Chapter 2 – Chương 2

"I thought the capital was a large city," Khoury murmured as the Lincoln glided along. "Yet, we are in the country so quickly." He wasn't really saying this to Jamila. He hadn't said anything to her at all, yet. He certainly hadn't made any move to come closer to her. He'd said it in Arabic and to himself.

So he was surprised when she laughed and answered, in English. "This is called Rock Creek Park. It's a large park running through Washington. It's over three times larger than Central Park in New York City. Do you know that park?"

"Yes, of course," he answered in English, perhaps a little huffily. "You speak Arabic."

"But of course," she answered.

Khoury frowned. He wondered if it had been wise to use a decoy who could understand them if they spoke in Arabic. But then it occurred to him that Bourek perhaps couldn't speak Arabic. Still he was a bit unsettled that this woman could.

Jamila took the hint that she was showing herself to be smarter than many Arab men wanted their women to be. She went silent and turned her head toward the window and watched the water tumbling through the creek bed running parallel to the road.

But Khoury too felt that this wasn't going as he wanted. He would be with this woman until he got back on the plane. "I thought we were going to go watch tennis," he said in English, trying to use a controversial voice without an edge to it.

"We are. The tennis stadium is on the edge of the park," she answered, turning toward him and giving him a tentative smile. "Do you like to watch tennis?"

"Yes, of course. It was on my list of how I would like to spend the day."

"As I was on your list?"

He didn't answer, and once more Jamila had the impression that she was speaking out of turn. She couldn't help it. She was an American, born and raised in Chicago. It was her parents who had come from Lebanon. And the man's accent told her he was Syrian. Even in the Middle East, a Lebanese woman would not be as diffident with her man as a Syrian woman would be. Bourek had told her just to keep her mouth shut and to play her part. She would do her best to do that, although there were things she naturally wanted to know. She certainly was being paid enough for two days of work to play the role Bourek was assigning her. She lowered her eyes and did what she could to look demure and subservient for the remainder of the drive.

"The stadium looks larger than I thought it would be," Khoury said at length, which was Jamila's signal to look up.

She knew nothing about tennis matches—certainly nothing about professional tournaments—and she realized as soon as the driver opened the door to let her out that she was dressed completely wrong—at least for attending a tennis tournament. Everyone else was dressed for the heat. Her flashy spike heels alone put her out of place. But then she saw the heads of all the men passing by snap around when they first saw her, and she realized that she, in fact, was dressed just right for attention.

Bourek had told her to dress for attention. She didn't ask him why, but she was pleased that, unwittingly, she had succeeded. She put on her oversized sunglasses while the driver handed Khoury their tickets for both the afternoon and evening sessions. They would be arriving near the end of the afternoon session rather than the beginning, but the price, even though high, was incidental to what was at stake in Khoury's visit and his sense of well-being.

Keep the attention on you, not on the visitor, Jamila remembered Bourek telling her, so she stood up straight, pushed her chest out, smiled broadly, and positioned herself a bit in front of Khoury as she walked beside him, his hand possessively gripping her elbow, into the stadium.

Their seats were in a box near one of the corners of the stadium, high up in the box section. There was a group of four chairs, two in front of two. Khoury went into the bottom row first, and Jamila slipped in beside him in the aisle seat. They had entered after the fifth game of an on-serve men's semifinal match. Jamila remained standing as long as possible before play started so that anyone looking over at them would more likely be looking at her rather than at Khoury.

Khoury was voicing his pleasure that the players were both ones he had seen play before when Floris Bourek slipped into one of the box seats in the row behind them.

There was no interaction between the two men during the next two games of play, but at the next sit-down and commercial break, the match being televised live, the two men stood and stretched. A third man, perhaps in his late twenties and gym-trained muscular, stopped and hailed Bourek as he came up the aisle to the top of the box section.

The two greeted each other as if they were friends, during which Bourek touched the sitting Jamila surreptitiously on the shoulder and murmured that she needed to visit the ladies room. He made a great to do about the young man who had just appeared sitting in the empty seat beside him, but when the young man agreed to, Bourek followed Jamila out, leaving Khoury conversing with the young man over his shoulder.

After two more games, having reached another commercial break, Bourek returned. Khoury and the young man no longer were talking, and when Bourek looked into Khoury's eyes he received a slight shake of the head and shrugged. Jamila returned just before play resumed, leaving three men who had been following her closely to scramble to be seated somewhere before the first serve of the next game. Before the first serve, the muscular young man who had been invited to sit beside Bourek had disappeared.

During the games, Khoury obviously wanted to talk to someone about play. But for some reason he didn't interact with Bourek at all. He was stuck with whispering this and that to Jamila, who did her best to respond in some acceptable way, but, truth be told, she didn't have the foggiest notion how tennis was played and was fighting boredom as much as she could. What she wanted was for the man to show some affection or interest in her or, better yet, tell her more about his business, but he seemed cold in that way. She wondered if Syrian men were all this distant with their women in public. He was a big, muscular man, and she assumed he would be forceful and possessive when they were alone later that night. But why couldn't he show some interest in her now? He made her feel like she was just an object. The fact that she'd been paid to be that—just an object—didn't assuage her slight irritation.

Besides, it was hot out here in the clothes she was wearing. She leaned forward and slipped her jacket off, leaving just the scoop-necked, sleeveless shell. She smiled in spite of herself. Men all around in the boxes were looking at her rather than the play on the tennis court. At least other men here weren't cold toward her.

The match went three sets and ran to where there was only a half hour before the first evening match was to start. Before the last game of the match, Bourek had gone out of the stadium. When he returned he had an order of Pad Thai in a Styrofoam box and a can of beer in his hands, which he left on his chair and whispered, without looking at her, that it was for Jamila—that he and Khoury had business to discuss. To Khoury, he whispered "At the end of the lane on the far side of the Grand Stand court, which is off to our left," and then he left. After a few minutes Khoury was gone too. With a sigh, Jamila reached back and took her meal. She'd be here alone until the next match started. But she'd never really be alone here. There were a hundred eyes watching her. But, by design, they watched her so attentively that they didn't seem to have noticed any interaction between Bourek and Khoury at all.

That was her major purpose here. To be a distraction and a decoy.

They didn't stay long during the evening session. At the break between the first and second set of the first match, a men's doubles semifinal, yet another young man came up the aisle from below, was greeted as a friend by Bourek, and invited to sit with him. And, as before, Jamila discovered she needed to powder her nose and Bourek departed behind her. The feature of starting a new set was that the stadium was closed to returning seat holders for three games rather than two, so Bourek and Jamila were gone for nearly twenty minutes.

The man who had appeared this time was younger than the first, and thinner, and his features were more feminine than masculine. He moved like a dancer. He also was a chocolate brown. He and Khoury exchanged words between the rows up until the break was over, and just before the match resumed, the young black man, named Jared, slipped down into the seat that Jamila had vacated.

When Bourek and Jamila returned, Jamila was left sitting on the upper row of the box with Bourek. The four of them left the stadium for good on the next changeover two games later.