Streams of Babel (40 page)

"Did she say her good-byes on September 10, 1996?" I asked.

He thought for a moment. "I don't recall the date as much as her resolve to cut herself off from me—from a past which she had convinced herself was a failure. It
was
September."

Jeremy was sitting now, leaning into me, patting my hair. My bad moment had passed. I didn't believe he was a terrorist. At least not now. Tomorrow might be different, but it wouldn't matter. His flight was leaving tonight.

This conversation had been hefty. It seemed to open a door for what I knew I needed to ask. It was now or never.

"Are you ... my father?"

SHAHZAD HAMDANI
FRIDAY, MARCH 15, 2002
NOON

I AWAKE THIS morning under heavy sedation again. I absorb the view of the Empire State Building out my window and decide I am actually in my Pakistani village, downloading photos of King Kong off the Internet for my father. He loves King Kong. I am planning a surprise for his birthday of King Kong photos. And suddenly I realize this is a fanciful dream, and I am at Beth Israel Hospital and this time not for asthma, per se, though it acts up for at least six hours a day. On a far more serious note, I have been scratched in the face by a devil. I have not spent much of my life reflecting on the devil. But now, I decide that the devil is personified in a man who will make it his last ambition on Earth to threaten the lives of two people.

Hodji had made an on-the-spot decision to fly me and Tyler here, as he says Beth Israel has the best protocols in place to counter acts of terror such as mustard or nerve gas. After my
asthma visit upon arriving on American shores, I did not think I would be back so soon.

Saturday night, I found myself hoping that Hodji was overreacting and that there had been nothing under Catalyst's nails that could hurt Tyler or me. For one, the scratches stopped burning after an hour or so, despite that the scabs had swelling beneath them until yesterday. For another, there is an absurdity to what happened that protects me, prevents me from fully accepting its reality.

The sedation is not a good feeling, but not a bad feeling. The only bad feeling I have is an itching beneath the scabs of my cheek and a restlessness, due, I am certain, to computer withdrawal. I have been given nothing to do but watch the television and the view while USIC, the CDC, and the doctors here have been trying to name a germ they claim to have seen in our blood. As appears to be characteristic with ShadowStrike, it is nothing they have seen before.

I notice immediately that Tyler is not in the bed next to me where he has been for six days.

I see the arm and leg restraints have been left where he lay. His thrashing about had become worse and worse with each passing day, as it appeared his mother was not coming. She had been contacted by USIC and told quite frankly that her son had been scratched in the face by a suspected terrorist bearing a yet unidentified substance under his nails. I cannot say why she chooses not to visit, but "she'll steal my hard drive" and "she'll figure out what I am" were common expressions of Tyler's after he tried to fling himself out the window on the second day.

I tried to remind him repeatedly that he is an American hero and his mother ought to be proud. But for some reason,
this would only soothe him for an hour at a time. It has been like sleeping next to a rabid animal, and I am hoping that perhaps while I was under a sleeping sedative, they removed him to get some help with his mind.

The room is too quiet, such that when Roger shows up, I am relieved just for some distraction. He glances at Tyler's vacant spot and does not look bothered by it, so I do not question him right off. He seems focused. He sits and leans the laptop to face me so I can see the screen. He has not mentioned my duplicity at the hospital in southern New Jersey. Perhaps he is ashamed. Dr. Briglianni has accompanied him, but at first, the things Roger shows me are not medical, and are quite engaging. He waits as, slowly, a black-and-white photo of a laughing man forms on the screen.

"Omar," he says.

I stare, hypnotized by the picture of a nondescript man of perhaps fifty, with dark curly hair and a clipped beard and mustache. The photo was obviously taken when Omar was not concerned about hiding himself. I see a marketplace in the background that looks highly cultured but perhaps not American. The buildings are older, yet familiar to me.

"Germany?" I guess. "Taken in Hamburg while he was professor over there?"

Roger grins into his lap and lets out a breath that sounds like relief. "Don't lose your mind because of all this, Shahzad. It's a good mind. It's fantastic. It's a computer chip wrapped up in a big heart."

Whatever,
as the American kids love to say. To recognize German buildings is for me no more difficult than to remember languages that I see and hear.

"Omar Loggi," he tells me. "Professor of biochemical engineering, University of Hamburg. He was an associate professor for two years—not to blame the Germans too much on this one. It's not like they could have possibly known him. Before that, he was Gustav Mojobian of Romania, and before that, who knows ... A national is sometimes a person who has become devoid of a homeland, devoid of family, devoid of alliances with his people. That's one good way that you can tell a terrorist. Did you know that, Shahzad?"

I still have the droopiness from the sleep sedative, and I do not interrupt him.

"A terrorist is a person who holds principles above people. That's the first trait. If you can trace them back far enough, you often see them divorcing themselves from any people with whom most people are normally close—family, friends, neighbors, communities. People who can prey on the world's innocents are not attached to people. They have replaced people with principles. Principles become their best friends. It sounds very high and mighty. However, we live in a world still too influenced by intelligence over instinct. Thank you, the Enlightenment. But terroristic behavior is not high and mighty. It's sad, and sad is simple."

His speech makes me mindful of my father talking about coming to New York. I had told him often, in anger and frustration, that I did not want to stay alone and help Uncle Ahmer and that I wanted him to remain in Pakistan as always. And I reminded him that what he wanted to do in America could easily be done without being there in person.

"
But Shahzad, if the Americans are to trust me, they will want often to shake my hand and sit in meetings where they can see me,
hear me, smell me, and look into my eyes. It's always primarily about the people, Shahzad, about the relationships.
"

"We discovered that four times between 1998 and 2000, during Omar's tenure at the University of Hamburg, he made trips to an obscure island in the Soviet Union, where Q fever has amassed in the systems of wild goats, birds, silver foxes ... It has developed in a mushroom that has overtaken the roots of trees. Q fever was cultivated on that island during the germ warfare period of the Cold War. Though the Geneva Convention stopped further development of biochemical weapons in the late 1960s, what was in the air there continued to cultivate. It was from the cultures of this Q fever that he developed Q3. He developed the waterborne agent either in Hamburg or in a lab somewhere near Astor College. We haven't found the lab. I'd love to say Q3 didn't work out very well, but those four kids down in Jersey would find that statement offensive."

"So where is Omar?" I ask. "Have you captured him?"

Roger switches to another photo, which uploads slowly. As I wait for his answer, I try to remember what came next in my father's most memorable "people" speech, but I cannot. I am cognizant instead of a piece of a famous saying: "Of the People, by the People, for the People..."

Maybe my father had gone on to say that, maybe not. But obviously, the People is something mass killers don't feel affection toward.

"We haven't found him," Roger confesses. "We traced two credit card numbers he was using all over South Jersey since December. Neither has been used since last week. We're reasonably certain he hasn't gotten out of any of our international airports, but we can't vouch for Canada's or Mexico's."

I hold my disappointment in silence. I sense in my deepest instincts that he is gone, far away.

"Ten men are in custody," Roger says to placate me. "They include PiousKnight and members of ShadowStrike, most of whom were living in Europe. They're being extradited, and we will try them in America"

"How did you find them?" I ask, feeling jealous that he could accomplish so much when I am stuck here. However, his answer makes me smile.

"Tell Tyler his Dog Leash program is a gem. It leashed a couple of suspects and then leashed them to others. Fast and furiously. It filled in a lot of holes"

I wish Tyler were present to hear that.

"And VaporStrike?" I ask. I have wandered through the months of vague chatter and suspect that Catalyst and PiousKnight were foot soldiers, and VaporStrike was Omar's colleague, perhaps a very ambitious and dangerous officer in ShadowStrike.

"Gone also," Roger says. "We'll find them. I promise. That's not for you to worry about. It's just that you've worked so long and so hard, I'm telling you this much as a professional courtesy."

The obvious question pours out of my mouth. "And how do you expect to find him without me?"

"Shahzad, don't goad me while I'm busy feeling sorry for you" is his only answer. I reach for the terminal and clutch it, but my grip is not as strong as his, and besides, the sleep medication makes me care slightly less.

"Fine, have your laptop." I sweep it toward him with reproach. "I would love to have your terminal and to help you search for these two men, but I am not in the habit of sacrificing my dignity. I am more concerned with 'the People' at present, namely the one who was in the bed next to me. Please tell me that you haven't lost track of Tyler, also."

"He's doing okay. He's on the psych ward, talking to a psychotherapist."

"That is a type of doctor?" I try to recall.

"Yes. Hodji's with him, too."

I feel peaceful, even outstanding for a moment, over something I cannot quite explain. It is about my primary focus being on Tyler, a person, rather than the laptop, an information receptor, which had been right in my fingers.

"And now ... Dr. Briglianni is here to show you something else." Roger hits the touch pad again, and a different sort of picture comes up on the screen. Omar is gone, and in his place are roundish orange circles floating in a dark pool. It looks like a science photo.

Dr. Briglianni comes to the other side of me and points at the screen, saying, "Hodji told me to tell you the whole truth, so I'm telling you."

Tyler and I had asked Hodji to extend to us this courtesy, but I find the daily results falling somewhere between irritating and terrifying. It's not that I wish I had not said it. I just wish the results were coming out differently than they are. The picture of my blood that I was shown yesterday had, perhaps, half as many of these orange circles floating in it. From the day preceding that, they had doubled as well.

"The good news is," Dr. Briglianni went on, "that now that we have identified the germ agent, we can tell other things, such as the gestation period, and more importantly, how to quell its effects."

"You know what the germ is?" I repeat.

"Yes"

He clears his throat, which forces my words out.

"Only tell me it is not smallpox, please. I have seen images of its victims on the Internet. It is better to be dead."

"It is not smallpox," he says.

I sigh in relief, but only for a second.

"It is a mutated form of ulceroglandular tularemia."

I think of Omar's online allusion to creating other vinegars and play the terminology through my head. Tularemia is a bioterroristic agent, but not as dreaded as smallpox. I cannot remember much about it on the spot. The first term has the root words
ulcer
and
gland
in it. My stomach starts to dance and sway in upset.

"You can get rid of it?" I ask.

"We would have been trying all the antibiotics we've been trying so far, plus an antiviral, which we will start you on immediately."

"So, you can't."

He clears his throat again. "We have alerts out to drug specialists on four continents. We'll come up with something, don't you worry."

I close the lid of the laptop, so I am not looking at these ever-multiplying orange blasts. They are shaped like hearts, if we care to discuss absurdity at its finest—reddish orange hearts in a bed of dark green fluid. I am a computer man, not a scientist. I had never processed the thought before this week that photographed blood can appear dark green.

"What shall I expect?" I ask as Roger whisks the laptop away.

"Do you know what a gestation period is?" the doctor asks.

"Yes." It is the time between when one is infected with a germ and when it begins to show symptoms. I have read as much.

"We believe this germ has an approximate ten-day gestation period, and it is not my opinion that we can find an effective medication in the next few days. Hence, next week you may break with a fever, and your skin will turn bright red, and a rash will start to—"

"Never mind," I cut him off. "I don't wish to hear it"

Roger offers, "The thing won't kill you, Shahzad. The other assurance we have is that it won't affect your vital organs. The CDC believes it will go mainly after skin tissue."

"Correct," Dr. Briglianni adds.

My memory is probably more remarkable than most people's, but it is not always a good thing. One passage I read about tularemia months ago floats to the forefront, along with a picture of ulcerated skin lesions and the remaining scars. I will not look like a smallpox victim, but it could be hideous nonetheless.

I wish to ask for Hodji but remain silent. He has watched over me for days, feeling guilty to the extreme for not removing Tyler and me from Catalyst's reach, for not having the imagination to conceive of his unprecedented intentions. It had been tricky for him, and I never cease to remind him that his guilt is unfounded in a situation for which there are no existing protocols.