The Captain Karim video ended. Muhammad called out for her, and she came to him. He was still sitting at the kitchen table. Half of the cookies were gone and crumbs were scattered all over the table and floor.
“Where are you from, Muhammad?”
“Ba-bay.”
Daria thought of how, for many English-speaking toddlers, library became liberry, or spaghetti became sgabetti. “Muhammad is from Bahrain?”
“Yes.”
“Bahrain is your home?”
Bahrain was a small island in the Persian Gulf connected to Saudi Arabia via a long causeway. Although it was an independent nation, it had been a protectorate of Great Britain for many years — hence the use of the word bistoog.
“Yes.”
“Where is your Anna?”
“In ba-bay.”
13
The first thing Decker did when he got down off the cliff was call Bruce Holtz, his boss at CAIN.
“Dude,” said Decker. “You got a minute?”
“Yo, Deck… hold on,” said Holtz. Then, “This about Mark?”
“No. What’s up with Mark?”
“Ah, nothing. Gimme a sec.”
Decker heard Holtz typing away at a keyboard.
Jessica, who was coiling their climbing rope, gave him a look that said, Hurry up already. She and Decker were both wearing headlamps — the last light of day had disappeared ten minutes ago.
“Listen,” said Deck. “I’m going to have to bail on next week’s job.”
Holtz stopped typing.
Decker added, “Something’s come up,” and then he told Holtz about his dad.
After a lengthy pause, Holtz said, “All right. I understand. No problem.”
Though he didn’t sound sympathetic, he didn’t sound angry either.
“Sorry, I know that screws you over.”
“Shit happens. I got family too. You do what you have to do, man.”
“Well, what I have to do right now is get a flight out of here pronto. I’ll fly commercial if I have to, but if CAIN can hook me up with a military transport, that would rock. The sooner the better.”
“I’m busy as hell, I got this fucking thing going on with Mark.”
“All right.”
“But I’ll put in a call. It’ll just take a second.”
“I appreciate it. What’s going on with Mark?”
“Oh, he’s busting my balls on this CAIN situation that’s going down. It’s confidential, so I can’t say more, but give me a heads-up if he calls you, would you? And if you could not let Mark know that you’re keeping me in the loop, I’d appreciate it.”
“Ah, yeah.” Decker wasn’t about to sandbag Mark, not after all Mark had done for him, but he didn’t see any point in telling Holtz that. “Anyway, you’ll let me know about the flight?”
“I’ll put in a call to the air base, see what I can do.”
14
Daria called Mark, and when he didn’t pick up, left a message for him about the Bahrain connection.
Then she loaded up another Captain Karim video for Muhammad. Halfway through it, the boy’s eyes began to droop, so she took the seat cushions off the couch and made a sleeping area for him in the bedroom — on the floor, because she worried he might fall off the bed.
She let him watch the rest of the Captain Karim video on his new bed, rubbing his back as he sucked on his pacifier. By the end of the show, Muhammad’s eyes had closed. She looked at him for a moment, marveling at his smooth skin, his lips pursed so sweetly around the pacifier that it almost made her physically ache to look at him. His black hair curled around a tiny, perfectly formed ear, and his shallow, steady breathing was as beautiful a sound as she’d heard in this world.
What happened to you, Muhammad?
One thing was certain, she wouldn’t tolerate seeing this child thrown back to the wolves.
She sat with him for a few more minutes, until she was sure he was fast asleep, and then walked to the living room and sat down on the cushionless couch. She called a potential benefactor she was supposed to meet in Almaty the next day and asked to postpone that meeting until a week from now. A flight to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, that she’d booked for two days from now, she canceled altogether.
And then she closed her eyes. God, she was tired. This pace was killing her. If her period wasn’t just late, then she had to start taking better care of herself, and soon.
Her mind swirled as she started worrying about child care, and preschools, and the lousy health care system in Kyrgyzstan, and how she was going to swing it all…
Four hard, sharp raps jolted Daria out of her sleep. Someone was knocking on the front door.
Her instincts told her that it wasn’t just a neighbor coming to ask for a cup of sugar, that it was some sort of law enforcement, or—
They were here for Muhammad. She couldn’t let them inside.
Daria stood up, took a half second to come up with a plan, then raced silently into the bedroom. Muhammad was still fast asleep. She gently closed the bedroom door just as four more loud knocks sounded.
On her way to the balcony off the kitchen, Daria grabbed her iPod and headset from the living room coffee table. As she eased open the door to the balcony, she brought up the last call she’d made, pushed dial, put on the headset, and slipped the device into her back pocket.
On the left side of the balcony, an old rope had been affixed to a rusted bolt that protruded from the exterior of the building. The makeshift fire escape lay on the floor in a tidy circular coil.
Daria took the rope and tossed it over the side of the balcony just as Mark answered her call.
“God, I was afraid I’d get voice mail again. Pick Muhammad up from our condo.” She spoke quietly as she slid gracefully down the rope. “Now.” The second her feet hit the pavement, she tied a quick knot in the end of the rope.
“I can’t. Complete cluster on this end. Holtz got involved in—”
“No time. They’re here for him, I have to draw them away. I can’t take him, it’s on you.”
“Who’s they?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you OK?”
With urgency, Daria whispered, “I’ll be fine, just pick up Muhammad!”
She tried to heave the knot, and the length of rope that was attached to it, back up to the balcony. She succeeded, but a several-foot-long loop, too high for her to reach, hung down over the side.
“OK, I’ll figure it out,” said Mark.
“Be quick about it. By the way, I left you a message — he’s from Bahrain. He says the woman he calls Anna, and who’s probably his nanny, is from there.”
Daria ended the call and ran to the stairwell entrance to her condo. As she opened the door, she heard more knocking coming from the hallway.
She climbed the creaky stairs, her footsteps heavy and loud on the oak stair treads. When she reached the second-floor landing, she turned into the hall and feigned surprise when she saw the two men — one a gangly schoolboy redhead with a razor-burn rash on his neck, the other an older man with Asian features — standing outside her door. The redhead held a crowbar in his hand and was in the process of wedging it between the doorframe and the door.
She took a wary step back. As she did so, she noted that the redhead was wearing leather shoes imprinted with the Timberland logo. Bishkek wasn’t like Baku, which had long ago been invaded by Western stores. An American, she figured. Backing away, she said in English, “What are you doing?”