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“You do not wish to know,” Moudi assured him.
“She will die, this woman?”
“Yes, and the aircraft must be completely disinfected before it is used again.”
“That’s what they told us.” The pilot shrugged, not knowing how frightened he should be of what he was carrying. Moudi did. The plastic sheet under his patient would now contain a pool of infected blood. They’d have to be extremely careful unloading her.
BADRAYN WAS GRATEFUL that he’d avoided alcohol. He was the most conscious man in the room. Ten hours, he thought, looking at his watch. Ten hours they’d talked and disputed like a bunch of old women in a market.
“He will agree to this?” the Guards commander asked.
“It is not unreasonable in the least,” Ali replied. Five senior mullahs would fly to Baghdad, offering themselves as hostage to–if not the goodwill, then the good word of their leader. It actually worked out better than the assembled generals knew, not that they really cared. With that settled, the general officers looked at one another, and one by one they nodded.
“We accept,” the same general said, speaking for the group. That hundreds of lesser officers would be left behind to face whatever music was in store for them was, after all, a small thing. The lengthy discussion hadn’t touched on that subject very much.
“I require a telephone,” Badrayn told them next. The intelligence chief led him to a side room. There had always been a direct line to Tehran. Even during hostilities there had been a communications link–that one via microwave tower. The next one was a fiber-optic cable whose transmissions could not be intercepted. Under the watchful eyes of the Iraqi officer he punched the numbers he’d memorized several days earlier.
“This is Yousif. I have news,” he told the voice which answered.
“Please wait,” was the reply.
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DARYAE1 DIDN’T ENJOY being awakened early any more than a normal person, the less so that he’d slept poorly over the last few days. When his bedside phone rang, he blinked his eyes for several rings before reaching to lift it.
“Yes?”
“This is Yousif. It is agreed. Five friends are required.”
All praise to Allah, for He is beneficent, Daryaei thought to himself. All the years of war and peace had come to fruition in this moment. No, no, that was premature. There was much yet to be done. But the most difficult thing was done now.
“When shall we begin?”
“As quickly as possible.”
“Thank you. I will not forget.” With that he came fully awake. This morning, the first in many years, he forgot his morning prayers. God would understand that His work must be done quickly.
HOW WEARY SHE must have been, Moudi thought. Both nuns started to wakefulness when the aircraft touched down. There came the usual jolting as the aircraft slowed, and a watery sound announced the fact that Jean Baptiste had indeed bled out as he’d expected. So, he’d gotten her here alive at least. Her eyes were open, though confused as an infant’s as she stared at the curving ceiling of the cabin. Maria Magdalena took a moment to look out the windows, but all she saw was an airport, and those appeared the same all over the world, particularly at night. In due course the aircraft stopped, and the door dropped open.
Again they would travel in a truck. Four people came into the aircraft, all of them dressed in protective plastic. Moudi loosened the straps on his patient, waving the other nun to stay in place. Carefully, the four army medics lifted the sturdy plastic sheet by the corners and moved toward the door. As they did so, Moudi saw something drip onto the flat-folded seat which had served their patient as a bed. He shook it off. The flight crew had their orders, and the orders had been repeated often enough. When the patient was safely on the truck, Moudi and Maria Mag-
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dalena walked down the steps as well. Both removed their headgear, allowing themselves to breathe fresh, cool air. He took a canteen from one of the armed party around the aircraft and offered it to her, as he fetched another for himself. Both drained a full liter of water before entering the truck. Both were disoriented by the long flight, she the more so for not knowing where she really was. Moudi saw the 707 which had arrived shortly before with the monkeys, though he didn’t know that was the cargo.
“I’ve never seen Paris–well, except flying through, all these years,” she said, looking around before the back flap was dropped, cutting off the view.
A pity you never will.
16
THE IRAQI TRANSFER
A
A WHOLE LOT OF NOTH-ing here,” the pilot observed. The Seahawk was circling at a thousand feet, scanning the surface with a search radar acute enough to detect wreckage–it was designed to spot a submarine’s periscope–but finding not so much as a floating bottle of Perrier. Both also wore low-light goggles, and they should have turned up a slick of jet fuel from the oily shine, but that also was negative.
“Must have hit pretty hard not to leave anything,” the co-pilot replied over the intercom.
“Unless we’re looking in the wrong spot.” The pilot looked down at his tactical navigation system. They were in the right place. They were down to an hour’s fuel. Time to start thinking about landing back on Radford, which was now combing the search area herself. The searchlights looked theatrical in the pre-dawn darkness, like something out of a World War II movie. A Libyan Cub was circling around, too, trying to be helpful but mainly being a pain in the ass.
“Anything at all?” the controller on Radford asked.
“Negative. Nothing, say again nothing, down there that we can see. One hour’s worth of gas here, over.”
“Copy one hour gas,” Radford acknowledged.
“Sir, the target’s last course was three-four-three, speed two-nine-zero knots, rate of descent three thousand foot per minute. If he ain’t in this footprint, I don’t know why,” a chief operations specialist said, tapping the chart. The captain sipped at his coffee and shrugged. Topside, the fire-and-rescue party was standing by. Two swimmers were in wetsuits, with a boat crew standing by the launch. There was a lookout posted for every set of binoculars aboard, looking for strobe lights or anything else, and sonar was listening for the high-frequency ping of the aircraft’s emergency locator. Those instruments were designed to survive a severe impact, were automatically
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activated when exposed to seawater, and had battery power to operate for several days. Radforcfs sonar was sensitive enough to detect the damned thing from thirty miles away, and they were right over the impact zone predicted by the radar crew. Neither the ship nor her crew had ever done a rescue like this, but it was something for which they regularly drilled, and every procedure had been executed as perfectly as the CO could wish.
“USS Radford, USS Radford, this is Valetta Approach, over.”
The captain lifted the microphone. “Valetta, this is Radford.”
“Have you located anything, over?”
“Negative, Valetta. Our helo’s been all over the area, nothing to report yet.” They’d already queried Malta for corrected data on the aircraft’s last speed and heading, but it had dropped off the civilian radar even before departing the destroyer’s more precise coverage. On both ends of the radio link, men sighed. They all knew how this would play out now. The search would continue for a day, no more, no less, and nothing would be found, and that was that. A telex had already gone to the manufacturer, informing them that one of their aircraft was lost at sea. Gulfstream representatives would fly to Bern to go over maintenance records and other printed data on the aircraft, hoping to garner a clue, and probably finding nothing, and this whole case would go into the “unknown” column in somebody’s ledger book. But the game had to be played out, and, hell, it was still good training time for the crew of USS Radford The crew would shrug it off. It wasn’t anyone they knew, however desirable and uplifting a successful rescue would have been.
IT WAS PROBABLY the smell that told her what was wrong. The drive from the airport had been brief. It was dark outside still, and when the truck stopped, both doctor and nurse were still suffering from the lengthy time in movement. They arrived, and the first business was to get Sister Jean Baptiste inside. Only then did both of them remove their plastic garb for the last time. Maria Mag-
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dalena smoothed her short hair and breathed heavily, finally taking the time to look around, then was surprised at what she saw. Moudi saw the confusion, and led her inside before she could comment on it.
That was when the smell hit them, a familiar African smell from the entry of the monkeys a few hours earlier, decidedly not something one would associate with Paris or a place as clean and orderly as the Pasteur Institute had to be. Next, Maria Magdalena looked around and realized that the signs on the walls were not in French. There was no way she could know what the situation was, there were merely grounds for confusion, to be followed by questions–and then, just as well, it was time, before the questions could be asked. A soldier appeared and took her arm and led her away, too uncomprehending still to say anything. She merely looked over her shoulder at an unshaven man in surgical greens, a sad look on his face giving greater substance to her confusion.