didn’t say. I hated how the unspoken became a barrier between us. But there wasn’t anything I could have told her that would make things better. I lived for my work.”
“And yet, in the end, you gave it up for her.”
Marc’s nod was almost lost to the church’s shadows.
Sameh glanced at his watch. They had been at the site going on an hour. “Perhaps we should-”
Marc touched Sameh’s arm. “Someone’s coming.”
Perhaps it was just his fatigue that kept him from noticing. Or his greater burden of years. But Sameh thought it was probably the American’s honed sixth sense. Because even after Marc silenced him, Sameh still heard nothing. Then, after a breathless eternity, there was the soft scrape of quiet footsteps.
Marc melted into the shadows. Sameh had seen him in action before, yet still he felt a momentary panic. He was mistaken to assume he understood this American, or could claim to grasp what had shaped him. Or what he was doing now.
A yelp at the church’s far end drew Sameh forward. An Iraqi protested in high-pitched Arabic for Marc to let him go.
Instead, Marc drew the man through a side door which, until that moment, Sameh had not known existed.
The side alley was fetid as only a poor Baghdad street could be. It had remained unswept for weeks, perhaps longer. A series of dark puddles were no doubt fed by some leaking sewage pipe. Inhabitants of neighboring tenements had added to the stench by piling refuse by their doorways. Clearly there had not been any garbage collection around here during Ramadan.
If Marc noticed the odor, he gave no sign. “Ask him what he’s doing.”
The man was in his late thirties and outweighed Marc by fifty pounds. Even so, he plucked futilely at Marc’s hold on his arm. “Tell him to let me go!”
Sameh replied in Arabic, “I will ask him to loosen his grip, but only if you are still.”
The man only struggled harder. “This is an outrage! I entered a house of peace!”
“Tell us why, and we will free you.”
“Why do you think? To worship!”
“I have lived in Baghdad all my life. I know this church and its priests and its congregants. I know them better than you do.” Sameh kept his voice calm and steady, as though there was nothing to suggest a reason for panic. “I ask you again, what were you doing here, in an empty church, in the middle of the week?”
The man was in the process of forming another protest when a truck passed in front of the alley’s mouth, splashing its headlights down to where they stood. The man studied Sameh’s face and said, “I know you.”
Sameh was fairly certain he had never seen this man before. “I am known to many.”
“You are the lawyer. The one who helped the children.”
“This is important to you, yes? That I help the lost and the helpless.”
Marc noticed the change. “What is it?”
The young man glanced over, then said to Sameh, “This is the American, the one on the news, the one Imam Jaffar has spoken of?”
Sameh said in English, “Let him go.”
Marc did as Sameh said, but positioned himself between the young man and the alley’s mouth. “What’s going on?”
Sameh replied, again in English, “This man has heard of us.”
Marc looked the man over. “He was sent. For Alex. And the ladies. And the Iraqi, Taufiq.”
The man was old enough to have survived his childhood and teenage years under Saddam. He knew how to mask his surprise well. Even so, Sameh was fairly certain hearing Marc speak those names had shocked him.
Sameh asked, “You understand English?”
The young man replied in Arabic. “A little, sayyid. Not well.”
“Tell us your name.” When the man hesitated, Sameh told Marc, “Apologize for accosting this gentleman.”
Marc reached out and touched where he had gripped the man’s arm. The man flinched away. Marc kept his hand outstretched in the empty air between them. He said carefully, clearly, “If you are a friend of Alex’s, we should be working together.”
“Here is what I think happened,” Sameh said in English, very slowly, wanting Marc to hear as well. “You are a friend of the missing four. And more. You share their cause. You came hoping against hope. Just in case. Because here is where they were to gather.” Sameh saw the man hesitate, and added, “As one who seeks to restore the lost and give hope to desperate families, I beseech you. I come as a beggar seeking crumbs. And with every minute that passes, the risks our friends face…”
“Enough,” the man said. He pointed toward the alley’s mouth. Marc stepped out of the way. The man glanced at both their faces a final time, then said simply, “Come.”
– – They returned to the main thoroughfare. It was approaching eight o’clock at night, but the street was as jammed as at midday, perhaps worse. To their left, a broken water main had flooded the street and eaten away the pavement. Car horns kept up a constant protest as three lanes snaked into one. A pair of wild dogs snarled at the water’s edge. The man guiding them glanced over, then away, his worried expression illuminated by headlights.
He led them down a side street that opened into a massive unguarded parking lot. The lot’s far end bordered the closest market to Sadr City. The crowds were thick and constant. Their guide led them to the left, away from the market’s entrance. He stood beside a pair of trucks and watched. In the distance were remnants of the barrier surrounding Sadr City. The American soldiers had ringed the entire slum in an eighteen-foot-high concrete wall during their surge. It had been immensely unpopular with Sadr City occupants, but in five days the number of suicide bombings in Baghdad had been reduced by two-thirds. The new government continued to pick away at the barrier, using the remnants as a goad to make the slum’s occupants behave.
A few minutes passed. A family of four sidled up next to their guide and exchanged quiet greetings. Then the family slipped around the nearest truck. The youngest child, a girl of Bisan’s age, cast Sameh a glance as worried as their guide’s.
The guide hissed, “We go.” He slipped around the first truck and vanished as swiftly as the family.
Sameh wanted to tell Marc they should turn around. That his chest had tightened to the point where drawing breath actually hurt, as though there were no longer room for air and his heart and his fear. But Marc had already followed the guide. Sameh had the sudden notion that men like Marc were trained to make shadows their friends. Even when the shadows threatened to swallow them and snuff out their life. He would have said something, but his friend was out of sight.
The two trucks were parked so that they formed a passageway. In the narrow space between the trucks and the brick wall was a set of stairs. Sameh knew this because he collided with a rusty handrail. He heard footsteps, and caught a reflection off the top of their guide’s headdress. Marc glanced upward at Sameh, his eyes glittering in the dim light. Sameh had no alternative but to follow.
Their guide knocked on a metal door. The man who responded was so massive as to nearly block the light from within. The guide whispered something, and the guard stepped aside.
Sameh knew another urge to turn and flee. Leave the American and this dank entryway and this guide who had refused to speak his name. He did not know how he found the courage to slip past the guard and enter.
Chapter Thirty-Two
T he five guards inside the doorway seemed rather odd to Sameh. For one thing, they were dressed in a conventional fashion, more like business executives than sentries. They also were very respectful. And something else. Sameh waited in a line of nine people. A female guard checked the women in a discreetly curtained alcove. Marc was in front of him, their guide next. Sameh had time to scrutinize the scene. Even so, he was almost through the security screening before he realized what it was that was so different.
The guards were at peace, even happy.
