc watched the soldiers start to slump before the lieutenant ordered them to stand down.
They dropped him off in front of a palace that had seen better days. Bullet holes were visible from the checkpoint, gouges and stabs that dug into the wall framed by American and Iraqi flags. The palms lining the street and shading the guardhouse were dusty and limp in the heat.
Barry Duboe stood on the embassy checkpoint’s other side. He greeted Marc with a grin that divided his face in two, the lower half smiling a welcome, the upper half squinted in warning.
Wordlessly, Duboe led him deep into the embassy’s bowels, past glittering chambers that had been segmented with cheap shoulder-high partitions. They entered a windowless room that might once have been a large closet. Duboe asked the young man behind the desk, “He ready for us?”
“Yes, sir.” The young man showed Marc the expression of a cat playing with its meal. Bored anticipation, bloodless humor. “Go right on in.”
Jordan Boswell was a typical white-bread bureaucrat. Not tall, not short, not skinny, not thick. Gray suit. Thinning brown hair. Coldly intelligent eyes. “This him?”
“Marc Royce.” Barry Duboe selected a chair between the side window and the filing cabinets. Positioning himself out of the firing line. “Jordan Boswell, deputy to the United States ambassador.”
