Part 29 (2/2)

”But it's true. I want us to be really us again.”

Suddenly her arms were around his neck, and she was kissing him.

He pulled her into him, crus.h.i.+ng her to him, tasting her lips, her mouth, inhaling her rose scent.

She broke away first. ”Yes, when-not if-when this is all over, let's try again.”

Then he felt her stiffen. She was looking past him. Bosa and Morgan had arrived, trotting sweaty-faced between the SUVs.

Morgan a.s.sessed the situation. ”Your timing stinks, but you're cute.”

”Get in the SUVs,” Bosa ordered. ”We've got work to do.”

72.

Her heart full of emotion, Eva watched through the winds.h.i.+eld as Judd drove off in an SUV, with Bosa in the pa.s.senger seat. Their speeding rear tires sent gravel pinging against the chain-link fence. The two men were late for their rendezvous in Baghdad and worried their source might leave before they got there.

With effort, she turned her attention to Morgan. They were in the front seat of the other SUV. Morgan had insisted on driving, explaining he had been in Baghdad many times and was fluent in Arabic. He was probably right-but all he was doing was sitting behind the steering wheel and examining the cell phone Judd had found on the dead customs man.

”Let's go,” she said impatiently. ”Maybe we'll get lucky and spot al-Sabah at SIL headquarters.”

But Morgan had not even turned on the ignition. ”Not yet. I'm working on something. Ah, here it is. Redial.” He tapped a b.u.t.ton and lifted the phone to his ear. ”Trouble!” he announced in panicked Arabic into the phone. ”Need help!” He ended the connection.

He had sounded so terrified that she had felt her chest contract.

He glanced at her. ”Pretty b.l.o.o.d.y convincing, aren't I?”

”Why did you make that call?”

”I want to see how many more of Seymour's people are around here and what they'll do.” He opened his backpack and took out a canvas case.

”Now what?”

”Directional mike. Low self-noise, high consonant articulation, and good feedback rejection. Compact and top of the line. Takes video, too. Hope someone shows up.” He rolled down his window and rested the mike on the side-view mirror. All of the windows in the vehicle were darkened, including front and rear winds.h.i.+elds.

Jack had already flown the jet away. In the distance, airport personnel were working around the planes parked at the terminal. No one was near the private jets.

And then two men ran out of the terminal. They had cell phones in their hands. Both seemed to be dialing out. Instantly Morgan turned on the mike and aimed it.

The phone lying on the dashboard rang.

”One's calling here,” Eva said. ”The other must be dialing one of the guys who answered the inspector's call.”

”That's what I'd do,” Morgan said.

Abruptly the pair stopped and stared down at the tarmac.

As they talked, Morgan translated for her: ”They believe they're looking at blood. They're wondering where the two other men are.”

The men looked up and yelled what sounded like names. Surveying the area, they ran again toward where the rental jet had been parked. Again they stopped and peered down, this time at the place where the customs inspector had died.

”More blood,” Morgan explained. ”One of them is phoning someone named Jabari. It sounds as if Jabari's important in al-Sabah's organization. They're telling him the customs inspector found Greg and Courtney Roman, but now there's blood in two places, the jet is gone, and the Romans, the inspector, and the two men are missing.” After more gazing around, the two new men looked down again. ”There are some drops of blood. They're following them.” Periodically glancing at the tarmac, the pair ran toward the small hangars. They tried doors. ”They've found one with a broken lock,” Morgan told her. ”Guess why.”

”George and Jack broke it so they could dump the bodies inside.”

”Bingo.”

Because the men were out of sight, there was no way the directional mike would work. Morgan and she sat in silence. He seemed relaxed.

”Aren't you worried?” she asked.

”About what? Two bungnuts who have to report in to a boss who really isn't the boss but works for a worse SOB than he ever dreamed of being.”

The men reappeared, talking as they hurried to the terminal.

Morgan aimed the mike again. ”They're leaving the bodies where they are,” he translated, ”and they'll tell the coppers they saw you and Judd kill them.”

She felt a jolt of fear. ”That's just wonderful. Now every policeman in Baghdad will be looking to welcome us.”

Morgan waved at her to be quiet. The men were still speaking. ”Ah-ha. Now we're getting somewhere.” He listened, his gaunt face intense. ”They're going to meet Jabari.” He turned on the ignition. ”They're parked near the front of the terminal. We'll follow. Call Bosa and tell him what we're doing.”

73.

There had been no bombings in downtown Baghdad for more than an hour. People emerged from shops and stores to peer around nervously then move briskly off, heading home, for errands, or perhaps to the local cafe. Walking toward a large s.h.i.+te mosque with a blue-tiled dome, al-Sabah pa.s.sed a man with a pushcart kitchen who was slicing thin cuts of meat from a rotisserie for shawarma, flatbread sandwiches. The mouth-watering aroma of grilling lamb drifted along the sidewalk. A crowd was gathering. Doing ordinary things helped people to feel normal, al-Sabah noted. The human animal was predictable.

Skirting the group, he stepped through a door into a thousand-year-old s.h.i.+te mosque that had been built of stone laid upon stone secured not by mortar but by the finest craftsmans.h.i.+p. Continuing down a corridor, he knocked on a polished wood door and entered a small whitewashed room with large framed portraits of Imam Ali and his son Hussein, the founders of s.h.i.+sm, on two walls and of Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran's 1979 revolution, on a third.

Across the room, kneeling on the floor in the traditional pose, his back to the wall, was Ayatollah Abdel-Hussein Gilani. Looking up, he closed the Koran and rose. With his long gray beard streaked with snowy white, his high-bridged nose, and his black, intelligent eyes, Gilani was the picture of a s.h.i.+te patriarch. He wore a light gray robe, black loafers, and the black turban that told the world he was a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. At the moment, his gaze was kindly and interested, but Gilani was a follower of Imam Khomeini, who believed all of G.o.d's authority was vested in the supreme leader and senior religious scholars.

They exchanged the usual affectionate greetings.

”Allaa bil-kheir,” Ayatollah Gilani said. G.o.d bless.

”Shall we walk?” al-Sabah, the courteous host, asked.

”Yes, let's do.”

With a gracious gesture, al-Sabah invited the ayatollah to precede him into the corridor. Like Baghdad's oldest houses, the mosque was built around a courtyard rimmed by colonnaded porticos. And, too, like the oldest houses, the great building was inward-looking, sealed off from the street on the ground floor except for a single door in each of its four exterior walls, all of which fronted streets. Al-Sabah and Gilani, who was still carrying his Koran, walked beneath an arch and into the central courtyard, an emerald-green oasis of plum, apricot, and walnut trees with winding paths and hard-packed sand areas for prayer rugs. When they saw the ayatollah, the men who had been reading or praying retreated respectfully to the porticos and vanished into the mosque, leaving al-Sabah and Gilani alone.

It had all begun in 2003, when al-Sabah and his boyhood friend Tabrizi had founded the SIL political party in Baghdad, sharing a vision of Iraq once again at the heart of a powerful and important s.h.i.+te world. Al-Sabah had used his old Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah contacts to set up meetings with mullahs from Iran's ruling clerical cla.s.s.

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