The Sanctuary

Chapter 9

The next hour or two went by in a blur.

Sitting in an austere interview room in the Hobeish police station on Rue Bliss, Mia felt sick to her stomach. It didn’t help that the room, with its bare concrete-block walls, was cold and damp. She was shivering intensely, though that was probably more from the shock and the fear.

She tried to remain focused on the only thing that really mattered right now: getting her mom back. But she wasn’t sure the two detectives sitting across the table from her or the agitated cops darting confusingly in and out of the room were getting the message.

She’d left the bloodied soldier and blundered zombielike down to the main road at the end of the alley and just stood there, tears streaming down her face, facing the oncoming traffic with her arms up. Something about the haunted look on her face must have connected with the people driving by, as one car after another soon stopped to help. Before long, the cavalry appeared in the form of several Durangos filled with armed Fuhud policemen, a kind of paramilitary überforce. The quiet backstreet quickly morphed into a noisy, chaotic zoo. The soldier who’d been shot was already dead. The one who’d been rammed by the car was still hanging on, and an ambulance soon arrived and took him away. Evelyn’s handbag and her shoe were retrieved. Mia was questioned and shuffled from one cop to another — she tried to explain about her mom forgetting her phone and handed it over to them along with her own, that last request slightly unsettling her — before she was eventually packed into one of their jeeps and whisked off to the station under armed guard.

She shifted in the cold, metallic chair and took a small sip from a bottle of water someone had brought in for her. “Please,” she murmured. Her throat felt as if it had been rubbed down with sandpaper. Her desperate screams still rang in her ears. She swallowed and tried again. “Listen to me. You have to find her. They took her. You have to do something before it’s too late.”

One of the detectives facing her nodded and answered her in broken English, but it wasn’t what she wanted to hear, just more of the same evasive and condescending platitudes. More worrisome, his partner, a wiry, ferretlike man who had quietly been rifling through her mom’s handbag and spreading its contents on the table, now seemed to be keenly interested in some pictures that he’d found in a brown envelope in the bag. As he studied them, he glanced up at Mia with a look she didn’t really like. He nudged his taller colleague and showed him the photographs. Mia couldn’t understand what the men were saying — she couldn’t even see what was in the photos — but the suspicious glances were now coming her way from both men.

Her shivering was cutting deeper than before.

The two detectives discussed something among themselves and seemed to be in agreement on their next step. The ferret collected Evelyn’s things and stowed them back into her handbag, while his platitude-spouting friend gestured to Mia to stay put, explaining to her as best he could that they’d be back shortly. Her reactions were still running on a slight time delay, and before she could really object or question what they were concerned about, they were already heading out of the room. After they shut the door, she heard a key turning in the lock before it clicked ominously.

Great.

She slumped in her chair and shut her eyes, hoping she could blink the nightmare away and start her day over.

An hour later, the two detectives were facing her across the table again, only they were now joined by a pug of a man in a gray suit, no tie, and an annoyed expression wrinkled across his pink-pale face that indicated he’d been dragged from the solitary comfort of his home. Her mind was a bit clearer now — she’d been offered a cup of Turkish coffee, a thick, syrupy local specialty that had taken some getting used to, but that she’d grown to like over the last few weeks — and she’d perked up when her new visitor had introduced himself as John Baumhoff and informed her that he was with the American embassy.

The conversation that followed was far less promising.

Baumhoff tapped his fingers on the Polaroids, which he’d laid out across the table for her to see. “So you’re saying you know nothing about these?” he asked her again, in a voice that was a touch too high-pitched for his gender.

Mia sighed and made a concerted effort to calm herself. “I’ve told you what happened. I don’t know anything about these things, these relics, whatever they are. We were having a drink. She forgot her phone. I thought she was being followed. I tried to warn her. These men stuffed her into their car and took her away—”

“Killing a soldier and seriously wounding another in the process,” Baumhoff interjected, with a knowing glance at the detectives standing behind him, who nodded in solemn agreement.

“Yes, exactly,” she flared up, “which is why you need to find her, goddammit. She’s probably already locked up in some hellhole while you’re all sitting here playing canasta with these Polaroids.”

He studied her through tired and jaded eyes, then reached out and collected the photos, picking them up one by one with his lethargic, puffy fingers. “Miss, um”—he seemed to have already forgotten the name he’d written down on the notebook in front of him—“Bishop,” he continued with his nasal drawl, “if your mother has indeed been kidnapped, there’s little we could have done anyway.”

“You could have put up roadblocks,” Mia protested, “you could have alerted the army, God knows they’re everywhere. You could have done something.”

Baumhoff glanced at her wryly. “We’re not back home, Miss Bishop. It doesn’t work like that out here. If they want someone, you can be pretty sure they’ll get him. Or her, in this case. They know all the side roads. They know where they’ll be safe. They’ve got it all worked out ahead of time. The thing is”—he shrugged—“this isn’t Iraq. There hasn’t been a foreigner kidnapped here for, oh, at least fifteen years, if not longer. It just isn’t done anymore. Apart from the occasional political assassination, this is a surprisingly safe city, particularly if you’re a foreigner. Which is why,” he added, pausing to reconsider the photos in his hands, “I’ve got to agree with these folks in that this is probably something else. Some kind of trouble your mother got herself into.” His eyebrows arched up and he sucked in his lips and opened his palms quizzically, as if waiting for her to fill in the blanks or come clean somehow.

Mia looked at him, bewildered. “What are you talking about?”

He studied her for a beat — his little cynical mannerisms were really grating on her now — then held up the stack of photographs. “These,” Baumhoff said. “They’re stolen goods, Miss Bishop.”

Mia’s jaw dropped. “What?”

“Stolen,” Baumhoff repeated. “From Iraq. You must have read about the little war going on over there.”

“Yes, but…” Mia’s daze came back in a rush.

“Thousands of relics of all kinds have been stolen from museums there. They’re still trickling through, finding their way into the hands of collectors who don’t care too much about their origin. They’re worth a lot of money…if you can smuggle them out, and,” he said pointedly, “if you can find the right buyer.” He gave her a knowing glance.

Mia’s face clouded as she struggled for words. “You think my mom had something to do with this?”

He gestured at the photos. “They were in her bag, weren’t they?”

“How do you know they were stolen?” Mia fired back. “They could be legitimate, couldn’t they?”

Baumhoff shook his head. “There’s been a ban on exporting any Mesopotamian relics ever since that whole mess started. I can’t say for sure that these are stolen, I haven’t yet had time to have them checked — I won’t know until I make inquiries with our people there tomorrow — but the odds are, they’re smuggled. Which could explain what happened tonight. It’s not a good crowd to mess with.”

Mia flashed back to her chat with Evelyn at the Lounge. “Wait a second,” she said excitedly. “She said someone came to see her that day. A guy who worked with her years ago. In Iraq.”

This piqued the detectives’ interest, and they asked Baumhoff for some clarification. Mia filled the three of them in on what Evelyn had told her, and they noted it with interest. Baumhoff shrugged and tucked the Polaroids into his attaché case. “Alright. Well, it’s late, and there’s nothing more I can do here. They’re going to need to keep you here overnight until an administrative officer can take a formal statement from you in the morning,” he informed her casually as he got out of his chair.

Mia went ballistic. “I just witnessed my mom being kidnapped and you’re leaving me here?”

“They won’t release you before they get that statement,” Baumhoff reported glumly. “It’s part of the French bureaucracy they inherited, and it can’t be done this late. You’ll be fine here. They’re going to let you stay in this room overnight, it’ll be more comfortable for you than a cell, believe me. They’ll get you some food, and a pillow and some blankets. I’ll be back in the morning.”

“You can’t leave me here,” she burst out at him, clambering to her feet. The ferret spread out his arms in a calming gesture and blocked her off. “You can’t do this,” she insisted.

“I’m sorry,” Baumhoff said with clinical detachment, “but a man’s been killed, another’s fighting for his life, and, like it or not, you’re part of it. We’ll clear it all up tomorrow. Don’t worry. Just try and get some sleep.”

And just as he gave her a parting, helpless half-smile, a cell phone warbled somewhere in the room.

Baumhoff and the detectives instinctively went for their phones before quickly realizing that the ringer wasn’t any of theirs. The ferret — no surprise there — was the first to sniff it out. He reached into Evelyn’s handbag and pulled out two cell phones, Evelyn’s and Mia’s own. Mia didn’t recognize the ring tone. It was Evelyn’s phone.

The ferret instinctively hit the call button and picked it up. He was about to say something into the phone, then stopped. He stared at it for an instant and glanced up at Baumhoff. The embassy’s man shot him a quick and low “Give it to me.” The ferret turned to his partner for direction. The taller detective nodded and said something clipped that obviously allowed it, before Baumhoff, anxious not to lose the call, grabbed the phone and pressed it to his ear.

“Hello,” he ventured with a forced, casual tone.

Mia watched Baumhoff’s face tighten with seriousness as he concentrated on the call. She could hear faint echoes of the voice on the other end of the line — it was definitely a man’s voice, and sounded American. Baumhoff listened for a moment, then said, “No, Ms. Bishop isn’t available right now. Who is this?”

Mia heard the caller answer briefly, and when it wasn’t to Baumhoff’s liking, he then said irritably, “I’m a colleague of Ms. Bishop. Who is this please?”

The man on the phone said a few more words, which caused Baumhoff to take on a surprised expression. “Yes, of course, she’s fine. Why would you think otherwise? Who is this?” His patience eroded quickly, and he suddenly raised his voice huffily. “I need you to tell me who you are, sir.”

The room froze into silence for a second or two, then Mia saw Baumhoff frown and move the phone away from his ear. He stared at it with an annoyed expression, then looked up at the detectives. “I don’t know who that was. He hung up, and there’s no caller ID number showing.” He used hand gestures to confirm what he meant.

He glanced at Mia. She gave him a look that said she was clueless about it too. The ferret reached for the phone. Baumhoff handed it back to him, nodded, and turned to Mia. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

And with that, he was gone.

Mia glared after him, but it was pointless. The detectives walked out, locking the door behind them. She paced around the room, staring at its grim, bare walls. The anger that had swept through her and cleared away her physical discomfort was subsiding, and with it, the fatigue and the nausea came rushing back.

She slumped down to the floor and shrank back against the wall, clasping her face in her hands.

Her no-brainer was turning into Midnight Express.