“You misunderstand. It is not a complication with you. You were magnificent. Just as advertised. No, the problem is with Mademoiselle Medina.”
The man in the chair reached for the pistol and scooped it off the table, startling both Syrians. Then he leaned forward and slid it into his waistband in the small of his back. “You’re losing me already. If I snatched the wrong lady, then it’s the fault of whoever you’ve got acquiring your intel. Not me.”
“She was the right woman,” Rima said.
The American cocked his head. “So . . . she’s not his mistress?”
Tarek answered now. “She is. But . . . she is also something else. Something we didn’t know about when we sent you to rescue her.” He looked down at his hands, and then back up.
Rima leaned in. “She is a mother. Her four-month-old son is back in Syria.”
The grandfather clock ticked off a few seconds more before the American just said, “Oops.”
“Her child is currently under the care of a nanny, guarded by security officers at her home in Damascus.”
The American blew out a sigh, clearly understanding where the conversation was going. “And this is the part where you tell me who the daddy is.”
Tarek said, “According to Mademoiselle Medina, Ahmed Azzam is the father.”
The visitor looked off into space now. “That throws a wrench into the works, doesn’t it?”
The Halabys struggled to understand the colloquialism, but Tarek responded, “Azzam is aware of this love child of his. In fact, he is the one protecting his son with members of his own security detail.”
Now the American sat up straighter in the chair. Tarek could tell he was genuinely curious, which meant he likely had another minute to convince the man to help his cause.
He asked, “Protecting him from . . . who?”
Rima answered. “From his wife, Shakira Azzam. She knew about the affair; of that we are certain. We do not know if she is aware of the child.”
“So . . . your whole plan was to flip Bianca so she would give up Ahmed’s plan against the Russians, hoping that might weaken the regime. But Medina left a baby back in Syria, a baby Ahmed has access to. She’d have to be a pretty shitty mother to turn on Azzam now.”
Tarek nodded. “She refuses to help us. Needless to say, she wants to return to Damascus to be with her son. And needless to say, we can’t let her do that.”
The American asset said, “I hate to state the obvious, but you two don’t know what the hell you are doing. I’m not just talking about the fact that you were clueless to the compromises of your target. Compromises that make her worthless as an intelligence asset. I’m also talking about the stunt you just pulled: neglecting to pay a freelance asset because you wanted to talk to him . . . two times out of three, that will get you killed in this game. Your ploy to get me to listen to you worked this time, but you try that next time with another contract asset, and he will shoot you at stand-off distance and be done with it.”
“With your help, sir,” Rima said, “there won’t be a next time, and there won’t be another contract asset.”
The American whistled softly. “Oh . . . I get it. You coaxed me here so you could ask me to go into Syria and kidnap the son of the president.”
Tarek shook his head. “No. Not a kidnapping. It would be a rescue mission.”
“Right. All I have to do is find a way to explain that to the bodyguards, the cops, the intelligence officials, and the military forces in my way.” When neither Tarek nor Rima spoke, the man just leaned back in the chair. “You two are out of your damn minds. No fucking way you’ll get me to go to Syria.”
Tarek said, “We can get you in, and we can get you out. We have people there who will help you.”
“Doc, three fourths of the shit that goes wrong in my life starts with some asshole feeding me that exact same line.” He stood up to leave.
Rima and Tarek stood, as well, and Rima said, “Sir, I wouldn’t ask you to go if I didn’t believe you could do it. A Westerner can get in via a weekly charter flight carrying surgeons into the capital to work at Syrian regime hospitals. We can put you in with them, with all the documents you need to be safe.
“Our documents are good. Just look at yesterday, for example. We provided you with the intelligence and papers that you needed to succeed in your mission.”
“That’s a lousy example, whether you know it or not. Either you are lying to me, or someone else is lying to you. Last night wasn’t what it looked like. It was a setup.”
“A setup?” Rima was stunned.
“Someone in your organization purposefully sent me into that address at the same time ISIS was planning to make their attempt on Medina.”
“Ridiculous.” But then she asked, “Why would someone working for us do that?”
“It’s all about earning the trust and allegiance of the woman. If I snuck her away from her bodyguards, she might have been thankful, or she might still have looked at it like it was an abduction. But if I pulled her out of there in the middle of a terrorist attack, she would have been more appreciative, even more beholden to those who rescued her.”
Rima said, “But everyone in our organization who knows about this operation is committed to overthrowing Ahmed Azzam. Sending you in when we knew the terrorists would attack only increases the chances you would be killed and fail, or Bianca would be killed, which means we all would fail.”
The American had an answer to this. “Someone in your organization knew my reputation. They knew I could succeed when others could not. Very few people know this, and nobody who did not know this would dare roll those dice.”
Tarek and Rima stole a glance at each other.
The American said, “And you both know exactly who I am talking about.” When neither of them spoke, he asked, “Who is he? The Frenchman I spoke with? Is he the one pulling your strings?”
There was more pained silence in the room, until Tarek said, “I am sorry to put it this way, sir, but you are hired help. I am not giving you information about our organization. Only what you need in order to do the job.”
Court looked at the refined middle-aged couple, and he could not see any hint at all that they ran a rebel group. “Why do you do this?”
Rima looked at Tarek, then back at Court. Her eyes misted over. “We did not want war with Ahmed Azzam. It was the young who thought it could be won. Those of us in the older generation, we told the young people . . . ‘You don’t know the Azzam family. They will drown the nation in blood before they relinquish power.’ But the young would not listen, and now they are dead.
“All the dancing, the singing they did when the protests began. The pride of fighting for something they believed in.
“All those beautiful young people, all those beautiful memories, all that hope, is buried under the stone now. All that remains is Ahmed and Shakira Azzam. They are smiling over the corpses of the rebellion.”
Tarek added to his wife’s thoughts. “Personally I wish the rebellion would end, but you’ll never hear me saying that publicly. Not because I support Azzam. Just because I know he will kill every living thing that opposes him now.”
“Then why do you run a rebel movement?”
Tarek answered for them both. “We have our reasons. Now we have to do whatever we can to bring him down, and Bianca Medina is the key.”
Court said, “You act like you are in control of what’s going on. You two are just puppets.” And with that, he headed past them towards the entryway. He put his hand on the door latch; he was steps away from disappearing again.
Rima said, “If you leave, what will happen with the war in Syria?”