The Godless One (23 page)

"I learned from Pastor
Grainger that Mustafa and Akila were members of this church. I
learned about the eagle head from...somewhere else. I already knew
it represented the 101st Airborne Division. I came here to find out
if anyone from that division was also a member of this church. It
is true, Ben has the bearing of a soldier, and for a moment I
thought..." Ari gave his shoulders a sheepish heave. "But then he
told me he was with the 1
^st
Armored Division…I believe
you were in the 2
^nd
Squadron, 2
^nd
Stryker
2
^nd
Stryker Brigade Combat Team."

"2
^nd
Stryker Cavalry Regiment,"
Ben gasped. "That's a helluva memory you have." Becky got up from
her chair and stood by him. Ben did not seem chagrined by this
feminine defense, which Ari found queer and unsettling. A hundred
times Rana had stood by him, but usually discretely, from an
inseparable distance.

"Are any other servicemen members of
your church?" Ari asked. "I mean, any who belonged to the
101st?"

Pastor Grainger shook his head, then
shifted his attention to Ben. "But you seem to know
someone—"

"Sid wouldn't be so stupid as to send
threatening notes on letterhead!" Ben said angrily.

"Ah," said Ari with a show of sadness,
lamenting the mental disease one friend has discovered in
another.

"Ben," said Grainger slowly, "I think
you mentioned this man to me before, without giving me his name.
You knew about the letters, too."

"Mustafa burned them all," Ben said,
slumping under his wife’s hand, as though Becky was pushing him
down into the chair. "If I’d seen them, I would have known who
wrote them…if it was Sid, I mean. But Mustafa didn’t want to take
the risk of Akila seeing them. He said they were too
disgusting."

"But you must have suspected," Grainger
pressed. Ari stayed silent, satisfied to have the pastor doing his
interrogating for him. "Did he know you and Mustafa were
friends?"

"He dropped by the house
once when Mustafa and Akila were visiting. He took one look at us
at the dinner table, eating
kushari,
and...it was pretty
awful."

"He was insane," Becky said, her blue
eyes reflecting an incomprehensible mystery. "I told Ben never to
go out to Sid's place again. He has plenty of guns, and he knows
how to use them."

"You think he would shoot Ben?" asked
Grainger with a glance at his phone, as if he was ready to call the
police then and there.

"Naw," said Ben, looking at his wife.
"But you can see any idea of him helping an Arab agent in CONUS is
out of the question. He hates them like nothing else."

Ari brushed off his irritation at being
subjected to another useless acronym. "Would you happen to know if
he was in Iraq in 2003?"

"He was..." said Ben, puzzled. "What's
that got to do with anything?"

"I'm only trying to reassure myself on
certain details," Ari shrugged. "Do you think we could pay him a
visit?"

"No!" Becky said fiercely. "He's
already on a hair-trigger with Ben. If he saw you on his
property—"

"I've been meaning to go see him, just
to clear the air," Ben interrupted, touching his wife's hand, a
gesture wonderfully familiar to Ari. "Becky, I knew him when we
were kids. I can't just drop someone like that. But I don't
understand. I just told you that you're way out of the
park."

"But there is still the matter of the
letters to Mustafa. 'Disgusting', you said."

"
He
said," Ben corrected. "Anyway,
I've seen Sid's handwriting and it's illegible. You can't get into
the 101st if you're an illiterate, but I don't think they use
penmanship as a criteria."

Wishing he could forego a performance,
but realizing its necessity, Ari produced a deep sigh of regret.
"I'm afraid I didn't tell you everything about Mustafa's
death."

"No," said Becky, a tower of negative
distress.

"Akila was shot. She died
instantly."

"Do you want to leave the room?"
Grainger asked Becky solicitously. She hesitated, then shook her
head.

"Mustafa was beheaded."

"No!" Becky said in despair, falling
back into her seat.

"No!" said Ben.

Grainger stared
disbelievingly.

"I'm afraid it's true," Ari continued,
secretly relishing the effect. He wondered if Americans would
consider him...what was the phrase they used...a 'sick puppy'? Why
not a healthy crocodile?

"It was obviously intended to send a
message to the Arabs living here," Ari continued.

"But only a terrorist would do such a
thing," said Grainger, carefully dodging ethnic identification. And
then he shook his head in despair. "Or someone with a profound
hatred for Arabs."

"Indeed," said Ari,
thinking,
There certainly was no love
involved
. "I'm sorry to have added to your
distress. Sid probably had nothing to do with the murders.
Blowhards blow the least, has been my experience. But I think, just
to reassure ourselves—"

"You're not really thinking of going
out there?" Becky persisted.

"Why not?" said Ben. "Kill two birds
with one stone?"

Ari was not happy with the conceit. Ben
and Ari...two birds.

"There is no way I will condone this,"
said Grainger emphatically. "I've lost too many of my parishioners
in the last year and a half. The Riggins, the Zewails...I refuse to
risk your life...and yours, also, Mr. Ciminon. If I hear of you
going out there to see this man...he really sounds
unbalanced...I'll call the police."

Becky blessed him with a
glance.

Ari sensed Ben resignedly backing away
from his resolution. He could see only one way out of the
impasse.

"And if we took with us an armed
Federal agent, would you agree?"

Pastor Grainger looked skeptical. "A
Federal agent? Where will you get him? Out of your hat?"

"Her," said Ari. "She's only a phone
call away."

Grainger and Becky were brought up
short.

"And when do you intend to make this
visit?" the pastor asked.

"Well, why not now?" said
Ben, who had brightened considerably. "He'll go off the wall when
he sees a Fed and an Arab. But why not, after what he said at our
house? At our
dinner
table?" He was directing these words to his wife.

"He'll kill all of you," she
whispered.

Grainger seemed a little more
acquiescent, but not by much. "If you insist, I want this Federal
agent to come to me, first. I want to see her credentials. I'll be
here until after the second service. Do you think she can get here
by noon?"

"Almost to a certainty," said Ari,
feeling very uncertain. Karen's phone number was programmed into
his cell. Would she respond?

"You can wait here until she arrives,"
said Grainger, again looking at his watch. He stood and glanced
down at Ari. "Don't feel obliged to answer, but do you have any
faith, Mr. Ciminon?"

"None whatsoever."

"I didn't make myself clear. I wasn't
speaking of Christianity. Do you hold any Islamic
beliefs?"

"None whatsoever."

"And loyalty?"

"I've sold my services to the
Americans," Ari said. "Not my soul."

CHAPTER EIGHT

"Sid and I used to go hunting at the
Powhatan WMA every week during season," said Ben as he turned his
pickup truck off of 288 onto Route 711, a narrow road that led west
into a countryside booming with new housing developments. "Some of
the guys in the club used to call him 'Sid Vicious'. It wasn’t just
the hunt that he enjoyed. I can’t put my finger on it, but it
wasn’t anything psycho."

"Club?" Ari asked.

"The Paxton Hunt Club. All of them good
guys who like a little sport, who like guns, and who would have had
nothing to do with Sid if he was a loon."

"But they called him
‘vicious’."

"It was a joke! I won’t say it was too
easy for him to kill something, or that he enjoyed killing too
much. I guess there was some of that in all of us, or we wouldn’t
have been out there in the woods. There was never any waste, by the
way. Ever have groundhog stew?"

"Probably," said Ari, summoning up
Iraqi equivalents he had consumed while in the field.

"It’s open season on groundhogs all
year round, so if you’re ever hard up for a meal, groundhog’s the
ticket. What was strange about Sid was…" Ben braked as the car
ahead of them stopped to make a turn. He pulled out a pack of
Marlboros from his jacket pocket. Ari took out his
Winstons.

"Uh, guys, would you mind not doing
that?" Karen complained from the Datsun’s narrow back seat. "I’m
almost suffocating as it is."

A comforting
frisson
swept over Ari.
It was like being back home, where a woman’s place was in the back.
The only difference was that neither he nor Ben were related to
Karen.

Ben made a sound of self-criticism and
returned the Marlboros to his pocket. After some hesitation, Ari
followed suit, deciding not to test the deputy’s patience. It had
taken only one minute to cajole her into joining him for this drive
into Goochland County, and a full ten minutes for her to get over
Ari’s confession that he had blown his cover, in a twisted sort of
way. But the mention of Sid Overstreet as a possible suspect in the
Zewail killings overthrew her doubts. She would show Grainger her
badge (and, as it turned out, show Becky her gun) so long as Ben
agreed to identify Ari as an Italian to anyone else that they met.
Ari had anticipated that she would see this as a priceless
opportunity to make amends for recoiling from the headless Mustafa.
No slave to rules and regulations (when it suited her), she did not
call for backup.

"You said there was something odd about
the way Sid hunted?" Ari said to Ben.

"It was like his
duty
to kill those
animals," Ben answered, pulling ahead once the car had turned. "He
would laugh and share a beer with the rest of us—"

"Booze and guns," Karen
snickered.

"—but there was something grim behind
it. Even when we were kids he talked about joining the Army. Maybe
he thought of hunting as some kind of training."

"Is he still in the Army?"

"That’s a funny thing. I was sure he
would be a lifer and retire as a Sergeant Major or something. But
he quit as soon as he finished his tour…honorable discharge, but
still not what I would’ve expected."

"Is he in the Reserves?" asked
Karen.

"No, and he could have used the money.
But with the National Guard getting called up to Iraq and
Afghanistan, there would have been a chance he’d end up back in the
Sandbox. A lot of guys like that option—it’s not such a bad deal,
if you don’t mind getting shot at."

"Did he mind getting shot at?" Ari
asked.

"To tell you the truth, I don’t think
he minded at all."

"And you?"

"I didn’t like it any better than the
next guy, but that’s not why I didn’t go back."

"Ah," said Ari. "I
understand."

"No, it wasn’t my buddy killing
himself," Ben said. "I pulled myself together after that. It was…"
He gave a short laugh. "I call it the ‘Eugene Sledge Syndrome’.
Either of you ever hear of Sledge?"

Both Ari and Karen confessed
ignorance.

"He served with the Marines in the
Pacific during World War II. When he came home after the war he
went out with his .22 one day and shot a dove. He went up and found
he'd only wounded it. It was flopping on its back, struggling to
breathe...and Sledge sat down next to it and began crying his eyes
out. That's how his father found him. He told his boy if he felt
killing things was so bad, just stop doing it, and Sledge put up
his gun. He became a famous ornithologist. Later on, he wrote the
best memoir about the war, 'With the Old Breed'."

"That's why you didn't go back?" Karen
said.

"The same kind of feeling must have
been in the back of my mind. I just knew something was wrong with
me and pretty soon I wouldn't be able to pull the trigger. I didn't
re-enlist. And when I went hunting with Sid at the Wildlife
Management Area, it happened. I had a deer in my sights and I
couldn't..."

Karen raised her hand, as though she
was going to put it on Ben's shoulder. Then she saw Ari watching
and pulled back.

"Sid was furious. Said I was
brainwashed and had become useless. He spent all day trying to get
the deer I'd let go. That was the beginning of the end between us.
But I'm still hoping we can get back together. You just can't let
your past go like that."

Ari remembered shooting his own
childhood friend, Omar, years later, in an apricot grove. It had
been necessary, and not particularly difficult, emotionally. Under
similar circumstances, he would do it again, without qualm. But he
was an unsentimental old fool.