Lion of Babylon

  Lion of Babylon

  Davis Bunn

  Lion of Babylon

  Davis Bunn

  Chapter One

  He exited the church’s double doors and surveyed the gathering. Ladies in their signature hats chatted and laughed while children played tag about their legs. Singles clustered around the periphery, drawn together by situation and need. The diverse congregation mirrored its Baltimore neighborhood. Marc Royce knew many of them, and would have been welcomed by most. But it had been some time since he’d moved easily among friends. Even here.

  Spring sunlight glinted off a windshield to his right. Marc watched a limo glide down the block toward them. Dark-tinted windows reflected the trees and the stone church. As the vehicle approached, the back window began to roll down.

  The congregation grew watchful, tense. In Washington, fifty miles to the south, only a tourist gave a black Town Car a second glance. But in Baltimore, limos meant something else entirely. A lot of Baltimore’s drive-bys started like this, with tinted windows masking rage and weapons until the very last moment.

  Which was why all the parishioners gathered in front of the church’s steps gave the slow-moving limo a very hard look.

  The Town Car swept through the surrounding traffic like a beast of the deep. The rear window was now all the way down. Marc tensed with the others, and reached for the gun he no longer wore.

  Then an old man’s face appeared in the open window. The lone passenger was white and old and paid the congregation no mind. He leaned forward and spoke to his driver. Apparently the window was down simply so the old man could enjoy the fine spring day.

  Appearances, Marc knew, could be deceiving.

  The limo swept around the corner and disappeared. The gathering resumed their Sunday chats. Marc gave it a few beats, long enough for his departure not to be tied to the limo, then walked around the corner.

  As expected, the Town Car idled at the curb. With Marc’s approach, the rear door opened. He slipped inside, leaving every vestige of the church’s peace outside with the sunlight and the cool spring air.

  – – The limo driver pulled away before Marc had the car door shut. It was a typical Washington power move, as though the world turned too slowly to suit.

  The old man asked, “How’ve you been, Marc?”

  “Fine, sir.”

  “That’s not what I hear.”

  When Marc did not respond, the old man smirked, as though Marc’s silence was a feeble defense. “You’re suffocating, is what I hear. You’re not made for this life. You never were. You’re going through the motions. There’s nothing worse than a wasted life. Believe me, son. I know.”

  Marc did not ask how the old man was faring. The last time they had met, it had been in the back seat on an identical ride. They had argued. Rather, the old man had raged while Marc fumed in silence. Then the old man had fired Marc and dumped him on a rutted Baltimore street.

  “What are you doing here?” Marc asked. “Sir.”

  “We have a problem. A big one.”

  “There is no ‘we.’ Neither one of us works for the government anymore. You’re retired. I was dismissed. Remember?”

  Ambassador Walton was the former chief of State Department Intelligence. In the three years since their last meeting, the ambassador had been forced off his throne. The Glass Castle, as the Potomac building housing State Intel was known, was ruled by another man now. Marc went on, “You called me a disgrace to the intelligence service.”

  Ambassador Walton had shrunk to where he wore his skin like a partially deflated balloon. The flesh draped about his collar shook slightly as he growled, “You got precisely what you deserved.”

  “I took a leave of absence to care for my wife.”

  “I gave you the department maximum. Six weeks. You took nine months.”

  “Both our parents were gone. She had nobody else.”

  “You could have gotten help.”

  Marc bit down on the same argument that had gone unspoken in their last meeting. He had lost his mother when he was six. When his father had become ill, Marc had been in Chile protecting national interests. His father, a construction electrician who had not finished high school, had been intensely proud of his son’s achievements. So proud, in fact, he had ordered his second wife not to let Marc know he was on the verge of checking out. Marc had arrived home just in time for the funeral.

  Taking whatever time required to care for his wife had been a no-brainer.

  When the limo pulled up in front of Marc’s home, he reached for the door handle. “Thanks for stopping by.”

  “Alex Baird has gone missing.”

  Marc’s hand dropped.

  Alex Baird was assistant chief of security in the Green Zone, the safety precinct in the heart of Baghdad. Marc might have been out of the intel game. And America might officially be done with that particular war. But to have an American agent go missing in Baghdad was very bad news.

  What was more, Alex was the only friend who had not abandoned Marc after the ambassador cut him loose. Alex had remained in regular contact. He had tried repeatedly to effect a truce between Marc and the ambassador. But Walton’s definition of loyalty was black and white. A subordinate was on duty twenty-four-seven. Everything else was secondary.

  State Intel was the smallest of the nation’s intelligence forces, responsible for security in every overseas nonmilitary base. Their remit included all embassies, consulates, ambassadorial residences, and treaty houses. The head of State Intel held ambassadorial rank so as to interact with the heads of various missions at an equal level.

  Ambassador Walton expected subordinates to treat his every request as a reason to go the distance and beyond. In return, the man accelerated their climb through the Washington hierarchy. Walton’s former proteges held positions in the CIA, Pentagon, Congressional Intel oversight committees, and the White House. Another directed the capitol’s top intel think tank, yet another served as ambassador to Zaire. In Walton’s opinion, Marc Royce had done the unforgivable. He had put his wife first. He had walked away.

  Ambassador Walton broke into Marc’s thoughts. “You think if I had any choice I’d show up here and grovel?”

  “When did Alex go off the grid?”

  “Almost three days ago. Seventy hours, to be exact.”

  Three days missing in Baghdad meant one of two things. Either Alex had been kidnapped, or he was buried in a dusty grave. Marc considered it a toss-up which one would be worse.

  “The official line is, Alex has eloped. He’s supposedly hiding under a false passport at some Red Sea resort. With a young lady he met through a local Baghdad pastor.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “The young lady is also missing. And she was seeing Alex.” Walton handed over a file. “Hannah Brimsley. Volunteer serving at the church in the Green Zone. Also missing is a second young woman, Claire Reeves. Civilian nurse contracted to the base hospital at Bagram Air Base.”

  “For one thing, Alex would no more walk away from a duty station than…” Marc was about to say, than he would. But since this was precisely what Walton felt he had done, Marc let the sentence drop. “For another, if Alex was romantically involved, I would know it.”

  “He never mentioned any secret work to you, something beyond the scope of his official remit?”

  “Nothing like that.”

  “You’ve remained in regular contact?”

  “Emails a couple of times a week.”

  “He hasn’t mentioned any problems related to his current role?”

  “Alex loves his work. He lives for it.” Marc fingered the woman’s file. “How did you come up with an intel work-up on a missing civilian?”

  Walton looked uncomfortable for the first
time. “I never left.”

  This was news. “Did Alex know?”

  Walton shrugged that away. “Officially I’m gone. But I was asked to remain on as a consultant.”

  “To whom?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way to the airport.” Walton’s gaze was the only part of him that had not softened with the passing years. “I’m not even going to bother with asking if you’re in. Go pack. You’re wheels up in three hours.”

  – – Marc’s house was a Colonial-era brownstone overlooking one of the city’s miniature parks. The green was rimmed by ancient oaks, so tall they could reach across the street and shelter his bedroom window. Marc’s father had bought the house from the city back when the neighborhood had been a drug-infested war zone. The city had condemned the abandoned hulks, cleared out the drug paraphernalia, and sold them for a song. The renovations had taken five years and carried his father through grieving over the loss of Marc’s mother. After his father’s death, Marc had bought the place from his stepmother, who had wanted to return to her family in Spartanburg. Marc often wondered what his father would have thought, knowing the beautiful old place had comforted two grieving generations.

  Ambassador Walton remained downstairs. He claimed his heart condition no longer permitted him the luxury of climbing stairs. Marc was grateful for the momentary solitude. As he tossed his gear into a bag, his gaze remained held by the photograph on his bedside table. Marc zipped up the case and sat down on the side of the bed. Walton’s querulous voice called from downstairs. Marc did not respond. He was too caught up in a conversation that had lasted three long years.

  The photograph had been taken on just another sunlit afternoon. The brownstone did not possess much of a yard. So like most of their new neighbors, he and Lisbeth had claimed the park as their own. That day, they had taken an impromptu picnic across the street to watch a lazy springtime sunset. Marc had been going off somewhere the next morning. Such outings had been Lisbeth’s way to slow him down, force him to turn away from the coming pressures and pay attention to her.

  Marc had taken her picture in a moment when the veils of normal life had fallen away, and Lisbeth shone with love. The photograph had resided in an album until the week after the funeral, when he had awakened in the night and realized that not only was she gone, but he would someday forget her ability to perfume almost any moment.

  Marc studied the picture, wishing there was some way to formally acknowledge the fact that the time had come to move on. He had not felt this close to Lisbeth for a long time. The sense that she again filled his room and his heart left him certain that she wanted him to go. Do this thing.

  A man, Marc silently told the photograph in his hands, could overdose on stability and quiet. Recently his most fervent prayer had contained no words at all, just a silent secret hunger. If he had been able to name his yearning, it would have been for pandemonium. Something to lift his life from boredom and sameness.

  He remained there, staring at the best part of his past, until Walton’s voice drew him into the unknown.

  Chapter Two

  Sameh climbed the courthouse stairs, burdened by far more than the day’s heat. His name meant “he who is benevolent.” A more ancient interpretation was “he who is elevated,” in a spiritual sense. This particular morning, Sameh felt neither.

  Nine o’clock in the morning and already the temperature approached thirty degrees Celsius, ninety degrees Fahrenheit. It was the twenty-third day of Ramadan. Muslim festivals were calculated on the twenty-eight-day lunar cycle, and this year Ramadan fell in May. During this festival, devout Muslims neither ate nor drank from sunrise to sunset.

  Sameh was a lawyer and a member of the Syrian Christian Church, the majority church for Iraqi Christians-those who had not either fled or been decimated under Saddam. Out of general respect for the Muslim culture, Sameh did not eat or drink in public during Ramadan. But he was not a man accustomed to fasting. And he detested the way life ground to a halt for this entire month. Working hours were shortened and almost nothing got done. People grew increasingly irritable, and the heat only made things worse.

  Sameh put off anything he possibly could until after Ramadan ended. But this day’s task could not wait. A child’s life was at stake.

  He entered the Al-Rashid courthouse in the center of Baghdad. The place had not been swept since the festival began. All the custodial staff could be seen seated in the shade of a courtyard palm, smoking cigarettes and muttering in sullen tones.

  The courthouse had originally been an Ottoman palace. Now it was stripped and battered and left with nothing but false pride and glorified memories. What had once been four formal chambers were now filled with papers and hostile employees and yellow dust. The air-conditioning had been out of commission for months. Most of the computers dotting the tables had shorted out. Documents were tied with twine and bundled like bricks, forming barriers between the office workers and their getting anything done.

  Sameh waited his turn before a desk midway down the second hall. Omar was the senior clerk of court. He had been appointed to his position during the old regime. Under Saddam Hussein, every university graduate like Omar had been guaranteed a government job for life. He had been doing this job for twenty-three years and knew nothing else.

  Life for people like Omar was not pleasant. Since Saddam’s fall, salaries had shot up two thousand percent. Even so, they had not kept up with inflation. Omar considered himself a member of the lost generation. While in his twenties, he had endured the last months of the Iran-Iraq war. As a loyal veteran, he had been rewarded with a job in the courthouse. Which he hated. Then he had endured ten years of international embargo, followed by the wars that ousted Saddam. Whatever came now, whatever promise might evolve for the new Iraq, it would never touch him. As far as Omar was concerned, his life was over. He was forty-eight.

  Normally, the only way to obtain anything from Omar was by having a senior judge order it. But most judges treated Ramadan as a holiday. Fasting made the judges who remained grumpy and impatient, which meant lawyers used any pretext possible to postpone trials. Heaven protect any criminal forced to enter a courtroom during Ramadan.

  Sameh watched the man refuse one entreaty after another, and knew he had one slim chance. When his turn came, he decided to risk telling Omar the truth.

  “I come to you as a supplicant,” he began. “As a beggar seeking bread only you can grant me.”

  A faint spark ignited deep in the clerk’s bored gaze.

  “My client is a businessman. His youngest child has been abducted.”

  Omar had the decency to wince. “When?”

  “Two afternoons ago.”

  A dozen others with courthouse business stood close behind Sameh, waiting their turn to make their entreaties. They moaned in unison at the news.

  “Tragic,” one said.

  “An epidemic,” said another.

  Nowadays adults who saw children playing in the street threatened to punish them unless they went back indoors. Which of course the children hated. But a child who escaped into the hot Ramadan sunlight was a child under grave threat. Thieves had taken to cruising the streets of wealthy neighborhoods, snatching any child who happened to be alone.

  This was what had happened to the son of Sameh’s client.

  “One moment the boy was indoors playing with his sisters,” Sameh said. “The next he slipped from the murabiah ’s grasp and flew out the door. By the time she was able to follow him outside, he was already a tragic statistic.”

  Those waiting their turn played the choir, shaking their heads and bemoaning Baghdad’s lawless state. Kidnapping had become a favorite tool of criminals. The banks and businesses all employed armed guards.

  Despite himself, Omar was ensnared by the tragic drama. “How old is the boy?”

  “Four,” Sameh replied. “Today is his birthday.”

  “This is the truth? The kidnappers stole him away from his celebration?”

  “You
know me,” Sameh replied. “I do not lie.”

  “It is true,” several murmured. “Sameh is the most honest man in Baghdad.”

  “But I am just a clerk,” Omar said, palms raised. “What can I do?”

  “The family’s gardener vanished the same day as the child,” Sameh said.

  The choir went silent.

  Sameh said, “The murabiah is the mother’s aunt; she has arthritis and is overweight. Even so, she claims it took her less than three minutes to follow the boy outside. Perhaps a carload of criminals happened to pass at this same moment. But neighbors do not recall seeing a car, and the street in front of their home is a quiet one. I wonder if perhaps the gardener had been waiting for just such an opportunity.”

  The clerk said, “You want to know if the gardener has a record.”

  “It is possible, no? One of Saddam’s parting gifts to Baghdad.”

  This drew a knowing murmur from the audience. In the closing days before the war, Saddam had released all violent criminals from prison. Why, no one knew. Even the members of his cabinet had been baffled by the action.

  Sameh went on, “Perhaps the man decided to use the recent chaos as an opportunity to improve his economic position.”

  Omar pursed his lips. “I suppose it is possible. But to discover this would be most difficult. So many of our archives from the Saddam era have been either lost or destroyed.”

  Sameh knew the man was asking for a bribe. But Sameh was one of a growing number of people who felt corruption should die with the old regime. He said, “You wish they had all been destroyed. But they were not. So could you request a search of those we still have? Please, brother. For the sake of a lost and frightened child.”

  Omar obviously realized that argument would do him no good. Sameh el-Jacobi was known far and wide as a man who stubbornly refused to offer a sweetener.

  The clerk sighed noisily, wrote hastily, and tore the coveted slip from his pad. He handed it over without meeting Sameh’s gaze. “For the child.”