“Yes, sir. She came running out of the field right in front of my car, Allah be praised. I’m taking her to the warehouse now.”
The man lowered the walkie-talkie and smiled at her. “Madam, I am with the Syrian embassy. We have rescued you, sister! We will get you out of here and, inshallah, back to Damascus where you will be safe from all harm. I promise I will protect you with my life.”
Bianca collapsed to her side in the backseat of the car and began sobbing uncontrollably.
* * *
? ? ?
The Syrian commando ordered Henri Sauvage to drive, and he remained in back with the woman, ready to cover her with his own body if there was any danger. The young man was almost euphoric, and Bianca, it appeared to Sauvage by looking in the rearview, seemed utterly despondent.
But Sauvage was thinking about himself, and he realized he had just helped the Syrians grab a missing Spanish national out here in the French countryside, and he, a captain in the Judicial Police, was the guy driving the getaway vehicle. He’d go to prison for life for this, which meant he’d want a bonus from Eric, for damn sure.
And he’d want to get the fuck away from France, probably for the rest of his life, as soon as this was over.
The Syrians had what they’d come for now, so he saw the light at the end of the tunnel for the first time in days, and he told himself he just might survive this, after all.
CHAPTER 52
Thirty-four-year-old Dr. Shawkat Saddiqi parked his Nissan Sentra in the reserved space in front of his apartment building and turned off the engine. He sat there a moment with his eyes closed.
It was three a.m.
He’d worked a twelve-hour shift in the ER of Al-Fayhaa Hospital that had turned into a fifteen-hour shift when the nine wounded occupants of a bus bombing were brought in shortly before he was due to get off work at midnight. He’d performed surgery on three of them himself, and saved two lives.
But he wasn’t happy, he wasn’t proud of his work. No . . . now at three a.m., he was just fucking spent.
He climbed out of his vehicle and walked along the sidewalk towards the back entrance of his building. He was surprised to hear footsteps behind him at this time of the night, but not worried. This was an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Al Midan, in the center of Damascus. This part of the city had been spared much of the war, at least the physical scars of it, anyway.
The emotional scars? No one in this city was immune from those, just as almost no one in this city was blameless from responsibility for the carnage.
Saddiqi arrived at the door and reached forward with his key, but a voice behind him called out softly.
“Shawkat Saddiqi?” The doctor turned around.
In front of him on the pathway stood a man with a beard wearing a wrinkled dark suit. Standing behind him was a small young girl wearing a chador and a long-sleeve cotton shirt with black warm-up pants and a blue backpack. He didn’t notice at first, but quickly he realized she held an infant in her arms.
Saddiqi might have been nervous to be accosted in a dark parking lot at this time of the morning, but there was nothing threatening about the group in front of him at all.
“As salaam aleikum,” Peace be unto you, Saddiqi said, touching his hand to his heart. It was a polite greeting, but he fought a little disappointment inwardly. He was not unaccustomed to people showing up at his apartment in the middle of the night. It usually meant he wouldn’t be feeling the coolness of his pillow any time soon, and he desperately needed rest.
“Wa aleikum salaam,” And peace be upon you, replied both the man and the woman simultaneously.
Saddiqi looked them over for any obvious injuries. He saw some blood on the collar of the man’s shirt. “How can I—”
The man said, “Do you speak English?”
Saddiqi’s guard went up, but he wasn’t sure why. In Arabic he replied, “Who are you?”
The man continued, still in English. “Doctor . . . I’ve been sent by Rima Halaby. It is a dire emergency.”
Saddiqi turned away.
He put the key in the door lock and opened it. In heavily accented English he replied, “Please. Come inside.”
* * *
? ? ?
Ten minutes later Yasmin sat on a vinyl sofa in a small but tidy apartment on the fifth floor of the building. Jamal was in her lap, and he ate greedily from the bottle she fed him.
Court and Shawkat Saddiqi sat at a small bar area in the apartment’s kitchen, just feet away from Yasmin. The doctor had already made tea for his guests, and he’d put out a plate of cookies and sweets that Yasmin politely declined. Court, on the other hand, dug shamelessly into a stack of cookies made of dates and flour because he hadn’t eaten all day.
Saddiqi took out a first-aid kit he kept in a back room and began cleaning the wound on Court’s head. As he did this he asked, “So, how is Rima?”
Court put down his cookie. “I’m very sorry to have to tell you this. But she’s dead.”
Saddiqi looked up from the bloody wound. “When?”
“Rima gave me your name two hours ago. One hour ago she was killed.”
“My God. What about Tarek?”
“Tarek is dead, as well.”
Saddiqi sighed and poured more antiseptic on a fresh cotton swab, and he went back to work. Court thought the man showed little emotion, and he tried to gauge Saddiqi’s relationship with the Halabys from his lack of reaction to hearing about their deaths, but he stopped himself. This guy was a trauma doc in Damascus. He must have seen death every hour of every day of his working life, so his internal meter of heartbreak and sadness must have been so off-kilter Court knew he couldn’t judge the man by how he acted.
Saddiqi closed the torn flap of skin, holding it until the bleeding stopped. “The Halabys’ two children died last year. I assume you were aware.”
“Yes. How did you know them?”
“I was a couple years older than the kids, but their parents and my parents had been friends when we were children. We lost touch after they emigrated when the war began.
“I had been helping the rebellion here in secret, treating wounded insurgents who showed up at my door. Someone who got out of the country told the Halabys that even though Dr. Saddiqi was working at a regime hospital in the capital, he could be trusted. Tarek reached out to me via encrypted chat, and we’ve shared information to help save lives.”
Saddiqi added, “This is back when they were just involved with nonviolent aid.”
Court said, “And then, somehow they became leaders of the insurgency.”
Saddiqi used glue to seal the skin closed above Court’s ear. “Leaders? No. After their kids died, the only way they could sleep at night was to dream about killing Ahmed Azzam and his supporters. Two people in their fifties who’d spent thirty years saving lives learned to dream of taking lives. But now they are dead. All for nothing.”
“No,” Court countered. “For something. But only if you can help us.”
“The Halabys sent you to me. Why?”
“This girl . . . and the baby. They need a place to stay. It might be a few days.”
Saddiqi seemed surprised by the request. He’d obviously expected much more. “Of course. They are welcome in my home.”
“There is something else. It might be that Yasmin doesn’t really want to be here.”
Saddiqi stood up and looked over Court to the girl feeding the baby on the sofa behind him. “She seems okay.”
“What she’s been through tonight has been a shock. People react in different ways. Trust me, I’ve seen it. She might be totally compliant now, and then wake up in the morning and try to throw herself out the window to get away.”
Saddiqi had cleaned the blood from Court’s neck, and now he took off his gloves and threw them into the trash. As he did this, he looked again at Court. “You are asking me to hold a mother and her baby prisoner?”
Court did not want to tell Dr. Saddiqi everything, but he realized he had no choice. “Sit down, Doctor.”
Saddiqi did so. “In my profession, we tell people to sit down when we are about to give them very bad news.”
“It’s the same in my profession. That baby? His name is Jamal.”