The Deadliest Strain

Chapter Fifteen

It was only midafternoon, but they weren't going any farther today.

Fahimah insisted that they stay the night in a hotel in Erbil. It didn't matter to her which one, and she wasn't telling them what they were going to do or where they were going tomorrow. Two army personnel joined their group at the airport, replacing the pilots. One of them, Ken Hilliard, had been stationed in this area of Kurdistan in Northern Iraq since the beginning of the war. He spoke the Kurdish language fluently and knew all the ins and outs of the place.

Rather than take the group to the Erbil Sheraton, officially the Erbil International Hotel, Ken directed the group to the smaller, far less conspicuous Shahan Hotel. Unlike the Sheraton, with its six-inch-thick concrete walls and armed soldiers searching everyone coming near the hotel, the Shahan simply offered security and clean rooms. Centrally located in the city, the whitewashed building with the tinted glass front had a growing reputation with foreign business people, many of whom had started switching to smaller hotels like this one.

Erbil was a dusty city that sprawled outward from a mound of earth called the tell As they rode in from the airport, Ken played tour guide, informing them that what they could see atop the tell itself was an ancient Ottoman fortress, with its ancient walls dominating the city. Saddam's forces had completely destroyed the inside of the fortress, but poor Kurds had rebuilt there since. While Fahimah listened in silence, he told everyone that Erbil was said to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, with some of the artifacts found there dating back to 23 B.C. Erbil, in addition to being one of the larger cities in Iraq, housed the Kurdish Parliament.

Austyn had been surprised to see, while they were still in the air over this capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, that Erbil was obviously in the midst of a construction boom. When they landed at the International Airport, they were met with a huge billboard — written in Kurdish, Arabic and English — welcoming them to Kurdistan.

Driving toward the Shahan Hotel, Austyn could see the new construction projects everywhere. The landscape was peppered with them, and Ken told them that investors were pouring their money in, eager to get a piece of the boom.

After Fahimah was given a room and two guards were stationed on the outside of her door, Austyn and Matt met with Ken for tea.

Chairs and tables were set up on the shaded sidewalk next to the hotel. The afternoon air was still hot, but it was almost comfortable here in the shade. Although it was too early for dinner, the smell of roasting lamb mingled with the normal smells of a city. The steady stream of people, cars, delivery trucks and an occasional horse-drawn cart kept the air vibrant with noise and activity. Other guests of the hotel, Iraqis and foreigners alike, were seated at the tables, drinking tea as well. There were no gates or dividers stopping pedestrians from weaving between tables as they went by.

Matt, inseparable as always from his computer, opened the laptop. "No signal here, either," he said.

"No wireless Internet at all, unless you're on the base. The cell service is shaky, too. From what I hear, the Kurdish government has had a hand in scrambling the signals."

"What about a dial-up connection?" Matt asked.

"Maybe. You'll want to check with the attendant in the lobby," Ken suggested. "And I'd be careful."

There were a few leads on Rahaf that Matt had told him about at the end of the flight. Austyn knew that the other agent was impatient to report the information they'd gathered back to the team in Washington and get someone working on it.

As Matt went back inside, Austyn looked around him. A white SUV with large, light blue UN letters on the hood and the side was parked across the street. A couple of peacekeepers wearing soft caps were laughing with a street vendor selling pistachios a few steps down the sidewalk. Austyn realized that the soldiers weren't armed.

"Your first time here?" Ken asked.

"My first time in Iraq," Austyn answered.

"You're lucky. This is a good place to start."

There were no questions asked, no menus brought out.

Not even a minute after they'd sat down, tea served in small clear glasses sitting on white saucers appeared before them.

"You have to tell them specifically if you want coffee," Ken told him.

'Tea is fine with me."

"And they won't bring out any sugar, either, since it's rationed, unless you ask," Ken continued.

"This is fine the way it is," Austyn said, taking a sip of the hot tea. It was strong. He noticed that the saucer under Ken's tea had a couple of sugar cubes on it. A regular customer, Austyn figured.

A cart carrying propane tanks on the back slowly went by.

"I assume those tanks are empty," Austyn said.

"No, they're probably full."

Every news report from Iraq, it seemed, had to do with some bombing and a rapidly growing number of fatalities. Austyn looked around them, thinking about security. Those tanks could cause a pretty good explosion.

"It's hard for outsiders to believe, but this is absolutely the safest area in Iraq."

Austyn decided he'd been too obvious. He leaned back in the chair, watching the bicycle-drawn cart take a right at the next intersection as a small car careened around the antique vehicle and sped off out of sight.

"From the images of Iraq that Americans see on television, you wouldn't know that there's even one place left in this country that isn't torn up."

Ken nodded with understanding. "Living here, I see and talk to the locals every day. Delivery guys say they're not worried about ambushes. Shopkeepers tell me that security is not an issue. And they're not just blowing smoke up my ass. You'll see for yourself. The shops are open as late as people are on the streets… and that's way after it gets dark. The restaurants are full. I don't know how long we'll be here, but if we're here for a couple of days, you'll hear it from the locals yourself. None of the Kurds living and working in Erbil are thinking war — they're thinking peace and prosperity. Occasional violence or kidnappings are the result of disagreements between Kurds about independence, but that's a rare thing."

Austyn figured Ken was probably about fifty, maybe a little older. Short red hair going gray, freckles, low-key. He was easy to talk to and seemed like a guy a person could trust. He'd first come over as an army reservist when his unit had been deployed, but then his time here had continued to extend. Austyn could already tell that the other man had a strong attachment to the people and this area.

"While life in the cities to the south — like Baghdad and Falluja — is pretty much driven by the insurgency, Erbil is part of the other Iraq, the region that stays out of the headlines and where life resembles something close to normal," he continued. 'This is actually true for most of Iraq's northernmost regions. This whole area forms a thin, peaceful crescent around the upper rim of the country, extending from Duhok to Erbil and Sulaimaniyah, cities that are less familiar back in the U.S. precisely because they have largely avoided the violence down south."

Austyn knew that was true. The media wasn't alone in focusing on killings and disasters. The same went for the general intelligence briefings they received at Homeland Security. Reports were issued with the focus on trouble spots. Two tour buses drove slowly by.

"Tourists?" Austyn asked.

Ken smiled and placed one of the small sugar cubes between his teeth, then took a sip of his tea. "Yeah. The local businesses are promoting it heavily. They're trying to convince people that not all of Iraq is Falluja. They're trying hard to show that Kurdistan is safe. The new three-hundred-million-dollar international airport you flew into is just one sign of the changing times."

"Where do these tourists come from?"

"Turkey, Iran. There are some Europeans, too. And, of course, a lot come from south of the border."

"Border?" Austyn asked.

Ken laughed. "The Kurds maintain a hard internal border between what they consider Kurdistan and the Arab-dominated central and southern Iraq. They've had the border in place since the Kurdish uprising at the end of the first Gulf War."

"And they're using it to stop the violence from creeping in from the south?" Austyn asked.

"Seems to be working. Cars on the road heading north are stopped at a series of checkpoints. ID cards are checked. Vehicles are searched. Smugglers, insurgents and terrorists who try sneaking into Kurdistan through Iraq's wilderness areas are ambushed by border patrols."

"And that's enough? A few guards and there's no violence?"

"No," Ken said, looking around him at the faces of people on the street. "They have a second line of defense. The Kurds themselves. Out of necessity, these people have forged one of the most vigilant antiterrorist communities in the world."

"A kind of regional neighborhood watch, huh?"

"Exactly." Ken nodded. "Anyone who doesn't speak Kurdish with a native accent stands out. Kurds are famous for being hospitable, especially to foreigners… obvious tourists, contractors, the military. But if they think you're a problem, watch out. As a group intent on protecting itself, they can be pretty… uh, decisive. And then, there's the Peshmerga."

"I know about them."

"You should. They've fought alongside us since '91. Peshmerga means 'those who face death.' Not a bad name for their armed forces group. Peshmerga is really the group in charge of security. They do a pretty remarkable job of it."

Two fresh cups of black tea appeared before them. Again, Ken's had two sugar cubes on the saucer.

"This tastes good. What kind of tea is it?" Austyn asked.

"Whatever kind they're brewing today." Ken smiled. "I guess… today's tea is Ceylon… from Sri Lanka. That's what most of the hotels in the city seem to be serving these days."

Austyn sipped his tea and looked down the road. In the distance, mountains rose up, rugged and forbidding. His mind locked back on Rahaf Banaz. They needed to find her.

"How big is the region?" Austyn asked, feeling inadequate about his lack of knowledge of the area. But, he told himself, when he left Washington, no one could have foreseen that his mission would take him here. Luckily, Ken Hilliard was a walking encyclopedia, and Austyn was grateful that he was their escort.

The first tea glasses were snatched off the table by a boy who couldn't be more than ten or twelve. He had the incredible ability to carry some twenty or so sets of teacups and saucers, one stacked on top of the other, without a tray. Wearing a long white T-shirt, pants and sandals, he flew between the tables, taking care of everyone sitting outside.

"Iraqi Kurdistan covers about 36,000 square kilometers, or almost 14,000 square miles, an area slightly smaller than Switzerland. It's home to about 3.5 million of Iraq's 25 million people."

"I recall the president referring to Kurdistan as an example of what has gone right in Iraq since 2003," Austyn commented.

Ken leaned back, looking around the street. "I thought the same thing when I was first sent here. But after all these years, I know better."

"What do you mean?"

"The relative peace they have here is not a result of the U.S. invasion. This region has been self-governing since the end of the first Gulf War in '91," Ken explained. "This was all a no-fly zone patrolled by U.S. and British aircraft after that war, and that pretty much freed the Kurds of Saddam Hussein's grip. At least, north of the thirty-sixth parallel. Since then, Kurds who fled Saddam's Iraq decades ago have been returning to take posts in the government and private sector, and in the universities here. They've had time to stabilize and rebuild."

This explained what Austyn had read about Rahaf sending so much of her income to this area. Homeland Security didn't have a file on Fahimah, but he wouldn't be surprised if she had been doing the same thing. It also made sense why she would come here to look for her sister.

"Despite everything I've just told you, this area hasn't been entirely peaceful. We had a couple of attacks on the offices of Kurdish political parties in the city a few years back. I think about sixty or seventy people were killed. But that was it. Nothing compared to the rest of this country," Ken continued.

"That would be an average day in Baghdad," Austyn replied, frowning.

"Exactly."

The two men were silent for a moment, and Austyn watched the traffic and sipped his tea. The drivers in Erbil were as crazy as they were in any other city, and maybe a little more so. Surprisingly, nobody was laying on their horns the way they would be in New York or Cairo or Rome.

A street vendor selling watches came by, stopping at each table. When he came to their table, Ken spoke to him in Kurdish, and the man replied politely before moving along. Austyn put his glass on the saucer.

"It's more than just time or roadblocks or the Peshmerga or even foreign investors," he commented. "You can't buy this kind of stability, and God knows we've learned you can't really force it on people long-term, either. This comes by people making all of it work together. You've got to want it to work."

Ken nodded. "I agree. People are the main ingredient. I heard one of their commanders say that the Kurdish people identify with their regional government. They feel they have a stake in maintaining peace. He told me if you try to rule a country with oppression and force, you have to surround it with fortresses. But if the people are on your side, they become your fortress."

"Not a bad philosophy. Something we could keep in mind when we—"

Austyn stopped mid-sentence, surprised to see one of the guards he'd left outside Fahimah's room appear at the door of the hotel. Immediately behind him, Fahimah followed with the other guard in tow. She had pulled a Nike cap on her head, and she was still wearing the white cotton shirt and camouflage pants she'd put on back at the Brickyard. Although extremely thin, she drew everyone's gaze when she stepped out. Austyn realized that she was definitely a head-turner. Those green eyes in the pale face never ceased to startle him. She came directly to their table.

Ken and Austyn both stood up.

"I'm sorry, sir," one of the guards started. "She wouldn't wait in the room until we could ask you if—"

"I'm not a prisoner," she said in a low but clear voice before sitting down at the table with them.

Austyn motioned to the two soldiers to wait by the front of the hotel. He immediately saw the error in that. Everyone — from those at the tables to the people in the cars or on the sidewalk — was looking at the soldiers.

"There's very little U.S. military presence in the north," Ken explained. "People say they don't feel occupied. They're not used to seeing armed soldiers."

"I warned him of that when we were still in Afghanistan," Fahimah said.

Austyn wasn't about to let her sit out here without protection. He carried no weapon. Ken seemed way too relaxed to be counted on to draw the pistol he wore at his belt. Just then, an argument broke out across the street between a shop owner and the watch vendor who'd stopped in front of his store. For a few minutes, anyway, everyone's attention was focused in that direction.

He looked at Ken, who was studying Fahimah's profile intently. Interestingly, the red-haired soldier seemed to have a crush on her. Austyn noticed it at the airport, where Ken had met them. The British accent and the green eyes must have done it, he supposed.

The boy appeared with more tea. He put one in front of Fahimah.

"Supas… mammon." She nodded to him.

The boy shot her a surprised look, glanced at the men, and then asked something. She answered him. The boy smiled and walked away.

"What was that all about?" Austyn asked.

She didn't answer. He noticed that there were three sugar cubes on her saucer.

"What did he ask you?" Austyn asked Fahimah again.

She actually smiled and looked over at Ken. "Would you care to translate?"

Austyn noticed that the other man's face had blushed deep red. "I didn't get the whole thing. Something about the bathroom. And him showing to us…" Ken's voice trailed off.

"You are far too polite," she told him before turning to Austyn. "The boy asked me if he should pee in your tea."

"And you told him?" he asked.

"Not today. But maybe tomorrow."

Austyn looked suspiciously at the glass cup before him. It looked strangely lighter than the last one.

"Don't worry," she said, softly tapping his glass with a spoon she'd been given with her tea. "He's a good boy. He wouldn't do it unless I asked him to."

Austyn saw her drop the three sugar cubes in her glass and stir the tea.

"Did he recognize you?" he asked.

"No." She shook her head.

"Have you stayed here before?"

She looked up at the white cinder-block facade of the hotel. "Yes, I have. Many years ago."

"Then you could have run into him."

"No," she said with certainty. "I was detained for five years, Agent Newman. And I stayed here quite some time before that. No, this boy would have been too young to be working anywhere."

"Then how did he know you took three sugars in your tea?" Austyn asked.

"He didn't. I don't take any sugar in my tea. But I would have used whatever he gave me to make him feel appreciated. After all, in bringing me sugar, he was trying to make me feel special."

He couldn't help but notice how much more at ease she looked here. She seemed almost happy. Certainly, she looked at home. She turned her chair slightly so that she could watch the traffic going by. Ken was completely quiet now that Fahimah was here. Austyn noticed he was doing a lot of staring in her direction. The argument across the street had subsided, and the vendor had gone down the street.

"There's a place I need to visit today," she told him after finishing her tea. "I can't go there, though, escorted by your soldiers."

"What place?" Austyn asked.

"The prison."

"You feel homesick?"

Her gaze narrowed. "It is a little soon to be making such bad jokes, don't you think?"

He lifted both hands in defense. "You were the one who's planning the contents of my tea for tomorrow."

"That maybe just turned into definitely," she warned him. "In fact, Agent Newman, I would not drink anything more at all while you are in Erbil."

"Which prison?" Ken intervened.

"Erbil Prison," she responded, turning to him.

"Do you need to see someone being held there?" Austyn asked.

"No, I simply need to visit the neighborhood."

"I know where it is," Ken told her. "In fact, I'm fairly familiar with the area."

The boy and the tea appeared again.

"Na," she smiled up at him. "Supas."

"What does that mean?" Austyn immediately asked.

"Na means no," she told him. "Supas means thank you."

Austyn looked at Ken first, making sure she wasn't telling him something totally off the wall. The other man nodded.

"Na, supas." he repeated to their server.

The boy smiled and dropped a sugar cube from his shirt pocket onto Austyn's saucer before going on to the next table.

"I think he likes me," he said cheerfully to the other two.

Another tour bus went by. A couple of young men stuck their heads out of the open windows and yelled something in the direction of the two soldiers standing guard on the street. One of them spit out the window. Austyn looked at Ken.

He shook his head. "Iraqis. Don't ask."

"I told you where I need to go." Fahimah turned to them, pretending what she'd heard hadn't affected her. "I will not accomplish anything if I go there followed by armed escorts."

"I can take you," Ken offered immediately. He turned to Austyn. "She's right. It's a lot safer to travel around the city if you don't bring that kind of attention to yourself. It's no problem. I'll bring her back."

There was no way she was going anywhere without him.

'Tell me who you're going to see. I want an exact street address," Austyn demanded of Fahimah. "Without cell phones and without knowing the language, there's no way I can get hold of you if I needed to."

She shook her head slowly from side to side. "I do not know who or where until I get there. I am acting on a… on a lead that is five years old "

Austyn was not about to be the one who would have to report Fahimah's disappearance to Faas Hanlon and the rest of them in Washington.

"We'll go," he said, standing up and putting an end to any argument she might have had. "The three of us."