The Libyan oasis town of Ghadamis was like an enchanted castle in a fairy tale. In the deserted old centre the white houses, made of mud and straw with palm trunks, were all linked together like one great edifice. At ground level, there were shady arcades between buildings, and the rooftops, traditionally reserved for women, were connected by little bridges. In the white interiors the window openings and arches were gaily decorated with elaborate patterns in red paint. Naji ran around in delight.
It suited the mood of Abdul and Kiah. For almost a week now no one had told them what to do, or tried to extort money from them, or pointed guns at their heads. Their progress was deliberately slow. They were in no hurry to get to Tripoli.
They were at last coming to believe that their nightmare was over. Abdul continued to be vigilant, checking his rear-view mirror to make sure they were not being followed, watching to see if another car pulled up nearby when he was parking; but he never saw anything sinister.
ISGS might have put the word out to friends and associates to look out for the escapees, but they were a young African couple with a two-year-old child, and there were thousands like them. All the same, Abdul kept his eyes open, looking out for the hard-faced, battle-scarred jihadi profile. He had not seen anyone remotely suspicious.
They slept in the car or on someone’s floor. They pretended they were a family. Their story was that Kiah’s brother had died in Tripoli, where he had no relations, and they had to settle his affairs, selling the house and car, and take the money home to Kiah’s mother in N’Djamena. People sympathized and never doubted it. Naji was a help: no one suspected a couple with a kid.
The weather in Ghadamis was searingly hot and the place received about an inch of rain per year. Many of the people did not speak Arabic: they had their own language, a Berber tongue. But the town had hotels, the first Abdul and Kiah had seen since leaving Chad. After they had gone around the magical old centre they checked into a place in the modern new town, taking a room that had a large bed and a cot for Naji. Abdul paid cash and showed his Chadian passport, which sufficed for them all, which was fortunate, for Kiah had no papers of any kind.
He was overjoyed to find that the room had a shower – crude, with cold water only, but the height of luxury after what he had been through. He stayed under the spray for a long time. Then he stepped out and looked around for a towel.
When Kiah saw him naked she gasped with shock and turned away.
He smiled and said gently: ‘What’s wrong?’
She half turned, covering her eyes, but then she giggled, and he relaxed.
They had dinner in the café next door to the hotel. The place had a television set, the first Abdul had seen for weeks. It was showing an Italian soccer match.
They put Naji to bed and made love as soon as he had gone to sleep. They did it again in the morning before he woke up. Abdul had some condoms, though he would soon run out at this rate. Such things were not often used in this part of the world.
He was in love with Kiah, there was no doubt about that. His heart had been captured by her beauty and courage and her lively intelligence. And he was quite sure she loved him back. But he mistrusted their emotions. These feelings might be little more than the product of the way they had been thrown together. For seven long weeks they had helped one another through intense discomfort and serious danger, all day and all night. He recalled the way she had set fire to the gasoline in the vehicle park, with no apparent fear for herself. She had saved Abdul’s life by killing Mohammed. She had since shown no remorse. He admired her grit. But was that enough? Would their love survive the return to civilization?
And then there was a cultural gulf as wide as the Grand Canyon. She had been born and brought up on the shore of Lake Chad, and until a few weeks ago she had never travelled farther than N’Djamena. The narrow, repressive mores of that poor rural society were all she knew. He had lived in Beirut and Newark and the suburbs of Washington DC. At high school and college he had learned the permissive morality of his adopted country. And so, even though they were sleeping together, she was shocked when he did something as normal to him as walking around a hotel room naked.
And he had misled her. She had thought he was a cigarette vendor from Lebanon – though by now she clearly suspected the lie. Sooner or later he would have to confess that he was an American citizen and an agent of the CIA, and how would she feel about that?
They lay facing each other in the simple room, Naji still asleep in the cot, with the shutters closed against the heat, and he delighted in the arch of her nose and the brown of her eyes and the soft colour of her skin. Caressing her body, he toyed idly with her pubic hair, but that made her flinch, and she said: ‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing. Just touching you.’
‘But it’s disrespectful.’
‘How can it be? It’s affectionate.’
‘It’s the kind of thing you’d do to a prostitute.’
‘Is it? I’ve never met a prostitute.’
There was another gulf. Kiah loved sex – that had been clear from the very first time, when she had been the one to take the initiative – but she had grown up with ideas about modesty that were startlingly different from those of someone raised in an American city. Would she adjust? Would he?
Naji stirred in his cot, and they realized it was time to move on. They washed and dressed the child then went back to the café for breakfast, and that was when they saw the news.
Abdul was about to sit down when his eye was caught by some footage of missiles being launched. At first he thought he must be looking at a test, but there were so many missiles – several dozen – that it seemed too costly for a mere exercise. This was followed by shots taken from the ground of missiles in the air, mainly visible by their white contrails; and Abdul realized they must be cruise missiles, for ballistic missiles flew too fast and too high for such filming.
Kiah said: ‘Why don’t you sit down?’
But he remained standing, staring at the television screen, full of fear.
The commentary was in a language he did not recognize though he thought it sounded East Asian. Then it was faded down and replaced by a translation in Arabic, and he learned that the missiles had been fired by the South Korean army, which had made this film; and that their action was in retaliation for an attack on a naval base of theirs by missiles from North Korea.
Kiah said: ‘What do you want to eat?’
Abdul said: ‘Hush.’
Next came film of an army base, with a characteristic grid of straight roads connecting low buildings. The signs were in hieroglyphs, and the Arabic translation identified the base as Sino-ri in North Korea. There was frantic activity around what looked like surface-to-air missile launchers. The pictures might have been taken by surveillance aircraft or perhaps a drone. Suddenly there were explosions, gouts of flame followed by clouds of smoke. More explosions burst in the air near the camera: the ground forces were firing back. But the damage down there was tremendous. Clearly the assault was intended to completely wipe out the target.
Abdul was horrified. South Korea was attacking North Korea with cruise missiles, apparently in revenge for an earlier incident. What had happened to cause this disaster?
Naji said: ‘I want leben.’
Kiah said: ‘Be quiet, Daddy wants to listen to the news.’
A part of Abdul’s mind registered that he had just been called ‘Daddy’.
The television commentary then added a crucial detail: Sino-ri was the base that had launched missiles against the South Korean naval facility at Jeju.
There was a whole tit-for-tat history to this that he had missed while out of contact in the desert. But this well-made film showed that South Korea wanted the world to know that it had struck back.
How had the Americans and the Chinese allowed this to happen?
What the hell was going on?
And where would it lead?
CHAPTER 33