“Ready?” Maggie asked, holding up Dara’s cell phone.
The three of them—Maggie, Ed and Elizabeth Stotz—stood in a dimly-lit stairwell on the fifth floor in the Agency’s San Francisco office on Golden Gate Avenue. Ed was the lookout.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Elizabeth said. She was a tall woman just under thirty, with straight blonde hair and bright blue eyes that danced when she spoke. One of the Arabic instructors at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, she had been picked up and driven to the City while Ed’s plane was in the air. She wore gray Levis, tan suede boots and a loose sea green cable knit sweater.
Maggie had run Elizabeth through Dara’s voicemails and Elizabeth had come up with a very acceptable imitation of Dara’s sensuous voice. Human memory was imperfect. Kafka had spoken to Dara infrequently and the passage of time, the stress of his situation, combined with the noise of a cell phone call, all made the hoax more credible.
Maggie plugged ear buds into the phone, popping one into her right ear while Elizabeth did the same with her left. They stood next to each other in the stairwell.
“Ready, set . . .” Maggie said, about to press the Call Recorder button on the phone’s setting screen. Still in her gray skirt suit she was feeling the wear and tear from a day’s worth of cross-country travel and the prep for making voice contact with Kafka.
“Whoa,” Ed said, holding up a big paw. His yellow tie, the one he wore far too often, was askew on his blue Oxford shirt. “Run me through this little stunt one more time first.”
“We call Kafka, and Liz here, posing as Dara, uses the basic script we’ve written as a guide.” Elizabeth held up the yellow-lined pad with half a dozen sentences and phrases Maggie and Elizabeth had translated to Arabic. “After a short phone call, enough to hopefully satisfy Kafka, ‘Dara’ pretends to be interrupted by a nurse or doctor or some other hospital employee entering the stairwell in the American Hospital of Paris. The echo in here should be enough to represent that. Then ‘Dara’ begs off the call. You—Ed—make sure we don’t have any interruptions, which we shouldn’t, this time of day. I put a sign on the door leading to the stairwell. If anyone surprises us, it’ll be from another floor and we’ll have time to react. Is Mobile Ops tracking Kafka’s number?”
“They better be,” Ed said, standing by the stairwell door. “You have your GPS mocker set?”
“MockLoc is still set for the coordinates of the American Hospital of Paris,” Maggie said. “If Kafka, or anyone else, is monitoring Dara’s phone, that’s the location they’ll see.”
“Let me hear Elizabeth do Dara one more time,” Ed said.
Elizabeth rounded her mouth into an oval shape, blinked as she concentrated, spoke a throaty phrase in Arabic, sounding to Maggie, eerily close to Dara.
“Unbelievable,” Maggie said. A chill slipped down her back as the simulated voice of her dead friend reverberated through her. “You’re in the wrong line of work, Liz.”
“It’s not work if you’re having . . . fun,” Elizabeth said in a breathy voice, sounding like Marilyn Monroe now.
Ed gave a thumbs-up. “Let’s do it, ladies.”
Maggie selected Kafka’s number from the speed dial, hit it, holding the phone up in the palm of her hand. The call dialed and rang in the earphones with a foreign beep-beep tone.
Two rings.
Three.
Elizabeth eyed Maggie, raising her eyebrows.
After all this work, Maggie prayed Kafka was available.
There was a click.
“Dara?” a cultured voice said in Arabic. “Is that you? Is that really you?”
Heart pumping, Maggie nodded for Elizabeth to go ahead.
“It’s me, habibi,” she whispered, so close to Dara’s musical lilt that Maggie found herself studying Elizabeth’s lips as she spoke. “It’s so good to hear your voice again!”
“And you. God be praised. How are you feeling?”
“The doctors are concerned about some inflammation around one wound but I am recovering.” Maggie wanted to plant the seed of a possible infection to support any future delays she might have to incur.
“Where are you?”
“Didn’t I tell you? The American Hospital of Paris.”
“It’s echoing.”
“I’m in a stairwell. They posted a plainclothes policeman on the door to my room, for my protection, and he stepped away for a moment.”
“What room are you in?”
Elizabeth eyed Maggie and Maggie displayed three consecutive fingerings.
“Room 213,” Elizabeth said. “But I’m not allowed visitors. And I mustn’t stay on the phone long.”
“When will they be releasing you?”
Once again Elizabeth questioned Maggie with her eyes, pressing the earbud to her ear. Maggie made a gesture, showing three, then all five fingers.
“Three days at best, I am told,” Elizabeth said. “But it might not be until the end of the week.”
Another pause, much too long for Maggie’s liking. She pointed at a sentence on the notepad, motioned for Elizabeth to recite it.
“Where are you, habibi?” Elizabeth said.
“I can’t say.”
Shit, Maggie thought.
“When will I see you?” Elizabeth asked.
“My masters are growing suspicious. They have told me to head back home. I don’t have long. A couple of days at most.”
“Back to Mosul?” It had been in Dara’s notes.
“Yes,” he said. “I can’t stay in Paris much longer.”
Maggie didn’t like the sound of that. She pressed the phone’s mute button, said to Elizabeth, “Tell him you’re going to try to get out early, that you’ll fake your recovery if you have to. We can always stall him later.” She unmuted the phone and gestured for Elizabeth to continue.
Elizabeth said, “I’ll tell the doctors I’m feeling better, habibi. I’ll try to get out in a couple of days. With all that’s been happening, I need the strength of seeing you again. Please wait for me.”
There was a pause. “I have something to tell you,” Kafka said, sounding final.
Maggie didn’t like the sound of that.
“What is it?” Elizabeth gasped.
Kafka took a deep breath. “I can’t go through with it.”
Maggie felt an alarm sound, deep inside. She mouthed the words Elizabeth was to say.
“About coming over to us?” Elizabeth said.
There was a pause. “Yes.”
“But why?”
“My parents,” Kafka said in a defeated voice. “Jihad Nation are holding them. Until I return.”
Maggie whispered to Elizabeth what she was to say.
“You think your masters might harm them?” Elizabeth said.
“I have no doubt . . . if I don’t return to Mosul soon. It’s standard procedure. They can’t afford me slipping away with all that I know. My mother has a heart condition. Just being held is a risk for her.”
Damn, Maggie thought. She muted the phone in her palm. “He’s ready to bolt. Tell him you have to see him, if only for a little while, before he goes back to Iraq. Lay it on thick.”
Elizabeth nodded and Maggie unmuted the phone again.
“I understand, my dearest,” Elizabeth said. “But couldn’t we at least meet briefly? Before you go? All this time and . . .” She feigned a sniffle.
“I want that, too,” Kafka said. “But I don’t see how . . .”
Maggie held up the locket that dangled around her neck for Elizabeth to see, the one she had taken off Dara’s body.
“I’m holding your locket, habibi,” Elizabeth said tearfully. “Near my heart.”
A knot of emotion caught Kafka’s voice. “I wish it could be . . .”
Maggie made a cranking motion with her free hand. Turn it up!
Elizabeth gave a nod of acknowledgement before she burst into Academy-worthy tears. “Oh, habibi, after all this—we are not going to meet? Oh, I am not strong enough for this news! I was kept alive for a purpose. Surely not this! Please don’t forsake me . . .” More convincing tears, ones that had Ed shaking his head. “Oh, I don’t want to live!” Elizabeth sobbed, as if uncontrollably.
“Hush, hush,” Kafka said. “It pains me to hear you weep. If you can get out of there tomorrow, I’ll wait.”
Maggie mouthed what Elizabeth was to say next. Elizabeth confirmed with a nod.
“I can’t possibly get out of hospital tomorrow,” she said. “I’m so weak. And the doctors would never agree to it. Perhaps the day after.”
After a long pause, Kafka spoke. “Very well.”
“Do you promise, habibi?” Elizabeth cried. “Do you mean it?”
“But I must return home after that. I simply must.”
Maggie checked her wristwatch. The call had gone on far too long. She motioned for Ed to open and shut the stairwell door, part of the deception. Ed pulled the door open, stomped several times in place on the metal stairwell, let the door slam shut.
Elizabeth followed Ed’s cue. “Oh my God, habibi, someone’s coming! I’ll text when I can.”
“Tell me what you always tell me,” Kafka said in a quavering voice.
Elizabeth turned to Maggie, her face a mask of sudden panic.
Maggie muted the phone, whispered it to her, unmuted the phone.
“You are my all,” Elizabeth said.
Maggie hung up.
All three of them let out a respective breath.
“That seemed to fly,” Ed said. “I couldn’t understand a single word Liz was saying but she almost had me in tears.”
“I think he bought it,” Maggie said. “Thanks to Liz. But he’s scared to death for his parents. And for good reason. We’ve got to grab him before he runs.” Truth was, she couldn’t help but feel for Kafka’s plight. His parents—prisoners of Jihad Nation. And here he was, a pawn in a shell game.
Ed frowned. “We still don’t have authorization.” He pulled a cell phone from his pocket, dialed a number. “Were you are able to get a trace on that call?” he asked someone, then swore mightily and hung up. “Kafka’s location services were turned off!” Ed jammed the phone back in his pocket. “We don’t know where he was calling from. We better hope he’s not playing us.”
Maggie looked at her watch. Six PM. “Let’s go get a drink,” she said. “Figure this thing out.”