“Your bosses are ditching the story then?”
“No. They’ll probably look for some local freelancer who’s less well known than me to cover it, someone who can dig things out without being as noticeable. They want to protect me.”
His cigarette had burned halfway down. He sighed and stubbed it out in his ashtray. “What’s happened to Laurel, you see horrors like that every day in Iraq. People kidnapped, blown up, killed for no reason at all. Just before I came over here another reporter and I left Baghdad to cover a story in al-Nasiriyah. Heat like a furnace and pretty much a wasteland on that trip. Often we’d meet American supply vehicles going like bats out of hell.
“About twenty minutes after we passed one of the convoys we saw something ahead. At first, just a glimmer by the side of the road like a piece of white cloth flapping around. Closer, we could tell it was a teenage boy wearing a dishdasha. The boy would take a few steps into the road and then waltz back, like there was some invisible line he couldn’t cross. All the while he was crying. Shrieking, actually. Crying and waving his hands.
“Our driver braked hard. A dark lump lay in the center of the road, a little girl, what was left of her anyway. She’d been hit full force by the convoy. We found out later that when she’d seen the supply trucks coming she’d run up because a couple of days earlier, soldiers had stopped to give them candy. I doubt they even knew they’d hit her. They travel incredibly fast to avoid attacks. Her brother was terrified to go to her out of fear that the same thing would happen to him.”
The murmurs of thunder grew closer. I thought about closing the window. “I guess you’ve learned to cope with danger. You know what to watch out for. I got into some scrapes when I was younger, but nothing remotely like this.”
“We,” Ari said. “We’re in this too. You’re not alone—don’t forget that.”
“Even so, I’m caught up in something I don’t fully understand. My life has been threatened more than once and now God knows what they’re doing to Laurel. I thought I’d figured out Hal’s hiding place this morning—a mausoleum at the Trinity cemetery where his mother was interred—but I couldn’t get into it. I have to follow Hal’s game through to the conclusion, whatever that is. To be honest, I can’t even finance the rest of the search.”
Ari reached over and rested one of his big hands on my arm. “I can’t promise it will end well, but I’ll do everything possible to make it so. Don’t worry about money—we’ll take care of that.”
I looked closely at him. “Where’s all this cash coming from? You’re a journalist, Tomas is an anthropologist. Someone else must be funding you.”
“A portion was donated.” His gaze swept away as if he was keeping something from me.
Laurel’s warning flag about terrorism resurfaced. “Who?” I insisted. “Is it some militant group? I need to know or I won’t continue.”
Ari pulled out another cigarette and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, not lighting it. Buying himself some time, I figured, trying to formulate a story I’d accept. He smiled. “We Assyrians have enough on our hands just trying to survive. We were glad to see the end of Hussein, but now more and more of our people have to flee the country. It is becoming very dangerous for us. The money does not come from us.”
He studied my face. I got the impression he was trying to decide whether I could handle the truth. “Samuel gave us the money. It came from him.”
Lightning flashed right outside the window. I felt as though it had just struck me. “That’s impossible. My brother didn’t have that kind of money.”
“He sold some things, from what I understand.” Ari hesitated. “I believe your property, the condominium, was one of those things. To an investor in Dubai. That’s what he told us. Apparently the purchaser agreed to a long closing, four or five months.”
“That’s impossible.”
“He intended to tell you. I guess he never got the chance.”
I could see from his face that he was telling the truth. After all, he had no reason to lie. With Samuel I’d always had a special reserve of trust. Ari had just blown that to pieces.
A strange hiss whistled through the air. On its tail, a bright arc of lightning illuminated the night with a cold luminescence, as if a floodlight had suddenly been trained on the window. Ari rushed to close it. I sat, dazed by this new information. I’d lost Samuel, and possibly Laurel, and now the home I loved had gone with them. I put my head in my hands. My grief gave itself a voice and blew out of me in jagged sobs.
Ari didn’t try to quiet me but moved closer. He waited until I calmed down and brought a towel he’d dipped in cold water. He handed it to me with a sigh. “It seems I’m always the one to deliver the bad news. No wonder I decided to be a journalist.
“You’ve always thought of Samuel as a little naive, haven’t you?” he said. “You think Tomas maybe talked him into the whole scheme. That is wrong. Samuel spearheaded it from the beginning. He was well aware of the hazards and made it very clear if anything happened to him we could rely on you in his place.”
“I can’t imagine why he said that.”
“Are you giving yourself enough credit? Sometimes the people we’re close to see strengths we don’t even know we have. Tomas proves that to me all the time. Think about it. We stand a good chance of recovering the engraving thanks to your efforts.”
“I’m not sure I have the guts to carry on with this. For the last two days I’ve been constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering when the next attack will come. It’s pure luck I’m still alive. By tomorrow night, Laurel may not be.”
“Let me give you something.” Ari reached inside the collar of his rumpled jean shirt and pulled a chain over his head. A golden charm dangled from one end. I could feel the warmth of his skin on the metal when he handed it to me. One face of the medallion was embossed with a winged disk, Assyria’s most famous symbol.
“A
“And please don’t take what Tomas says personally. He’s under big pressures like we all are. That’s not to excuse his behavior. I wouldn’t be able to go now if I didn’t think he was in good hands. He too will be sick when he hears about Laurel. He really liked her.”
Ari chuckled. “What do you expect? I’m the older brother. There’s a lot of history for us to overcome. In my father’s eyes, I did no wrong. With Tomas, just the opposite. I’ve been paying for that for a long time. I can deal with it. I have, what is it you say in English, big arms.”
“Big shoulders.”
“Yes.” Ari laughed again and touched his shoulder. His aura was so strong that when his smile faded, as it did now, the light in the room appeared to grow dimmer. “Something else. I’m breaking a secret, but it helps for you to know. Tomas’s fiancee died recently.”
I looked up at him in surprise. “Laurel said they’d separated, that she’d married someone else.”
“Tomas is too ashamed to tell it, the real story. He’s taken the blame upon himself.”
“What happened?”
“Did Laurel tell you my brother once planned to become a priest?”
“Yes, and that he changed his plans because he wanted to marry.”
“Tomas could only have gotten away with that excuse over here.” He shook his head in a kind of world- weary gesture. “Assyrian priests are permitted to marry; that’s not what happened.
“His fiancee lived with her parents in Baghdad—Karradah District. When the bombing started she became terrified and begged Tomas to let her stay with him, but he was too busy helping Samuel and thought she would be safer at home. After we got the engraving Tomas and I went to see her.” Ari’s face sagged. “We found a disaster. The family apartment block crushed. Half was still standing. We could see the guts of the building’s insides. But the rest? All metal rods sticking up, hills of broken concrete.
“You see Tomas as a restrained man, and usually he is. But on that night he went berserk. The one time I had to stand to the side. I could do nothing to help him. They never found her body.”
“I know how bad it feels.”
