Escape (3 page)

In the kitchen, Charlie Campbell patted Jessica on the shoulder, the insincerity of which they both noticed but said nothing about. "Maybe when you get... better," he said, "you can help with the campaign. But you know what Dr. Winkler said about avoiding stress and getting plenty of rest. Just enjoy this time with the kids. Like Diane said the other day, they grow up fast, and it won't be long before they're out of the house."

Charlie thought he saw a look of irritation on his wife's face. His smile collapsed into a frown. He had watched her increasingly vitriolic mood swings with growing concern for their potential impact on his forthcoming congressional race.

Charlie was a politically ambitious man whose marriage to Jessica had given him the financial and personal wherewithal to pursue his goals. After graduating from Columbia Law School, he'd gone straight into politics, and by age thirty he had become borough president of Manhattan.

When he began wooing the predominantly liberal voters of Manhattan, his wife's outspokenness had been an asset. She'd also been astute with her political advice. He was still thankful that she'd encouraged him to denounce the war in Iraq early on, before he'd done much more than test the waters of a congressional campaign. Now he looked like a prophet, while other politicians were trying to explain why they'd initially approved of the war.

The 8th Congressional District included most of Manhattan's Upper West Side and points south encompassing Chelsea, SoHo, Greenwich Village, TreBeCa, and downtown Manhattan, as well as Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Coney Island, Brighton Beach, and Gravesend in Brooklyn. As such, the district was composed of the most left-leaning voters in the entire state, who were only too willing to believe that a Republican administration had lied to lead Americans into a disastrous war and was possibly even responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Personally, Charlie had a hard time swallowing the notion that the Bush administration could have carried out what would have been the most complex and well-executed conspiracy and cover-up ever conceived by any government anywhere.
Hell, they can't even keep their sexual peccadilloes off the front pages and newscasts,
he thought,
much less pull off 9/11 and blame it on the fucking camel jockeys.
But publicly, he bent in whatever direction the voters in the district leaned.

Even up to Jessica's declaration that Islamic extremists were fighting for Allah, rather than Big Oil, Charlie had been able—when the press called asking for comment—to shake his head, plaster an affectionate smile on his face, and fall back on his wife's First Amendment rights while pointing out that being married did not mean that they shared all the same views. "At least not necessarily to the same degree of... vigor," he'd add, with a "what can you do" chuckle.

Charlie's own idealism had mellowed with age and political realities. As he had pointed out to his wife numerous times when asking for a bit more discretion in her comments, radical leftists rarely had their husbands elected to high office in the United States. The caution usually had the desired effect, because she wanted it as much as he did. She positively dreamed of becoming the darling of the Left within the D.C. beltway and being offered an endowed chair at Georgetown University.

Still, she couldn't seem to shut up for long. Something would set her off, and the next thing he knew, he'd be speed-dialing for the public-relations spin doctors.

At the same time that NYCU was trying to distance itself from his wife's comments, Charlie's political handlers, who privately referred to her as the "C-word," prepared Charlie's responses to the media. To wit, she had been taken out of context, and even at that her comments were "devil's advocate-type provocation intended to make people think about how our actions are perceived in other countries."

"My wife was merely trying to say that if U.S. foreign policy is based on violence, then violence is to be expected in return," he'd explained during an impromptu speech at Columbia University, where he could expect a sympathetic crowd. It was a few days after the birth of Benjamin, and he had said, "My wife and I have a new baby boy ... yes, thank you for your applause, we like him too ... and he's why I'm running for Congress. We need more voices for reason and diplomacy, not more dead soldiers or a draft of our sons and even our daughters. Our current adventurism in the Middle East has only created more enemies and a more dangerous world for all of our children."

Charlie and his team thought the speech had gone over well. But when Jessica saw the clip on the evening news, she'd lashed out. "I don't need you interpreting me for the masses," she'd hissed, "or using our son for cheap political theatrics."

"Great, here we go again," he'd snarled back, then ducked when she hurled a crystal ashtray at him. "You're nuts! I can't keep up with your fucking moods." He'd stomped out of the house and didn't return that night.

But
that's all water under the bridge,
Jessica thought, standing in the kitchen. Today, she'd save her children from that evil man.

Charlie finished his espresso and gave her a wink. "Well, got to run," he said. "You sure you're all right?"

Jessica hesitated. A part of her wanted to tell him that no, she wasn't all right—that there was a voice she believed to be the voice of God and it was telling her to do a terrible thing ... that she needed help and he shouldn't leave. But
that would ruin everything.

"I'm good," she replied and pecked him on the cheek. "Really, I am. Now get going to your meeting ... mustn't keep Diane waiting."

Charlie scanned her face for evidence of sarcasm. Diane was usually a sore point in their relationship.
With good reason,
he thought, hoping he could still make it across town to her apartment for a quick romp in bed before heading to the campaign office. But his wife's face was the picture of innocence. He shook his head and headed out the door for the waiting cab.

Jessica walked over to a window facing the street and looked out. It was mid-March, and the leaf buds were opening on the trees in front of the brownstone. Her husband glanced back at the house but didn't see her, then climbed into the cab. She kept her vigil for several more minutes to make sure the taxi and Charlie didn't return.

Then she picked up the telephone and called the nanny. "Hi, Rebecca, I won't be needing you today," she said. "I'm going to take care of the children myself."

"Are you sure, ma'am?" Rebecca replied, the worry in her Jamaican-accented voice unmistakable. "Perhaps, I should come over just to help a little bit, dearie."

"That won't be necessary," Jessica said evenly. "But thank you, Rebecca. In fact, thank you for everything. And goodbye."

Jessica hung up with a sense of relief. With Charlie gone and the nanny accounted for, the steps of her plan were being checked off like a grocery list. She went down to the brownstone's underground garage where she opened up the back of the family Volvo station wagon and pulled a large footlocker from the interior. Charlie rarely, if ever, drove; he always taxied or had a driver, so the car had been a good hiding place.

Bumping the footlocker up the stairs, Jessica lugged it into the hallway outside the main floor bathroom and opened it. Inside were her "supplies"—two new pretty white dresses for the girls and a white gown for Benjamin; a padlock still in its packaging from the hardware store; and a hunting knife purchased at a sporting goods emporium in Newark. She picked the knife up and examined the blade; the weight of the weapon felt empowering in her hand.
Just like the knife Abraham planned to use on his son Isaac,
the voice noted approvingly.

Jessica left the trunk in the hallway and carried the clothing and the knife into the bathroom. The knife she laid on the vanity, and then she hung up the dresses and the gown before turning on the bathwater—testing the water on her wrist to make sure it wasn't too hot. She wanted the children to be clean and freshly scrubbed for their trip.

She heard the voice humming—the sort of sound, she imagined, that the universe makes, or how God communicates without words. She turned off the water, but the humming persisted.

Jessica turned and walked to the nursery and stood next to Benjamin's crib. She looked down at her sleeping child for a moment, then picked him up and held him against her shoulder. He felt warm and trusting nestled against her, making little sounds associated with baby dreams and contentment.

Suddenly she sobbed, overcome by what she knew she had to do. Murderer/ cried a voice that sounded more like her own.

Don't listen to that,
replied the other voice.
Your children's souls are at stake. The sins of their father run in their blood. Send them to me if you want to save them.

Jessica willed herself to turn to the door of the nursery and begin to walk. Tears clouded her vision. She stumbled to the bathroom, where she sank to her knees next to the tub. Cradling her baby, she looked down into Benjamin's adoring eyes. A tear fell from her cheek onto his forehead, startling him. Lying him on the rug, she unzipped and removed his sleeper, and then his heavy, wet diaper. "God, do I have to do this?" she cried when he was naked.

I command it!
The voice was insistent, angry.
Jessica, answer me!

"Hineini!"
Jessica shouted her reply. The Hebrew word confused her for a moment; she hadn't heard it since her childhood, when she'd visited her grandparents' home in Mount Vernon and listened to stories from the Torah. But she knew what it meant. "Here I am!" she shouted again.

The ancient word gave her the strength to pick up the child, who gurgled happily and kicked his feet. "Oh such a good baby," she cooed. "Don't worry little lamb, we'll meet again someday."

Jessica hesitated. She feared God, and in the Torah that had been enough to satisfy Him and spare Isaac. But now the voice was silent.
"Hineini,"
she whispered again and plunged her baby beneath the warm, soapy waters of the tub.

A young black man paced back and forth on the sidewalk outside of the Third Avenue synagogue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, his fingers nervously combing through his frizzy beard and scratching at the old pockmarks on his cheeks. Stopping at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the temple, he closed his eyes and allowed the warmth of the sunny July morning to soak into his face.

Ever since his childhood growing up in the tenement apartment at 126th and Madison Avenue in Harlem he shared with his grandparents and younger sister, he'd loved this time of year. On a day like this, the memory of shivering through a long winter in the rat-infested building would be forgotten. On a day like this, the sunlight would last forever and the games of stickball, punchball, and hoops would go on well beyond his normal bedtime.

Back then, his grandmother, a large woman who favored loud floral-print dresses, would be hanging out the window of their apartment, fanning herself and complaining to the neighbor woman in the next window over that the city smelled "like a big ol' garbage truck." But the heat also meant the arrival each evening of heaven on wheels.

It would begin as just a few notes heard in the distance, a sound no boy or girl sweating it out on the baked city streets could resist. Every kid on the block would stop what they were doing and swivel their heads like radar antennae, trying to determine the direction of the music. Then around a corner it would appear, driving slowly, calling out like the Pied Piper of cold sugar treats, the Good Humor Ice Cream truck.

He'd look up at the old woman in the windowsill, the only mom he'd ever really known, and wouldn't have to say a thing. Her eyes might have been going, but her hearing was as good as his and she knew the sound of the ice cream man when she heard it, too. She'd disappear for a moment to fetch her purse and then drop a dollar bill to "buy a little treat" for himself and his sister.

The young man shook his head. All of that had been long ago and they were both dead—one of old age, the other murdered during a drug deal. But today he was ready to join them, ready to place himself in the hands of Allah.

Beneath his calf-length wool coat and the heavy vest he wore, sweat trickled down his chest and back. He wanted to scratch, but he didn't dare.
It's time to do this,
he thought, yet he lingered, soaking in the sounds and smells and sights.

To the east he could see a small section of the Queensboro Bridge and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center where his mother had died, writhing in pain, when he was eight. Death had frightened him then, but not anymore. He welcomed it.
Inshallah, as God wills.

Sighing, he thought about his young son—Abdullah, only four years old. The boy would be in religious school, the
madrasah,
in his
hifz
introductory course, memorizing the Qur'an. He was also studying Arabic so that someday he could read the words as they'd been written by the Prophet Muhammad—
blessings be upon him.
Someday, if it was Allah's plan, his son would also study Qur'anic interpretation, called
tafsir;
Islamic law, or
shar'iah;
and
hadith,
the recorded sayings and deeds of the Prophet.

May
Allah grant him peace,
the young man recited to himself. He hoped that his son would grow up to be a man of God, perhaps even an imam in the new world—a Muslim world subject to Islamic law.
I'm doing this for him,
he assured himself.

Baptized in the Harlem Baptist Church some twenty-five years earlier as Rondell James, he'd suffered a case of smallpox at the age of ten. It left his complexion scarred and his psyche battered, especially when the other kids nicknamed him "Scratchy."

His grandparents had tried to fill the void left by a father he'd never known and the death of his mother, but he'd misspent a miserable youth running with gangs, dealing crack, drinking malt liquor until he couldn't stand up or shoot straight, fathering illegitimate children, and serving time upstate for armed robbery. His life had no purpose, no meaning. If he had ever dreamed of something better when he was a boy, the notion had been drummed out of him as a teenager by his so-called community leaders and activists who convinced him he was a victim of racism. It wasn't his fault he had nothing. Society owed him but wasn't going to pay up. It was the white man's world, and he was just taking up space in it. A real nobody.

But he wasn't going to be a victim anymore. On September 11, 2001, the martyrs had flown the jetliners into the World Trade Center, and he'd seen the power that a few men of faith could wield if they obeyed the will of Allah. Even as the city mourned, a part of him had thrilled that men with brown faces like him had terrified the world's most powerful nation.

It had also been Allah's will that shortly after the attack, as he happened to be walking down Frederick Douglass Boulevard, he had seen a man standing on a milk crate, preaching to the crowd. Tall and so thin that the skin of his face seemed to have been pulled and stretched over the bones, which made his protruding eyes and thick lips more pronounced, the man drew attention to himself like a red cape attracts a bull. He was dressed all in white, including a small, round white cap on his head. And in his brown hand was a microphone hooked up to a boombox held above the passersby—most of whom tried to ignore him—by another, even larger and much heavier man, also wearing only white.

As he moved closer, Rondell saw that the two were surrounded by yet more black men similarly dressed—tough-looking men in dark glasses, who stood with their arms crossed and their jaws set. Even the local gangbangers and street criminals gave them a wide berth.

"Hear me, my brothers and sisters," the man on the milk crate shouted into the microphone. "Christianity is the white man's religion. He's used it to keep our people in shackles from the days when they were brought here in chains from Africa. There is only one faith for the black man whether he is in Africa or America, the one true faith of Islam."

The man spoke in clipped, three-or four-word bursts, but without pausing in his train of thought. "Only men of the One True Faith would have the courage to strike at the World Trade Center where the white man forged his economic chains every bit as cruel and binding as the iron shackles of slavery. They were men of purpose. Those of you who have been living lives without purpose, find a purpose here with us in serving Allah. Return with us to our mosque and join us in prayers that the Prophet, blessings and peace be upon him, taught us so that we might live as we were intended."

A few hecklers across the street shouted slurs from a safe distance, but Rondell James stood mesmerized. It was as if the man was speaking to him directly. He'd never embraced Christianity like his mother or grandparents; he couldn't identify with a white Jesus hanging on a cross. And, like the man said, he was almost twenty-five years old and still living a life without purpose. Jobless, pointless, he couldn't even make child support payments—not that he'd tried very hard to do so—without resorting to crime.

When the man stepped down, Rondell walked toward him, intending to ask him more about Islam. But when he got to within several feet, one of the big bodyguards put out a hand and stopped him. Embarrassed, he assumed the man thought he wasn't good enough. He was about to turn away when the tall speaker placed his own hand on the bodyguard's arm and lowered it.

"
Salaam,
Brother Abdul," the man said. "I believe we have a seeker of the One True Faith."

In that moment, Rondell knew he'd found a home. He went back to the Al-Aqsa mosque at 124th and Malcolm X Boulevard with the men in white and several other prospects, including his friend Suleiman Abdalla, who, like him, had a physical deformity, a disease that affected his skin's pigmentation. After a quick introductory course, the young men had found themselves kneeling and rising, kneeling and rising—praying in the direction of Mecca. Afterward, Rondell's knees were sore, but his soul was lifted, and he resolved to change his life.

He'd thrown himself into his new religion with all the zeal of the recent convert. Never much of a reader in school, having dropped out in eighth grade, he took the
hifz
course to memorize the Qur'an, so that he would be known as a
hafiz,
someone who knew the book by heart. He prayed five times a day with such fervor that some of his fellow converts thought he was "putting on a show," and he always listened intently to the exhortations of the tall man in white, Imam Sharif Jabbar.

The imam gave him a new name, Muhammad Jamal Khalifa. "Be proud," Jabbar told him. "It is also the name of one of Sheik Osama bin Laden's brothers-in-law. He has arranged the financing of many spectacular projects on behalf of
jihad."

The new Khalifa was thrilled to bear the name of one of the great men of Al Qaeda who, as Imam Jabbar lectured, were "fighting the white man and his decadent culture on behalf of people of color, not just Muslims, everywhere." Of course, such virulent speeches were reserved for "special converts" like Khalifa and not heard by the general congregation at the mosque. Most of the members of the congregation, in fact, had no reason to suspect that their imam's politics were any more radical than his soapbox oratory, or that he would ever suggest acting on the ideas he privately espoused.

Soon, Khalifa was one of the men in white standing in a circle around Imam Jabbar as he proselytized on the street comers of Harlem, reaching out to other young black men like himself. The imam was a heroic figure to him, the father he'd never known—a real man who wasn't afraid to speak out on his convictions, and damn the authorities if they didn't like it. He'd even been on
hajj,
the pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim was obligated to make during his lifetime, if he could afford to do so.

Khalifa was ready to do whatever the imam asked. He'd even helped beat a man senseless for his sake. The man, claiming to have lost his wife in the 9/11 attack, had tried to push his way through the bodyguards one Sunday afternoon to get at Jabbar. After Khalifa was arrested, he had pleaded to a reduced charge of misdemeanor assault and spent three months in jail, praising Allah that the authorities had not matched his current name to his old felony record.

After such a show of loyalty, he'd moved into the imam's innermost circle of trusted men. Only then was he told the story of how the imam had gone from the hajj to Afghanistan, where he'd spent a month training in an Al Qaeda camp. That's how Khalifa learned that the tens of thousands of dollars the mosque's congregation raised every year for "Muslim charities" actually ended up in the hands of the
mujahideen
for their holy war against the West.

"Who are they to call
us '
terrorists'?"
the imam had railed at one of the secret meetings attended by the bodyguards and a dozen other newer converts like Khalifa and Abdalla.
"The Jews in Israel murder Palestinians all the time, and no one calls them terrorists. White American soldiers drop bombs on innocent people in Afghanistan and Iraq, slaughtering thousands, but no one calls them terrorists. The attack on the World Trade Center was not an act of terror' ism, it was a military strike in a war declared by Sheik Osama bin Laden and others five years earlier. It's war if the atrocities are carried out by the West, but it's terrorism if Muslims defend themselves."

The men at that meeting had been asked to line up so that the imam could speak to each in turn. Then, the imam had placed a hand on each man's shoulder and looked him squarely in the eyes. "We
need our own mujahideen who are not afraid to die for Allah,"
he had said to them. "
Are you such a man?"

"I am,"
Khalifa had sworn when it was his turn.
"Tell me how I can serve."

The imam had smiled. "Soon,
my brother, soon."

That had been two years ago. Now, Khalifa looked up at the simple rectangular, gray granite sides of the synagogue with its modest, unadorned windows and Star of David above the wide doors. At
least the Jews are not idolaters—unlike Christians with their blasphemous paintings of God, the prophets, and their false saints,
he thought and then caught himself before he let any other decent thoughts about Jews slip into his mind.

He was aware that Jews were also "People of the Book," who followed the same general teachings regarding the worship of the God of Ibrahim, the father of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, though the latter two had bastardized the teachings and strayed from the true path. He also knew that the Qur'an generally preached tolerance of the Jews in Muslim lands. However, as Imam Jabbar had explained, all that had changed when the Zionists stole Palestine from its rightful Muslim owners. The Israelis were the enemy, as were all Jews and the Western governments they controlled, especially the United States.

"Yes, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, wrote that Jews should be allowed to live in Muslim lands without converting so long as they, in his blessed words, 'pay the tax of acknowledgment of superiority and are in a state of subjection,'"
Jabbar had said.
"After all, there must be Jews in Jerusalem at the end of the world for the prophecies to be fulfilled. However, the Prophet, blessings upon his name, often made war on Jews if, like today's Zionist murderers, they harmed or insulted Muslims. And has not Sheik Rahman issued fatwas permitting
Muslims
to kill Jews and Americans? Who are we to argue with such a great man!"

Learned men like the "blind sheik" Omar Abdul Rahman, who had been behind the first attempt to destroy the World Trade Center, bin Laden, and Jabbar impressed Khalifa. He admired how they could find ways to resolve apparent contradictions within the Qur'an through
fatwas,
decrees by Islamic clerics that absolved individual Muslims of actions that would otherwise be considered crimes. The fatwas were a necessary tool of jihad, otherwise suicide bombers and jihadis would have been committing sins. He had studied the writings of Sayyid Qutb, the martyred Egyptian writer of the 1950s and '60s, and one of the founders of the Islamic fundamentalist movement. Qutb had argued that the establishment of Israel, and the West's support of the Zionists, were insufferable humiliations for Muslims that had to be rectified. But Allah had allowed it because Muslims had turned from the righteous path by adopting Western culture, including immodest clothing, ideas about women's rights, and secular democracy. Only by returning to fundamentalist doctrine, establishing nations governed by shar'iah, and waging jihad on those who oppressed them would Muslims regain the blessing of Allah and attain eventual world domination.