As he’d gotten older, though, he found himself sympathizing with the old guard more and more. Because the cesspool was starting to drive him crazy.
He rubbed his temples, his head spinning as he thought of the Sunnis and Shias and the royal family of Bahrain. The boy, though, what to do with the boy?
One option was to stop trying to figure it all out, declare victory, and hand Muhammad over the next morning as he’d already promised to do. The only problem with that plan was Daria. And what remained of his own conscience.
That old man had been lying.
Dammit.
“Where shall I drop you?” asked the Bahraini taxi driver who was bringing Mark back to Manama.
Mark considered his next move. It was only eleven in the morning; he had the whole day ahead of him. “What’s the nearest big hotel?”
Mark checked into the Sheraton in downtown Manama, taking a room with a king bed on the fifteenth floor. It was a business-class hotel near the diplomatic section of the city. The Bahrain World Trade Center — two gleaming wedge-shaped skyscrapers joined by slender sky bridges — was just a short walk away, as was the Central Bank of Bahrain.
He found a men’s shop on the first floor and bought a maroon oxford shirt, dark gray slacks, underwear, black socks, black wing-tip shoes, and a soft leather briefcase equipped with a shoulder strap. After completing his purchases, he showered, shaved, dressed in his new clothes, and then picked up his iPod.
A wall of disinformation had been thrown up in front of him. His job was to find a weakness in that wall and exploit it.
After connecting to the Sheraton’s Wi-Fi, he googled royal family Bahrain schools and learned that most of the extended royal family had been educated, at least at the elementary school level, at an exclusive bilingual English-Arabic private school on the west side of Riffa. He went to the school’s website, and saw that regular classes began in kindergarten, for which a child needed to be five years old.
But he also found a weekly child-parent class that was offered on Sundays, which was described as a way for parents to introduce their preschool-age children to the English language. It was restricted to parents whose children had already been accepted as future students at the school and was intended to complement the kindergarten curriculum the children eventually would encounter.
Hoping that Abdullah hadn’t been lying when he’d mentioned that Muhammad had been taking English lessons, Mark clicked on the Staff icon at the top of the school’s website. It was a small, prohibitively expensive school; there appeared to be only one teacher per grade. The kindergarten teacher, who also taught preschool English, was a woman named Jean Harman.
Today was a Saturday, the last day of the Muslim weekend, so Mark knew it was a near certainty that the school would be closed. He’d have to track Jean Harman down elsewhere.
He googled Bahrain phonebook and wound up on the website for Batelco, the main telecommunications company in Bahrain. Typing in the name Jean Harman brought up a listing for Jean and Victor Harman, beneath which was an address.
36
The bathroom in Rear Admiral Jeffrey Garver’s spacious three-bedroom apartment was large enough to accommodate a wide double sink, above which hung an equally wide mirror. Both Garver and his wife Miriam were standing in front of this mirror, staring at their respective reflections.
Garver — who was the director of intelligence for US Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain — was partially dressed in white boxer shorts and a white undershirt; he had only just gotten around to shaving because he’d spent a sleepless night and then morning videoconferencing with Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida. His wife, wearing a pea-green ankle-length skirt and long-sleeve yellow blouse, was applying her makeup, getting ready for an afternoon meeting of the Bahrain Officer Spouses’ Club. Their apartment was on the sixth floor of a high-rise located on the west side of Manama, less than a quarter mile away from the US naval base.
Through the bathroom window, Garver could just see the building where he worked, and a green baseball field. Past the base, in Manama Bay, he could make out two guided missile destroyers.
God willing, he thought, pulling his razor carefully down his cheek, this view wasn’t going to change much in the years to come. The Fifth Fleet was responsible for patrolling the Persian Gulf, that narrow body of water through which twenty percent of the world’s oil passed. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates all touched its waters. Take away the fleet, and all hell might break loose.
“I spoke with Jason last night,” said Miriam, referring to their youngest son. “He sends his best.”
Garver forced himself to smile. “Decent of him.”
“He seemed busy. Fitting in all right, I guess.”
“Who?”
“Your son, are you even listening to me?”
The Garvers’ youngest son had just joined their oldest at the US Naval Academy, which was also Jeffrey Garver’s alma mater.
“I’m sure he doesn’t miss us a bit,” said Garver. He ran his razor under hot water, rinsing off the shaving gel and stubble, then brought the blade to the underside of his chin.
Three more had died today.
It amazed him that his wife could be so oblivious — indeed that so many Bahrainis could still be so oblivious — to what was happening. People really did live in a fantasy world. Not for long, though. If the news didn’t break today, it would tomorrow.
Moments later, as she applied eyeliner, Miriam said, “Reema came yesterday.”
A fifty-eight-year-old Bahraini mother of four, Reema came twice a week to clean, do the laundry, and occasionally buy groceries.
“I saw.”
“She was on time, I’ll give her that.”
Garver cleaned his razor off again, leaned in closer to the mirror, and began carefully shaving under his nose.
“She asked,” added Miriam, “whether instead of taking off the first week of December, she might take off the second. Something about the date of her nephew’s wedding getting changed due to—”
“Miri—” That was Garver’s nickname for his wife. “You know I don’t want to hear it.”
He spoke sharply.
“I know, dear. I know.”
“These people always have reasons a mile long, and it always has something to do with their damn second cousin, younger brother, aunt, or whatever. At some point, you have to decide between trying to please every last person in your family and doing your job. I know that sounds harsh, but…”
“Don’t be mean, dear.”
“Fair is not mean. What did you tell her?”
“That I would ask you, but that you were a navy man, and that navy men didn’t like changing the schedule after it was set.”
Garver shook his head. With everything else that was crashing down around him, this was the last thing he needed to deal with.
“She should know that by now. How many times do I have to tell these—”
“Now, Admiral, you know I don’t like to hear those words.”
Heeding his wife’s warning, Garver stopped himself from saying what he’d been thinking. But he’d be damned if he was going to let the housekeeper walk all over him.
“No. No, she can’t change the date. She made a commitment and I expect her to honor it. We don’t do ourselves or her any good by tolerating bad behavior.”
No doubt, thought Garver, that ruling would earn him a few nasty looks the next time he saw the housekeeper. She’d fault him, try to make him out to be the bad guy, just because she, like so many other Arabs, refused to plan her own life properly. That was the problem with this whole region.