The Godless One (20 page)

But it was snow, skittering across the
pane with brisk nonchalance. It was a petulant winter spat that
bore no comparison to the frigid Kurdish mountains that he had
roamed like a snow leopard, hunting down the rebels with whom he
shared the magnificent isolation.

He booted up the computer and proceeded
where he had left off the day before: Image No. 49. Then Image 50.
Then Image 51. Fifty-two, 53, 54, 55…

Image No. 56.

The human intelligence technician from
the United States Forces – Iraq had posted a helpful label. Six men
lay slaughtered like beeves in front of a garage. The technician
indicated that the picture was old, from the summer before. It had
been taken in the north end of Amarah, the capital of Maysan
Province, by somebody in one of the battlefield surveillance
brigades. It had been passed along to G-2, which sent it back to
USF-I in Iraq, which forwarded it to CENTCOM (of which USF-I was a
part) in Tampa, where it was jiggered into shape for the delight
and amazement of Ari Ciminon. This was but one of the typical
routes through which pictures arrived at Beach Court Lane. Ari
suspected that many invisible hands were secretly involved. U.S.
bureaucracy vs. Babylonian antiquities, modern mass psychosis vs. a
medieval lunatic.

Something about the image
puzzled Ari. First off, was it really six men? It was hard to tell.
The butchery had been so intense and complete it might have been
three men in parts or the parts of twelve men jumbled together. Why
did Intel send him such incomprehensible messes? It was as if some
bloody-minded human intelligence technocrat was assembling the most
gruesome collages to test Ari’s proficiency.
OK, you figured out that last puzzle. Now try
this
….

Another problem was the location. One
pile of rubble pretty much looked like another pile of rubble in
post-invasion Iraq, but something told Ari the intel technician was
either mistaken, or intentionally misleading him. Ari had had some
experience in Amarah during the 1991 uprising. It was one of the
hottest places in the country—in every way. The average summer
temperature was 114 F. The picture on his computer screen was taken
far enough away from the bodies to include the entire murder scene.
One of the consequences of this was that the cameraman caught some
of the locals in the background. Their faces were blurred, but they
were definitely not dressed for warm weather. Yet they were indeed
surrounded by Amarah-like ruins. The Shia city had been knocked
around badly during the war with Iran, caught a stiff uppercut
during the uprising, and was on the ropes against a vengeful Iraqi
army just prior to being rescued by the British in 2003. So yes,
this could be Amarah. And yet there was something familiar about
one of the ruins. He was sure he had been to this spot not many
years ago, yet he had not been in Amarah for over a
decade.

Ari had been practicing with some of
the graphics editing programs that had been allowed into his
computer. He opened Photoshop and imported the picture. He zoomed,
toyed and tilted. He filtered out colors, changed colors and to a
certain degree managed to clarify the corpses. Yes...six men. And
one of them looked familiar....

He shifted to the area beyond the
garage. A pile of white rubble lay neatly along a sidewalk…but
there weren't all that many sidewalks in Amahar. He studied how the
side of the building sloped like a half-eaten bread loaf into the
street, ending in pulverized crumbs.

He then imagined a Warthog hovering
overhead.

This wasn't Maysan. This was Nineveh
Province. And the city was Mosul.

According to Deputy Karen, alopecia was
one of the symptoms of capture myopathy in deer. He tugged on his
hair. Several strands came out, some streaked with gray. But he did
not think this was what was causing his scalp to tingle. It was the
house in the picture, and its previous occupants, which was
triggering his dread.

It has to be a
coincidence
...

He shifted back to the dead
men.

Yes...yes. Almost hidden behind a hand
curled in terror was the face of a man he was sure he had met.
Yes...yes. In Baghdad. Ari had accompanied a Special Op unit during
a night raid. The Americans had received a tip that a man in the
Zafaraniya neighborhood was responsible for several mortar attacks
against the Green Zone. When the soldiers broke down his door there
had been no gunfire, just the usual shouts and screams. Ari was
brought in—he was still wearing his stifling ski mask in those
days—and a man sitting on the floor wailed on seeing the anonymous
translator.

"No! Don't shoot me!" he had screamed.
"I'm a friend of the Americans! Tell them! Tell them that..." And
he hesitated. Because, after all, he did not know who Ari was. The
man lowered his voice. "Tell them I am related to Nawaf az-Zeidan.
Surely, they know him!"

Surely, they didn't. Ari had to explain
to the American captain that this man was a relative of Nawaf
az-Zedain, a distant relative of Saddam Hussein. The captain would
have been pleased to ventilate the cringing man then and there. Ari
quickly added that Nawaf was the owner of the house where Uday and
Qusay Hussein, Saddam’s sons, had been mortally fragmented by the
U.S. Army. No one knew who had fingered the brothers, but Nawaf had
been made a U.S. citizen and given a whopping thirty million
dollars, which naturally raised suspicions.

"Ask him if he got a cut," the captain
joked, then ordered his men to back off.

It was not a propitious moment for
Nawaf’s distant cousin. Four of Nawaf’s relatives, including a
child, had already been assassinated in revenge for Uday and
Qusay’s betrayal. He might very well be next.

Three years later, there he was, his
gory remains a testament to gluttonous bloodlust and Ba’athist
tribal fidelity. Ari was now certain that the house across the
square from the garage where the bodies lay was the one where Uday
Hussein, his brother and a handful of others had made their last
stand on July 22, 2003.

Image No. 56…

After testing Ari on his ability to put
names on the faces of the playing cards distributed by the
Coalition of Iraq's most wanted, a colonel in the Green Zone had
quipped: "And what are you, the 56th man?"

Whoever posted this image knew more of
Ari's background than he was comfortable with. Someone at the heart
of the Armed Forces' military intelligence. Of course, it could be
a coincidence. It could also be a warning, or a threat.

He decided that, for the time being, it
would be best not to respond with the victim's identity. He logged
off.

Going downstairs, he opened the door to
see if the weather was conspiring with CENTCOM to ruin his day. The
snow had stopped, leaving a dreamy coat of silence over the yard
and gazebo. But the James sounded louder than ever.

He was about to close the door when he
saw the tracks. They came right up to his front door, then shaded
away around the side of the house. He considered running back
inside to get his shoes, then dismissed the notion. He had hiked
barefoot while negotiating the sharp icy slopes of the Zagros. He
could certainly handle a bit of tropical snow.

"Sphinx!" he said in a loud whisper,
dreading the possibility that Diane was hunting for her missing cat
and might overhear him and destroy his hopes. Of course, these
tracks might belong to any cat...Ari had seen one or two lurking
about, before. But these tracks looked just the right size. And
they were fresh. "Sphinx!"

He knew that exposing himself this way
was infinitely foolish. A sniper hiding in the woods across the
street would find him the easiest game imaginable. But he did not
think anyone would be looking for him just yet. And no one had
rear-ended his Scion and exchanged information. Then again, Mustafa
had felt safe. Otherwise, what could have possibly possessed him to
give his address to a complete stranger? America had accepted him,
embraced him...protected him. What was there to fear?

Name the first president
of the United States
....

This stupid cat is more
important to me than my life
. It was an
outrageous thought, worthy of a blithering idiot. Yet Ari found
himself compelled to follow the tracks to the side of the house
facing the Mackensies, where another patch of woods presented an
even thicker blind for an eager hunter. His heart gave a little
thump when he saw where the cat had jumped on a window sill in his
search for entry.

I'll wring your neck,
Sphinx
....

The cat had jumped off the sill and
continued its way to the back. They were as easy to follow as the
tracks Sphinx had made in the flour Ari had tossed on the floor
while in search of Moria Riggins' hidden cocaine. He short-footed
the small slope leading to the patio and basement and saw to his
chagrin that here, too, Sphinx had tried to sniff a way in through
the glass panel sliding doors before heading towards the garage.
Blindly, filled with irresponsible longing, Ari raced around the
boxwoods. The tracks paused at the closed garage door, and then
trailed down the driveway.

Where Diane stood. Holding
Sphinx.

"Hello," he said wanly.

"Hi," she said brightly. "Aren't you
cold?"

Now that she mentioned it, in pajamas
and barefooted Ari did indeed begin to feel cold. Quite cold. It
had been twenty years since he had chased those sly Kurds from
ridge to ridge. His blood circulation was no longer quite
so...efficient.

"I’m fine," he chattered.

"I was going to come here and when I
opened the door Marmaduke got out. He must have known I was coming
to see you. He wasn’t really coming here. He was just leading the
way."

Ari scowled, then smiled, then glanced
towards the woods, searching for the slightest movement. Clumped
snow was thumping to the ground, disrupting any attempt to focus on
particular sounds.

"My mother is making me do this," Diane
said from within her scarf. Her knit cap was pulled down so low
were eyes were almost invisible.

"Do what?" Ari asked.

"She thinks maybe I should share
Marmaduke with you."

Ari’s eyes widened. "Share?"

"Just have him over here a little bit
of the time, and with me the rest."

If sounded like a preciously good
arrangement to Ari. But almost against his will he found himself
searching for lines of fire, and he knew the possibility simply did
not exist.

"My mom says you look so sad and you
must miss the cat so much…" She gave Sphinx a proprietary squeeze,
inferring the offer only went so far. Ari thought there was a touch
of avarice in the eyes peering out of the slit between the scarf
and cap. "Are you putting on an act?"

"I’m sorry?"

"Not eating and going all mopey and
walking around in the snow without shoes or a coat. Are you trying
to make us feel sorry for you?"

"I find it difficult to control how I
appear, lately," Ari admitted. "But until I’m more presentable, I
think you need to turn around take Marmaduke to your
home."

"Huh?"

"Go. Go away now. This is the house
where children are murdered. It is bedeviled. It’s
haunted."

Diane drew back. "Mom said
you were sad, not
crazy
."

Ari’s bare feet merged with his teeth
into a giant ice cube.

"It’s Sunday!" Diane shouted,
perversely arguing against her own best interests. "You’re supposed
to be saintly!"

"
Go
!"

She ran back up the street, slipping
and sliding on the thin layer of snow as she clung to Sphinx, who
did not appear overly concerned by events.

As Ari hopped back inside, he cursed
his forgetfulness. Sunday! What time was it? Eight. He had to
hurry. A cursory shower and shave made him fit to be seen in
public. For a very short while, he thought his timing was perfect.
Then he backed the Scion out of the driveway onto Beach Court Lane.
The small rise leading up from the river was an Everest to his
little car. He was astonished that so inconsequential a snowfall
could prove such an impediment. Low gear helped some, but it took
him ten minutes of corkscrewing and zigzagging to reach level
road.

Southside United Methodist Church,
presided over by Pastor Harris Grainger, was a modest brick edifice
located in a residential area only a mile from Ari’s house. When he
arrived he found the parking lot less than half full. As his feet
crunched on the rock salt, he noted the date chiseled into the
cornerstone: 1920. He wondered if this was considered
venerable.

There was no one at the door. He
entered a hallway. From the right came the burbling of children.
From the left, beyond three sets of doors, a choir was singing. A
small pile of worship service programs sat on an offertory table in
the narthex. Ari took one of them and studied it intensely, hoping
to get a clue as to how to behave once he was inside the
nave.

WELCOME TO SOUTHSIDE UNITED METHODIST
CHURCH

The Third Sunday After
Epiphany