by Thomas Waite
Lana looked at the screen of her digital door peephole. Tahir’s angry face loomed close; in the background she saw that the small blue car he’d driven was not the smashed-up Corolla he’d used to save Emma and Sufyan. She also noticed that he hadn’t drawn a weapon, though on the video she’d watched minutes ago online he’d acquitted himself handsomely with nothing more than his fists and feet.
She unlocked the door, and stepped back quickly, keeping her distance from Tahir. He moved past her without saying a word in greeting. He smelled of sun and sweat.
“Where are they?” he demanded in a hoarse voice.
“They’re coming. Don’s with them.” She mentioned him, lest Tahir assume he’d be facing only the teens and her.
Tahir didn’t respond. He looked around as if he still might find Sufyan lurking in the living room.
“Can I get you something to drink?”
“Water.”
He sounded dry. But at least he’d answered her.
When she turned her back on him to go to the kitchen, she listened for his footfalls. If he’d taken one step to follow her she would have wheeled around with her weapon. But he remained by a bay window and stared at the street.
Lana filled a plastic cup with water, unwilling to give the apparently unarmed man a weapon of any kind; she knew the damage you could do to someone’s face with a simple glass because she’d been trained to do it. She suspected the maiming and blinding potential of a glass wouldn’t have been lost on a fighter like Tahir, either.
So be it. She offered it to him with her left hand to keep the right free for drawing her gun.
For a man who’d sounded parched, he sipped slowly. Maybe if you were born and bred in a desert, you always savored every drop.
“Do you want to sit?”
He turned his wide unblinking gaze on her, the whites as unblemished as any she’d ever seen. That was all the answer he gave her.
She perched eight feet away on the armrest of a chair, keeping her body free of cushions or anything else that could impede her reach.
“Thank you for what you did earlier.” She couldn’t leave that unsaid, even with malevolency alive in every moment since he’d stepped inside.
He shook his head, as if she’d just piled annoyance onto his fury. But after several seconds passed, he said, “Your daughter is not the problem.”
“I know that, but you’re the one who threatened her life right in this living room.”
“I hoped that would stop them.”
“Stop them?”
“Stop the two of them with all this”—he threw his hands outward—“this love.” Spoken like an epithet.
“You’ve also been trying to incite people to attack her, me, Don, our dog.” He stared at her. Didn’t disagree. “That’s right,” Lana went on. “I know it’s you. You’re in those chat rooms trying to whip those fools into a froth.”
“That will stop. My threats were part of my cover … ”
My cover?
He surprised Lana by revealing that he was anything more than an immigrant, although he might have suspected his appearance on the video would soon have reporters digging into his background.
Or he’s found my cybertrail and knows I’m already looking into him.
“I’m watched, too, not just by you. We’re all watched, even when they say we’re not. Eyes are everywhere.”
His gaze roamed the room, as though for cameras that weren’t there.
“You almost got them killed.”
“You think I do not know that. But I saved them,” he pointed to his chest. “If I wanted you or your daughter dead, or Don, you would not be sitting there.”
They both turned as Emma pulled into the driveway with Sufyan. “And she would not be with my nephew.”
Don drove in behind them in his pickup.
Neither Lana nor Tahir spoke. It seemed an hour had passed before the door from the garage opened. Don led Emma and Sufyan into the house. Jojo came up and sniffed Tahir, who ignored the Malinois.
“Hello, Tahir,” Don said.
The Sudanese didn’t respond. He stared at Sufyan, who quickly bowed his head.
That can’t be good, thought Lana. Not if he’s that cowed already. He knows his uncle a lot better than we do.
“Sit down,” Tahir said to him. “You, too.” He pointed to Emma.
Lana saw Don bristle and eyed him to be silent.
Tahir took a deep breath. “Do you love my nephew?” he asked Emma. “I mean really love him. No games now.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Sufyan, do you love Emma?” The first time he’d ever used her name.
“I do, Uncle.”
“Enough to die for her?”
“Yes.” Sufyan answered without pause.
“And you,” he turned back to Em. “Would you die for my nephew?”
“I would,” Emma said, eyes pooling.
Tahir looked at the ceiling. Perhaps he was seeing more than the smooth white surface. Perhaps he had his eyes on whatever he viewed as Paradise. The very possibility had Lana reaching back and placing her hand on her gun.
He shook his head at her, as if he knew what she’d just done, then sat across from the young couple. “I ask you these questions because today you almost died. I know killers. I know your mother and father have killed for their country, Emma. They have not told me that, but I know.” His fist thumped his chest to punctuate the last word. “And I know those men in the van were killers. But I will tell you both something: neither of you is a killer yet. You were both fine fighters out there, but I do not want Sufyan to have to kill. That is not why I came to America. And your parents do not want you to have to kill,” he told Emma.
He looked at Lana and Don. “Do you?”
“No, we don’t,” Lana said. Don shook his head.
“Each generation wants peace for its children,” Tahir said to Emma and Sufyan. “But you two have chosen love in a country that is having difficult times and won’t let you know peace with your kind of love. That is why I ask if you are ready to die, because if you are ready to die for love, then you must be ready to kill for it, or you will surely perish. Can you do that?”
Sufyan said yes immediately. Emma paused. Tears ran down her face. “I don’t want to have to kill.”
Lana wondered if her daughter was remembering the bloodshed on a bus about a year and a half ago, when Emma had tried to murder a madman, and the nightmares she had suffered in the aftermath of that sickening violence. Emma had been so young to learn—with such vicious visceral force—that sometimes you had to try to kill someone or be killed. Em had failed to slay that jihadist, but she’d injured him and saved countless lives with her courage. Now she was learning another side of that macabre equation: sometimes you have to kill for love.
“If you stay with Sufyan,” Tahir went on, “the decision to kill might be made for you. It is better to make that decision now. Your father and I are running around trying to keep you two safe. I am watching you while I am watching him, and he is probably watching me while he is watching you. It is likely that you will get yourselves killed doing this, and you might get us killed, too.
“We cannot keep doing this. You cannot be children running around like this is a game. If you choose love, you must grow up now. If you are willing to die for love, you must be willing to kill for it. That was how it was in Sudan, and that is how it is in America now. Do not try to fool yourselves. Do not play childish games. Or you will die and so will the people you love most.” Tahir settled his eyes on Emma. “You are welcome in my home. My nephew loves you and I will protect you with my life as I would protect him.”
Lana swallowed hard at his apparent sincerity.
He turned to Lana and Don. “We are in this together. I did not want this,” he looked at the young couple, “for their sakes. And I know you did not. But it is life.” He stepped over to Lana. “Now we must survive. All of us. Together.”
She couldn’t have sai
d it better or more honestly.
Tahir took her hand in both of his and bowed his head. He repeated the gestures with Don.
“We three are strong,” he said, “because of those two.” He looked at Emma and Sufyan. “We have such powerful reasons.”
Forty minutes later, they sat at the dining room table and ate their first meal together.
IT’S GOING TO BE incredibly tight making the Gamblers Anonymous meeting in Bethesda. I’ve got to catch a flight leaving Seattle-Tacoma International in an hour and fifty-five minutes—and I don’t even know for certain that Elkins will be attending. But she did search for a time and place, then texted her family that she’d be home late. All from a phone that is not the one she uses for work. At least the defense establishment better hope she doesn’t because I’ve had no trouble hacking and tracking it. She’s installed an ad blocker to stop my flow of casino ads, but I changed the content and had them come from a new server. Lana’s clever. She switched to a new virtual private network. It didn’t stop me, though. I sniffed out messages to Emma coming from a new IP address and located Lana’s “gambling phone.” I’ve yet to hack into her work phone, however.
SeaTac is more than an hour away. It’s not a given I’ll make the flight, so as soon as I jump into my SUV I open Waze. It looks like clear sailing, and there don’t appear to be any police lurking in the firs to nail speeders, though I’m not too concerned about them. State patrol officers have been pressed to take on so many additional duties that America’s interstates feel more like autobahns.
People hurry from place to place as though they know how exposed they are to harm when they’re out and about. Major league baseball teams have been playing to empty stadiums for the past few weeks as media-savvy ISIS propagandists threaten “convocations of death,” spectacles only nihilists could enjoy. I am not a nihilist. My agenda is so much richer, if equally crimson. And I know how exposed Americans are, even at home. I know because I make a point of visiting them at random.
I’ll often split my screens into quadrants and turn on computer cameras just to see what strangers are doing as they watch their screens. Mostly, not much. They sit and stare, eyes like glazed donuts, and just as empty in the middle. What’s repugnant, frankly, are the extreme numbers pleasuring themselves. I take no pleasure whatsoever to see boys and girls—or men and women, for that matter—in various states of undress. I have no interest in voyeurism, but I do find cultural anthropology in the age of terror fascinating. Here’s the most curious thing I’ve noticed: Since the nuclear attack, nothing has changed in the privacy of people’s homes. If anything, more of them than ever are sitting in front of their computers touching themselves or Skyping with friends or dawdling over cat videos.
I think one big reason they are at their computers so much now is that unlike the physical world, which no longer proves comforting with fixed shorelines and geological features, the virtual world remains a steady, stable, predictable presence … if eminently penetrable.
My Mercedes averages ninety-seven miles an hour and I make it to the airport in only fifty-eight minutes. With only my computer case and shoulder bag, I’m seated in first class with four minutes to spare. I used to loathe flying when I was consigned to steerage at government expense. But now I deny myself nothing of wealth’s prerogatives. I skim from accounts in the States and abroad. Dollars, euros, Swiss francs, they’re all the same to me. Sometimes I pay the banks back by stymying the efforts of others queued behind me who also want to sack the virtual vaults. But I’ll admit it’s in my interest to keep the banks’ losses to a minimum so that my own efforts can continue as unimpeded as possible. I’m not greedy. I take only what I need to be comfortable. I couldn’t care less if Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, or Banco Santander, to note only four institutions that have endowed me of late, lose a few hundred thousand here or there. It all goes to a good cause, which at the moment is flying me comfortably to Reagan International so I can arrive at the Hope Center in Bethesda, Maryland, in time for Lana’s Gamblers Anonymous meeting.
We have one stop in Denver. I’ve always enjoyed flying over the Rockies in daylight, but it’s downright disconcerting to see the near absence of snow. While it’s never flush in the fall, there have always been peaks that remain covered year round. Now they are few and far between and Denver, like most western cities, suffers from drought.
We land in the Mile High City exactly on time. There’s no deplaning for those of us flying all the way to DC. The new passengers board hastily. A size fourteen sits next to me on the aisle. She has the most comely face I’ve seen in ages, attractive in the ripest way possible. Large women don’t get a fair shake. She smiles at me in that certain way that sails across the seat divide as easily as it can reach across a room, but I know nothing will come of it. I have no real interest in her.
The pilot warns that we’ll be facing turbulence as we pass over the Midwest. It turns out to be an understatement. The wind shear shakes the plane like it’s a maraca, and we passengers rattle in our seats like dried beans. I can see the woman beside me white-knuckle the armrest.
“We’ll be okay,” I tell her. “This is nothing.”
What do I really know about such things? Not much, but I simply can’t believe the plane is going to get ripped apart, not with my life’s work so clearly before me.
We stop shaking well before we begin descending. Even so, I’ve never been so glad to get off a plane. I request a driver from Uber, canceling twice before a woman with a Honda Accord responds.
She pulls promptly up to Arrivals. Her name is Sam—red-haired, round-faced, and as freckled as Little Orphan Annie. She’s friendly, effusive, and I’m reminded of why I’ll never again stand in an endless cab line waiting for some sleepy-eyed taxi driver to roll up and stare insolently at me as I shoehorn my body and bags into a filthy back seat.
Sam ferries me to the Hope Center in the downtown area. There’s angle parking in front set off by a black, slatted fence. Lots of empty spaces. Sam slides right into one and I pay her, bidding her adieu.
I watch her drive away, pleased that she’s gone, unlike a taxi driver, who might have wanted to pick me up in an hour—for an added fee, of course—so that he could take a dinner break at my expense. With the sky darkening, I notice that it’s that time of day.
I don’t want anyone looking out for me. I have plans. Left to their own devices, our leaders from the President on down would have us all spying on friends, neighbors, and strangers. How despicable is that? Like the reprehensible Operation TIPS program after 9/11, which would have given the U.S. more citizens spying on one another than the Stasi had in the former East Germany. Popular opinion drove the proposed TIPS operation into the ground, but the weight of public opinion these days is driven more by paranoia than it was even back then.
I enter the facility, which looks less like a healing center than an office building for boiler-room brokers. So much for the architecture of awe in the design of a sanctuary.
Carrying my briefcase, which hides the main reason I’ve made this trip—it surely wasn’t just to observe Lana grovel with guilt over gambling—I walk up to the meeting room on the second floor and see that she’s not there. I look at my watch. There’s still time. Come on, Lana.
With only five minutes to go, my impatience makes me squirm in my seat. And then she walks in.
I observe her only at an angle. While this will be the third meeting we’ve shared, we’ve hardly talked at all, although a few words did pass between us at the coffeemaker a month ago. That encounter definitely gave me a thrill, making me wonder when we’d meet for the last time. Now I know the answer: never. This will be it, if I’m successful with the device I’m carrying. I had wondered how surprised she’d be if there had been a revealing, climactic moment, an unveiling of me, if you will. I think she would have been shocked to find out who I am. But maybe I’m giving myself too much credit. She might have her suspicions already, for all I know, but there have
never been fewer than fifteen of us at the meetings. Tonight it’s especially busy with Lana the twenty-first person to show up. I wonder if she’s counting, too. And if she’ll find that propitious, a winning hand at a game I know she plays. I suspect she’s savvy enough to be a card counter.
And here comes number twenty-two. He slips past the door less than ninety seconds after his charge. I’d give odds—and it’s fun to put it that way in a room full of repentant gamblers—that the African-American man is her FBI-issued security. He might as well be wearing a blue jacket with the Bureau’s acronym blazing across his back in iridescent letters. He has chiseled features and looks alert and intelligent. Too much so for the circumstances. Most of these people look beaten down by debt, doubt, and their affliction. He looks like a winner all around, a warrior. No, I’m not buying him for a man with a gambling problem. I’m buying him as a man with a security problem: Lana Elkins.
It’ll be interesting to see if he tries to join in at some point.
He never does. There’s not a lot of talk during the meeting; it seems to reflect the lack of interaction beforehand. A dourness pervades the room, as if something has sucked out all of the oxygen. I finally nod in what I think is an encouraging manner when an older man with a bright white beard speaks up in support of Lana. Yes, she was strong. Yes, she blocked my efforts to flood her phone with casino ads … for awhile. But my goal wasn’t simply to have her gamble. My goal has always been to keep her distracted so Steel Fist can kill her, or have her killed, which would only encourage his subscribers to commit more mayhem. And gambling is sidetracking her. She just said, “I can’t get it out of my head.” That’s the idea, Lana. I want you thinking about gambling when you could be thinking about your survival.
After the meeting ends, she hangs around long enough not to attract attention for leaving in a rush. Predictably, the man I picked out as her FBI agent follows suit.