Jihadi (38 page)

By the time Fatima reached the BII compound, her legs were screaming a deep, silent ache.

She showed the armed guard her ID and made her way through the big interior steel-and-glass gate with no problem. The gate closed behind her. Once past it, she saw a young man at a reception desk. He smiled at her. Behind him lay a bank of elevators she had been visualizing for at least five miles.

The helpful guard informed her that the phones and the elevators were out of service until further notice.

She made her way toward the stairs. Her smile had worn away two hours ago; she felt as though she had been walking all her life. Once she coaxed her sullen, aching, but obedient legs up the stairwell, up to what had been, only yesterday, Ra’id’s ample third-floor office, Fatima found, not a new ally named Nada, but a locked door.

A large, precise sheet of grey paper was taped into place over the pane of glass set into that door’s top quarter.

If you had seen Fatima, it would have looked to you as though she were trying to read that sheet of paper with her cheek and the flat of her palm. But there was no writing on the sheet and no mystery as to what it conveyed. The paper taped onto the glass was there to obscure the letters of Ra’id’s name. Those letters, once visible in broad block print, once painted large and neat for all to see, were never supposed to be read again.

Fatima had walked thirty long miles in less than twenty-four hours. She almost tore the brown paper off the glass, but she opted to
save her energy, pull her hands back and make her way back downstairs to the reception desk. Her legs groaned and her feet creaked with each step. Nowhere to sit yet, though. She told them to mind their manners, to cultivate patience.

The helpful young man at the desk informed Fatima that Miss Nada was no longer employed by the BII. Miss Nada’s resignation had been accepted yesterday. That was all he knew.

Her eyes and the bridge of her nose were the only portion of Fatima visible to the young man. That, at least, was an advantage.

Was there anything else he could do to help her?

Fatima’s troubled legs insisted in plaintive tones that she lean in against the reception desk. She disagreed and quieted them again.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, opened them again, and asked whether he would please inform Murad Murad personally that Fatima A–– was waiting at the reception desk for him. If the young man would emphasize that Fatima was extremely eager to see him, she would be grateful.

He asked the Directorate, in good English, for one hundred thousand American dollars. The moment Indelible did that, on Skype, Sullivan Hand got physically excited. His trousers strained with it.

Here, at last, was a live lead. On the ground. In the Republic. With contacts in the insurgency. And not only that: Motivated by what appeared to be serious financial problems, rather than religious drama. This was something the Directorate could work with. This would once again win Becky Firestone’s favour, impress her more, even, than the Oldburgh sting had.

Indelible told Sullivan Hand that he had the names and recent confirmed locations of five – five! – insurgent leaders, and that he, Indelible, was willing to share that information. If it was of interest to the Directorate. If that would help them build up trust together. If he could get the cash immediately.

And so forth.

While this was going on, what was Becky doing?

That very evening, Becky sent Thelonius a text message: ‘One warning and one warning only. Are you respecting my privacy?’

Thelonius chose not to respond, preferring to destroy the phone and replace it with one bearing an entirely new number.

‘Call Dad? What are you talking about, call Dad?’ Dick Unferth said. ‘Close that door.’

Thelonius closed the door. ‘These Oldburgh fools trusted us. We sold them out. Sent them to prison. So Becky could win at something. And you knew all about it.’

‘Sullivan Hand was acting as liaison on a legitimate FBI operation, T. Sit down, please.’

Thelonius sat.

‘
We
were paying him,’ Thelonius said. ‘He’s
our
guy.’

‘So? It’s still an FBI sting. If the Bureau screwed up, that’s the Bureau’s problem. We’re not FBI. We don’t do domestic. You do know that, right?’

‘He was
bait
. This was entrapment. For headlines. It’s going to blow up on us. Becky’s going to go to prison for it if we’re not careful. So is Sullivan Hand. So are you. You have a right to know that. So does Dad.’

Instead of responding to something he didn’t like hearing, Dick Unferth would remove his glasses, wipe them, replace them and look at you like it was still your turn to talk. Thelonius didn’t fall for it.

‘We don’t
know
they were set up,’ Dick Unferth said. ‘It’s a complex case.’

‘Have you heard the audio? Have you read the transcripts?’

‘I read the summaries.’

‘The summaries are bullshit. Do you know what actually happened?’

‘What actually happened is what we say happened. I think you need some time off.’

‘They’re innocent.’

‘Not our lane, Thelonius. We don’t do innocent and guilty. We do good guys and bad guys.’

Thelonius stood and leaned into Dick Unferth’s space. ‘I want you to declassify that audio. I want you to send it to the defence attorneys and the judge who sentenced them. And I want you to fire Sullivan Hand. Now.’

‘Hell, no. Now sit down.’

‘No. That kid is a loose cannon. Get rid of him. Then we can move on to the next problem. She’s got obstruction of justice and perjury and entrapment on her hands now – and so do you – until we clean this up.’

‘You’re not
listening
, T. That’s all
domestic
. It doesn’t apply to us…’

‘Yeah, well, it’s
going
to be international the minute some reporter connects it back to the Directorate. You don’t think the families are going to push? You don’t think this is going to get out?’

‘Not if you don’t
put
it out. And you’re not going to do that. You’re a team player, T. Last team standing wins, remember?’

The afternoon traffic went past outside the big window. Rush hour. People going home.

‘Here’s what we’ve got. If you don’t fire him today,
Dick
, I’m calling Dad. And I’m heading to court tomorrow morning and making a motion to have my wife declared mentally incompetent.’

Dick stood up.

‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you, T.’ Dick Unferth gave him a dark look. ‘She warned me about you, you know, even before you left for the Republic. Warned me you’d try something like this. Cast aspersions on her. Try to undercut her if you came back.’

‘
If
I came back?’

Dick Unferth flinched, lost himself in conjectures, then put his boss face back on and said: ‘Just get out of my office.’

‘I thought you said she had no role in setting up that mission.’

No reply. Thelonius felt his knees giving way beneath him, then steadied himself.

‘Okay, T. I am calling Security.’ But he didn’t reach for the phone.

‘Dick. Believe me. I’ll leave. For good. Once you fire Sullivan Hand.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because,’ Dick Unferth said, with what may or may not have been actual remorse, ‘he’s on to something big now. Please don’t call Dad. Please.’

The first thing he felt when he heard the news was not sadness at all, but the leftover dry throat and raging skull of a sick hangover he thought was finally receding. It returned as the words hit him. The first thing he felt was the insult of his own body waking up.

The generalized, overwhelming sense of being disrespected that spread through Mike Mazzoni with each throb of his head connected to everything that sucked in the Republic. After they woke him, stood him up, and told him Bobbler had been shredded by waves of nails and barbed wire and bits of sharpened aluminum, the disrespect of having his brother taken out by a raghead mingled with the disrespect of having that ache in his skull, and the disrespect of not being able to speak, and the disrespect of not being able to focus his eyes properly, and the disrespect of not being able to get rid of the sweating.

Fiercely dehydrated, hearing too many things at once, none distinctly, and all too loudly, sensing that someone right behind him might just be going at his head with a small ball-peen hammer, Mike Mazzoni may not have had the capacity for deep grief. What he was capable of, however, was updating his list of Things That Piss Me Off to include this new, transcendent item, which took its place at the very top of the list.

He was pissed off at everything, pissed off at a cellular level. At being woken up. At not having been there to stop this. At being the one left to explain to everyone, to his mother,
why
he had not been there.

At ragheads who got away with shit by blowing themselves up, in particular.

Some raghead, somewhere, he swore wordlessly in his underwear, was going to feel justice.

Once the two officers had left, Mike Mazzoni grabbed a virgin bottle of tequila, hid it in a paper sack, and staggered out to the latrine, his head pounding, his chest heaving. He held the paper sack close to his chest with his left hand, lowered his shorts with his right hand, and pissed – aiming, more or less, for the little son of a bitch who had done this. He did not wash his hands and did not shave. He dressed, banged through the door, still clutching the sack without having cracked the bottle’s seal, and commandeered a vehicle.

They brought it on themselves, the ragheads. They always did.

Thelonius was driving his rental car to his friend Carl Arnette’s place after work. He wasn’t driving home. He still didn’t have a home to drive to. The rush-hour traffic had gotten worse. Dad still hadn’t answered his calls.

‘Drive to Salem instead,’ Sergeant USA said. ‘Look. You can take Route One. It will be quicker than this damn parking lot. Then, when you get to Salem, we can take her out. Once and for all. Gun it. Hurry.’

‘I don’t think so, Sarge,’ Thelonius said.

‘Machine, kid.’

Thelonius opened all the windows so the traffic noise could come in, but it wasn’t enough to drown out Sergeant USA. He just amped up his own volume to compensate.

‘
Machine
. You hear me?
Machine
. We should have taken her out years ago. Hey. Let’s take the exit for Route One, that exit, it’s coming up. Look. It’s wide open. Put the pedal down, kid. Pick up some speed. Then let’s take her out.’

Thelonius clicked on the radio. A country music station was playing. Thelonius turned it up as loud as it could go.

Sergeant USA glowered.

Thelonius inhaled deeply through the nose, then exhaled through the mouth. The radio sang:

Why we break each other’s hearts, I swear I just don’t know
.

‘Machine!’

‘It’s time to shut up now, Sarge.’

‘Not on your life!’ Sergeant USA bellowed over the music. ‘Hit that accelerator. That’s an order, kid. There’s a kitchen knife you can use. It’s on that wall magnet doohickey where she hangs everything up. She’s an android, kid. I swear. You saw that text, didn’t you? “One warning and only one.” That’s evidentiary threatening. That makes it self-defence.
Machine
. You’ll see.
Machine
. Turn. There. That’s the exit. Right there. Right –’

Thelonius raised his arm and delivered a sharp, lethal upward elbow strike to the tip of the masked man’s nose.

The blow shattered Sergeant USA’s ethmoid bone and drove its fragments through the cerebrum, all the way through to the hypothalmus, the ancient lizard brain.

Sarge bled out from the face. Thelonius, who knew what it looked like when someone bled out, looked over and checked him from time to time as the traffic eased up. Somewhere in Saugus, after Thelonius got to the Hilltop Restaurant, but before the exit for Carl’s place, the body vanished.

This was not a good idea. Get out.

A grunting heard. And another grunting. This was the room where she had been shown Thelonius’s possessions. Yet something different now about the design of it: a silver row of gleaming, straight, newly installed coat-hooks protruding from the rear wall. Fatima counted them. There were five of them. In his new capacity, Murad expected important visitors.

‘Shut the door.’ And grunting again.

No salaam. No eye contact. A bad start? She would sit, rest her legs when the chance came and then leave if necessary. How they ached.