Jihadi (40 page)

The leftmost coat-hook had punctured his temple, impaling him with its four rigid inches of stainless steel. Murad Murad dangled, on display, unconscious, twitching.

Fatima approached him with slow steps, breathing hard. She looked him over. A thick rivulet of blood ran from his nose, wound its way down his cheek and onto the shoulder-pad of his khaki uniform. His eyes stared at everything and nothing, and then rolled back into his head.

He gasped and then stopped gasping.

Short of breath herself, she grabbed his wrist and felt for a pulse. Nothing. The question of what to do next was now moot. Instinct had removed the threat.

Her breathing, already hoarse and raw, became more frequent in the certainty of his death, and she heard herself moan and wheeze with it. Something shuddered again inside her, the roaring and coiling from the very core of her, and she staggered backward with it. The chair held her, though it was bolted in the wrong direction, so as to only afford her its back. She gave it her armpits, slung herself there, heaving with it. He was dead, with certainty he was dead, so she did not attempt to prevent the shuddering.

The thing writhing inside her swung in and out of itself from all angles, like a pot boiling over from beneath its lid, sputtering and stopping, sputtering and stopping. It was stronger than last time, even, and it bent inward with each new heave it demanded of her. It kept up that inward bending and heaving for the longest time. She clutched her torn garment, held her upper body tight. Instinct
was content with this arrangement. It had its own momentum.

There was no shame in her following where the writhing led. When the spasms had passed, when she had returned to herself, she asked instinct ‘What next?’ and listened for the answer.

Having been granted permission, she returned to the corpse that hung by its hook on the wall. She repeated
Bismillah
and fought back the urge to spit into its face. That would have been shameful. She found a loaded pistol in a holster on Murad Murad’s hip. She took that pistol.

She retrieved her torn scarf and facial veil from the floor, found three of the four pins. She worked them back into place as best she could. She sat for a brief rest. Her hair, forehead and lower face covered again, her jilbab pinned acceptably, she remembered Thelonius.

Just Get Started.

She stood, retrieved the two gold hand-weights, covered her eyes with her left hand and hurled the hand-weights toward the grey window.

They sailed right through its one-way glass. There was a tremendous crash and whine and clatter. Gold afternoon light flooded the room.

The danger past, she removed her left hand from her face. Her eyes were safe.

She ignored the alarm that sounded. She kicked free the loose shards of glass in the corners of the frame, and walked calmly into the late-afternoon rush of Malaika Street on her numb, obedient legs.

‘Getting some wheels now?’

Sullivan Hand joked that, with all the money he had just transferred to Indelible’s bank account, Indelible could afford to buy a new car now if he wanted. They both laughed at that.

Indelible laughed exactly the same way Sullivan Hand laughed. He acknowledged that he might be buying a Lincoln at some point, but said that, right now, he had to pay off some pressing debts. During all of their conversations, Indelible made frequent reference to desperate financial straits.

In reality, he had no pressing debts. As soon as the conversation concluded, Indelible arranged for the money he’d secured to be delivered, in the event of his death, to the trustees of the refugee camp known as Jahannum.

Indelible emailed Sullivan Hand the names and locations of five insurgents. These five men had agreed to be martyred in order to help Indelible build up a bridge of trust with Sullivan Hand. Sullivan Hand didn’t know that.

During their next call, Indelible told Sullivan Hand that he had recently been appointed the New Imam’s personal physician. He hadn’t, really. Sullivan Hand didn’t know that, either.

In his cubicle, Sullivan Hand maintained his fatherly tone as he said ‘Oh.’ Then he punched his silent fist in the air. It felt to him as though he had just won the Super Bowl. As though Becky Firestone were, at any moment, about to walk in the work area, strap him down to something solid, his desk, say, and have at him, as though he were immortal.

Late that night, Thelonius phoned Adelia and asked to speak to Dad. When she recognized Thelonius’s voice, she said she had been meaning to call him and asked whether he was sitting down.

This was like running patrol, only all alone. This was like hunting, and like looking for a new black star to tattoo, and like pinning disrespect itself in the laser sight. This was like getting down to business at last.

The drive had helped Mike Mazzoni to even things out a bit. He took another hit from the fifth of Cuervo, which was beginning to undercut that headache. Hair of the dog. Good for whatever ails you. Have to remember that when time to call Mom rolls around. Women a lot more likely to overreact to things.

He wasn’t ten minutes from the base when he spotted her.

Damn.

Some fool raghead girl. Thirteen, fourteen. Stark naked. In a pond. Splashing herself between the legs. He slowed. Either she hadn’t heard the vehicle or she had heard it and not cared. He pulled the vehicle onto the shoulder on the opposite side of the road. Peered through the window. She was visible from the road through a parting in the trees, no problem. She was
facing
the road, in fact. And she was spending way too much time washing her goods.

Which looked fine and clean and free of distracting stubble and open for business to Mike Mazzoni.

Cold water or no cold water, she certainly seemed to be enjoying herself. Her face. Damn. He killed the engine, swigged some more Cuervo, got out, stepped around quiet to the border of the asphalt, and stared at her. A little rosebud blooming.

Damn.

The broad grey road between them. Forty feet away, maybe.

And she was
still
trying to work something out down there. What the hell kind of water was she cooking with? How long would this go on? This long, anyway.

Damn.

Then the moment died. The girl heard something, abandoned her half-crouch, stood straight, met his eyes. Her forehead wrinkled and her face went dark. She screamed something he didn’t understand. Like she was calling him a name. Warning him off.

When he didn’t move, she raised her two hands like two paws with claws and howled at him like a cat. Loud as she could. Now a meow. A howl. High, then low and rumbling.

Then she covered her little teenybopper titties. Turned and splashed her way out of the pond and ran her little teenybopper butt cheeks back into the brush.

Oh hell no.

Something about the way she had looked at him, something about the cat thing, pissed him off in a way he couldn’t quite translate.

Bitch.

Things That Piss Me Off
. His go-to topic, and, in a sense, his only topic. Prominent on the long list of Things That Pissed Mike Mazzoni Off were any and all stunts pulled by people who had the intention of humiliating him. That was what the raghead teenybopper had just done: tried to make him look like an idiot by howling at him like a cat. Like she could kill him just with a look.

That ridiculous claw gesture, that dying howl, might not have raised his blood in quite the same way on any other occasion, but on this afternoon, the afternoon he learned of his brother’s death, and greased his throbbing head with tequila, her howl became the latest entry on the list of Things That Piss Mike Mazzoni Off, and clicked into place somewhere right at his foundation.

He went back to the vehicle for Hajji, and for a grey steel container he had, the day before, filled with gasoline. They felt familiar and ready in his hands.

Walking what might have been the fourth mile away from BII on her numb legs, the late-afternoon traffic coursing all around her and hours to go before she reached home, Fatima’s debate about what she would and would not tell Mother was interrupted by a smell.

The smell of that ripping thing.

It hit her. The overpowering stench. Not sweat. Not steel. Not petrol. All three at once.

She spent five minutes attempting to wave down a car. Any car. Finally one stopped. A black cab. The driver, a high-pitched fast-talker with sunglasses to fight the glare, demanded to see her cash before he let her in. She showed it to him. He nodded. She got in the back.

She gave her address and promised him double if he made his way around the traffic somehow. He hung a right onto a side street that she otherwise wouldn’t have believed in. The cab rushed forward all at once, pushed her like a lover into the dark embrace of her path. She wept for Noura.

From the same discreet airstrip that had welcomed Thelonius into the Islamic Republic the month before, the five flying killer robots prepared to take off.

Each was quite expensive. When you turned them on, they made a steady, unyielding, high-pitched whirr, precious metal birds gone insane.

Sullivan Hand had recommended UAV strikes on the five insurgents Indelible had identified for him. Dick Unferth approved those UAV strikes.

The acronym UAV stood either for Unmanned Attack Vehicle or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, depending on the people you talked to. The dead guy telling this story wants you to know he used to call them Unanticipatable Airborne Vasectomies. They’re also known as drones. UAVs are flying killer robots. They’re all the rage these days.

All five of the men the killer robots targeted were prepared to die. They each knew with certainty, and accuracy, that death was coming. They had each been talked into believing that their dying would hasten the arrival of the global Islamic Caliphate and ensure the forgiveness of their sins. And forgive the sins of their near relatives who had passed on. And forgive the sins of their children. And so forth.

Dick Unferth believed that these kills, which were confirmed, proved the viability of Sullivan Hand’s new contact, Indelible, as a source of invaluable intel within the senior leadership of the terrorist network operating in the Islamic Republic. Dick Unferth told everyone that Sullivan Hand’s actions were the future of counterinsurgency. And so forth.

Dad was dead.

Adelia, calling at just after midnight, refused to say anything more about it over the phone. Using a series of private codewords only she and Dad and Thelonius understood (the relevant words here being ‘rare water’, a phrase Thelonius never imagined he would hear her say) she went on to intimate that she had something she had to give Thelonius. (‘Improving’.) She wanted to give it to him in person. (‘Eyes’.) He had to come out to the Cloisters as soon as possible. (‘Sunny’.) She would wait for him. (‘Sleepy’.)

After Adelia said these words, a deep sense of not knowing where he was predominated. For a long moment Thelonious could not establish his position. Wait. Carl’s apartment. Yes. Thelonius was in a bed there, at Carl’s place. That half-open door. Through it, there would be stairs leading down to Carl’s front door. Beyond that, to the right, there would be a kitchen, with a window that opened onto the street. Cats, two of them, one orange and small, one tortoiseshell and a bit larger, liked to sleep near the heat vents in Carl’s kitchen.

Adelia hung up. Thelonius placed the cell phone on the bedside table.

Assume the best. Assume the simplest. Assume the least twisted. Assume the normal. Old men, sick men, do die. Adelia, it was true, was not known for overreactions in emergency situations, but no one, not even Adelia, was
incapable
of overreacting. In all likelihood, she was overreacting now, having lost the man in her life. Loved ones do leave a hole in you when they die.

Sleep was impossible. He would have to leave a note for Carl.

Thelonius took the next available flight. Upon arrival at Dulles, he hustled himself and his two carry-ons off the plane, navigated a familiar maze and planted himself in front of what he knew to be the only open rental option at that hour, Budget. The sole unclaimed vehicle on the Budget lot was a green Siena.

What the hell.

The thought of driving it worsened the fluttery, empty feeling in his stomach. His heart pounding, he nevertheless told the acnecursed counter teen, Brace, that he wanted the Siena. It made no sense to waste any time fussing in order to avoid a Becky-related memory built into the structure of the moment.

Brace was sorry the Siena was all that was available.

He gave Brace, who reminded him of TV’s Eddie Haskell, his credit card. He signed the necessary paperwork, received a copy of the rental agreement, grabbed the keys, strode with five minutes of deep purpose to T-19 (the location scrawled helpfully on the agreement), and stared at the doppelganger Siena for a moment.

He pushed thoughts of Child aside.

The rental key in his hand, confirmation that there was actually nothing serious to worry about less than twenty minutes away, Thelonius made a point of edging out of spot T-19 slowly, checking both mirrors for oncoming vehicles as he did so.

What kind of a name was Brace?

He knew the route: muscle memory. He did not bother turning on the Siena’s GPS. He claimed his exit without cutting anyone off. Hardly any traffic. Cautious, careful, steady, he guided the Siena toward Dad’s house. Impossible to think of the Cloisters as anything but Dad’s house. Impossibility everywhere. He couldn’t seem to stop blinking.

Focus now. No need to complicate things. Safe trip. Road ahead.

He obeyed the speed limit. He stopped for traffic lights. He used his turn signals when changing lanes. His drive was uneventful.

By the time he made it to the Cloisters, it was a little before dawn. He worried he might wake Adelia, but her text as he parked his car in the open garage read,
Come to the back of the House
.

They both still knew to capitalize House.

Not even a hello. A nod. Which was fine. It was time for him to pray. She said that was fine and pointed him toward a spot just outside the House. Level moss. Cool. Which way was northeast? Did she happen to know?

She did. Did he need a carpet or anything?

He did not.

He prayed.

‘They’re flushing the town water system this morning,’ she said when he was done.

‘Okay.’ Good to speak of something other than Dad.

‘It’s not supposed to start for a half an hour. The old machinery bought by the city fathers back in the day had to be replaced. It collapsed and left every drop in the water tower contaminated with rust. We’ve been on bottled water in the House. They have to dump the whole thing this morning and then refill it. Don’t be surprised when you make your way back to your rental.’

There was no more
we
to be on bottled water. But it seemed cruel to point that out.

He looked at her, with an expression that asked,
what happened
? Adelia only nodded again, still all business, and said, ‘Let’s go in.’

Like Dad, like Thelonius, she knew Glass to be a safe place to speak.

She led him down the familiar pathway, which was lighted with the high-angled beams of the security lighting Dad had installed just after Thelonius entered the family. Those lights had lit many
wanderings toward Glass. Once more, following the back of that graceful, tawny neck. That kinked, tightly bound hair. Adelia’s existence emerged as a sober, comforting reality he could cling to, the closest graspable fact in a sea of bobbing uncertainties. But he wasn’t really walking toward Glass, wasn’t really following Adelia at all. He was swimming through the waters bordering a bleak, cold shipwreck: Dad Gone.

Adelia was both the last keeper of Dad’s secrets, and the culmination of a private theory that Thelonius had nursed for some years. All of Ryan’s known mistresses had been black. Thelonius had always wondered whether this sensual preference of his had been some kind of declaration of independence to Prudence, whose family boasted at least five generations of white supremacists from various South Carolina and Georgia elites.

And after Prudence’s passing, was he also making some kind of statement to Becky?

Who knew? Dad never brought it up. Thelonius never brought it up. There were many topics one never brought up with Becky. Her barefaced, apparently immovable refusal to accommodate herself to the dark, high-cheekboned women who always guarded Dad’s House, to the open secret of her father’s string of elegant, bronze concubines, was simply never discussed. This silence was non-negotiable.

There were several jokes that had helped to make Becky a laughing stock within the Directorate. One of these, in which Thelonius never indulged, ran as follows:
How do you end a conversation with Becky Firestone? Ask her whether or not Dad likes dark meat at Thanksgiving.

The whisk of the doorway. They stepped into Glass. A warm embrace of moist air met them. Adelia closed the door and locked it behind her. Thelonius had never seen her in here.

In the centre of the crystal-walled terrarium: Dad’s empty wheelchair. Tendrils and buds and leaves, too close to it already, surrounded it from every angle of the structure, gave every impression of being prepared to claim it as their own.

‘They collected the body late last night. You will want to stay in motion, I think.’

‘Stay in motion?’

‘The last official decision Dad made was to confirm your spot as the keynote speaker at the Freedom Banquet. The White House signed off on that last night, just after seven p.m. That’s not going to be revoked. But if I were you, I would skip the banquet.’

‘Why?’

‘You’ve had an adversary since before you left for the Republic. We both have. I suspected as much, but I couldn’t prove it to Dad’s satisfaction. And now Dick Unferth is interim Director. So. Leave the country for a while, I think. That’s what I’m going to do. Keep moving.’

Thelonius’s heart folded into a tiny square.

Steel in her eyes, Adelia handed him a thumb drive.

‘Becky killed him,’ she said. ‘He died around midnight. While I was sleeping. They had an argument in the House. This is the audio of it. You deserve to hear it. I would destroy it afterwards, though.’

Impossible. All of it.

The lush green tangle of the place had a familiar slow throb. It pulsed and edged out toward the empty wheelchair, toward them. She held the back of Thelonius’s head with both hands. She kissed him on the cheek. That was impossible, too. She opened the door to the greenhouse. The air changed again, chilled and collapsed. He followed her out. The sun was up now, somewhere behind those clouds.

He left her, went back to the garage and stared at the Siena, wondered where on earth it would take him.

Before he could bring himself to press the key-button that unlocked its doors, a gurgling and roaring sound from the street outside. He went down to investigate. As she had promised, the gutters were rushing, about to overflow their banks with red liquid.

Everything impossible was happening now.