Dan Fesperman: Layover in Dubai

It was time to wake everyone in the house.

Laleh, Ali, and Keller sat before Sharaf at the kitchen table. They were in a grumpy stupor, and still wondering why he had awakened them so urgently at ι a.m. The recorder remained at the center of the table-silent, waiting. It was to be the main prop in his presentation.

Waking Laleh had been the hardest part. Thinking like a cop, he had dashed to her bedroom first, knowing she would have to play one more role in this final move. But at her doorway he hesitated, overwhelmed by a burst of fatherly emotion. Light from the hallway cast a shadow across her face. He stepped to the bedside and brushed back her hair the way he had once done when waking her for grade school.

“Laleh?” he whispered. “Laleh?”

A flutter of eyelids.

“Yes?”

She was almost instantly alert. He then realized that for all the exertion and emotional strain, a part of her was immensely enjoying the cloak-and-dagger aspects of the past twenty-four hours. She was a player in the arena, out where decisions affected lives. He smiled in spite of his worry, admiring how easily she had taken to this new role, even though he still would have preferred to have kept her out of it.

“I need your help, one last time.”

She sat up, propped on her elbows.

“What time is it?”

“After midnight. But this can’t wait. We have to begin planning now, all of us. So get dressed and come to the kitchen.”

She nodded, obedient. He went to wake the others. And now there they were, looking at him like he had lost his mind.

Sharaf began his spiel.

“Good news. Lightning has struck. We have found the candle to attract our butterfly. All five of our butterflies, in fact, if I’m reading things correctly.”

“Butterflies?” Ali rubbed his eyes. “Anwar, what in God’s name are you talking about?”

“Let’s just say I know now how to bait the trap in a way that might well produce instantaneous results. Here, listen to this part of the recording again.”

Sharaf hit the PLAY switch, and Hal Liffey’s voice began speaking in Russian.

“He is saying that in the corporate world they first learn what they can from the source of the trouble-through briefings, interrogations, surveillance. In this way, potential debits are turned into assets. Even then, they only liquidate after full consultation by all interested parties.”

He switched off the machine.

“So?” Ali said.

“Don’t you see? Interrogation, debriefing, and full consultation. If we can present them with an immediate and serious threat to their operation, that’s how they will respond. And given the timetable for delivery, I’m betting they’ll respond right away.”

“What kind of threat?” Keller said.

“Basma. At the first hour of business tomorrow she will telephone the police department and ask for their ranking authority on vice. She will of course be referred to Lieutenant Hamad Assad. She offers to share with him a most interesting tale of a human-trafficking operation using a new means to smuggle goods into the country. But she is worried, very worried, about her own safety, so she will only meet him on neutral ground, at a place of her choosing. Of course, that is the very sort of location Assad will prefer. The last thing he would want is to have her show up at the police station.”

“And you think he’ll rally the troops?” Keller said.

“Does he have any choice, seeing as how all the troops are here in town? Especially after what happened to the last fellow who decided to handle things on his own?”

Ali nodded.

“That part is plausible,” he said. “Even at 1 a.m., with kebabs rolling around my stomach. But what will the location be?”

“I was thinking you could provide one. A place with actual neighbors, so the watchers can blend in with the scenery.”

“Yes. I can arrange that.”

“We’ll have Mansour’s men wire the place, and we will stake it out from every angle. Every possible entry and exit, fully covered. Then, when all the players have arrived and had time to fully implicate themselves in the course of their debriefing, we’ll spring the trap.”

The only one who hadn’t spoken up yet was Laleh, and they turned to her now. She would have to play the most crucial role, and she didn’t look pleased.

“I suppose you want me to talk her into this,” she said.

“In the morning. After you’ve slept.”

“Well, I can already tell you that she won’t agree to it. Nor would I let her.”

“Oh, so it is up to you to decide for her now?”

“No. But it is her life that will be at risk. It’s one thing for you to do something stupid on your own. Quite another to ask someone else who won’t even know the real danger.”

“Oh, Laleh, come on. We’re talking about one person helping hundreds, maybe thousands. The greater good, Laleh!”

“It’s easy to say ‘one versus thousands’ unless you have to face the one.”

Sharaf sighed and regrouped.

“Right now, Laleh, even as we sit here, fifty girls just like Basma are locked inside cramped steel containers on the pitching deck of a ship at sea, probably vomiting their brains out. And you’re going to let that happen over and over again, just because the fate of a single young woman is in your hands? You’re the one who wanted to participate, Laleh. Well, participation comes with a cost, and the cost is responsibility. For Basma, yes. But also for those fifty young women, and however many more will keep coming if we fail.”

Laleh frowned and shook her head, almost a shudder. Sharaf hated pushing her, but it was a lesson she needed to learn. This was the hidden reality of the heady life in the arena. Remember this feeling well, my daughter, because the burden never lightens.

“I will ask her,” Laleh said. “But I won’t push. Write out your argument, and all your justifications. I will present it in your own words as you wish. But I won’t be an advocate, only a messenger.”

“Fair enough.”

It was settled, then. They discussed a few other arrangements and then went back to bed, where Sharaf supposed he might finally be able to sleep.

But he couldn’t, of course, not a wink, because now his plan seemed all too shaky, and riddled with holes. What if they didn’t take the bait? What if everyone didn’t show up? Or, worst of all, what if they simply sent an assassin to kill Basma? At this late date, who knew how they might really react, no matter what Liffey had said about contingencies?

Six hours later he was standing by the front window with a cup of coffee, stomach fluttering as he peeped through the blinds into the early-morning sunlight. Out by the curb, Laleh was climbing into a taxi. His girl, heading off on her mission to talk another poor girl into hers.

Shaky or not, it was all they had. The taxi pulled away from the curb. Their operation was under way.

Nanette Weaver lined up her supplies in front of the hotel mirror, a general preparing for battle. Arrayed before her were moisturizer, foundation, concealer, blush, shadow, eyeliner, and lipstick-all of it in demure little tubes, vials, and bottles, plus a chic mini-cube of molded Lucite.

Once, in a rare moment of budgetary curiosity, she had totted up the dollar value of this arsenal and had been mildly appalled by the result, especially once she added shampoos and conditioners. Despite the micro sizes necessary for travel, the damage had come to $271.

But excess in the defense of finesse was no vice, and today it was more important than ever that Nanette achieve just the right look. Because now was the time to take command, marshal the troops, set disarray back in order. Proper leadership was what they had been lacking, and at this crucial final hour she aimed to provide it.