welfare and any privacy worries you may have, but it’s imperative that I speak to Tomas. I know his brother, Ari, is in London. We were together recently in New York. I can be trusted.” A flash of irritation crossed his features. “Sir, I will allow that someone has misled you, but I assure you, I’ve never heard of these individuals. If you don’t mind, I think it is best you depart.” He hesitated. “You’re staying at a hotel?”
“Yes. Al-Mansour.”
“I presume you don’t speak Arabic?”
I shook my head.
“Their staff are very competent and speak English. I’d suggest you enlist their help in your search. They will have directories and other resources.” He moved over to the door. “I’m afraid you’ve caught me at a busy moment. You’ll excuse me now, I hope.”
I thanked him and walked away. What else could I do? I had about two minutes to forge a story that would satisfy Ward. I desperately searched for ideas and came up with something that might work.
Ward and Eris met me when I reached the taxi. “Well?” he asked. “Tomas didn’t show up, as you predicted. The man I spoke to claimed he’d never heard of him. But I saw something.”
“What?” Ward thrust his face closer to mine. Streaks of sweat ran from his temples to his chin.
“The guy was lying. At least Ari’s there—that much I’m sure of.”
“Why do you think so?”
“I saw his camera propped up against a cabinet in the front room. The same one he carried in New York. If he’s here, Tomas has to be close by.” I decided this sounded more convincing than saying I’d seen either of them in person.
The flush left his skin; the tension that had produced crevices of worry between his brows and around his mouth subsided. Ward was clearly not prepared to raid the house right now. By the time they stormed the place, interrogated the owner, and discovered there was nothing of substance to my story, I might have found a way to extricate myself from this nightmare.
Eris pulled out her phone.
“Who are you calling?” I asked.
“There are people who need to be alerted if Ari Zakar is back,” she responded. She saw the question mark on my face. “It’s nothing to do with our little venture. Just a quid pro quo for some important people.”
“Why do they care?”
“A story he’s working on. Something about Abu Ghraib. Nothing to do with us.” She punched in a few numbers and delivered the information I’d just given her to the voice on the other end. I smiled inwardly. Ari had that prison story to thank for being safely holed up in London.
When we reached the hotel room we saw the button on the hotel phone flashing. Ward picked it up while Eris went back into the bedroom. Just as she was about to lock me up again Ward called out. “Hold on, we’ve got a new development.”
I pushed my way past Eris. Ward beamed. “Congratulations, you delivered.”
I managed to cloak my shock at this news.
“We just missed a message for you.”
“I’m officially registered here?”
“We had to.”
“What’s the message?”
“You’re to meet a contact of Tomas’s at the museum. Three o’clock.”
Thirty-two
The instantly recognizable facade of the Children’s Museum, featured on the front pages of the international press this spring, sat at the intersection of Qahira and Nasir streets behind a high wrought-iron fence. Its sand- colored limestone structure— two square towers joined by a bridge over the central arch—was a handsome example of museum architecture. Distinctly Islamic with classical grace.
Between the central frieze and the roof of the arch, a black circle—a shot from an American cannon—looked like the point on an exclamation mark. The arch was impassable now, the space taken up by a tank.
A little late, I thought grimly. Probably just there for show. The place looked forlorn. It reminded me of those abandoned factories in the Rust Belt, once thriving concerns built at the turn of the century, now lonely outposts without a purpose.
The museum’s story was familiar to me. Founded at the zenith of British power in the Middle East, when the boundaries of modern Iraq were carved out, it was at first only one room in a Baghdad building. When more space was needed a small museum was built overlooking the Tigris. Inaugurated in 1926, the museum resulted from a collaboration between the Iraqi king Faisal and a remarkable Englishwoman, Gertrude Bell. Al-Khatun, they’d called her. An explorer, writer, and archaeologist, she’d dedicated a good part of her life to protecting Mesopotamian culture.
The present site, a complex of buildings, was established in the sixties. The main galleries were housed in a rectangular structure with an inner courtyard. Since the museum’s establishment, periodic bouts of looting had broken out, the most notorious occurring during the Gulf War. It had been shut off to the public since then.
After I walked through the gate I handed the passport Ward had restored to me to an American Marine, who helped me locate the right entrance. I was met by an older woman wearing black-rimmed glasses and a hijab who introduced herself as Hanifa al-Majid. This was Tomas’s colleague; I’d imagined someone much younger. “Much welcome, sir,” she said after I greeted her. Her English was rocky but we managed to communicate well enough.
I recalled all the times in my youth when I’d daydreamed about walking these corridors with Samuel. The thrill of actually being here momentarily overwhelmed me. Our route took us through the Assyrian gallery. At its entrance loomed the massive Lamassu, with their bull bodies, wings, human-like heads, braided hair, and horned helmets. Each statue had five legs positioned so they could be seen as four-legged from either the front or the side. Inside the gallery the floor was strewn with debris, but the life-sized reliefs of Assyrian royal figures and Apkallu around the perimeter were blessedly intact. I paused in front of a magnificent portrayal of a man grasping the bridles of two horses, sculpted as beautifully as anything done by the Greeks and Romans.
My guide summoned me. As we hurried away our footsteps echoed in the emptiness of the hallways. I felt saddened by what had been stolen, trampled underfoot, lost forever.
I could see efforts underway to clean up some of the disorder, although many areas were still in a shambles. We traipsed through a wide hallway, one side patterned with small squares of openings to admit natural light. On a low podium a headless statue stood to one side. When she saw me glance at it, Hanifa flushed and said, “Always the head was gone. Done in the past, not looters.” I sympathized with her obvious distress over the state of the museum.
An Iraqi guard with an AK-47 sat at a small desk in one of the restoration rooms, surrounded by banks of shelving holding hundreds of dusty clay vessels and jars. Broken bits lay heaped in piles on the floor, some shards with the museum ident marks still visible, all of them crushed by the looters. I wondered whether this was the room where Samuel had kept the engraving.
She pointed to the piles. “I’m sorry for it—how it looks. No electricity is here. Most staff are gone. No security system. It takes us long time to fix up because of this.” The poor woman looked as if she carried the weight of the entire building on her shoulders.
I moved closer to her. “Do you have a phone? I have to make a call urgently.” From the look on her face I could see she hadn’t understood. I mimicked making a call and she got the idea. She shook her head. “No— sorry.”
My hopes sank again. It had been a long shot anyway. Even if she had a working phone, putting a call through to New York would probably be impossible.
She took paper and a ballpoint pen from the desk and scribbled a note, passing it to me. It read
