Blue Damask Page 17

  “What are you saying, Elsa? Are you saying you do not wish to analyze my suicide in your dissertation?” There was a harder edge to his voice and she knew what he really meant. He told her. “I am not going back to the asylum. Ever. I’d rather be dead.”

  She tried not to wince. She chose every word carefully. “I would be affected in a negative way by your loss.”

  “True. But Mehmet would have a very pretty third wife.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I do not wish to be Ozgur Mehmet’s wife.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you wish. I will have him take you away from here and try to get you on your way to Damascus before anything happens. Let me go to sleep. I want to be alert when they kill me tomorrow.”

  He lay down and rolled over in the blankets, his back to her. She lay down, crinkling the papers as she stretched out. She was too warm to need a blanket.

  Chapter Twelve

  Elsa did not sleep well. She awoke many times and lay there, staring into the darkness. Her dreams were disjointed and disturbing. Dr. Engel had put great store in dreams and required that she keep a journal of her own. They would discuss them the next day at the clinic. He would share the insights he gleaned from her dreams and demonstrated how they could be interpreted for the benefit of the patient.

  Elsa had a thick stack of dream journals back in Vienna. On this trip she had not bothered to keep notes, but now she was sorry she did not. These troubling dreams involved trains and ships and automobiles. She seemed to be always late for her connection, rushing to catch the train, leap the gangplank of the ship and fill the empty tank of a motorcar.

  She turned her head. It was still too dark to see Sonnenby but she could hear him snoring softly. Again she tried to imagine a return to Vienna without him. She imagined the final stop at the station, stepping down from the train and walking across the platform and getting a cab to take her the last mile or two to Dr. Engel’s house and her little room on the third floor. She imagined the cozy bed and her familiar writing table and the window that opened out onto the quiet street. She imagined greeting Magda and handing over to the housekeeper the bags and her coat and smiling at Dr. Engel. “I have returned from Damascus,” she would say. And then it would all fall apart, because after that there would be nothing but failure.

  Elsa sat up and took a deep breath. She would not sleep any longer. She sat there until she heard movement around her in the camp outside the tent walls. Horses were being walked back and forth and she heard them crunching fodder. Soft voices in Arabic or Turkish came from all directions. She knew that if she went to the tent flap she would see a blue glow in the east where the black of night was fading to day. She turned to look down at Sonnenby. He was just a darker shape in the lightening gloom. She could see his shoulders rising and falling as he slept.

  He was very different from the sullen man in a straightjacket just a week or so ago. She thought about the power of society over the lives of individuals. Someone somewhere signed a paper stating that Sonnenby was insane. After that it was an indictment. Events rolled from that pen stroke. She imagined the asylum, the treatments, the physical and chemical restraints. There was no legal recourse for that signature. Innocent men were sometimes accused of crimes and sentenced to prison. There may be some legal way to get them out again. New evidence might free a man. But there was nothing that could be done for a man who had been signed into an asylum with a stroke of a pen.

  This was a lifetime verdict with no chance of parole. Yet Sonnenby had been paroled by Mr. Marshall. She raised her knees, set her elbows on them and rested her chin on her hands. Marshall must have known Sonnenby was sane. He must have done something, talked to someone higher up than the man who sent Sonnenby to the hospitals. He must have cared. She thought about everything that must have been done to get Sonnenby out. And get him a therapist. No one went to that much trouble if he thought his efforts would be futile.

  What was the British Foreign Service doing out here? She glanced at Sonnenby’s back again. The light outside was growing enough now that she could see the outline of his body as it lay on the rug. What was unique about him in this situation? And why would they remove him from a hospital, drag him out here by force, then kill him? It made no sense to her. There must be a missing piece, but Sonnenby refused to tell her what it might be. And why should he? They had just met. He had demonstrated a complete lack of trust in anyone. Understandable. She imagined the many betrayals he must have suffered in his life.

  If what Sonnenby told her was true, and the British merely needed the goodwill of the tribesmen to set up their derricks, what good would come of killing their ambassador? None. And if the tribes were in disagreement with themselves about the value of British gold versus their freedom to control their territory, what good would come of killing Sonnenby? None. Yet he was adamant that his life was over. She frowned.

  Unless he knew something that would change the plans they were making. If Sonnenby’s presence was necessary for step one, but threatened step two, then his convenient death would make sense. She sat up straighter. So what was step two? Did Marshall know about step two? Would he have brought Sonnenby out if he knew? It occurred to her that the two parts to this plan might actually involve two different powerful factions.

  Outside a tent flap snapped loudly, like a gunshot, in the morning breeze and Sonnenby sat up and kicked the blanket from his legs, then put his body in a crouch of readiness to attack or to flee. She didn’t move. She had seen this behavior before in the hospital.

  Loud sounds could cause a sudden uproar in the sleeping ward. One night a clumsy nurse dropped a tray laden with metal bedpans she was bringing back from the washroom. The screams and cries from the ward took an hour to quiet down. Men were under their cots, up against the walls, and two of them rolled in the aisle pummeling each other. Shell shock, they called it.

  She called to him softly, “Henry.”

  He relaxed immediately. “Damn.”

  “Were you dreaming?”

  He turned to look at her and then sat down on his backside and felt for the laces on his boots. “No, Doctor Therapist.” He tightened the laces and made a knot, then reached for the other boot. “I was not dreaming.”

  He was lying.

  He finished with the boots and stood up. The morning light made the outside of the tent glow on the east side. He looked at it, judging the time, then turned as if he would go out. His dark hair fell forward over his face and his shoulders sank. Elsa thought he was thinking about what he was going to tell her about this day’s events, but a moment later he collapsed to the carpet and lay there, still. His eyes open.

  She quickly moved to him and knelt to loosen his. She put a hand on his cheek and felt his temperature, and then moved her fingers to his throat to feel his pulse. Sudden loss of conscious would have been noticed and recorded in both school records and military ones. She had not seen anything in the records until his commitment to the asylum. She wondered if a war wound had damaged his brain. There was no record of head trauma.

  Mehmet entered the tent so quickly that she suspected he had been watching, waiting for them to wake. He knelt on the other side of Sonnenby’s body and felt him as she had. He looked up at her and said, “What has happened? Has he fainted? Is he ill?”

  “He is ill, Mr. Mehmet.”

  “Why are his eyes open? He looks like a dead man, but he breathes. Is he dying?”

  She released the breath she had been holding. “No,” she assured him. “He is unconscious.”

  Mehmet nodded and patted Sonnenby’s cheek. “Wake up, brother, it is time to work.” He turned to Elsa. “Is it epilepsy?”

  She looked up at him sharply. It had not occurred to her that Mehmet would know about epilepsy, or that he was Sonnenby’s brother, but now, looking closely, she could see the resemblance in the eyes and in the thick black lashes. She looked down at Sonnenby. None of the papers in her file had suggested he had epilepsy. She passed a hand over Sonnenby’
s forehead, brushing a stray lock from his open eyes. That would explain quite a bit, actually, but it was impossible. Epilepsy would have shown itself much earlier in his life. He was nearly thirty. She frowned. Seizures, though. Interesting.

  Mehmet said in a low voice, “He must come with me soon. The British want him at dawn, after prayers.”

  “They will have to wait, unless you are prepared to have men carry him out.”

  “Can you not bring him around?”

  She patted Sonnenby’s cheek and his eyes blinked. “These episodes don’t usually last very long.” Elsa took his right hand and rubbed his wrist. It was always fascinating to her to watch the sense return in a patient’s eyes. One moment the eyes were vacant, like fish eyes, and next there was something there that hadn’t been there before. Yet that ‘something’ could not be described. It was not as though the eyes were physically different, but one could tell when there was someone looking out of them, and when no one was home.

  Sonnenby inhaled sharply and tried to rise. Elsa pushed him back. “Wait just a few minutes until you are all here.” He looked confused, his eyes twitched and he blinked rapidly. “You are in Deir El Zor, with Ozgur Mehmet,” she told him.

  “Ugh,” he rubbed his face with one hand. “I feel terrible.”

  Mehmet agreed. “You look terrible,” he said in English, but his voice was kind as he bent over his brother. He then spoke in Arabic. Or maybe Turkish. Sonnenby listened intently. Both men seemed to have forgotten that Elsa was there. She watched them, and the longer she looked the more the family resemblance became evident. It wasn’t just in the eyes, but in the width of their shoulders and the shape of their jaws. Mehmet wore a turban, but the one lock of dark hair that had escaped from the black cloth over his ear was thick and curled into a ring. She looked at Sonnenby. The Englishman had his hair cut very short except for the long forelock. There was a definite wave to the way the dark strands fell.

  Now, with one man on his back and the other leaning over him she could see the two profiles, the strong bridge of their noses and the firm chins. One man’s skin was very pale and the other’s was brown like fine walnut, but they were very alike.

  Mehmet’s tone changed. Sonnenby reached up and put a hand on Mehmet’s shoulder and squeezed it. Both men were silent, staring intently into each other’s eyes, and then Sonnenby said something and they both nodded. Sonnenby tried to sit up again, and this time Elsa sat back and let Mehmet pull him to a sitting position. He bent his knees and held his head between them with both hands. Mehmet had a hand on his back and leaned forward to see his brother’s face. He said something soft and low and Sonnenby replied, along with a shake of his head.

  Mehmet turned to Elsa and said in English, “My brother has asked that I send you away with my family.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “My family will take care of you for now, insha'Allah”

  “Go with him, Elsa. For God’s sake.” Sonnenby reached for Mehmet and the other man helped him to stand. He wobbled a moment before he spread his feet and braced himself on Mehmet’s shoulder. “You know what is coming.” He tried to give her a smile, but failed. “Don’t forget your papers.”

  “No,” she said. “I can’t leave you. I just found you. You are obviously ill.”

  “The British are not going to wait until I am better. I have to go or they will come and get me. I don’t want them to find you here.” He swayed and Mehmet moved a little closer.

  “No,” she said.

  Mehmet said something long and hard in Arabic or Turkish which made Sonnenby smile, but Elsa crossed her arms over her chest and pressed her lips together. “I have a responsibility. I have been tasked with your care. I am your therapist.”

  “I release you, then,” he said.

  “You divorce her?” Mehmet was visibly shocked. “Brother, no. Do not do that.”

  Elsa frowned. She was quickly losing control of this conversation. “There must be a third way.”

  “You saw the machine guns.”

  She stomped one foot. “Gott im Himmel! Verdammte Männer und ihre Kriege!”

  Mehmet blinked at her, but Sonnenby lowered his eyes. “I agree with you wholeheartedly, Brunhilde. But the guns are here, the ammunition is in the trucks and the bullets in the guns. Guns and gold, Elsa. It’s what makes the world work.”

  She ground her teeth but refrained from another outburst. It was not professional. She made fists and pressed them to her eyes. Think. She hated the idea that there could be no solution that would benefit everyone involved.

  “I see you working this over, Elsa. I have spent days at it. Give it up. Put on your veil and go with Mehmet’s family. He will try to get you back to Damascus.”

  “This is not about me,” she snapped at him viciously, making both men widen their eyes. “I am not trying to get back to Damascus. I am trying to get your life back for you, Henry Sinclair.”

  Sonnenby pushed Mehmet away and took a step toward her and said softly, “We are in a tent, Elsa. Keep it down.”

  She stomped her foot, then turned to pace again. “There is something you are not telling me. Something doesn’t make any sense at all. They don’t need you to negotiate with the tribe. The gold does that. And you are not the only translator for the British.” She shot him a fierce look. “You have not told me everything.”

  She saw the confirmation in his face. He tried to hide it, but she saw how his face twisted in defeat before he composed it into that British stiffness she so disliked. Marshall’s face was like that all the time. Mehmet was looking at Sonnenby with dismay. He said something in Arabic. Elsa guessed he was asking, “Have you been lying to me, too?” The way his eyes searched his brother’s and the sad sound of betrayal in his voice needed no translation.

  When Sonnenby spoke his voice was stiff and cold. “Go with Mehmet, Elsa.” He would not answer his brother, nor did he look at either one of them as he turned his back, pushed aside the flap in the entrance, and walked out of the tent.

  Mehmet beckoned her to follow him in the opposite direction from where Sonnenby had disappeared. She did not want to go with him, yet she knew it would be foolish to try to follow Sonnenby into the British lair. It was obvious how that would play out. But to go with Mehmet was to give up all the efforts she had made in the last week.

  He read her face. “Lady,” he said. “You will be reunited. But this is a bad time.” He lifted her veil from the carpet and handed it to her.

  He was right. She reluctantly wrapped her head and then picked her way behind him, careful of tent pegs and supporting ropes and piles of horse manure. He led her to a line of horses tied to a long rope strung between two of the brick houses. The sun had risen; she could see it across the river where the little ripples of current were tinged with its gold. There were no clouds. Elsa looked up at the clear sky. The crescent moon hovered over the western horizon.

  The cool breeze of the night was gone with the sun. Mehmet gave the order to take her away to his family. He merely glanced at her before turning and walking back toward the center of the village. She followed him with her eyes. One of the trucks had been started up. She could see dust rising in a widening column as the truck was repositioned.

  She could feel doubt creeping in the corners of her mind. She started to imagine unpleasant things and quickly stopped them before they could become possibilities. She had to trust Ozgur Mehmet. “Don’t let them kill him!” She shouted at his back.

  He stopped walking for a moment, but did not turn around.

  She watched him until he turned and disappeared behind one of the brick houses. She made fists with her hands. She was a scientist. The facts were indisputable. She was a woman in a country unfriendly to women. She was no longer under the protection of the British Foreign Ministry, if she ever had been. She had no money and she did not speak their language. She had no choice but to trust him. Sonnenby trusted him.

  The men who were her keepers stood quietly alert near the hors
es. Waiting. Waiting for something. She scanned the brush and stones and low shrubs, her hair blew in her eyes when her veil was lifted and bits of sand peppered her cheeks and got in her mouth. After a long wait she heard shouting. Then a gun shot. Just one.

  That must have been the signal, for the men leapt into action. She was scooped up onto a horse, her feet stuffed into the stirrups. A hard push on her leg against the animal’s body served as a wordless warning to hold on tightly.

  Her horse was not wearing a bridle, the halter rope stretched to the saddle of a man who gave her a meaningful look before kicking his horse’s ribs. Both animals sprang forward and galloped along the green track near the river. She did not turn around. She couldn’t. She had to concentrate to stay on. Standing a little in the stirrups helped. It stopped the bouncing of her breasts which threatened to pound her papers out of their files. She held on to them tightly with one arm and leaned forward to bend and tighten them inside their folders. She focused on the space between her horse’s ears and willed her legs to keep her upright.

  The tribesmen pulled up just a few miles from the settlement and dismounted. They quickly led the horses into a ravine that in rainy weather emptied into the Euphrates. Now it was quite dry and offered a shelter from view, but not much else. Elsa tried to dismount, but the man pressed her leg against the horse’s ribs again and gave her a fierce look.

  She heard the sound of an aeroplane in the distance. So did the tribesmen. Their looks of alarm and sudden flurry of words and movements suggested a change of plan. The man beside her reached up both arms and dragged her down from her animal and pressed her into a clay cleft in the ravine while the other men released the horses, and with a shout and a few accurately thrown stones, dismissed the frightened animals. She watched the horses flee toward the river.