Chapter 10
Pain seared through Evelyn’s head with each bump in the road.
The trunk of the car was lined with several folded blankets, but that didn’t help much. Not only was the road surface rough and riddled with potholes that felt like veritable crevasses at times — more of a mountain trail than a paved road, Evelyn imagined in her fleeting moments of lucidity — the journey itself felt like an unending series of tight bends that veered left and right and climbed up and down hills and mountains, tossing her body around without warning like a bottle adrift in a storm, and squashing her against the insides of the trunk with each change of direction.
Her suffering was intensified by the duct tape across her mouth and the cloth sack around her head. The sensorial isolation would have been bad enough without the long and winding road from hell. She could hardly breathe, struggling to suck in faint wisps of the dank, stale air through her nose. She worried about what would happen if she got sick. She could suffocate on her own vomit, and they wouldn’t even hear her. The thought sent a bracing shot of anxiety through her veins. Her bones ached from the constant battering of the ride, and the zip-tie nylon cuffs around her wrists and ankles chafed against her thin, wrinkled skin.
She wished she could find relief by losing consciousness. She could feel herself spiraling into the darkness, but each time, just as she was on the verge of blacking out, another bump would send a jolt of pain quaking through her and jar her awake.
The car hadn’t traveled far from the downtown area when it had pulled into a deserted lot behind a heavily damaged building in the southern outskirts of the city. Evelyn had been dragged out of it, tied, gagged, hooded, and stuffed into the trunk of a waiting car with practiced efficiency. She’d heard her abductors discuss something briefly, their words unclear in her confused and muffled state, then the doors were slammed shut and the car had lurched onto its journey. She couldn’t begin to guess how long she’d been in here, but she knew that hours had already passed.
She had no way of knowing how much longer it would take.
Her mind was besieged by a tangle of blurred images. She saw herself running mindlessly through the downtown arcades, out of breath, her legs burning from exertion. Following Farouk. His terrified face.
Farouk. What happened to him? Did he get away? He wasn’t in the car with her. She thought she remembered seeing him slip away from their kidnappers and run down the alley, past the car. Right after someone had screamed out her name.
Mia. She didn’t dream it, did she? Was her daughter really there? She flashed to the surreal image of Mia, standing there, frozen in shock, yelling out from the far end of the street. She was reasonably sure that had actually happened. But how? What was she doing there? How did she get there so quickly? She remembered having drinks with her. Leaving her at the hotel. Why was she in that alley? And, far more important, was she safe?
A fist of grief punched through her and throttled her heart. There had been deaths. She was sure of it. The gunshots rang in her ears. The soldier, mowed down by the car. The deafening, horrifying thuds, the body slamming against the windshield like a crash-test dummy, shattering it. She tried to concentrate, tried to remember more clearly, but every bump shook her to her roots and sent her thoughts scattering.
She tried to let herself go, to force the blackout, but it wouldn’t come. The discomfort and the pain were unyielding. With a burgeoning horror, she started to focus on the specifics of her journey. Hours. It had taken hours. That didn’t sound good. Not in such a small country. Where were they taking her? She plowed through dissonant memories, back to newspaper reports she remembered from years ago, from the “dark days” of Lebanon. The kidnappings. The journalists, the random hostages who had been plucked off the streets. She remembered how they’d described their journeys — wrapped in duct tape like mummies, stuffed into crates, hidden in trucks. A growing sense of dread gripped her as she visualized their captivity cells. Bare. Cold. Chained to radiators that didn’t work. Surviving on scraps of vile food. And then the scariest thought of all came rocketing blindingly out of the darkness.
None ever knew where they were held.
Years of captivity. The most efficient intelligence services in the world. Not a clue. No informants. No ransoms. No rescue attempts. Nothing. It was as if they’d been wiped off the face of the earth, only to reappear years later — if they were lucky.
The car must have then hit a serious pothole, as her head snapped back and bounced up against the sheet metal of the trunk’s lid. The burst of pain was enough to finally send her over the edge and into the merciful peace of a dreamless sleep.
Chapter 11
Farouk gazed blankly into the chaotic patchwork of shelters and makeshift tents. He could feel the suffering and the despair in the stillness around him, even in the oppressive darkness that was only broken, here and there, by the faint glimmer of a gas lantern. It was eerily quiet, except for the muted sounds of scattered radios that wafted through the trees. Most of the refugees had finally succumbed to sleep.
The garden square of Sanayi’ was one of the rare patches of greenery in the concrete maze that was Beirut—green being a generous term, given how parched and unkempt its grounds were, even in normal circumstances. With the onset of the war in the south of the country, hundreds of refugees had made it their home. As had Farouk, since arriving in the city where he had no one to turn to. Not anymore, that is.
He took a final drag from a cigarette before stubbing it out on the ground beside him. He patted his pockets. The pack of smokes he found was empty. He crumpled it and tossed it away and shrugged to himself. He pulled the lapels of his jacket up against his neck and shrank back against the low wall that ran along the edge of the square.
This was what his life had come down to. Alone in another war-torn country. Homeless. Squatting on a patch of dried-out mud. His morning was looking even less promising than that of the wretched souls piled across the wasteland before him.
He wrapped his shaking hands around his head and tried to shut the world out, but the rush of the last twenty-four hours wouldn’t go away quietly. He rubbed his face, cursing himself for remembering Evelyn’s interest, for interfering with a sale that was all but agreed, for instigating this whole disaster… then stared out into the shadows, wondering what to do next.
Leave? Go back home, to Iraq? Go back… to what? A demolished country, ravaged by a brutal civil war. A land of mass kidnappings, death squads, and car bombs, a place of unmitigated chaos and suffering. He shook his head. There was nothing to go back to, and nowhere else for him to go. His country was gone. And he was here, now, a stranger in a strange land, his only contact and friend taken away.
Because of him.
He’d dragged her into this, and now they had her.
The thought was like a dagger to his heart. He shook his head again and again. How could he have let that happen? It was his fault, there was no escaping it. He saw them, he knew they were coming for him, and yet he still led them to her, got her taken in his place. He shivered as he remembered Hajj Ali’s tortured body. His old friend—Sitt Evelyn — in the hands of those monsters. The thought was too horrific to imagine.
He had to try to help her. Somehow. Let people know what he’d gotten her into. Help them find her, point them in the right direction. Warn them about what they were dealing with. But how? Whom could he talk to? He couldn’t go to the cops. He was in the country illegally. He was trying to sell stolen goods. Even with the best intentions, the cops wouldn’t take too kindly to an illegal Iraqi smuggler.