He set the Portuguese tapes and the books about Brazil in his desk at odd angles and photographed them with his phone, so when he returned from lunch he could see whether they had been touched. When he returned he found they had.
That night before he went to sleep he wondered where the old man really was. He hoped it wasn’t Brazil.
34
Alan Spencer had begun to dress like a Libyan after two months in the country. On most days he wore a pair of loose white pants, a white shirt that hung nearly to his knees, and a pair of sandals. Sometimes he wrapped a scarf around his neck and pulled it up like a hood over the skullcap he wore. On hotter days he wore the kaffiyeh, keeping his neck, shoulders, and head protected. His face and hands had tanned, because he spent most of his days interviewing patients outside the medical tents.
He began to notice that the patients, particularly the ones in the remote rural areas, were more likely to approach him first, because his clothing put them at ease.
Spencer assumed that a few of the Canadians probably thought he was going native, or masquerading, but others seemed to respect him for adapting to the climate. In time a few other volunteers followed his lead. But his motives were not what they imagined. The long, loose shirt and pants made it easy to conceal his pistol and the flat pocketknife he now carried. He knew that if terrorists were to open fire at the clinic, the first shots would be aimed at the highest-value targets. They would aim for the doctors, then the nurses, all in hospital scrubs, and then anyone else who didn’t look Libyan.
Spencer’s new appearance might give him time to pull out his silenced pistol and kill one or two attackers before they realized where his shots were coming from.
As the months went by, the Canadian relief mission moved farther east, and slightly northward toward Ajdabiya, Benghazi, and Tobruk. The team encountered increasing numbers of refugees from wars and migrants hoping to reach places where they could earn a living. There were groups of Eritreans and Somalians fleeing Al-Shabaab, traveling on foot toward the Libyan port of Ajdabiya. The travelers he interviewed said that they hoped to get on boats to Greece or Italy, but if that failed they would keep going to Benghazi and try again there.
Many needed medical help, and had been in need long before they reached the clinic. All of them needed food and water. Groups would stop to rest for a day or two before they moved on, trying to marshal their strength for the big push to the Mediterranean.
As the clinic moved closer to Ajdabiya, they began to meet Syrians, Senegalese, and even a few Libyans from regions where the fighting had been heating up. All it took to explain why they were converging in the northeast was a glance at the map. Libya was the obvious place to cross the Mediterranean to southern Europe. The smuggling routes were centuries old, and the human trafficking business had been thriving for decades. The logic of getting out of the Middle East and North Africa was unassailable, obvious to everyone. The wars of the past ten years had left poverty and chaos, and the extreme danger of the escape routes deterred no one.
Nearly all the refugees spoke Arabic or had someone with them who did, so Spencer’s language skills were more in demand than ever. Traffic increased as they neared Tobruk, the stronghold of the government forces.
Because of the press of patients the Canadian relief mission exhausted its supplies two months earlier than they had expected, so they asked that the scheduled airlift to resupply them be moved eight weeks ahead. They drove into Tobruk to wait for the airlift at the airport, which Alan remembered had still been the old El Adem air base when he was in Libya. When they reached the airport, Dr. Zidane received a phone call that said there would be a three-day delay. The supplies had to be purchased, packaged, and loaded.
Spencer waited until the group had unloaded the trucks and set up camp inside the airport fence. Then he went to find Dr. Zidane alone. He said, “I know this is an unusual favor to ask, but I’d like to take a little time off.”
“Time off?” she said. “That’s a novel idea. What would you do?”
“I think I told you that when I was a child I came to Libya with my parents, who were archaeologists. When they worked in particularly remote sites, they sometimes had me staying with Libyan friends between here and Benghazi. I’d like to go and visit some of the places I remember.”
She shrugged and said, “I don’t feel I can say no to you, Alan. You’re absolutely irreplaceable, but we’re stuck here for a few days, and we don’t have enough supplies left to run at full strength anyway. But please, be very careful. You’re in the middle of a civil war.”
“I’ll be careful,” he said. “And I’ll be back in seventy-two hours, when the plane arrives.”
“Do you want to take one of the satellite phones?”