The Command полностью

She was at the door when the woman said something, too low for her to hear. And the owner said, “Wait. Wait. You are here alone?”

She turned, surprised and a little suspicious. “Yes. Why?”

“You should not be alone,” the woman said, still in Arabic. Clear classical speech, too, as good as Yousif’s or Bucheery’s. “Wait for me. I’ll take you back to the souk. And I have something for you to put on. That we may go safely in the night.”

The world looked different from behind a veil. Now none of the men looked twice. She and her companion moved through the descending night as if invisible. She’d become one of the shadows. Unseen, but also undisturbed.

She made as if to turn the corner, but the woman took her arm. “Not that way. This.”

“Shukraan. I was turned around.”

The narrow streets twisted and turned. She realized she was lost. The woman glided like a cat down alleys no broader than their outstretched hands. They smelled of dust and piss. Around her throbbed the intimate sounds of close-lived lives, babies crying, radios, the rhythmic thump of someone beating out dough or laundry. She was walking very fast ahead through a particularly close warren of passages. Then Aisha lost sight of her, black cloth vanishing into black night, and she ran to catch up, suddenly scared.

She ran full length into the men who stepped from the shadows. They smelled of cheap cologne and sweat and cigarettes. They weren’t much bigger than she was, but they were much stronger. Three, maybe four of them, and before she could scream they had her hands twisted behind her, her mouth sealed by a rough palm, and she was being dragged backward. She heard the rasp of a wooden door, the squeal of unoiled iron. The ground dropped away in worn, rounded steps, and she smelled old spices, cool stale air, stale breath.

Hands at her face, stripping off the veil. Then binding the black cloth, twisted, over her eyes.

A light clicked on. She couldn’t see what it illuminated. She felt a corner against the back of her knees. “Sit down,” a voice growled.

She obeyed, trying to find a seat behind her with her bound hands before she trusted her weight to it. She couldn’t stop panting. Her heart was going very fast, and she wanted to pee.

“Allah is great,” she said tentatively, into the waiting silence.

“Indeed He is, blessed be His name. You are truly Muslim?”

“And have been since birth.”

“Yet you work for the Americans.”

“I am an American. There are many American Muslims.”

This seemed to be news to her captors. She listened hard to the whispering. She couldn’t tell how many were in the cellar with her. She fought for control, trying not to dwell on being alone, trying to tell herself they couldn’t just cut her throat and bury her beneath this dusty basement earth that her shoeless foot kneaded gritty beneath her toes.

Obviously the cobbler had picked up the phone as they’d left. But who were these people? Her first fear had been Egyptian Jihad, like the suicide boaters. But the Jihad was Sunni. Not likely they’d have adherents among the despised Shi’a.

“Why are you asking questions in the Makarqah?” A different voice from the first.

“I’m trying to find out more about the man who attacked our warship a few weeks ago. He called himself Doctor Fasil Tariq al-Ulam. I have a photograph.”

“We know who you mean. He was working with bin Jun’ad.”

“With … That’s right.” Interesting, because as far as she’d seen in the local press, not one word had been released about local involvement in the incident. She took a deep breath. “And who are you?”

“You don’t need to know that. All you need to know is what we’re going to tell you.”

“Then I’m listening.” She bent her head, both to show submission and to glimpse something over the blindfold if she could. But the black cloth was impenetrable.

“Tonight you will go to the new madrassa east of the Japanese embassy. Across from the Salmaniya Gardens. Do you know where that is?”

“I know where the Gardens are. At the roundabout.”

“Near the Old Palace, eiwa. The street door will be open. In classroom number eight, you will find something that will interest you.”

Madrassas were Islamic schools. She didn’t understand what was going on, but if it meant they were letting her out of this basement alive, she’d agree to anything. She was beginning to guess who these rough-speaking men were: local militants and sympathizers orbiting the Party of God. The Hezbollah were certified terrorists. Iranian-backed. But according to the Defense Intelligence threat updates, it had been some years since they’d carried out a verifiable action. There was speculation Iran was tapering off its support.

All that was conjecture, though, and it left her head the instant she was jerked upright and the light snapped off. “Step up,” the rough voice commanded, and she stumbled over invisible stairs back up into the alley. Where she was told to wait for ten minutes before taking her blindfold off.