by Suzi Weinert
Months after her mother’s death, she pounded on the door of her father’s study. When he opened it she wailed, “I see men in uniforms marching with guns toward our house. What should we do?”
Her father jumped to his feet. He’d anticipated this possibility since last year. “Quick, tell nurse to get your travel bag and hurry. Meet me at the back door as soon as you’re ready. We’ll leave in fifteen minutes. Wear the disguises we practiced.”
Soon their loaded car sped across the countryside and eventually to a wharf where they boarded a boat for Europe. There her father said, “Here are pictures of three ships: one sails to Spain, one to Africa and one to America.” He showed them to her. “So, my little Seer, which one do we take?”
She sniffed and as the lilac fragrance touched her nostrils, she saw them aboard one of the ships. “This one.” Tapping the picture, she chose America, with no idea what that destination implied.
Now Veronika sank her old body into a comfortable living room chair and thought about her eighty-eight years in Great Falls. When she’d first arrived, farms and woodlands stretched in all directions with a few simple country stores at crossroads. At age ten, she’d attended boarding school while her father built their new mansion on his prosperous horse farm. Later she graduated from Georgetown University and afterward married a wealthy man, who moved into their mansion on the estate. In time, she knew her husband spent time with other women, even before shown the facts. After she divorced him, she knew the day before it happened he would be mortally wounded by an enraged husband. She felt no remorse.
She was almost sixty when her father took an extended trip to Russia, returning five months later with a young bride, who disliked Veronika on sight. This stepmother considered Veronika a threat to her power and the eventual inheritance of her new husband’s wealth. Two years later, baby Anna was born to that union and the new wife’s hostility toward Veronika increased. Her father always showed devotion to his older daughter, a situation angering the new wife even more.
That spring, when a hundred lilac bushes blossomed around the estate, Veronika knew beforehand her stepmother would fall ill and die soon. With no children of her own, Veronika welcomed the chance to “parent” little Anna, but the child had a mind of her own, hungering for excitement resulting in constant trouble at school and risk-taking at home. In elementary school, Anna invited dares and took every one. In high school, she drove too fast, partied too hard, drank too much and wrecked her car numerous times.
Veronika knew when he failed to appear for breakfast one day that her father would die before nightfall. His will gave Veronika the estate and a money settlement to Anna, who left immediately to visit her mother’s relatives in Russia. She sent no word for five years but reappeared one day, now a sly, seductive beauty who asked to live at the estate. Veronika agreed so long as she caused no trouble.
“I sell real estate now,” Anna explained, but her older sister thought this far too tame for the adrenalin rushes Anna craved from living on the edge. Anna often stayed away for days, even weeks, with no explanation.
Veronika pulled her shawl around her shoulders and sniffed the air. Did ethics apply to prescience like hers? Was hers a gift or a curse? Should she intervene or ignore? Did it make a difference? Her warning not to ride only delayed her mother’s death while telling her father about the approaching soldiers changed the outcome.
Veronika sank back into the chair and closed her eyes. A faint aroma of lilacs drifted around her. She breathed deeply to shut out distraction, allowing the vision to come. A group of men sat in a circle, their faces twisted in cruel exuberance. They spoke oddly-accented English. She knew they plotted violence and death…death to thousands. Hate gleamed in their eyes. She recognized a few words as they spoke. This danger lurked near but not in Great Falls. Was the setting a warehouse? What explained their foreign-accented language and use of those specific words? Her eyes opened wide as a sudden, powerful cognizance dawned: terrorists!
She sat up in the chair. How could she prevent this danger from growing? Call the police? Say she had a vision with no specific leads to trace? Absurd! Yet if she did nothing, she felt certain monstrous results would happen. Minutes passed as she struggled with options.
At last she stood, gathered her purse and car keys, primed the security system protecting her home, climbed into her car and headed for the police station.
21
Friday, 11:46 AM
When Veronika entered the McLean District Police Station on Balls Hill Road, the on-duty policeman sitting behind bulletproof glass indicated a phone on the wall. She picked up the handset and put it to her ear.
“What can we do for you, Ma’am?” he asked from behind the protective window.
“I’d like to speak with the person in charge—the chief.”
“Sorry, he’s not here now. If you tell me what you need, maybe I can find someone to help you.”
“I…I know about something very dangerous that will happen soon.”
The reception cop tried to size her up and balance this against staff on duty at the station. “Just a minute, please.” He pressed a phone button and spoke briefly, his conversation muted by the heavy glass separating them. Into the lobby phone he said. “Please have a seat. He’s on his way.”
Veronika sat down and looked absently at newspapers on the coffee table. Picking up a copy of the McLean Connection weekly edition, she turned the pages idly, glancing with little interest at the articles until she stopped short at the photo of three smiling women. One woman in the picture drew her total attention. She closed her eyes, trying to grasp why.
“Hello, Ma’am,” said a deep, pleasant male voice.
Startled, Veronika’s eyes blinked open as her concentration diverted from the photographed woman to her reason for coming to the police station.
“I’m Detective Adam Iverson. How can I help you?”
She stood, still clutching the newspaper and told him her name. “Have you a place where we could talk more privately than this waiting room?” she asked.
“Of course. Come on back to my office.” He held the door open and she preceded him down the hall. “It’s the last door on your right.” As they entered his cubicle, he held the back of a chair to comfortably seat this elderly woman before settling into his own chair behind the desk.
He noticed her age and the dignity with which she moved and spoke, yet her clothes and hair-style looked as if she’d stepped out of an old European painting. Noting her nervousness in the unfamiliar police setting, where law-abiding citizens often felt uncomfortable, he began with small talk to put her at ease. “Fall’s a beautiful time of year in Virginia. Do you live nearby?”
“Yes, in Great Falls.”
He pushed the small talk another minute until she seemed calmer. “What brings you here today?” he asked in a friendly voice.
“Detective, this will sound strange to you, but I am clairvoyant. Since childhood. Not always right but right way too often for coincidence.”
Geez, he thought, freezing the smile on his face. Another kook with a rambling tale I must endure while I have better things to do. No choice but to hear her out. Maybe she’ll surprise me with something after all. “I don’t believe much in coincidence,” he said.
Taking this as encouragement, she continued. “The last two days I’ve felt growing dread about something terrible starting to happen close to us, somewhere in northern Virginia. Not Great Falls but perhaps McLean or Vienna. It will bring death to thousands of people.”
“Have you had this feeling other times or other places?” he probed.
“Nothing like this.” Her hands twisted together in her lap. “In a vision today, I saw ten men sitting in a circle. They’re foreign but not Oriental or African, yet dark-complexioned. By that I mean no blue eyes or blond hair. They wore American clothes and contemporary haircuts.”
“So…they could be any group of Americans?”
“No. They spoke accented En
glish but peppered it with words from a tongue I didn’t recognize. I speak English, Russian, German, French and recognize many Slavic words, but I am here because of two words they spoke which I have heard before.”
Interested now, Adam asked quickly, “And what were they?”
“Allah and jihad.”
22
Friday, Noon
Adam considered various implications of Veronika Verontsova’s two loaded words. He studied her carefully.
“You may think me eccentric,” she continued, “bringing you unverifiable information, but add it up as I did to see why I’m here. Try to put yourself in their position. Terrorists seek inventive ways to attack us, and we’ve avoided a major incident killing thousands of people since that horrible 9/11 incident in 2001. Their lack of success must increase their frustration and resolve. Osama Bin Laden’s death at American hands further outrages them. My clear look at the men, my certainty that danger emanates from them and something awful will happen nearby—all frighten me. Alerting the police is my first step, because you have direct lines to Homeland Security. If you don’t intend to contact them, tell me whom to call and I will. I don’t think we have much more time, maybe only a week, before they commit this terrible act.”
The wrinkled old woman’s sincerity convinced Adam she believed every word she spoke. And what if she was correct? If threat of such danger lurked in Fairfax County, police needed to know. “All right,” he said. “Please give me your contact information so we know how to get in touch with you. May I see your driver’s license?”
“Of course.” As she fumbled in her purse to retrieve the ID, the newspaper in her lap fell to the floor. She placed her license on Adam’s desk, retrieved the newspaper page with the photo and spread it out. A wave of connection again washed over Veronika as she studied the smiling woman’s picture. “Detective, I found this in your waiting room. This woman is about to become involved in the danger. I’m sure of it.” She turned the photo 180 degrees for Adam to see and pointed to the person about whom she spoke. “This woman…” She pointed to one of the three heads in the picture.
Adam’s jaw dropped as he stared at the face in the photo. He read the picture’s caption: “Darla Clark, Jeannie Meyer and Jennifer Shannon plan McLean Newcomer’s luncheon at Great Falls restaurant L’Auberge Chez Francois.” Her finger rested on the photo of his new mother-in-law.
Veronika watched Adam. “Your expression says you know this woman.”
Adam gave a nervous smile and changed the subject. “Who’s acting like a detective now?”
“The caption gives her name. I must talk to this Jennifer Shannon. She may help me better understand the danger confronting us. I can find her in the phone book, but if I approach her without introduction, I may upset her as I did you.”
Adam cleared his throat to buy time as he sorted out this development. “Why don’t I tell her about our meeting and give her your contact information? If she wants to talk to you, she’ll call. You’ll recognize her name when she does.”
“Thank you, Detective.”
“No, I thank you for coming to the station. Here’s my business card. Phone me with any more information about this.”
He walked her back down the hall, but before she went through the waiting room door she turned to shake his hand. “Goodbye, Detective.” Sniffing the air as if savoring an aroma, she stared at him, extracted her hand from the farewell gesture and looked at her fingers as if she’d never seen them before. “I…I see information about you. A new wife? An important career decision soon? A farm with a harmless old house that isn’t harmless at all, not for you. Proceed very carefully right now, young man.”
And then she was gone.
Adam stared as the door closed behind her. When surprise at her personal comments about his life wore off, he frowned. How could she know this about him? He’d dropped by the office this afternoon for a few minutes only to pick up a case file. But as he prepared to go home to help Hannah with the revamping at the farm, reception asked him to take this walk-in. His interview with Veronika Verontsova was pure accident. No way could she have researched him in advance, never mind personal insights not in any public records.
So how could she know?
The detective shook his head, trying to make sense of it. How should he take what she’d said today? Was she a well-meaning, dignified lunatic? More troubling, was she for real? He reached for the phone, then hesitated. Not understanding this himself, how could he explain it to Steve, a police buddy who’d recently left the McLean station to join Homeland Security? By itself, a single potential clue like this might appear irrelevant; yet alongside other pertinent clues it might fit a meaningful pattern. Nutsy as he feared this would sound, Steve should know.
He dialed his friend’s number.
23
Friday, 1:06 PM
Khadija returned from morning classes, pleased to find Ahmed back also. Her father had gone to his workplace for an hour. “Have you finished lunch?” she asked. He nodded. “Then have you a few minutes to look at the textbook I use for teaching? I brought an extra copy for you to keep if you’d like to read more later.”
“Thank you. I will read the book with pleasure.” Pleasure hardly described the thrill he felt. This gesture proved she thought of him at least once that day, whereas thoughts of her squeezed everything else out of his mind. And now this gift and her request to sit with him. He could hardly believe his good fortune.
“Then let’s go to the living room and I’ll explain it. Here, sit by me so you can see when I turn the pages. ” She eased onto the couch, patting the seat beside her.
Ahmed complied and, as he settled next to her, his nostrils filled with her fragrance. Was this haunting aroma perfume or perhaps a scented soap used to wash her hair? She wore no hijab. He marveled at her long hair swaying smoothly about her shoulders as she talked with animation. He breathed deeply, savoring the wonder of her closeness.
Though they sat apart on the couch without touching, Khadija’s profound nearness to Ahmed overwhelmed him. Conscious of this physical proximity as she talked about her ESL textbook, he concentrated hard to focus on her words rather than her closeness.
“Besides language and grammar, I teach my students practical skills like applying for a job. I also tell them about life in our country so they know better what to expect.” She traced a slender finger across the title on the workbook’s cover. ‘‘American Ways, An Introduction to American Culture.” Turning to a marked page, she read. “‘Until we are confronted by a different way of doing things, we assume everyone does things the same way we do and thus our own culture—our values, attitudes, behavior—is largely hidden from our view. When we spend time analyzing another culture, however, we begin to see our own more clearly and to understand some of the subtleties that motivate our behavior and our opinions.’” She asked, “Did you understand this?”
“It says my Middle-Eastern culture seems normal to me until compared with another way of life.
“Yes. If you can’t read the whole book, at least try Chapter Two about traditional American values and beliefs.” She turned to the chapter and pointed to a heading. “Individual Freedom. I tell my class this means the right of individuals to control their destiny without interference from a ruling noble class or government or religion or any other organized authority.”
He tried to absorb this. In Middle-Eastern culture, government, religion and education reinforced identical doctrines: submission to Allah, the one-and-only God who held everyone’s destiny in his hands. “Individual freedom” meant a Muslim’s choice to obey Allah or not. If you strayed, Sharia Law clamped hard on transgressions. Holy men interpreted Allah’s rules and “signs.” Good Muslims accepted these interpretations. Subtle variations existed among Shia, Sunni and other Islamic factions, but all agreed upon submission to one God as understood through the words of his prophet, Muhammad. All non-Muslims were Infidels. Therefore, everything Ahmed heard, saw and learned i
n his life thus far corroborated these as absolute truths. All else was heresy.
“The price paid for this freedom is self-reliance,” she continued. “That means individuals must rely on themselves or risk losing freedom. Americans believe they must stand on their own two feet because their destiny is in their hands.”
Ahmed shifted uncomfortably. During his conscious adult life, compliance earned praise in his country. They valued obedience and stringently discouraged questioning. Physical punishment might follow humiliation in front of classmates for questioning authority. The military camps he attended used similar social and physical deterrents to discourage independent thinking.
Khadija turned a page. “The Third Value is equality of opportunity. That means everyone has an equal chance to succeed in America. Everyone can better himself because there is no fixed condition for his whole life.”
“What does this mean, ‘no fixed condition’?”
“Some cultures stifle upward mobility.” Seeing his confused expression, she amplified. “In some cultures, if the father is a farmer or tailor or baker, his son must be also; then his son’s son and so on. They have little opportunity to rise to something better. So a farmer couldn’t become a teacher or a shopkeeper or a doctor. In America, with determination and hard work you can pursue any profession you wish. You might start poor, but with hard work you might become rich.”
He knew nothing of his own family. What was his father’s occupation? Without photos to reinforce childhood memories, he could hardly remember his parents’ faces. The school where the two men took him didn’t name his original village. From age five, he’d survived at the whim of those housing, feeding and indoctrinating him, learning early to please or suffer consequences. What future might have awaited him at home if his parents had lived?
Khadija’s voice brought him back to reality. “Here’s the Fourth Value I teach: the cost of equal opportunity is competition. So, if everyone has an equal chance to succeed in America, then it’s their duty to try. Competition is part of growing up in America.”