by Edward Klein
She moved her unbroken leg and I noticed that she was wearing a white gold ankle bracelet filled with diamonds and emeralds. If real—and it certainly looked real—this anklet was worth a fortune. This mysterious woman was not only beautiful; she was fabulously rich.
Her eyelashes fluttered and she slowly regained consciousness. She looked up at me and said something in German, which I didn’t understand.
“Do you speak English?” I asked.
“Ja,” she said in a weak voice. “Veer ist mein Kennedy?” Sydney Michael Green carried the naked blonde tsunami victim up the hill to above our CIA safe house, where we found Vangie Roll. She was talking to a European doctor, who was in charge of a makeshift rescue area. Doctor Kitzel (as he was named) took one look at the woman in Sydney’s arms, and rushed over to his side.
“Please,” he said, “take the Countess to that empty tent.”
“Countess!” Sydney Michael Green exclaimed. “Higgy, we rescued a real live countess!”
Inside the tent, Sydney Michael Green laid the Countess on a cot. Vangie spoke to her in German, and provided a running translation.
“She’s Countess Gladys of Thurn und Taxis,” Vangie said, “and she’s from one of Europe’s oldest and most prestigious families. She’s a big jet-set celebrity. I remember reading about her in Star magazine.”
“Veer ist mien Kennedy?”
“Who?” Vangie asked.
“Mein Chinese Crested accessory dog ist namen Kennedy. It goes mit me everywhere—to parties…movie premieres… orgies….”
“Why did you name him Kennedy?” I asked.
“Because Teddy Kennedy took me to Hyannisport and shtupped my brains out all weekend. And then he wouldn’t even take my phone calls. So the least I could do was name my dog after him.”
Just then Russ Slanover appeared in our tent. He was sweating and out of breath.
“Higgy, I have a lead on the guy we’ve been looking for,” he said. “Badung Sabang.”
“Where is he?”
“Not far from here. Just over the hill.”
Countess Gladys moaned again, “Kennedy… Kennedy!”
I explained to Russ Slanover that the countess had lost her Chinese Crested accessory dog.
“That’s strange,” Russ said. “Because Badung Sabang is just up the hill, and he’s rescuing dogs and cats.”
As we prepared to leave Countess Gladys and follow Russ Slanover to the top of the hill, Sydney Michael Green pulled me aside.
“Higgy,” he said, “I think I should stay behind and look after the Countess. I’ll meet up with you and the rest of the team in Jakarta.”
“This is no time for your usual monkey business,” I said.
“I know this sounds strange, Higgy, but I have this feeling that I just want to protect her,” he said.
I couldn’t be sure whether Sydney Michael Green was being sincere, but I didn’t care. If he wanted to absent himself from the interview with Badung Sabang and miss out on possibly crucial information that would sink the Obama ship forever, that was fine with me.
“I understand perfectly. You just stay right here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
A bright red Sikorsky S-92 preyed in the middle of a clearing, its rotor still spinning. I noticed the symbol on its side: a blue globe with the words International Animal Rescue. Nearby, a large makeshift pen contained a menagerie of animals—dogs, cats, a miniature donkey, and a goat or two.
Russ Slanover pointed out a tall, dark-skinned man with thick, wavy hair standing in the midst of a chaotic scene. The man was carrying a manila envelope stuffed with cash, and he was trying to hold back a group of shouting refugees, many of them barefoot and clothed in wrap-around skirts, and all of them desperate to leave Banda Aceh on the waiting helicopter.
“That’s Badung Sabang,” Russ Slanover told me. “He works for International Animal Rescue, an Indonesian charitable organization, but as you can see, he’s hustling some cash on the side by charging exorbitant prices to evacuate people.”
I nodded in approval at this impromptu display of capitalism. Simple supply and demand. “Okay,” I said, “let’s see what we can do.”
The three of us—Russ, Vangie, and I—approached Badung Sabang.
“We’re Americans,” I said. “We need to get to Jakarta as quickly as possible.”
Badung Sabang did a quick calculation in his head.
“Eight thousand U.S.,” he said.
Oh, so he wanted to bargain? “Maybe you’ll give us a special deal,” I said. “We’ve heard that you went to school with Barack Obama. This lady here”—I pointed to Vangie Roll—“is a friend of Barack Obama’s from Chicago. They play basketball together.”
Badung Sabang was suitably impressed. “Barack—he’s going to be your next President.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I said.
“Why not?” Badung Sabang asked.
“Because,” I said, “in America, some people believe the school you went to with Barack Obama, the Besuki School, was a Muslim madrassa, which would make Senator Obama a Muslim.” Badung Sabang smiled as if he had been down this road before. “You need to talk to the imam.”
“Who?”
“Imam Selatin was very close to Barack,” Badung Sabang clarified. “He gave Barack private religious instruction. Go talk to him.”
“Do you know how we can find him?”
“Sure,” Badung Sabang said, opening his arms wide. “He’s my boss at the International Animal Rescue Foundation. You need to go to Jakarta and talk to him. But it’ll cost you eight thousand dollars.”
I knew this routine. “Four thousand,” I countered.
He looked at me like I was the most foolish man in the world. “Eight. I’m not the one who has to go talk to the imam.
He had a point. Besides, it was only the taxpayers’ money anyway. I reached into my pocket and took out the contingency “flash cash” I always carried for situations like this. I paid Badung Sabang his asking price, and he shoved the money into his manila envelope.
“Of course,” Badung Sabang said, “before Imam Selatin can talk to you, he’ll have to get permission from the Russian gentleman who funds the Animal Rescue Foundation.”
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. “That gentleman’s name wouldn’t happen to be Yurik Maligin, would it?”
“How did you know?” Badung Sabang asked.
“Just a lucky guess.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Five days of nothing. No meetings…no returned phone calls… not even a sighting.…”
I was venting my frustration to Russ Slanover. He was seated next to me on a metal bench in Jaya Ancol Park in Jakarta, overlooking the Pasar Seni art market. Since the arrival of the Tchaikovsky Circle in the Indonesian capital on December 27, we had failed in all our efforts to track down the mysterious Imam Selatin, who had tutored Barack Obama, or Barry Soetero as he was known when he was a young boy living in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather. Barack Obama, Barry Soetero, what was with all these strange names? We should have been able to hang him on that alone.
In any case, we had wasted five precious days, of my precious time, and now here it was, New Year’s Day, 2006, and I had nothing positive to report to my boss, Whitney Nutwing.
I was a failure, and a little voice inside my head kept saying: Who’s the nutwing now?
“It’s not as bad as you’re making it out, Higgy,” Russ Slanover said, as though he had read my mind. “Look at it from a scientific point of view. Look at the profile we’ve developed on Imam Selatin.”
Russ worked the keys on his high-tech laptop computer, and then twisted the screen so that I could see the results. I stared at an old, slightly out-of-focus black-and-white photo of Imam Selatin. The face that stared back at me had burning dark eyes, a long nose, and a graying beard. These prophets, I thought, really had to lose the beard.
“What’s that’s mark on the left side of the Imam’s face?” I as
ked.
“A naevus flammeus nuchae,” Russ answered.
“A what?”
“A port-wine stain birthmark. I found out the Imam has tried everything to get rid of it, including freezing, radiation, and the neodymium YAG laser.” He didn’t bother trying to explain that to me. “The behavioral profilers at Langley suspect that his facial birthmark—his disfigurement—has a lot to do with the Imam’s embittered, bloodthirsty nature.”
“He carries the mark of Cain.”
“That’s the wrong religion,” Russ said. “But you could say that the Imam’s private Islamic school—his madrassa—reflects his authoritarian, fundamentalist nature. The school teaches the Wahhabi form of Islam, which encourages violence against Jews and Christians and moderate Muslims. The school preaches that Western-style democracy is responsible for all the world’s ills, and that Osama bin Laden will cure those ills with sword and fire.”
“Not exactly a liberal-arts curriculum,” I observed. “Where is the Greek? Where is the Latin?”.
He ignored the outburst. “The weird part is that the Imam’s school is partnered with International Animal Rescue. It teaches its students basic veterinarian skills,” Russ continued. “The financial forensics experts at Langley have traced the funding for the school to your old adversary, Yurik Maligin.”
“That’s all fine and good,” I said, “but what I want to know is why Maligin is funding an obscure Muslim imam here in Jakarta.”
“That,” said Russ Slanover, “is still the sixty-four-thousand rupiah question.” He seemed very pleased with himself, but I wasn’t impressed. At 9,000 rupiahs to the dollar, that made it roughly the seven-dollar question. The world wasn’t craning its neck to find out the answer to that.
New Year’s Day was a national holiday and the Pasar Seni art market was packed with families inspecting handicrafts and souvenirs from all over Indonesia. The sight of these parents with their children made me wish that I was back home with Vier instead of chasing an elusive imam. These children resurrected all my nagging doubts about my priorities.
True, my work for the Tchaikovsky Circle was of vital importance. Trying to protect the CIA—and thus the United States itself—from immoral, miscreant politicians was a worthy cause. But so, too, was trying to raise Vier in a happy home environment. I had already lost Taitsie who, until Vier was born, was the most important person in my life. Our marriage was shattered because of my long, unexplained absences. No other woman could ever capture my heart the way Taitsie had. Without her, I had a huge, gaping hole in my soul. Only being back with her and Vier could make my life whole again. But how could I ever begin to restore my family if I was over here in Jakarta, or in a dozen other places where this Barack Obama assignment took me?
A ring on my cell phone interrupted my musings. I recognized the distinctive sound announcing a call from Vangie Roll—Billie Holiday singing “God Bless the Child.”
“What do you have?” I asked.
“Imam Selatin’s secretary blew me off,” Vangie said. “She said the Imam was out on a Russian yacht and wouldn’t be back for an indefinite period of time.”
“So Maligin is one step ahead of us—again!”
“Don’t despair,” Vangie said. “I think I’ve found a way to infiltrate the imam’s circle. His ex-daughter-in-law lives nearby. She had a bitter divorce from the imam’s son, and under Muslim law, she lost custody of their children.”
“Why would she talk to us—total strangers?” I asked.
“I told her you were the president of the Sticky Fingers Literary Agency,” Vangie said, “and that I was one of your writers. I am supposedly doing research for a book on renowned Asian Islamic teachers, including Imam Selatin. The ex-daughter-in-law, Gema Darmadi—that’s her name—invited us for tea. Higgy, she sounds like a lonely, scorned woman who needs someone to spill all her beans to.”
The imagery sounded grotesque, but I merely said, “Pick me up in a taxi and we’ll go see her.”
Less than an hour later, Vangie and I arrived by taxi at a modest two-story house in the Kebayoran Baru residential section of Jakarta. A tall woman in her early forties greeted us at the door. She was dressed in a relaxed white cotton pantsuit, a wide red belt, and gold slippers. Her dark hair was swept up and pinned back, revealing a long, elegant neck. I wanted to make like a swan with her, but I had a duty to do.
“Welcome, Miss Roll and Mr. Higginbothem,” she said in a pronounced accent. “I’m Gema Darmadi and it is a delight to meet you.”
Gema Darmadi led us onto a bright screened porch, where a traditional English tea service and a small angel food cake awaited us. We sat on wicker chairs. I detected the intoxicating smell of aloe incense sticks burning in bamboo holders.
“Mr. Higginbothem, how do you prefer your tea?”
“Just with lemon, please.”
I noticed that she didn’t put any sugar in her tea and didn’t touch the piece of cake in front of her. No wonder she kept her girlish figure.
She looked at Vangie and then at me. “So, you two are in love.”
I almost spat up a mouthful of tea.
“I can tell,” Gema Darmadi said. “You two have a shared destiny.”
“A shared what?” I said. Gema Darmadi had a dreamy look on her face.
“A shared destiny, Mr. Higginbothem, is what we all strive for. To go through life with a partner on an equal footing.”
Vangie was nodding her head vigorously.
I decided this line of conversation was getting out of hand.
“Our destiny is to learn more about your former father-in-law,” I said.
The faraway look hardened into sharp lines. Hell truly has no wrath like a woman scorned.
“I have known Imam Selatin since I was a child,” she began. “His son, Suki, and I were childhood friends who later fell in love. My parents and his parents were social friends and they approved of our marriage. We were married in 1979, when both of us were eighteen years old. We had three children together. And we were divorced seven years ago.”
She stopped, and for a moment she seemed ready to cave in.
Vangie and I looked at each other. What malignant, desperate secret had we unearthed now?
“The situation in the imam’s house, where we lived, was not…proper,” she said, “and I could not live that way anymore.” Her eyes began to tear up. “I’m sorry…all this reminds me of the suffering I endured…”
We gave her all the time she needed to recover. This was getting juicy. Then she said, “Imam Selatin told me that since I had attended a Christian missionary school, I needed to be taught how to be a good Muslim wife. I had to allow him to teach me how to be a proper Muslim woman in the bedroom.”
“What did that mean?” Vangie asked.
“He tried to rape me,” Gema Darmadi exclaimed. “And he told me that if I tried to protest, Allah would judge me a failed Muslim.”
She paused again and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.
“He chased me around and around the house,” she continued. “Around and around until he started getting dizzy. That’s when I kicked him in the shin and told him what a dirty, filthy old creep he was.”
Vangie looked aghast. “Did you tell your husband?”
“I did,” Gema answered. “I couldn’t hide it. Yet Suki put all the blame on me. To tell the truth, if it wasn’t his father, it looked like he wanted to do a three-way.”
Vangie and I remained silent at this shocking news. Could anyone imagine doing a three-way with a man who had a gross beard like that?
I coughed, trying to dispel the somber mood that had fallen over us. “Gema, I’m sorry for bringing up the painful past,” I said. “But as Miss Roll told you, we’re researching a book on Islamic teachers. Our American audience would be fascinated by how Imam Selatin tutored an American boy. There is the case of Barry Soetero, for example.”
Her eyes lit with sly understanding. “Yes,” she said. “Nowadays, he calls himself Barack Ob
ama. I heard bonny Barry will be your next President.”
She sipped her tea, and the shadow of a smile came over her tear-stained face.
“There’s a story about that case,” she said. “Before the divorce, Imam Selatin told Suki and me that his mission—‘My greatest mission for Allah,’ the filthy old creep called it—was to take young foreign boys living here in Indonesia and convert them to Islam. Every year he took on another one—French, English, German…specially selected from local schools—but only one American in all those years.”
“Was this Imam Selatin’s idea?” I asked.
“No,” Gema Darmadi said. “The dirty old creep told Suki and me that he was part of an organization called the International Council for Allah. They meet once a year in Cairo and review their progress in training young boys. They send the boys back to their home countries to grow up and enter government and politics. Later, the boys are called on to do their duty.”
“Duty?” I said, startled by this new turn.
“Yes,” Gema said, “their duty to help reestablish the historic Caliphate—rule by Islamic clerics—that dominated the Muslim world until five hundred years ago. “
I listened in stunned silence. Was there really a Muslim plan to recruit, indoctrinate, and plant converted Muslims inside non-Muslim governments with the hope that they would someday rise to hold high governmental positions? As outlandish as this sounded, the scheme resembled Soviet plans during the Cold War to train Communist sleeper agents, and then plant them in foreign countries for future activation.
“Gema,” I said, “what can you tell us about Barry Soetero? What do you recall about him and the imam?”
“Oh, I remember the day Barry graduated from the perverted old creep’s tutorship,” she replied. “Suki and I were about the same age as Barry—about seven years old—and the wicked old creep invited us to the festive occasion of Barry’s Khitan, the term for male circumcision carried out as an Islamic rite.