Free Lion of Babylon by Davis Bunn Page B

his purchases back to the hotel, where he showered and lay down on the bed. Marc did not expect to sleep, but the next thing he knew there was an unfamiliar buzzing sound next to his ear. He fumbled across the nightstand for his new cellphone, rubbed his eyes, and said, “This is Marc.”
    â€œI got what you want.”
    â€œHold on.” He rose from his bed and walked to the desk. The electronic clock read four fifteen. The city outside his window was completely dark. Duboe was calling him the hour before dawn. Marc found the hotel pen and pad by moonlight, rubbed his face again, and said, “Go ahead.”
    Duboe gave him a name, then spelled it out, each letter brittle with his wrath. When he stopped, Marc asked, “Do I need an address?”
    â€œNot for that place.”
    â€œShould this name mean something to me?”
    â€œAsk your new best pal. He knows.” Duboe’s words felt like bullets. “You tell Sameh I’ve delivered. This is a one-time gift. Either you come in with the goods, or the game is over. Repeat, over.”
    â€”——
    Sameh’s office was just off Nidhal Street. Many of the city’s ancient structures had started life as palaces, including this one. But the building had been poorly maintained and battered by war. Recently it had been expanded in an ugly and haphazard manner, so that it covered every square inch of what once had been formal gardens. But here and there were still vestiges of the lost grandeur. Sameh’s private office occupied what probably had been a beloved child’s bedroom. The room was narrow and long, with a high peaked ceiling. The walls and ceiling still held shadows of original murals, vague shapes that suggested a fabled garden and birds in flight. This was extremely rare, as Islam forbade the making of images. Yet here they were, ghostly recollections of a faded past.
    The building had air-conditioning. But most days they could not risk turning it on. Baghdad endured constant power shortages. The danger was not in losing power entirely, but in the power declining . If the air-conditioner was running during such a decline, the condenser would burn out. There were no replacement condensers in Baghdad, and few repairmen. All parts had to be brought in from Jordan. So the air-conditioner did not run.
    The various offices all owned shares of a generator. The generator ran the lights and the fans, but when the city’s power went out, everything dimmed and the fans emitted a sullen growl.
    Sameh had spent the previous afternoon trying to find where the gardener might have lived. Supposedly there were records of all the felons released in Saddam’s last days. The police were constantly revamping the list of those whom they knew to still be in Baghdad. Many had fled, either to outlying cities or away from Iraq entirely. Several hundred were known to have remained in the capital, however, and these were carefully monitored. What made this gardener interesting was how no one seemed to know anything about him.
    Sameh entered his office to find Marc waiting for him. Which was a surprise. What was more of an astonishment was how his aides smiled at this young American.
    One of Sameh’s two assistants was his niece, Leyla. She had been married to a judge. Sameh had introduced the two of them. Since both her parents were deceased, Sameh had also served as Leyla’s official guardian during the courtship. Leyla’s husband had been one of very few judges during Saddam’s regime who had not been a member of the Baath Party. The last year of Saddam’s rule, the judge had been handed a case in which a Baath official had taken over the villa of a family after they disappeared. Despite warnings, the family’s relatives had taken the case to court. Leyla’s husband had sided with the family’s relatives and ordered the party official to vacate the house. A week later, all the relatives of the family