Dan Fesperman - Layover in Dubai

“It’s the police,” she said. “A Lieutenant Assad. He says it is urgent.”

Halami glanced at Sharaf in alarm, and with a hint of mistrust.

“What, you think I called him?” Sharaf said. “He’s probably looking for Basma, just like me. But if he finds us, we’re finished.”

There was shouting from the entrance-Assad’s voice ordering someone to search the house. They had to get moving, but Halami was blocking the way, still studying his face. Smoke curled from her cigarette like the signal of an impending decision, and for a moment Sharaf was convinced she would throw them to the wolves.

Then she yanked at his sleeve and shoved him into the hallway toward the rear of the house, while whispering harshly, “Take the stairs to the top floor. Then the ladder to the roof. Go!”

He ran, Sam followed. There was more shouting from the front room, and the house was in an uproar. Women were running out of their bedrooms, moaning and holding their hands to their faces. The commotion gave them the cover to make it up to the next floor before any police reached the stairwell. By the time they got to the third floor the chaos below was louder, with heavy thumps of moving furniture, and the indignant cries of the residents. When Sharaf reached the landing he doubled over, dizzy and out of breath. Sam tugged at his shoulder.

“We’ve got to keep going,” Sam said. “It’s over there.”

A fire escape ladder was bolted to the wall at the end of a dim hallway, leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling. Sam climbed the first three rungs and flattened his palms against the door, wrenching it open with a metallic shriek while Sharaf watched from below. He threw it back like a hatch and burst into the sunlight, climbing onto a flat gravel roof. Then he thrust a hand back through the opening for Sharaf as he watched the big man struggle upward, hands sweaty on the rungs.

“Here,” Sam called.

Sharaf reached higher as a shoe slipped. He took Sam’s hand as footsteps echoed up the stairwell from the second floor. Sam pulled hard, boosting Sharaf past the last rung until he landed on the rooftop in a heap. They shut the trapdoor behind them.

“Stay low,” Sharaf said. “We’re too exposed.”

They moved in a crouch to keep from being seen from the street, and headed for a massive air-conditioning unit that sat like a blockhouse in a far corner. Sharaf was breathing heavily. His swollen forehead throbbed, and his head began to swim. He paused, and must have wobbled, because Sam was quickly at his side, coaxing him toward the far side of the blockhouse cube. They sagged onto the warm gravel behind the metal box, which sighed and grumbled as the big air-conditioning unit throbbed against the eighty-five-degree heat.

“Good thing we parked around the corner,” Sam said.

“An even better thing that we didn’t bring the Camry. In this neighborhood it would stand out like a rickshaw.”

Ten minutes passed. They could hear little of the ruckus unfolding below, and after a while Sharaf began to hope that they could ride out the storm. He listened for voices from the yard, expecting that at any second the policemen would begin trooping back toward their vehicles.

Instead he heard the groan of the trapdoor as it opened on the far side of the roof.

“Shit!” Sam whispered.

Sharaf shifted uncomfortably, his rump sliding on the gravel. He supposed they could still try running. They could even jump, although the fall would probably knock him senseless, especially in his current condition. A weary part of him braced for surrender. Wasn’t that bound to be their eventual fate, anyway?

Then he glanced at Sam, the young man unwittingly pulled into all this. He saw the look of eager desperation, the urgency of youth. And that made him think of Laleh, her concern, and her efforts to help. He rose into a crouch, settling on the balls of his feet.

Footsteps crunched slowly toward them across the gravel. A shadow slid into view on their left, followed by a khaki police uniform. The officer gasped. So did Sam. But Sharaf, to his own surprise, nearly laughed in relief.

It was Sergeant Habash, the ambitious young Palestinian and squad room grunt. Of all the policemen who could have discovered them, Habash was the luckiest possible choice, given the ease with which Sharaf had always manipulated him. Not that Sharaf had much leverage at the moment. Nor did he have much time to employ it.

“Hello, Sergeant. I assume you’re looking for the same girl as we are.”

“You’ll do as a consolation prize,” Habash said.

“So that’s what you’re opting for, then? A brief moment of glory on behalf of Lieutenant Assad, who will promptly claim all the credit for himself and forget about you? Unless I tell him how easily this fellow Keller got away from you last Monday.”

“But that was your doing!”

“I doubt he’ll see it that way. But there is an alternative, of course. What if I were to promise that, if you give me the chance, this fellow Keller will be dead by this evening, drowned in Dubai Creek? Don’t worry, he doesn’t speak a word of Arabic, so he has no idea what I’m saying.”

“You would do that?”

“Of course. He is excess baggage, an embarrassment for us both. Killing him will solve your problem and mine. And the longer I’m away from the office, the less likely it is that I’ll tell them how you let him escape, or how wretchedly bad your English is in all those press translations. Unless, of course, you’re itching to be back on the street, walking your old beat in Deira.”

Habash’s conflicted expression told Sharaf he was making progress. But before the sergeant could answer, the trapdoor slammed again, and another voice called out.

“Sergeant, what are you doing over there?”

It was Lieutenant Assad. The air-conditioning cube still blocked Sam and Sharaf from view. For Habash, for all of them, it was the moment of truth.

“Did you hear me, Sergeant? What’s taking so long? Is she up here or not?”

Sharaf smiled at the wording. Even a fellow as dim as Habash couldn’t possibly have missed the opening Assad had just given him.

“No,” Habash shouted back. “She’s not up here.”

“Then stop wasting my time! We’re ready to leave.”

“Yes, sir.”

And, just like that, Habash turned and left, without even having to tell a lie.

The trapdoor slammed shut. The rooftop was silent. Sharaf sagged in relief against the air-conditioning unit, feeling its vibrations like a massage across his sweating back. A few minutes later they heard voices in the yard, followed by the slamming of car doors and the rev of engines. Two vehicles pulled away from the curb.

“Too close,” Sam said. “What do we do now?”

Sharaf considered the question carefully, thinking only as a policeman, and he wasn’t at all pleased with the answer that sprang to mind. He voiced it, all the same, as if merely testing its theoretical possibilities.

“We telephone my daughter, and put her to work. It is insane, it is outrageous, and, worst of all, it is exactly what she will want. But Halami is right. Right now, she is our only option.”

An hour after the police departed, Sam and Sharaf were back in the Beacon of Light’s canteen, staving off the jitters with snacks and soda. At dusk they watched through a slit in the curtains as a taxi arrived, the yellow Camry gleaming beneath the streetlamp. Laleh, wearing her abaya, stepped out from a rear door.

She had come straight from the office. Apparently she was more willing to brave the threat of surveillance than further doses of her mother’s wrath. Or so Sam had concluded after listening in on a series of family phone calls. Even through the language barrier the urgency and anger were unmistakable.