Layover in Dubai Read Online Free PDF Page A

deciding to be blunt about it.
    “A particular woman? Or just any woman?”
    “I don’t know. Whoever she was, he found her in a hurry. She’s the one who went for help. Where is she, anyway? I’d like to talk to her.”
    “Sometime later, perhaps. When did you first realize he was in trouble?”
    “About half an hour later. They’d just announced closing time, and the woman came running out to get me. Her dress was torn, and she looked scared, told me to hurry. Then we heard shots, or I guess they were shots. The two big guys came running out of the room, and that’s where we found him.”
    “They were big? Tall, you mean?”
    “Stocky, like weight lifters. But not that tall.”
    “Describe them. Their faces, what they were wearing.”
    Sam did so. The lieutenant nodded as he wrote it all down.
    “Your friend, was he carrying a cell phone, or a BlackBerry?”
    Sam looked down at his feet.
    “No. Or if he was, somebody took them. I checked.” Assad raised his eyebrows. Maybe Sam shouldn’t have mentioned that. He supposed he had better keep Nanette’s name out of this.
    “Did you find anything else?”
    “A handkerchief. A pen. His wallet. I left them in his pockets.” He decided not to mention the datebook, and immediately wondered if it was the right move.
    “I’m surprised you had the stomach for it.”
    Sam shrugged and looked away. He knew he must look guilty, and the detective was eyeing him closely. Maybe he’d need that lawyer, after all.
    Mercifully, Assad flipped a page in his notebook and moved on.
    “Have the two of you been together since your arrival in Dubai?”
    “Pretty much. He slept later than me this morning, but I saw him downstairs at breakfast.”
    “At your hotel?”
    “Yes. The Shangri-La.”
    “And how long have the two of you been in the country?”
    “Two nights now. About …” Sam checked his watch. “Thirty-six hours.”
    Assad paused in his note taking and snapped to attention at the sound of a new voice from the corridor. The voice mentioned the lieutenant’s name, and Assad squinted, tilting his head like a dog who has just heard a disagreeable noise.
    “Excuse me a moment,” he said, rising from the chair. He crossed the room and opened the door. It was clear from his face that he didn’t like what he saw.

     
    3
    When he was a boy, diving for pearls among sharks, and gambling with smugglers three times his age, Anwar Sharaf was rarely underestimated by his peers. Nowadays, in his fifties, people did it all the time. Especially Westerners, who needed only one look before writing him off as either incompetent or inconsequential.
    Sharaf’s police uniform was part of the problem—green with epaulets and red piping, a canvas military belt, laced boots, a silly beret—a getup that would have been right at home in some banana republic far across the waves. He accentuated the effect with a potbelly, a sloppy mustache, and the hangdog jowls of the long-suffering family man.
    Glimpse him hunched over paperwork at his undersized desk and the word “beleaguered” came instantly to mind. So did “inept” and, possibly, “corrupt.” Because surely here was an underpaid fellow who would soon have his hand out, sighing and grumbling about this rule and that until you bribed him and were merrily on your way. A harmless nuisance, in other words. A scrap of local color to liven up your texts and postcards home:
Dumbest cop ever, LOL!
    The moment Sharaf opened his mouth, impressions began to change. Fluent in English and Russian (his father, hiring tutors at the height of the Cold War, had hedged his bets), Sharaf had also picked up Hindi from the streets and Persian from the wharves. That left him in command of four of Dubai’s main languages of commerce, with his native Arabic murmuring beneath them like an underground stream. His tutors had also schooled him in literature, economics, biology, philosophy—the works. Throw in his seasons of instruction on the