Jihadi (36 page)

With Ra’id’s head flung upon the iron grating of a gutter outside the American embassy; with a YouTube video of the bloody ovoid spinning and landing on the opening to the sewer, its ghastly, disastrous red eyes open and askew, and then receding as the car filming it sped away; with that video having drawn four hundred thousand views in the two and a half hours before it was taken down; with the city and the nation in the profoundest turmoil, Fatima conceded, definitively, the validity of her misgivings concerning the driver.

A group, Defenders of God – perhaps connected to someone at the newspaper of the same name, perhaps not; perhaps large, perhaps small; perhaps new, perhaps old – had claimed credit for the murder of the prime minister’s son, and for ‘the blessings accompanying such actions’. And demanded the withdrawal of all American forces.

And announced the instalment of the New Imam as head of state.

And forbade women from public places, including the mosques.

Calls to the prime minister’s office, calls to Ra’id’s assistant Nada, calls to the police – all essential, all impossible. The land lines were down. The cell lines were down. The country was in the midst of a seizure. Only one link to current events remained.

Through the usual thick waves of white noise, Motorola announced the military’s ‘patriotic intervention’: the city under martial law, the prime minister ‘escorted’ to an unspecified location, where he would remain ‘safe from terrorist threats’ while grieving the
passing of his son. A brigadier general would be making a public statement ‘of the gravest national importance’ that afternoon. An interim director of the BII had been named: Murad Murad, a ‘veteran intelligence analyst and seasoned administrator’.

Fatima found Ummi and Noura in the back, trimming weeds. Without telling them why, she ordered them indoors, demanded they move far away from all windows. In saying these things, she employed a tone of voice that she had never heard herself use.

Neither of them questioned her use of that voice. They did exactly as she said.

The driver of that grey car, or someone else connected to Ra’id’s murder, would be coming back, intending to kill her as well. And possibly her family. Sooner, rather than later, instinct said.

Because of what she knew about Indelible. Because of her ability to tell the Americans what Indelible looked like, share that video, alert the Americans that he was not to be trusted. Whether she should harbour any intention to do so now was irrelevant. Fatima had to protect Noura and Ummi.

She found her sheathed machete, brought it with her to the base of the large tree that marked the edge of Wafa’s property line. She clasped the cloth-covered blade with her teeth, set her foot upon the trunk and her right hand upon a limb, and climbed. Three-quarters up, she crouched on one of the broad, leafy arms and carefully set the machete in a little nook in the tree.

She changed positions as necessary, combined her prayers in a seated position from the limbs of the tree where she hid. There was legal precedent for this.

Just before sundown, she saw the familiar double headlights of the grey sedan approaching.

Fatima unsheathed her machete.

The night after the members of the Oldburgh Jihadi Ensemble were
arraigned, Sullivan Hand’s mentor showed him her appreciation for all his hard work on the case.

She did this by taking him to a nice hotel in Marblehead, turning on a little video camera, tying him to a bed, taking his clothes off, and having rough, loud sex with him as she talked to him about his future in the Directorate.

She knew she was ovulating and mentioned this frequently – over a dozen times – during coitus. She was eager, for some reason, not only to document the sex act on video, but to demonstrate her own willingness to be impregnated. Having taken what she wanted, she flipped over, lay next to Sullivan, hugged her own knees close to herself, stayed motionless in that position for some minutes, then received or pretended to receive an important text message.

(The dead guy telling this story found that video on Becky’s computer. He was performing intel work for Dad.)

(Dad is a dead guy now, too.)

Becky put away her phone, showered, dressed, said goodbye, took the camera, shut it off, and walked out of the hotel room, leaving Sullivan Hand there tied to the bedposts. He liked that sort of thing: being dominated.

The last thing one heard from Sullivan Hand on this video was him imploring Becky to untie him and let him use the toilet.

Sullivan Hand was, as usual, full of shit.

As he drove into the glare of the late-afternoon sun, Skullface took another small, white pill to calm his heart. He drew these from a grey case, which he opened and shut with the word
Bismillah
. After he took each pill, he said
Bismillah
, too.

He told the boy, who was in the back seat, that the pills were nitroglycerine, that he was taking them to treat the bad heart condition he had inherited from his father. He said that he was ready to face his judgement before Allah at any point in time that Allah should choose to take him. The boy said nothing, but wondered if anyone could really take nitroglycerine without exploding, wondered what kind of doctor would tell someone to take such a pill.

The dead guy scratching out this manuscript wondered about this when he was a kid, too. He found out, when he was in Oregon, that lots of doctors prescribe nitroglycerine to calm down people’s hearts. He drew a comic book about a doctor who thought he was helping people with heart conditions, but who was actually blowing all his patients up.

He called this comic book
Sorry!

The cockeyed, grey-skinned driver stopped the car earlier and further from the house than he usually did, parking directly beneath the tree. He opened the driver’s-side door and got out to survey the property before approaching Fatima’s home. In his hand was a revolver. Had he looked up, he would have seen Fatima tensing her limbs, a cat before the great forward leap upon her prey.

Had he listened more carefully than he was listening, he would have heard her tiny whisper before the leap:
Bismillah
.

Over the prone body, she said this verse:

Whoever honours her flourishes

Whoever defiles her fails.

At the end of their brief period of shared R&R, Mike Mazzoni and his brother received separate duty assignments. This parting of the ways, which seemed temporary to each man at the time, came at Dayton’s request.

Mike Mazzoni never knew that. He thought of this as HQ imposing a much-needed break from someone he was close to, but who had been getting on his nerves. He didn’t have a good history of dealing with such people.

After only a day or so, it felt like it had been his own idea, not seeing his brother. It felt like running away, as indeed his own enlistment in the marines had felt at first. This flinging away of himself from his old life, the one he didn’t want. It was how he functioned.

For as long as he could remember, Mike Mazzoni had been running away from home. It was probably too late to change that now.

Fatima’s face was unveiled, but her gold headscarf still covered her hair and throat. A red bruise ran across her nose where she had been struck.

Her face was contorted now in what might have been agony, or might have been a lover’s grimace in a moment of passion, or might have been the deep expression of purpose found on the face of a woman at war issuing a death blow. It was, at any rate, a private face, not one meant to be shown to the world, and if you happened to be
imagining it, as you scribbled, for longer than absolutely necessary, as you suspected you might be, you felt a little guilty for doing so.

You wonder from time to time whether you loved Fatima. ‘I love you,’ you sometimes say out loud, to her, but also to the walls of your personal suite at the Beige Motel. You are never quite sure how it sounds. Saying it doesn’t seem like home.

Far away from embassy duty, on his own, and no longer even in Mike's unit, Dayton did not have to take orders from his brother. He was no longer Bobbler.

He disliked the nickname, made the best of it, as he had made the best of things back in Little League. The coach and everyone else had adopted ‘Bobbler' out of obedience to the sheer mass and volume of his older brother's personality. Not having to answer to that was like waking up without a bad tooth.

Dayton was the best sharpshooter in his new unit. He was probably the best American sharpshooter in the Islamic Republic, but he didn't like talking about whether or not this was the case. This morning he was on his own in the sunlight, pretending to guard a perfectly safe police station that was far from any hot spot and needed, so far as anyone could tell, no guarding. He had just stepped outside for a smoke, hoping to get rid of the little click in his head, when he saw a boy emerge from the shadows and say something that sounded like ‘HELP'.

After she had reassembled time, it occurred to Fatima that she had never before seen the driver outside the confines of his vehicle.

The cross-eyed, grey-haired assassin had made almost no noise as he died, just a little, damp exhale sound as she opened his throat from behind in perfect surprise. He had been crook-backed. He lay on his side now in a kind of C shape.

Immediately after dispatching him, a physical convulsion had seized Fatima. This was a convulsion of a powerful nature, one she felt uncomfortable even considering discussing with others. It was not a new thing to her, just not to be spoken of. Such convulsions had occurred a few times before in the state just before sleep, as one’s mind wandered. If one happened to begin dreaming of men. They woke one up and made one move one’s hands away from one’s body.

Ummi had locked Noura in her room as ordered, thanks be to God, and the neighbours were sheltered behind their tightly closed night blinds, which meant Ummi was the only person now alive who could have seen that fierce, shameful shuddering. But it had been dark. Perhaps Ummi hadn’t actually seen the shuddering at all, only heard the shout.

This had been the strongest such wave she’d experienced. She had lost her footing with the fierce compulsion of it, having to clutch a limb of the tree for support. Shameful. The man there on the ground
bleeding out. She had shouted out, ‘Don’t look at me!’ She had tried shouting it twice but the words would not come out.

A curtain had closed in front of her mother.

Five minutes might have gone by for Fatima like that, in shameful convulsions. As though her body were gloating as the old man emptied out.

Once she recovered, she dragged the corpse out to the pond and left it there. It sank beneath the surface, but she knew it would still be visible in daylight to anyone who knew where to look. Not a proper burial. It would have to do until she could find someone to conduct a formal funeral ceremony.

In the far corner of the pond she washed her hands quickly and did not think of this act as carrying any special significance or symbolism. She washed the machete, too. With a clean blade she went back and cut away the bloodiest patches of grass near the tree. These slippery, broad threads she threw into the pond. She washed her hands once again.

In the house, she gave in and wept.

Ummi’s hand brushed against her cheek.

‘You are a good girl, Fatima, and a patient woman, and a true believer.’

The three of them – Ummi, Noura, Fatima – required protection now, and the sooner the better. A conversation with Ra’id’s secretary was imperative. None of them knew how to drive, however, and even if Fatima had known, the laws of the Republic prohibited women from driving.

No neighbours answered when Fatima knocked. The options were all unappealing. Taking the grey sedan across the city limits
would have been an invitation to jail time (if she attracted the attention of the authorities) or far worse (if she attracted the attention of the zombies).

Fatima was unwilling to risk either possibility. She would eat something for strength, walk back to the city and meet with Nada, Ra’id’s assistant, to explain her family’s situation. They needed either to be relocated or to have an armed guard of some kind.

Having showered, having dressed, having prayed, with her hunger assuaged, she reminded Ummi to keep Noura locked in her room, then made for the straight, tree-lined road that led out of the village.

But Noura begged for release so piteously and with so many promises to behave that Ummi relented.

‘Only if you sit right next to me the whole time, Noura. Only if you sit with me on the couch until your sister returns.’

Ummi unlocked the door.

An hour or so passed, during which time Ummi had been sewing and Noura had been reading or pretending to read a book. For no apparent reason, Noura thrust her nose in the air.

With a speed and intensity that gave Ummi gooseflesh, Noura exhaled sharply, leapt up, dashed to the living-room window, opened it, and bellowed, ‘It’s a trap! He says to smell the air! He says for you not to come back in the house!’