This is a work of fiction.

All of the characters, organizations, and events

portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously.

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An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

The Prisoner’s Wife. Copyright © 2012 by Gerard Macdonald. All rights

reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address
St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Macdonald, Gerard.
The prisoner’s wife / Gerard Macdonald.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-312-59180-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250- 01243-2 (e-book)
1. Kidnapping—Fiction. 2. Intelligence officers—United States—
Fiction. 3. State-sponsored terrorism—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6113.A255P75 2012
823'.92—dc23
2011050641

First Edition: May 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 1
PARIS, 9 APRIL 2004

In the spring of 2004, Darius Osmani was disappeared.

In mid-April, in a black Volvo on the rue des Vieilles Boucher-
ies, Hassan Tarkani and Calvin McCord, intelligence operatives,
were talking money.
Calvin said, “You tell me what you get, I tell you what I get,
one of us going to be unhappy. Trust me. That’s the way it works.”
They were parked without lights in the quatrième, between
a shuttered café and a nineteenth-century apartment building.
Streetlamps were already lit. In the rain, a pointillist halo sur-
rounded the lights.
“Tell me,” said Hassan, “for the same work, will a man from
poor country, will he get less money than a man from rich coun-
try?”
“Interesting question,” said Calvin. As part of his training, he’d
GERARD MACDONALD

spent a semester at Michigan State, studying issues in moral belief.

“We’re talking ethics, I don’t know what to tell you. We’re talking
practicalities, answer is yes. No question, rich guy gets more. ‘To
those who have, it shall be given and they shall abound; from those
who do not have, even what they have shall be taken away.’ That’s
the Bible, right there.”
“This is Christian Bible?”
“That’s the one,” Calvin said.
Both Hassan and Calvin wore tight-fitting black caps, which
were in fact ski masks, rolled to forehead height. Calvin, who had
a low threshold for boredom, held a hip flask between his knees.
He took a drink without making an offer to Hassan. By nationality
Hassan was Pakistani; by religion, Muslim. Though Calvin had
worked with Muslims who eased the pain with alcohol, his part-
ner wasn’t among them. So far as Calvin knew.
Hassan turned on the car’s interior light to check a double
photo—full face and profile— of a man in his late thirties. “What
exactly has he done, this man?”
Calvin snapped off the light. “Nothing, far’s I know. It’s what
he might do. Same as Iraq—preemptive strike. Lock up the rag-
heads planning whatever they’re planning, what do we have? I’ll
tell you. Peace. Would you say God knew if you did take a drink?”
“Of course.”
“I have this vision of your God,” Calvin said. “He’s sitting in
front of like some infinitely giant flat-screen video monitor, keep-
ing an eye on all you camel jockeys. He’s pretty damn sharp. He’ll
be eyeballing some chick wearing makeup on this side of the
screen, say the right side, or she got her head uncovered, what-
ever, then, same moment, he sees a guy like you, not you person-
ally, out in left field, you sneak a little drink. Gotcha, says God,
quick as a flash. Won’t miss a trick, this guy. It’s like a touch-screen

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 THE PRISONER’S WIFE

he has up there, he just hits it with his hand and bam, blasts you.
Do not pass Go. Get straight to hell. What’s the road name mean?”
Through the rain-spattered windshield, Hassan peered up at a
sign. “Old Butchery Street.”
“Appropriate,” Calvin said. “Something I wonder is, why the fuck
you speak five languages and me—that’s got more money and more
rank and more education—I have trouble talking my own damn
tongue.”
“It has to do with color of passport,” Hassan said. “If it is blue,
you tell us poor people, ‘Learn American, or we don’t talk with
you.’ If you are sorry son of a bitch with green passport, you learn
languages or you don’t speak with any person outside of Pakistan.”
He touched the side of his wristwatch, illuminating numbers on
its dial. “How long?”
Watching the apartments, Calvin said, “Long as it takes. He
wants to get laid, has to come out sometime.” He lifted the flask,
resisted a moment, and took another drink. His hand shook a
little.
In the darkness, his mind wandered.
“Global warming,” he said. “You heard of this? Climate change?
Sun getting hotter? Worries the shit outa me. I hate to be the one
has to tell you, your whole damn country’s going undersea.”
Hassan said, “You’re thinking of Bangladesh.”
“The hell I am,” said Calvin. “If I was thinking of Bangladesh
I would’ve said Bangladesh, wherever the fuck that is.”
Hassan considered explaining the subcontinent’s geography
and decided against it. He pointed to the now-opening door of the
apartment building.
Calvin was peering through binoculars at a man who stood in
the building’s doorway, lighting a cigarette between cupped hands.
The match glow lit up his face.

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GERARD MACDONALD

“Snap. That’s our boy.”

Moving as one, Hassan and Calvin rolled down their ski masks.
They were out of the car, across the damp pavement, gripping the
arms of the figure in the doorway. When the man yelled and tried
to back into the hall, away from the black-masked figures, he was
borne in the opposite direction, toward the Volvo. He shouted once.
Something soft was pushed into his mouth. Though his arms were
held, his feet were free. The prisoner had once been a soccer player,
a fullback, in Iran. He kicked the black-masked man holding his left
arm, kicked again, heard a muttered exclamation. Then something
smooth and heavy slugged the place where the prisoner’s skull
joined his neck. At the same moment Hassan’s fist hit the young
man’s gut, driving air from his lungs. The smooth and heavy thing
hit his knees: first the left, then the right.
When his breath came back and his eyes opened, the suspect
found his vision fading in and out of focus. Whatever was in his
mouth made it hard to breathe. He tried again to kick, but his legs
hung limp, like a doll’s.
The masked men bundled him into a car’s backseat.
Hassan followed the prisoner in, gripping his thin neck and
binding his mouth with duct tape.
Calvin, in the driver’s seat, pulled the car out, passing a soft-
topped Peugeot. He did not turn his head. “Just don’t do what you
did with the last one, okay?”
Hassan paused in his work. “I did what, exactly?”
“Get out of here. You taped his fucking nose.”
“Accident, right?”
“Tell me about it,” Calvin said. “Just keep this one breath-
ing.” He made a sharp right turn. “I’m not flying out with a body
bag.”

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 THE PRISONER’S WIFE

He slowed for a red light on rue Rivoli, then accelerated through

green. “Documents?”
Hassan cuffed the prisoner’s hands behind him, bagged his
head, then searched his pockets. The man made a sound that,
through duct tape and hood, became a muffled groan.
Calvin now wore a black trilby hat. Adjusting it, shielding his
face, he turned on the car’s interior light, so Hassan could read.
“Hate to end up in Bagram with the wrong guy.”
Hassan said, “He can hear you.”
“That’s okay,” Calvin said. “He’s not going to Bagram. Still want
him to be the right guy.”
Hassan had found the man’s passport, which was worn and red.
“We got him.”
The man moaned.
“Planning to travel?”
“Pakistan. He has a visa. More than one.”
“Won’t be using them,” Calvin said, without looking back. “Not
anytime soon.”
Hassan opened the backseat coffee-cup holder. From a plastic
cylinder, he extracted a hypodermic.
“This won’t hurt a bit,” he told the prisoner. “It will relax you.
Take away the anxiety.”
“Understandable anxiety,” Calvin said. “All things considered.”
At slightly less than legal speed he was driving down the boule-
vards des Maréchaux, heading for the Parisian périphérique. “He
must wonder what the hell’s happening. I mean, I would.” When
his phone connected he called ahead for priority clearance at
Charles de Gaulle.
Again, the prisoner made a sound. To ease injection, Hassan
considered removing the man’s outer clothing, then decided not

5
GERARD MACDONALD

to. Rule was, at destination, three thousand miles away, the pris-
oner’s garments would be cut from his body and the bagged pieces
flown to Virginia for testing. Till then, the guy stays dressed. That
was the rule.
Through the prisoner’s woolen jacket, Hassan administered a
syringe-full of chemical relaxant. As the hypodermic’s needle en-
tered his arm, the man twitched like a rabbit.
Hassan patted the prisoner’s duct-taped face. “Oh, come on,”
he told him. “Didn’t hurt.”
“Clean needle,” Calvin said, from the front seat, “if that’s what
he’s worried about.”
“If he is worrying now,” Hassan said, “soon he won’t.” He found
the prisoner’s pulse. “Relaxing already, this boy.”
Passing a police patrol, Calvin slowed a little. “He might be
worried if he knew where he was going.”
“Fortunately,” Hassan said, “he has no idea.”