The Architect of Revenge: A September 11th Novel

by T. Ainsworth

  Wherever he went, the smell of wood smoke and fires cooking lamb, fish, or offal parts greeted him from the crisscrossed alleys and markets. He’d stop to taste the cuisine and enjoy the company of men sitting near piles of rugs, spice jars, and mountains of shoes. Returning to the hostel often late in the evening, he’d smell his armpits and his stool in the commode. He reeked of curry, onions, and coriander. That was his intent. He no longer smelled like a foreigner.

  As his understanding of the cultural archeology expanded, Morgan ventured closer to the crowded ghettos where the peons, craftsmen, and servants lived in tenements, and gangs of unskilled men from the tribal territories would leave to work day and night. Those who remained watched for trespassers, guarding neighborhoods where the police did not come—and the law was Sharia justice.

  One morning Morgan looked in the mirror at his mangy hair. His beard overflowed his cupped hand—improper by custom.

  “Time for a haircut and trim,” he said. “Perfect. It’s Friday.”

  A visit to a ghetto barbershop would give Morgan a measure of how he was adapting in his character. The experience could be dangerous, possibly treacherous—all the better.

  On the drooping bed, Morgan placed the satchel in his lap and gently ran his fingers along the gray rope woven in a serpentine pattern over a sturdy fabric shell. The bag contained everything he owned. When he slept, he put his leg through the strap. When he was out, it was always over a shoulder.

  A man tried to yank the satchel away once as Morgan stood on a busy sidewalk. He looked into the thief’s eyes, and asked in terse English if he wished to be castrated. The man stepped back into the crowd and was gone.

  Morgan unzipped the satchel and placed the revolver, bullets, clothes, passport, and Koran beside him. A fingernail picked at a thread inside. Created by a tailor in Berwyn, the secure thick lining was quilted and had numerous sealed little pouches. One split open. Acquired months earlier from numerous Chicago banks, a pleat of well-aged rupees went into Morgan’s pocket. The satchel contained enough cash to get him wherever he needed to go, buy what he needed to buy, or bribe whomever he needed to bribe. There was plenty.

  He put everything back inside the satchel and left the hostel.

  Morgan got out of the tonga and stepped over a crack in the pavement, knowing the minuscule boundary marked the demarcation of two distinct worlds. He briefly looked around. He was already being scrutinized, his every movement suspect.

  A distant woman standing on a crumbling curb drew her headscarf higher across her face. Her act of modesty was an ominous warning that visitors were not welcome.

  In respect, Morgan lowered his gaze and kept walking, counting his heartbeats.

  Normal—almost slow. Then he smiled.

  No graffiti on the wall

  The neighborly request scrawled on the cracked masonry was to the point. He heard young voices and looked toward the source of the gleeful sounds.

  With magnetic curiosity, children gathered in an expanding circle around him. A small boy raced with his friends, trying to keep up. Suddenly blue in the face, he stopped to crouch and pant. Morgan knew immediately. The child had Tetralogy of Fallot—the same heart problem that killed his sister. Without surgery Morgan knew the child would be dead in a year. The image was a stark reminder of his distant past but no longer his concern.

  Morgan kept walking deeper into the ghetto.

  “Najis! Their entire being lives in the cesspool!”

  From a radio distorted oratory of the khutbah and cyclic cheers of the crowd echoed from buildings across the street, the mullah’s sermon blasted from Morgan’s destination.

  “Unclean! Every pore! All liquids in the filthy bodies! If they live among us, they have no solace! No hope! Shave their heads! Make them identifiable to the pure!”

  Morgan entered the shop, greeting the sole barber. Enjoying their morning caucus, several men seated in scattered chairs nearby nodded with collapsed smiles. Morgan nodded back and sat down. The barber gave him green mint tea served in white china and stoked the incense thurible.

  “Unless they live under these conditions…”

  The exhortation from the radio continued.

  “The vilest of creatures…upon which the serpent crawls…have no protection from the sword!” The sermon flowed like an indulgent river as the revilement amplified. “Those who do not believe…will burst in flames! And his wife…laden with maggots…will have a rope stretch her neck!”

  The crowd’s enthusiasm climaxed.

  “No leniency! Banish them to Hell!”

  The barber shut off the radio.

  “What is your name, friend?” asked the barber.

  “Ali. Barif Ali.”

  “Where do you come from?” asked one of the men.

  “Beirut,” Morgan answered.

  After he got the passport, Morgan found a travel guide about Lebanon aboard the Sagar and studied it intensely. He could comment about the neighborhoods, culture and history, but hoped their questioning wouldn’t get more specific. The book was a decade old.

  “Why are you here?” asked a customer.

  “I wish to travel this beautiful country for a time, Inshallah.”

  The barber flapped a towel across the chair to scatter any hair while his other hand offered the seat to his new customer.

  “Barif…please.”

  Morgan sat down with the satchel resting on his feet. The man wrapped him in a herringbone gown, folded a tissue-paper collar around his neck and then pulled a comb through his hair.

  The barber stepped back to study the shape of Morgan’s head and his beard. With a learned nod to what he needed to do, he picked up a pair of scissors.

  “Did you read the damn British defeated us in cricket?” the barber asked.

  “Hyenas,” Morgan said.

  Their communal irritation with the outcome became intense. Suddenly the barber shifted the conversation. His beads of sweat concentrated the emotion brought earlier by the speaker on the radio.

  “Dhimmis! Jews and Christians…all guilty!” the barber said.

  Morgan agreed heartily.

  “They spread mischief in the land…the satellite MTV!”

  The sharp scissors chattered with increasing speed. Morgan sensed the barber’s animated passion as the metal blades gnashed together.

  “Pour molten lead into the ears of those listening to the music of whores! Execute the Zionists who sell the filth!” the barber said as he held up a chipped mirror to show off his handiwork.

  Morgan nodded his approval. “You should work in Beirut! God has blessed you with the gift of supernatural hands.”

  Manual hair clippers appeared.

  “My electric shears blew up.”

  The man showed him the metal remnants with frazzled wires.

  “The electricity is deadly and it goes on and off…mostly off,” he said. “The government is a puppet of Satan.” He paused to ignite the incense again. “Their CIA trained Mujahedeen to fight the Russians. Now Satan wants us dead too. So they cut off the electricity, and the water makes us sick!”

  From the sidelines, a man said, “But God is on our side.”

  The clippers mowed through Morgan’s sideburns then shaped his beard. Soon he was lathered and tilted flat on his back. The straight razor removed the stray stubble from his cheeks and neck. Occasionally the barber would slap the blade across a leather strop clipped to the old cast-iron chair. Without pause the barber continued his railing—his now raspy voice unremitting in conviction.

  “We want Sharia law…and free markets.” The razor was moving across the taught skin above Morgan’s carotid artery. “We will smite the necks of the foreign meddlers!”

  “Spill their blood in the gutters for the dogs to lick,” said another voice.

  “I, my brother, my cousins, our clans, our tribes against the world,” responded Morgan.

  “Muntaz!” exclaimed one of the patrons. Wonderful!

  The saying wa
s often spoken to their children from an early age: Unity above all.

  The barber held up the mirror a final time. Morgan admired his salt-and-pepper beard.

  “Tell us, Barif…” The questions resumed from the cohort of men. “How long have you been here?”

  Morgan squinted, looking confused. “Two weeks perhaps.”

  “Did you arrive on a ship?”

  Morgan had to quickly manage the accelerating interrogation.

  “I traveled overland,” he answered. “So many honorable people…and beautiful places! I wish I could see everything!”

  “Men who work at the ports speak of the disappearance of an American aboard a freighter.” The man cleared his throat.

  What went wrong? His pronunciation perhaps…

  “I have not heard such,” said Morgan. “My journey was long, and through the countryside!”

  The situation was deteriorating rapidly.

  “We would love to see the places. Show us your passport.”

  Morgan’s body remained relaxed. There were five other people in the room. Shooting them would be too loud, but the scissors and razor were close by on a pedestal. They would make a bloody mess but if necessary provide a means for escape.

  “They hold it where I stay,” Morgan said calmly.

  “Ah,” the barber laughed, breaking the subtle animus. “You are smart to keep it there. Many thieves on the street.”

  “Friends,” Morgan rose, slinging the satchel over his shoulder. “I must be on my way.”

  “Brother, we invite you to prayers and fellowship,” one of them said. The request was cordial but sinister in its delivery.

  “Your generosity is more abundant than the stars, my brother,” said Morgan. Such a gathering would not bode well for his neck. “Perhaps another time…Inshallah.”

  The man nodded in silence.

  Morgan paid the barber, shaking his hand before looking a final time at both sides of his head in the mirror. He rubbed his beard. “What fine work! My friend, I will give your name to all who ask!”

  The barber nodded in thanks.

  “Peace be with you,” Morgan said to the group, raising his hand to bid the men goodbye.

  “Allahu Akbar!—God is great!—” he said with a broad smile and walked out of the shop.

  Lying on the mattress, drenched in sticky air, Morgan was awake. It was mercifully quiet. The couple in the next room had finally stopped fucking.

  He heard the grinding squeal: bad brakes.

  That wasn’t unusual in Karachi.

  The sound came again but lasted longer as the automobile was too quick taking a turn. Morgan’s ears reached out to listen more intently.

  Another squeal—closer. He estimated the distance.

  Sounds like that blue Toyota…

  He had seen it twice on his way back to his room.

  The squealing was closer.

  The grinding ceased at the front of the hostel. In the darkness he slipped toward the window and looked out, using a small mirror.

  A police car pulled up immediately behind the Toyota. All the automobiles’ doors opened at once. Machine-pistol bolts cycled.

  No coincidence.

  They would find his room empty.

  Morgan hung the unzipped satchel over his shoulder so his hand could drop inside to fire the loaded .357.

  He stepped into the hallway, threw a leg over a back window’s threshold, and scaled down. Receding deep into the garbage-filled alley, he paused in the opacity to look back.

  A flashlight beam lit the corridor then shined out the window, painting the alley with light.

  “Ali!” a man shouted.

  Morgan recognized the voice. It belonged to the man at the barbershop who had invited him to prayers. He had to have been the one who notified the police.

  Morgan heard a woman’s shriek.

  They had entered the adjacent room.

  “Charmouta!” one of the men shouted. Whore!

  Morgan had seen her at the hostel with several men. She was likely an outcast, earning a living the only way she could.

  Her screams pulsed to sobs as they beat her.

  Morgan knew the punishment wouldn’t end until she was dead. There was nothing he could do to help. His haircut had cost her life.

  “You do not want to meet me again,” Morgan uttered, slipping deeper into the darkness.

  He emerged onto the next street, zipped the satchel, and walked toward the intersection. He was near Korangi Road and the Towers of Silence. On the ancient mounds inside, the Zoroastrians placed the corpses of their dead for the buzzards.

  Morgan vaulted the wrought-iron fence around the towers, dropped to the ground, and crawled. Hungry vultures would provide cover until morning, when a train ticket would carry him north.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Alexandria, Virginia October 28, 2003

  Jericho went for a run when she got home. She needed the athletic escape from the tedium that began in the morning with the exhausting committee meeting.

  Disappointed, she cut her jog short and came home to a hot shower. Wrapped in a warm terrycloth robe, she poured a glass of chardonnay and let the armchair devour her wilted body. After a few sips, she was snoring gently. When she shifted a little, some of the briefings on her lap fell to the carpet.

  The phone rang. Both eyes snapped open.

  “Good evening, Elaine.”

  “Cottrell?”

  The two hadn’t spoken for two weeks. He’d been in California with his grandchildren on a vacation.

  “I suppose you’re dusting your townhouse,” he laughed.

  She was still drowsy, making his deep voice sound like winter wind blowing over the Wisconsin cornfields—a faraway remembrance.

  “No, just…reading,” she lied.

  “Girl, you need to get out more.”

  “God love you, Cottrell…you never stop trying.”

  “We need to talk privately,” the admiral said.

  “Okay, going secure.”

  It was rare for a senior analyst to have a STU phone at home, but during her time working at the Annex, one was installed so she could take calls from distant time zones. When she went to the NGA, Herndon made certain it stayed.

  While waiting for the connection, she took another sip of the wine. The sweetness stuck in her mouth.

  “So, Elaine, you didn’t get raked over the coals too badly, did you?”

  “I assume, Cotty, you’re not speaking in the abstract. Is that the reason we went secure?”

  “Just snooping about the meeting. Wanted to hear your thoughts on how it went…plus I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “I’m confident I represented your office with proper—”

  “In other words,” Herndon said, “you loved it.”

  “Not really, sir,” Jericho said, but he was right.

  In his absence he had asked her to represent the NGA at the Nuclear Committee meeting. Jericho appreciated the admiral’s confidence, but taking his seat at the conference table put her next to Rushworth. With the presence of another woman so close, Rushworth seemed to be more empowered beyond her normal Machiavellian self.

  “Welcome, Elaine,” she’d said, oozing charm. “I know the gentlemen will take pleasure with the company of an additional woman.” With flourish she filled Jericho’s water glass, wiping the lost drops with a napkin. “Girls seem to do the housekeeping.”

  “Commander Jericho,” the admiral laughed, “I know you’re fibbing. Priscilla is a condescending ego-saturated nutcase.”

  “I hope the NSA isn’t listening,” she said.

  “Let them,” he countered. “She’s your typical political appointee. Darlin’, better get used to it. ‘Cause I bet you might be sitting there again.”

  “I appreciate your faith, sir.”

  An air-conditioned chill descended over her. A small blanket on her legs covered all but the Minnie Mouse bedroom slippers, a young niece’s Christmas gift and a private side n
o one would ever see.

  “Anyway, Lainey, I’ve got a bit more info on your sweet little ol’ freighter that wasn’t mentioned at the meeting, got it from one of my sources.”

  “Do tell.” Jericho yawned. “I’m finally awake.”

  “Ah!” he said, “I knew it! You were sleeping!”

  “Because I’m overworked and underpaid.”

  “Of course!” The admiral chuckled. “I’ll tell you, they’re dumber than stumps over there! Using open frequencies, forgetting we’re listening. Karachi port authority attempted to move our favorite freighter to a more isolated area. Seems she was taking up space from paying customers. When the port pilot tried to power up the starboard bow thrusters, breaker alarms go screaming.”

  She could hear his pen clicking.

  “And guess the ol’ problem.”

  “Cotty, it’s too late for more theater.”

  “It’s so darn good!” he exclaimed. “The wiring harness in the forward bulkhead shorted! So what do the nuggets do? Open the hatch! Pew! Putrid gas blows right into the engineer’s face! Flattens the guy! They had to call an ambulance.”

  “Let me guess,” Jericho said. “Dead bodies.”

  “Yup, Lainey. Two of them! See…isn’t this fun?” The admiral didn’t balk at describing the details. “Their drippings basted the wires!”

  “Yuck.”

  “The coroner reports—”

  “So they weren’t Muslims,” Jericho injected.

  Pakistani murder investigations required autopsies, but Islamic law wasn’t so accommodating.

  “Correcto! One sounds like that big Somali who came ashore in Houston—had a single wound through an ear, deep in his brain. The captain had his heart torn open from the inside.”