Elliot Ackerman - Dark at the Crossing

Haris eased back into his seat, saying nothing.

When they pulled up to the office, the air was rich with the smell of fresh baked simit and açma from the corner pastanesi. Amir idled the Peugeot in front of the garage door — a shutter on a steel roller built into the villa’s outer wall.

Nailed into the wall was a sign for the Syria Analysis Group. The paint on the organization’s logo — the oblong border of Syria with a lamp illuminating it from the side — was weather-beaten, scaled and flaking at the corners, long overdue for a touch-up. Tethered to the sign frame, bundles of spent glow sticks hung on small bits of twine, marking the location of last night’s, and of other nights’, parties.

With his cellphone, Amir dialed Marty. Nothing. Amir tried again. From the receiver, Haris heard a startled voice answer, as if irritated at being woken. Amir asked to be let inside. A moment passed and the garage door rolled open. They pulled into the villa’s courtyard, where they drove past a small, untended garden, crosshatched with weeds and seeded with cigarette butts, as if sprouts might root from their filters.

They waited.

“Let’s be quick about this,” said Daphne.

“We’ll just get the five thousand and leave,” answered Amir.

“I don’t want to go inside.”

“We won’t,” said Amir, “but I think you’re being a bit hard on him.”

“Money or no money, it’s exploitative the way he’s made a business from researching the war.”

Daphne gazed out of the window. A few empty lawn chairs were scattered across the yard. In the corner of the outer wall, an oleander grew. Its bare branches were thin. A blanketed heap slept in a chaise beneath the tree. A single, lazy arm hung toward the ground as if reaching for an inflated kiddie pool a couple of steps away. Buoyed by the pool water, melting chunks of ice floated alongside some bottles of Efes pilsner.

Marty opened the villa’s heavy oak door. He shut it behind him by the brass knocker and stood in the threshold, atop a few marble steps. He made a visor of his hand, squinting against the sun. He wore his Docksides like a pair of slippers. A tattered terry-cloth bathrobe hung down to his calves. Its knot was tied loosely, draping open at the front and exposing his boxer shorts and navel. In the bathrobe’s right pocket was something heavy.

Haris’s eyes instinctively noticed the heavy pocket — the five thousand.

As Marty’s senses adjusted to the midmorning light, his stare fell into the Peugeot. His eyes widened upon seeing Daphne. He jogged down the marble steps, his Docksides thwacking against his heels.

It was barely perceptible, but Haris noticed Daphne sink in her seat as Marty sauntered up to her window. She fixed her gaze straight ahead, boring into some invisible distance.

Marty knocked on the glass and quickly checked his appearance in the side mirror.

Daphne rolled down the window, finding the switch as though her hand were disconnected from the rest of her body. Seeing Marty tested the limits of her manners.

Marty, his wide grin growing ever wider, noticed none of this. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said to Daphne, the weariness lifting from his voice and his words brimming with hollow charm, as if he said them only to charm himself. He leaned his head deep into the cab. “Why didn’t you bring her last night, Amir?” he asked. “Fiesta’s wrapped up now.” He didn’t give Amir a chance to answer. He turned toward Daphne. “He’s always trying to keep us apart.” Marty again leaned deeper into the cab, his shoulders coming through the window. “You’re always trying to keep Daphne from me,” he repeated, lightly scolding Amir.

“I’m here now,” said Daphne, her eyes remaining straight ahead.

“Yes, and just in time to leave,” he said, taking the five thousand from his pocket. “Who’s helping you across the border, the Northern Storm?”

“Haris has a contact in the Daesh,” Amir answered quietly. His words were forlorn and his stare hung at his hands, which limply gripped the bottom of the steering wheel.

Marty pulled his head from the window. He regarded Haris in the backseat, giving him an examining look. Haris couldn’t bring himself to match Marty’s gaze. Self-consciously, he ran his palm over his face, which bristled with a few days’ growth of beard.

“You’re an Islamist?”

“I’m not,” said Haris.

Marty patted the five thousand, a banded stack of bills, against his hand like a thug with a baseball bat. “I don’t know how I feel about giving this over to the Daesh. Even if I was okay with it, I mean, Jesus, Daphne, you can’t cross with the Islamists.”

Daphne swung her eyes away from the distant spot where they’d been focused. She pushed her sunglasses up on her head. Hatefully, she stared at Marty. “And why not?”

“Why not? Because they’re savage.”

“And all this isn’t?” said Daphne, surveying his opulent home rented at an inflated price, the detritus of last evening’s party strewn across the front yard. “You’ll still get your report. And more than an update on events in Aleppo, you’ll get information on the Daesh. What do you really know about them? Very little, I suppose.”

Marty didn’t argue this point. Instead, he reached toward Daphne, cupping the blond tips of her hair, which curtained her slender neck. “You may be half-Muslim, but you’re half-Christian also. Have you looked at yourself? They’ll never let you cross as you are, head uncovered, with a nose ring, dressed like a western woman.”

Everything Marty said was true, but his obsession with Daphne seemed less about his feelings for her, or any real attraction. She was, Haris realized, the one person who refused all Marty had to offer. The villa, the parties, the easy research job, which paid well if you were a Syrian stranded in Antep — Daphne resisted all of it, and this made her irresistible to him.

“Goddammit,” said Marty. “Hold on a second.” He jogged back inside, his bathrobe flapping behind him.

Amir’s gaze remained on his hands. “He’s right, you know.”

“About what!” Daphne shot back. She clutched the bag of baklava in her lap, nervously folding and unfolding its top with her manicured fingers.

Amir said nothing. Turning on the radio instead, he surfed through the stations for programming in English or Arabic. Before he found any, Marty reappeared at the front door and rushed down the marble steps. He clutched a white linen scarf with floral embroidery. Haris thought it’d probably been a small tablecloth.

Marty leaned in a crouch against Daphne’s window. She turned down the radio. “Your five thousand is contingent on one more thing,” he said, his face becoming stern, like a father setting curfew for a beloved daughter. Marty held up the scarf.

Daphne laughed on reflex as he held the scarf by its ends like a garrote.

Nothing in Marty’s dour expression changed.

Daphne stopped laughing.

“Fine,” she said, “but I still think it’s ridiculous.”

Marty ignored her. He folded the scarf into a triangle, which Daphne spread flat against her lap. Grasping both its ends, she flung the scarf over her head, looping it in a knot beneath her chin. Her shoulders sank, and she lowered her sunglasses. Their large red frames rested on her cheeks, and she stared straight ahead.

Now Marty laughed, so did Amir.

“What?” she snapped.

Neither said anything.

“What!”

From the backseat, Haris replied: “You look more glamorous than before.”

Amir and Marty laughed even harder now.

“Yeah,” said Marty. “You look like Audrey al-Hepburn.”

Daphne, trying to remain upset, fought against a smile. She took out her nose ring, tucking the quartz stud into her pocket. A black hole dimpled her nostril. Without saying anything, Marty took the five thousand from the pocket of his bathrobe, offering it to her instead of to Haris or Amir. He placed it in her palm. Amir reached toward Daphne as if she should give the money to him. But she didn’t. She tucked the cash into the bag of baklava on her lap.