The Black Widow Page 26

  But what would the men of ISIS do to the female physician who allowed the great Saladin to perish before his mission of uniting the Muslim world under the black banner of the caliphate was complete? Surely, she thought, they would not thank her for her efforts and send her peacefully on her way. The stone or the knife would likely be her fate. She had not come to Syria on a suicide mission and had no intention of dying in this wretched place, at the hands of these black-clad prophets of the apocalypse. What’s more, Saladin’s predicament provided her with an unprecedented opportunity—the opportunity to nurse him back to health, to befriend him, to earn his trust, and to steal the deadly secrets that resided in his head. You must not let him die, the Iraqi had said. But why? The answer, thought Natalie, was simple. The Iraqi did not know what Saladin knew. Saladin could not die because the network’s ambitions would die with him.

  As it turned out, the supplies were only ninety minutes in arriving. The woman, whoever she was, had managed to secure most of what Natalie needed. After pulling on gloves and a surgical mask, she quickly inserted an IV needle into Saladin’s left arm and handed the bag of solution to the Iraqi, who was looking anxiously over her shoulder. Then, using a pair of surgical scissors, she cut away Saladin’s soiled, blood-soaked clothing. The stethoscope was practically a museum piece, but it worked well. The left lung sounded normal but from the right there was only silence.

  “He has a pneumohemothorax.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “His left lung has stopped functioning because it’s filled with air and blood. I need to move him.”

  The Iraqi motioned toward one of the fighters, who assisted Natalie in easing Saladin onto his left side. Next she made a small incision between the sixth and seventh rib, inserted a hemostat clamp, and pushed a tube into the chest cavity. There was an audible rush of escaping air. Then the blood of Saladin flowed through the tube, onto the bare floor.

  “He’s bleeding to death!” cried the Iraqi.

  “Be quiet,” snapped Natalie, “or I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  A half-liter or more of blood spilled before the flow slowed to a trickle. Natalie clamped the tube to prevent outside air from entering. Then she eased Saladin carefully onto his back and went to work on the chest wound.

  The piece of shrapnel had broken two ribs and caused significant damage to the pectoralis major muscle. Natalie flooded the wound with alcohol; then, using a pair of angled surgical tweezers, she removed the shrapnel. There was additional bleeding but it was not significant. She removed several bone fragments and threads of Saladin’s black garment. After that, there was nothing more she could do. The ribs, if he survived, would heal, but the damaged pectoral muscle would likely never regain its original shape or strength. Natalie closed the deep tissue with sutures but left the skin open. Twelve hours had passed since the original wound. If she closed the skin now, she would be sealing infectious agents into the body, ensuring a case of sepsis and an agonizingly slow death. It was tempting, she thought, but medically reckless. She covered the wound with a gauze bandage and turned her attention to the leg.

  Here again, Saladin had been fortunate. The lump of shrapnel had been discriminating in the havoc it had wreaked, damaging bone and tissue but sparing major blood vessels. Natalie’s procedure was identical to the first wound—irrigation with alcohol, retrieval of bone fragments and clothing fibers, closure of deep tissue, a gauze bandage over the open skin. In all, the crude surgery had taken less than an hour. She added a heavy dose of antibiotic to the IV and covered the patient with a clean white sheet. The chest tube she left in place.

  “It looks like a burial shroud,” the Iraqi said darkly.

  “Not yet,” answered Natalie.

  “What about something for the pain?”

  “At this point,” she said, “pain is our ally. It acts as a stimulus. It will help him regain consciousness.”

  “Will he?”

  “Which answer do you want to hear?”

  “The truth.”

  “The truth,” said Natalie, “is that he’s probably going to die.”

  “If he dies,” said the Iraqi coldly, “then you will die soon after.”

  Natalie was silent. The Iraqi looked at the once-powerful man shrouded in white. “Do everything you can to revive him,” he said. “Even for a moment or two. It is essential that I speak to him.”

  But why? thought Natalie as the Iraqi slipped from the room. Because the Iraqi did not know what Saladin knew. Because if Saladin died, the network would die with him.

  With the surgery complete, Natalie dutifully covered herself with her abaya, lest the great Saladin awaken to find an unveiled woman in his court. She requested a timepiece to properly chart the patient’s recovery and was given the Iraqi’s personal Seiko digital. She checked Saladin’s pulse and blood pressure every thirty minutes and recorded his intake of IV solution. His pulse was still rapid and weak, but his blood pressure was rising steadily, a positive development. It suggested there were no other sources of internal bleeding and that the IV was helping to increase his blood volume. Even so, he remained unconscious and unresponsive to mild stimulus. The likely culprit was the immense loss of blood and the shock he had suffered after being wounded, but Natalie could not rule out brain trauma. A CT scan would reveal evidence of brain bleeding and swelling, but the Iraqi had made it clear that Saladin could not be moved. Not that it mattered, thought Natalie. In a land where bread was scarce and women carried water from the Euphrates, the chances of finding a working scanner were almost zero.

  A pair of fighters remained in the room always, and the Iraqi appeared every hour or so to stare at the prostrate man on the floor, as if willing him to regain consciousness. During his third visit, Natalie pulled at Saladin’s earlobe and tugged the thick hair of his beard, but there was no response.

  “Must you?” asked the Iraqi.

  “Yes,” said Natalie, “I must.”

  She pinched the back of his hand. Nothing.

  “Try talking to him,” she suggested. “A familiar voice is helpful.”

  The Iraqi crouched next to the stretcher and murmured something into Saladin’s ear that Natalie could not discern.

  “It might help if you say it so he can actually hear it. Shout at him, in fact.”

  “Shout at Saladin?” The Iraqi shook his head. “One does not even raise one’s voice to Saladin.”

  By then, it was late afternoon. The shaft of light from the oculus had traveled slowly across the room, and now it heated the patch of bare floor where Natalie sat. She imagined that God was watching her through the oculus, judging her. She imagined that Gabriel was watching her, too. In his wildest operational dreams, surely he had not contemplated a scenario such as this. She pictured her homecoming, a meeting in a safe house, a tense debriefing, during which she would be forced to defend her attempt to save the life of the most dangerous terrorist in the world. She pushed the thought from her mind, for such thoughts were perilous. She had never met a man named Gabriel Allon, she reminded herself, and she had no interest in the opinion of her God. Only Allah’s judgment mattered to Leila Hadawi, and surely Allah would have approved.

  There was no electricity in the house, and with nightfall it plunged into darkness. The fighters lit old-fashioned hurricane lamps and placed them around the room. The Iraqi joined Natalie for supper. The fare was far better than at the camp in Palmyra, a couscous worthy of a Left Bank café. She did not share this insight with her dinner companion. He was in a dark mood, and not particularly good company.

  “I don’t suppose you can tell me your name,” said Natalie.

  “No,” he answered through a mouthful of food. “I don’t suppose I can.”

  “You don’t trust me? Even now?”

  “Trust has nothing to do with it. If you are arrested when you return to Paris next week, French intelligence will ask you who you met during your vacation in the caliphate. And you will give them my name.”

>   “I would never talk to French intelligence.”

  “Everyone talks.” Again, it seemed the Iraqi spoke from personal experience. “Besides,” he added after a moment, “we have plans for you.”

  “What sort of plans?”

  “Your operation.”

  “When will I be told?”

  He said nothing.

  “And if he dies?” she asked with a glance at Saladin. “Will the operation go forward?”

  “That is none of your affair.” He scooped up a portion of the couscous.

  “Were you there when it happened?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m making conversation.”

  “In the caliphate, conversation can be dangerous.”

  “Forget I asked.”

  He didn’t. “I arrived soon after,” he said. “I was the one who pulled him out of the rubble. I thought he was dead.”

  “Were there other casualties?”

  “Many.”

  “Is there anything I can—”

  “You have one patient and one patient only.” The Iraqi fixed his dark eyes on Saladin. “How long can he go on like this?”

  “He’s a large man, strong, otherwise healthy. It could go on a very long time.”

  “Is there anything more you can do to revive him? A shot of something?”

  “The best thing you can do is talk to him. Say his name loudly. Not his nom de guerre,” she said. “His real name. The name his mother called him.”

  “He didn’t have a mother.”

  With those words the Iraqi departed. A woman cleared away the couscous and brought tea and baklava, an unheard of delicacy in the Syrian portion of the caliphate. Natalie checked Saladin’s pulse, blood pressure, and lung function every thirty minutes. All showed signs of improvement. His heartbeat was slowing and growing stronger, his blood pressure was rising, the right lung was clearing. She checked his eyes, too, by the light of a butane cigarette lighter—the right eye first, then the left. The pupils were still responsive. His brain, regardless of its state, was alive.

  At midnight, some twenty-four hours after the American air strike, Natalie was in desperate need of a few hours’ sleep. Moonlight shone through the oculus, cold and white, the same moon that had illuminated the ruins of Palmyra. She checked the pulse, blood pressure, and lungs. All were progressing nicely. Then she checked the eyes by the blue glow of the butane lighter. The right eye, then the left.

  Both remained open after the examination.

  “Who are you?” asked a voice of shocking strength and resonance.

  Startled, Natalie had to compose herself before answering. “My name is Dr. Leila Hadawi. I’m taking care of you.”

  “What happened?”

  “You were injured in an air strike.”

  “Where am I now?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  He was momentarily confused. Then he understood. Fatigued, he asked, “Where is Abu Ahmed?”

  “Who?”

  Wearily, he raised his left hand and made a lobster claw of his thumb and forefinger. Natalie smiled in spite of herself.

  “He’s right outside. He’s very anxious to talk to you.”

  Saladin closed his eyes. “I can imagine.”

  42

  ANBAR PROVINCE, IRAQ

  YOU ARE MY MAIMONIDES.”

  “Who?”

  “Maimonides. The Jew who looked after Saladin whenever he was in Cairo.”

  Natalie was silent.

  “I meant it as a compliment. I owe you my life.”

  Saladin closed his eyes. It was late morning. The circle of light from the oculus had only just begun its slow journey across the bare floor, and the room was still pleasantly cool. After regaining consciousness, he had passed a restful night, thanks in part to the dose of morphine that Natalie had added to his IV drip. At first, he had objected to the drug, but Natalie had convinced him it was necessary. “You cannot heal properly if you are in pain,” she had scolded him. “For the sake of the caliphate, you must.” Once again, she could not fathom that such words had passed her lips.

  She placed the stethoscope to his chest. He recoiled slightly from the cold.

  “Am I still alive?” he asked.

  “Be quiet, please. I can’t hear properly if you speak.”

  He said nothing more. His right lung sounded as though it had regained normal function; his heartbeat was steady and strong. She wrapped the blood pressure cuff around the upper portion of his left arm and inflated it with several quick squeezes of the bulb. He winced.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “Do you have more pain?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “The arm,” he said after a moment.

  Natalie released the air pressure, removed the cuff, and tenderly probed the arm with her fingertips. She had noticed the swelling last night and had suspected a fracture. Now, with the assistance of a conscious patient, she all but confirmed it.

  “The only thing I can do is immobilize it.”

  “Perhaps we should.”

  Natalie applied the cuff to the right arm.

  “Pain?”

  “No.”

  His blood pressure was at the low end of normal. Natalie removed the cuff and changed the dressings on his chest and leg. There was no visible sign of infection in either wound. Miraculously, it appeared as though he had come through surgery in an unsterile environment with no sepsis. Unless he took a sudden turn for the worse, Saladin would survive.

  She opened a package of fiberglass casting tape and commenced work on the arm. Saladin watched her intently.

  “It’s not necessary for you to conceal your face in my presence. After all,” he said, fingering the white sheet that covered his otherwise nude body, “we are well acquainted, you and I. A hijab is sufficient.”

  Natalie hesitated, then removed the heavy black garment. Saladin stared hard at her face.

  “You’re very beautiful. But Abu Ahmed is right. You look like a Jew.”

  “Is that supposed to be a compliment, too?”

  “I’ve known many beautiful Jewesses. And everyone knows that the best doctors are always Jewish.”

  “As an Arab doctor,” said Natalie, “I take exception to that.”

  “You’re not an Arab, you’re a Palestinian. There’s a difference.”

  “I take exception to that, too.”

  Silently, she bound his arm with the fiberglass tape. Orthopedics was hardly her specialty, but then she was not a surgeon, either.

  “It was a mistake,” he said, watching her work, “for me to mention Abu Ahmed’s name in front of you. Names have a way of getting people killed. You will do your best to forget you ever heard it.”

  “I already have.”

  “He tells me you’re French.”

  “Who?” she asked playfully, but Saladin did not rise to the bait. “Yes,” she said, “I am French.”

  “You approved of our attack on the Weinberg Center?”

  “I wept with joy.”

  “The Western press said it was a soft target. I can assure you it was not. Hannah Weinberg was an associate of an Israeli intelligence officer named Gabriel Allon, and her so-called center for the study of anti-Semitism was a front for the Israeli service. Which is why I targeted it.” He fell silent. Natalie could feel the weight of his gaze on her while she worked on the arm. “Perhaps you’ve heard of this man Gabriel Allon,” he said at last. “He is an enemy of the Palestinian people.”

  “I think I read about him in the papers a few months ago,” she answered. “He’s the one who died in London, is he not?”

  “Gabriel Allon? Dead?” He shook his head slowly. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Be quiet for a moment,” Natalie instructed him. “It’s important that I immobilize your arm properly. If I don’t, you’ll have problems with it later.”

  �
�And my leg?”

  “You need surgery—proper surgery in a proper hospital. Otherwise, I’m afraid your leg will be badly damaged.”

  “I’ll be a cripple, is that what you’re saying?”

  “You’ll have restricted movement, you’ll require a cane to walk, you’ll have chronic pain.”

  “I already have restricted movement.” He smiled at his own joke. “They say Saladin walked with a limp, the real Saladin. It didn’t stop him, and it won’t stop me, either.”

  “I believe you,” she said. “A normal man would never have survived wounds as serious as yours. Surely, Allah is watching over you. He has plans for you.”

  “And I,” said Saladin, “have plans for you.”

  She finished the cast in silence. She was pleased with her work. So, too, was Saladin.

  “Perhaps when your operation is complete, you can return to the caliphate to serve as my personal physician.”

  “Your Maimonides?”

  “Exactly.”

  “It would be an honor,” she heard herself say.

  “But we won’t be in Cairo. Like Saladin, I’ve always preferred Damascus.”

  “What about Baghdad?”

  “Baghdad is a city of rafida.”

  It was a bigoted Sunni slur for Shia Muslims. Natalie wordlessly prepared a new IV bag.

  “What’s that you’re putting in the solution?” he asked.

  “Something for your pain. It will help you sleep through the heat of the afternoon.”

  “I’m not in pain. And I don’t want to sleep.”

  Natalie attached the bag to the IV tube and squeezed it to start the flow of fluid. Within a few seconds, Saladin’s eyes dulled. He fought to keep them open.