It was an unfathomable outrage, the American wrote in her journal.
By nightfall they had assembled the corpses and built a huge funeral pyre from the remnants of tents, bedding, handwoven blankets and camel saddlebags. The night was clear. Tranquil. The winds slept. Constellations wheeled overhead as the flames and smoke ascended into the eternal desert sky. The bodies burned with the putrid smell one never forgets as the Egyptian doctor recited a passage from memory.
“We only have the life of this world. We die and we live, and nothing destroys us but time.”
That night as the fire crackled and the group settled into their tents, the workers did not speak, or even attempt to comfort each other. The Egyptian searched for answers in the worn copies of his holy books. The Brazilian and the soldier played chess. The American wept in private until sleep took her.
In the morning, they rose with the sun as the winds resumed. Exhausted, the foursome said little to each other as they departed. They had driven for nearly three hours when the Brazilian squinted from behind the wheel of the Mercedes into the sandstorm. “It looks like something ahead. An animal.”
“A goat from the camp. A survivor,” the doctor said. “Let’s pick it up.”
“I’m not certain what it is.” The Brazilian radioed ahead to the soldier in the Rover.
The soldier reached for binoculars, trying to discern the small form ahead.
“That’s not an animal! It’s a woman!”
He shifted gears.
Oblivious to the trucks, the woman walked deter minedly, even as the trucks overtook her and braked in front of her. All four workers climbed out and stood in her path, staring at her. Only when she reached them did she halt.
She appeared to be in her thirties. From the quality and fabric of her tattered garments, she at first appeared to have been a shepherd’s wife. But the Egyptian doctor saw something more, saw the vestiges of an educated woman, a middle-class woman of standing, perhaps.
A woman who did not belong here.
Under her head scarf, they saw her face was bruised and scarred with dried blood. Her parched lips mute. Her blank eyes did not regard the workers. They did not regard anything.
“What is your name?” the doctor asked first in Arabic, then several other languages, including English and French.
No response.
“She is in shock and dehydrated,” he said, then to the woman, “You are safe. You are now with friends.”
At that, the woman collapsed. The soldier caught her.
“Let’s get her onto a stretcher,” the doctor said.
Wind-driven sand hissed and pelted the canvas of the Mercedes as the doctor and the American aided her, checking the woman’s vital signs, setting up an IV drip. Examining her, the doctor found she had cuts and con tusions from severe beating.
When they resumed their journey, the doctor watched over the woman in the rear, swaying with the truck’s rhythmic rocking.
She was semiconscious. Her vital signs were good. They had been traveling for nearly an hour; all the while the doctor wondered, Who was this sole survivor?
She was not a tribeswoman. She seemed misplaced in the region. She had smooth skin, almond-shaped eyes. She was beautiful. He tried to comprehend what she had witnessed and fathom reasons for her being here. Running a soothing hand over her forehead, he noticed an unusual protrusion within her clothing.
He discovered a hidden, zippered pocket cleverly sewn along a seam. He opened it, extracted its contents. Documents. He studied them carefully, absorbing her identification.
Samara Anne Ingram.
Her photograph. A nice smile. Dual citizenship. An Iraqi from Baghdad. A British subject. A certified nurse. Small photographs of a man and a little boy. Her husband and child? But they were not among the dead.
Why was she here?
An aid worker, perhaps?
An idea landed on the doctor.
“Change our course now!” he yelled to the front. “We must go to Yemen!”
“Yemen?” the Brazilian responded over the engine’s roar. “Why?”
“I know medical people there. Good ones. It’s better we take her there. Tell the others on the radio! We must change course now! Turn around!”
“But the guards at the border will make things diffi cult.”
“I can take care of that.”
“You’re the boss.”
Few people alive knew the Egyptian’s true identity and his role as senior recruiter for one of the deadliest networks in the world. The doctor touched his waist and his con cealed money belt. It was thick with cash, bribe money that would ensure entry into Yemen with no questions asked.
If that failed, he only had to put his lips to an ear, whisper a name, and all doors would open for him.
All doors.
He was oblivious to the radio’s chatter-the Italian cursing the GPS again-and the swish of petrol in the trucks’ many exterior storage containers as transmis sions ground and the trucks turned and headed off for the lethal zone of Yemen’s northern border with Saudi Arabia.
The Egyptian was oblivious to it all.
For he was no longer a doctor with the relief agency. Now, he was performing his other duty-one the others knew nothing of.
No one saw him slide Samara’s identity papers inside his boot.
His old friend would be pleased.
He had found a potentially powerful soldier.
A perfect soldier.
25
Old Walled City of Shibam, Wadi Hadramaut, Yemen
Rick Mofina
Six Seconds
I am dead.
Samara was lying in the bed of a darkened room and discerned two figures watching her. Seated in chairs, they were silhouetted against the brilliant sun that bled through the huge wooden shutters.
Was this the next stage of death?
The torment of the tomb?
The old women had told her the stories-how after a believer’s death, after the mourners had left, two angels would appear and question the dead, to judge their entry into paradise.
“Where am I?”
“With friends, who wish to help you.”
“Help me?”
“Into the next life.”
Nausea surged through her and she vomited into the pan at her bedside.
Her head throbbed with pain. She was disoriented, groggy from sedation.
But alive.
An IV drip was taped to her arm, her body sore as fragments of memory strobed.
The bandits attacking the camp.
She’d hid for days under the corpses; how they twitched as the vultures fed on them.
Then the horror of Baghdad.
The blinding thunder flashes, the earth splitting open.
Carrying her son in her arms.
As she recovered, she saw vials for drugs at her bedside.
A cup of water was handed to her.
“Samara, we’ve learned much about you in the few days you’ve been here after we found you in the desert.” The man’s voice was soft, sympathetic, as he looked over her papers. “Through our contacts, we know of the injustices that have been inflicted upon you. We know of the tragedies of Baghdad months ago, that forced you back to your people, your distant Bedouin relatives, to aid them.”
“Who are you?”
“Your brothers.”
“My brothers?”
“We will help you.”
“What of the others? Did any of the others in the camp survive, the children? The mothers? There was an old man, he tried to help me.”
“There is only you.”
“Oh!”
“Pray with us and you will understand.”
Samara wept.
“How can I pray? My faith has been destroyed.”
Six Seconds 163
“This will change, you have been called to your destiny.”
My destiny?
Something was taking shape.
It had been five months since the deaths of Ahmed and Muhammad. Five months since Samara began her search and now, here, the answers Samara had sought were emerging. As if rising from a shimmering mirage, something illusory was coming into view, as foretold by the old woman.