“So?”
“Lots of people name their boys Jamal around here, right?”
“Of course. It is the given name of the man who ran the country for thirty years before his son took over.”
“Right,” Court said. “But that boy? His father named him Jamal because his father’s name was Jamal.”
“Who is the boy’s father?”
Court shrugged. “Ahmed Azzam.”
Saddiqi shook his head emphatically. “Ridiculous. Ahmed Azzam’s son is dead. It’s a secret, but Shakira took him to my hospital many times, and we all know—”
Court shook his head now. “This isn’t Shakira’s boy, and Yasmin isn’t the mother, either.”
It took a moment for the doctor to understand, but when he did he covered his face with his hands and muttered something in Arabic that sounded like a prayer. Finally he switched back to English. “Who is the mother?”
“A Spanish woman who has a house here. She’s currently out of the country.”
“And you brought Ahmed Azzam’s child here, to my flat. I assume people are looking for him.”
“I’d say that’s a very safe assumption. I can promise you that no one tailed me to your place. The main danger is the girl. She is complying because she’s worried she’ll be blamed for this even if she somehow manages to get away. But who knows? Like I said, tomorrow she might have second thoughts.”
“Again, sir. Do you think I just happen to be running a jail in the back of my flat?”
“I didn’t have any other place to take her. I have to leave town . . . just for a few days.” Court looked off into the distance. “I think. I hope.” He looked up at the doctor. “If I don’t come back by Friday . . . then I’m dead, and you’re on your own.”
“You aren’t making a good case for me helping.”
“I hear you’ve been helping for seven years. You’ll help now, because that kid back there might just lead to the end of this war.”
“How will the child end the war?”
“Better if you don’t ask any questions.”
Saddiqi rubbed his tired face again. After a long time he nodded, as if to himself, and said, “I have a neighbor. He is involved in the local resistance. He’s not a leader, but he is a good man, and I suppose he can watch over a girl and a baby for a couple of days in my apartment. If he can’t manage that, then I guess that means the resistance is useless.”
“That’s good. How soon can he be here?”
“I patched him up after he was shot two years ago. Since then he’s brought me other wounded fighters. If I need him, at any time, he will be here. I’ll call now.”
Court told Dr. Saddiqi about his contact in France who was looking for a way to bring the girl and the baby out of the country. He gave Saddiqi Vincent Voland’s phone number.
Saddiqi asked, “This Frenchman. Is he reliable?”
“If he screws you or me over, then I will tear off his nuts and shove them down his throat. He knows this. I think he has all the motivation he needs to come through for us.”
The doctor looked at Court a long time. Court broke the staring contest by glancing at his watch and standing up quickly. “I have to get to Babbila.”
“What’s in Babbila?”
“The Desert Hawks militia base. I’m sort of working for them at the moment.”
Saddiqi seemed as stunned at this as Court had expected.
“Long story,” Court explained. “It was my cover, and I wasn’t planning on using it again, but I’m going to need to find a way to get back in there like none of this happened.”
“You shouldn’t be out on the streets. But I can go anywhere. I’ll drive you where you need to go as soon as my neighbor comes to watch the girl.”
CHAPTER 53
At the warehouse just off the grounds of Toussus-le-Noble general aviation airport, the Syrian commandos tended to their wounded, bagged their dead, and cleaned and reloaded their weapons.
Bianca barely spoke a word as she was shown to her quarters, an area in the corner of the warehouse floor partitioned off with sheets hanging from ropes. Inside was a cot, a change of clothes, and a new pair of tennis shoes in her size. For the third time in the past week, people had given her clothes to change into, although it occurred to her that only the Lebanese fashion designer she’d come to Paris to model for had given her anything she much felt like wearing.
As soon as she arrived Malik told her that President Azzam wanted to speak with her via sat phone, but she surprised everyone by saying she was just too tired and emotional to talk. She asked Malik to relay the message that, thanks be to God, she had been rescued and was unhurt, and she would speak with him in the morning. It was obvious to Bianca that Malik did not want to disappoint Azzam, but also clear he did not want to offend the woman who obviously held a special relationship with the president, so he reluctantly let it go and offered her canned food, which she declined, and bottled water that she took with her to her makeshift quarters.
Rima had warned her that someone with this group had been working with Shakira and had been involved in the ISIS assassination attempt. But even though Rima didn’t specify the attractive blond-haired Westerner standing on the far side of the warehouse floor, Bianca Medina had decided all the Syrians were working for Malik, and Malik was definitely in the Syrian intelligence services. That left two possibilities as to the identity of the man working for Shakira Azzam.
There was the gruff man who’d said not a word to her during the drive from the field to the warehouse, and the blond man . . . she thought he might be Swiss because of his accent and word choices. He had shaken her hand and told her he had been sent here to Paris by Ahmed himself to help with her recovery.
He seemed genuine, and sincere, but she had met many men who could charm and deceive simultaneously.
She didn’t dare say anything to anyone about what Rima had told her. Any hint that the Halabys had allowed her to escape or had communicated information to her would tip off Ahmed’s people that she had been complicit in her own disappearance. If not at first, then at least after the fact.
She just lay down on her little cot and stared up at the rafters ten meters above her. She thought about the American down in Damascus, about Jamal, and about the things Rima had told her and shown her about the crimes of Ahmed Azzam, and she wondered what the hell she was supposed to do now.
* * *
? ? ?
Sebastian Drexler gazed across twenty meters of dusty warehouse floor to the beautiful young woman lying on the cot, just barely visible through an opening in the bedsheets hanging around her. He looked her long, slender physique up and down, then fantasized about pulling his pistol from his coat right now, firing a round into that exquisite body of hers, and then spinning around and dispatching Malik’s men with perfectly placed bullets to their heads. He could then burn this building to the ground and catch the next train to Bern or Zurich or Gstaad or Lauterbrunnen.
It was fantasy, of course. There were still eleven GIS operators here, nine of whom were fit enough to fight effectively.
No . . . Drexler would have to wait, but he didn’t think he’d have to wait too long.
An opportunity would arise to kill Bianca as they traveled to the east; he just had to be ready to take advantage of it.
As he thought about the hours and days ahead, he looked down at his phone and saw that he had four missed calls and a text on his encrypted commo app. He opened the text.
Answer your fucking phone.
It was the first lady. He sighed, long and hard, because he’d have to call and give her the news that Bianca was still alive and, for now, at least, she was surrounded by men who would give their lives to protect her.
He walked over to a darkened distant corner of the warehouse and dialed the number to her satellite phone.
Shakira answered on the first ring. “Dammit, Sebastian!”
Missed you, too, he thought. “The woman has been recovered.”
“Dead or alive?”