Ambush (Michael Bennett #11)(16)

An image rose in my mind of the woman Haifa and the Marine, Resenko, their butchered bodies arranged next to each other in a small house in Habbaniyah. And eight-year-old Malik, weeping nearby. In my memory, I once again gathered him in my arms and carried him outside, his eyes wide and wet in the moonlight.

Zarif cleared his throat, and I snapped back to the sun-drenched patio.

“For six months, I’ve been looking for an eleven-year-old boy named Malik,” I said. “His mother was an interpreter for the Marines in Habbaniyah, in Iraq.”

Zarif’s brow furrowed. “Okay.”

I spun the saucer under my coffee cup around with restless fingers. “When Malik was eight, his mother was murdered by insurgents. After she died, Malik spent a lot of time on our forward operating base. I think he felt safe on the FOB. Outside the wire, it was chaos. There were corpses on the street every morning, local nationals who had been kidnapped and tortured the night before.”

I paused to take in the sunny, sleepy square and forced my hands into my lap.

Zarif’s voice broke through. “Ms. Parnell. Sydney. Are you all right?”

“Yes.” I plunged on. “Malik and I grew close. I wasn’t a mother figure for him. I have no children of my own, and my parents weren’t great role models. But I did my best. I worked with him on his English, let him play games on my computer, showed him how to count cards in blackjack.” I smiled. “I told him that in America, thumbs-up means something different from what it means in Iraq. We watched a lot of movies together. His favorite was The Lion King. Hakuna matata, he would say to me. It means—” I glanced away and cleared my throat.

“It means no worries,” Zarif said. “A good idea, hard to hold on to.”

I brought my gaze back. “The other Marines helped take care of him. We were all fond of him. Then, a few months after his mother’s death, I was redeployed. I tried, but failed, to bring him with me back to America.”

“I’ve heard that story many times,” Zarif said. “Men and women who helped our soldiers and Marines, then were left behind when we withdrew and things got ugly. A lot of them died. I thought we’d learned that lesson in Saigon.”

An old, familiar anger burned in my throat. “Not our most shining moment.”

“No. But please, go on.”

“After I left, friends sent me emails to let me know how Malik was doing. He continued to spend time on the FOB. Then one morning he didn’t show up. No one was worried until he didn’t appear the next morning. Or the next. A week went by.”

Zarif raised an eyebrow. “Let me guess. He never came back.”

“Everyone hoped that his grandparents had decided to move away. But in truth, a lot of us figured the family had been killed for working with us. It was not only Malik’s mother who worked for the US government. One of his uncles did some sort of business on the FOB. And another family member had served as an interpreter for a special-ops team. He was killed in an ambush along with the rest of the team.”

Including the man I’d loved. Doug Ayers.

“It’s a terrible story,” Zarif said. “So much loss.”

“Yes.”

He took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. “Do you mind?”

“I live for secondhand smoke.”

“Sarcasm.” He moved to slip the pack back into his pocket. “I’ll wait.”

“Actually, no. Please, go ahead.”

He tapped out a cigarette and lit it. The pungent scent of tobacco filled the air. I tried not to notice how good it smelled.

“But now something has changed,” Zarif guessed.

“Six months ago, a man came to see me. He believed that not only was Malik alive and well, he was sure the boy had made his way to America. But he had no leads. He thought I might know something, since Malik and I had been close. But this was the first I’d heard anything.”

“This man, who was he?”

A real son of a bitch. “A fellow Marine. I didn’t ask how he got his information.”

“And you do not wish to share his name.”

I hadn’t decided what to do about Sergeant Max Udell—Sarge. I didn’t know where he was or what he was up to. Sharing seemed like a bad idea. “What could it mean to you?”

Zarif tipped his head to the side and blew a stream of smoke up and away. “Nothing, I suppose.”

Max Udell had been a tank sergeant in the Marines, a trusted colleague, if not a friend. But by the time he surprised me in my own kitchen, he’d fallen a long way from his time in the USMC.

“This man broke into my house and told me at gunpoint that he was working for the CIA. They’d taken the boy to use as a spy, then lost him.”

As if Malik were merely a toy, carelessly misplaced.

“And what did you tell him?” Zarif asked. There was a bright rim of metal in his voice that hadn’t been there before, as if he were more interrogator than bystander.

I narrowed my eyes. I’d had nothing to offer Sarge to help with his search. Not that I would have shared anything with a man who wanted to turn kids into spies. Or with someone who opened the conversation by promising to splatter my brains around when we finished.

“The truth,” I said. “That I hadn’t seen or heard from Malik in nearly three years.”