In addition to Michael, Halima haunted my mind. I needed to see her, find out what was going on. But how could I do that? Telephoning hadn’t worked. Friends of Yemen was closed.
Traffic was frustrating today, but we made our way through streets starting to clog with the noon rush. In Sana’a, that’s when everyone heads home to have a big lunch and then chew qat. My taxi driver had been uncharacteristically quiet for one of his profession, probably trying to get home for his own lunch.
Creeping along, we had come only as far as the northern gate to the Old City, Bab Sha’ub. On a whim, I thrust some money at the driver and asked to be put down.
He looked unhappy—more unhappy than he should have—but traffic was stalled and I opened the door and got out. I needed lunch and it was high time for my tête-à-tête with Nello. What would be his take on the Petrovich murder? And possibly, just possibly, he knew something about Halima.
I entered Bab al Sha’ub. I was starving. Nerves had something to do with it. So did forgetting to eat breakfast after finding Michael’s body this morning.
I hadn’t thought this morning I’d ever want to eat again, but the smell of warm crusty hubz being baked in the brick firin tempted me to stop en route. A young man pulled the bread out on a flat wooden paddle. Unable to resist the delectable smell, I bought a heavy little square loaf and exchanged a smile with the young baker.
As I did, I glanced back. One of the men in the sorghum patch last evening stood quietly in the background. The thin man with the scar. He’d chatted with the inscrutable Brit.
I shivered in the hot sun. The bread grew heavier.
I had five mystery people to wonder about now, though I’d barely arrived: The Brit, the Blonde, the Sheikh of the Souq with the BMW, Scarface, and the Face in the Window. Well, six, if you count the Corpse. Forgive me, Michael. I didn’t mean to sound crass. Number seven would be whoever murdered Michael. Or maybe that was someone I’d already met?
And I would never know what Michael Petrovich had wanted to speak with me about.
Wait. My paramount mystery and my whole reason for coming lay with Halima. Murder could not deter me from the mission.
CHAPTER 27
In Arabic some things are said or written twice, the second word there to ensure that the right choice of meaning is made for the first, and vice versa. A man is just and fair-minded, a woman brave and courteous, a judge has intuition, insight, discernment in the ways of men.
Eva Sallis, The City of Sea Lions
I headed for Nello’s café on al-Zubeiri Street, on the edge of the Old City. Stomach growling, I crumbled off the end of the loaf of hubz as I walked, chewing surreptitiously to not be rude in public.
The bread was wonderful, but I stopped nibbling. Nello’s place was near. There’s nothing like pasta to settle the soul.
As I entered the small front door of the Caffe d’Italia, I took a quick look over my shoulder. Scarface was behind me! Was he following me? This time I tried to meet his eyes. He looked right past me and walked on down the street, fitting in with every other futha-clad pedestrian.
I heaved a sigh of relief to find Nello wiping his hands on a spotless apron as he came from the kitchen. “Hello!” I shouted.
He didn’t say a word, but came around to give me a bear hug. Then he kissed my hand.
We both had tears in our eyes. “It’s a little late for lunch,” I said, when he gestured to one of the red and white checked tablecloths.
“It is never too late for lunch,” corrected Nello. “Not for Elizabeth. Not for an old friend.” His words were balm to my turbulent day. A Sprite can containing white wine appeared on the table. Bless the man! Nello poured it into a coffee cup for me. Then he told the cook to make zuppa ala paesana, made from the delicious little potatoes and green beans grown in fields around Sana’a.
As he returned to the kitchen to oversee the creation, I thought back to all the nights I had gathered with other reporters at Nello’s, whether the SCUD sirens went off or not. Nello acquired wine and Red Label Scotch from bootleggers who brought it across the Red Sea from the free port of Djibouti. The forbidden nectar was poured into soda bottles for respectability, though everyone, including the police, knew what they contained. I suspected Nello contributed plenty of Scotch to the police to ensure this oversight.
Obviously, today, murder had to be the first topic. Michael and I had eaten at Nello’s just yesterday! “I suppose you heard,” I began.
“Ah, yes. Petrovich. Dead. I know.” He looked at me keenly, probably trying to figure out how much this had upset me.
“I was sure you would.” I spoke hesitantly but met Nello’s eyes to show there were no secrets here. “I just met him on the plane coming here. What do you know about him? I gather he’d been to Yemen several times before.”
Nello held up one finger, and disappeared for a moment into the kitchen. When he came back, he had a basket of fresh-baked bread and a cruet of olive oil. We couldn’t delve into really juicy gossip without sustenance.
The hubz I’d bought lay like a guilty secret in its plastic bag. It had cooled, so Nello couldn’t smell it, at least. Like all wonderful breads that are meant to be consumed as soon as baked, hubz gets hard fast, so I’d eat Nello’s bread and carry the plastic bag back. I’d give some to Mrs. Weston, soaked in milk. Oh, yes, I needed to buy some cans of sardines on the way back. Expectant mothers need protein.
“Now. Tell me what you know about Michael Petrovich.” I looked stern.
Nello glanced at me. “I do not want to say something to hurt you.”
“No. No!” My lunch with Petrovich must have given Nello undue suspicions. “I don’t like to see people I have met being murdered, but believe me, Nello, I had no special feelings for that man. Tell me what you know.”
After a quick, shrewd look my way, Nello leaned forward.
“Michael Petrovich,” he said thoughtfully. “Businessman, he was. And more. Much more.”
“What do you mean?”
Nello tilted his head. “You know him only from plane? Nothing else?”
“I met him on the plane from Frankfurt.” Better not to say I had found him quite charming.
“Petrovich,” said Nello, “is bad guy. Arms supplier. Was.”
“What?” An arms supplier? “Are you sure, Nello?”
“He is watched by police and army and maybe has some friends there, too.”
“Who did he supply arms to?” I took a chunk of bread and dipped it into oil.
“Well. To people who pay money. Big money. Groups who need arms for bad purposes. You know.” His voice dropped to a whisper, though there were no other customers in the restaurant. “Like what used to be in Aden when Soviets were there.”
“You mean terrorism.” During the Soviet control of South Yemen, the country had been a training ground for terrorists of all stripes, Palestinian, Kurdish, Irish Republicans… “I thought most of that had been pushed out with reunification of the two Yemens and with the Soviet collapse,” I said.
Nello sipped at his own glass of red “juice.” “Well,” he said. “They were pushed out as far as Somalia across the Gulf of Aden and Sudan across the Red Sea. Not too far.”
Yes, we had seen evidence of that. The World Trade Center bombing in 1993. And reporters spoke among themselves and with experts about the shadowy character, Osama bin Laden, who lived somewhere on the