“Is he doing okay?” asked Mrs. Gore with a quavering voice.
“He’s doing fine. He came out of anesthesia and we spoke a bit.”
“Did he say anything?”
“He’s just eager to see what SIPNI can do, that’s all.”
“Naturally!” Mrs. Gore snapped her fingers. “We’re all eager for that. Will we be able to talk to him soon?”
“After we move him to the Intensive Care Unit. Right now he’s in recovery until the anesthesia wears off.”
“He’s a brave boy, isn’t he, Doctor?”
“Yes, he is.”
Kathleen Brown looked at Ali with the same put-on thoughtfulness that she had displayed in the operating room. “Dr. O’Day, is there any evidence that the SIPNI device is working?”
Jamie had asked almost the same question. Ali did not have the answer for him then, nor did she have it now. “It’s too early to say,” she replied.“At this point, SIPNI’s sending out recruitment pulses, scanning Jamie’s brain to find all the loose ends, and working out a map of possible connections. In our animal experiments, it took several hours for the first functional neural nets to reorganize. Complete restoration of function took a couple of weeks. But those were dog and monkey brains. Jamie’s brain is more complex, and his version of SIPNI is more complex, too. It could take more time or less time. We’ll have to wait and see.”
As Ali spoke, Kathleen Brown suddenly seemed to lose interest in her, and turned to look toward the door. Ali followed her gaze. She saw a tall man at the threshold, dressed in light brown pants and a midnight blue blazer that fit closely about his burly shoulders and chest. He was well-tanned, his skin finely creased like an outdoorsman. His neatly combed black hair showed flecks of gray, making him seem about forty years of age. But the most striking thing about him was the way he stood—at ease yet purposeful, like a captain at the helm of a steady ship, or a country squire surveying his manor. The mysterious man did not speak, but after catching Ali’s eye he nodded, signaling that it was for her that he had come. Ali was puzzled, for she had never seen him before. Offering apologies to Kathleen Brown, she got up and went to the door.
“Excuse me. Are you looking for someone?”
“Harry Lewton, chief security officer for the medical center. I’d like you to come down to my office, Dr. O’Day. Just for a minute.”
She was startled to hear him address her by name. “I’m rather busy right now,” she said, gesturing toward Jamie’s family and the camera crew.
“I can see that. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t urgent.”
“What is this about?”
“It would be better not to talk about it here. My office would be more private.”
Dr. Helvelius was watching from his armchair. When Ali failed to return immediately to her seat, he got up and pushed his way into the tête-à-tête. “Problem?” he asked.
“Just a minor security matter,” said Harry. “It won’t take long.”
“You’re damned right it won’t.” Helvelius scrunched up his nose, pushing his glasses higher so he could read the name on Harry’s ID. “Can’t you see what w-we’re doing here? You have no right to bother us now.”
“I’m afraid that I must insist, Dr. Helvelius.”
Helvelius turned brusquely toward Ali. “Would you like me to call Dr. G-G-Gosling’s office?”
Ali sighed. “No. No, it’s all right. I’ll be right back.”
“If he gives you trouble, p-page me. I need you today, Ali.”
Helvelius said no more, but cocked his head and scowled as Ali stepped into the hallway. Harry gently closed the glass door on him.
“Do you know who you were just talking to?” said Ali. “This had better be important.”
“Let’s go this way,” said Harry. He led her across the Promenade, a glass-enclosed court humming with echoes of footsteps and carts and gurneys, and into an empty elevator. He pressed the button for the first basement level.
“I saw you on television this morning,” he said in a small-talk tone of voice. “Very impressive, what you’re doing. It’s all over my head, of course, but I can see that it’s a big deal for medical science.”
Ali replied with a chary smile. Out of the corner of her eye she stole a closer look at Harry Lewton. He had a prizefighter’s face—jutting cheekbones, broken nose, and long permanent folds on either side of his mouth. Although she imagined that some women would have found him handsome, he had the kind of man’s face that typically repelled her—coarse and unintellectual. But there was something else, something out of place. His eyes. She glanced several times at his caramel-colored eyes, mobile and perceptive, spoked at the corners by creases that hinted at gentle humor and even sympathy. Because of his eyes she wasn’t sure what to make of him.
“Wasn’t there a Code White this morning?” she asked.
“Um-hmm.”
“Is it over yet?”
Harry shook his head.
“No? Then don’t you have something more important to do than pester me? What is this about, anyway? Illegal parking on the traffic circle? Overdue library books?”
Harry cocked his head and smiled. “It will only take a few minutes. Believe me, I wouldn’t bother a big shot like you if I didn’t have to.”
“I’m not a big shot,” she replied tartly. “I’m just an assistant professor—a couple rungs from the bottom of the faculty ladder. I don’t even have my own lab, just a small K99 grant that’s supposed to help me find my independence one of these days. It’s the team I work with that’s big.”
Harry, still smiling, turned to her with a direct, penetrating look that unnerved her. “From what I’ve seen, it looks like your day has arrived,” he said.
There was a ding, and the elevator doors opened.
“Just to the right here, and across the hall,” said Harry.
He led her through the control room, where she saw one woman and three or four men studying a bank of video surveillance monitors. At a door in back, Harry swiped his badge, pressed his thumb against the glass plate of a laser scanner, and entered the office as soon as he heard the door lock click. Inside, Ali saw three men staring grimly at her from behind a long mahogany desk. This tribunal—for so it seemed to be—consisted of a small Asian in a black suit, a tall African American, and a beefy, red-haired Caucasian in a blue police uniform with twin silver captain’s bars on his collar. They made no sign of greeting as she entered. The silence was broken only by the rattle of a flimsy metal and fiberglass chair, which Harry placed in an empty area in the middle of the room.
Ali glared at Harry as he walked behind the desk and seated himself in a tall leather chair, in the very midst of the tribunal. He’s set me up. Whatever is happening here, it’s no “minor security matter.”
A cool impression was called for. With as much dignity as she could muster, she sat in the chair Harry had provided for her, primly locking her ankles. She waited through an uncomfortable silence, her knees pointed to one side, as though expressing an unconscious wish to head for the door. The coiled stethoscope in her pocket jangled as she adjusted the knee-length white coat she wore over her blue scrub suit. She clasped her hands in her lap to suppress her nervous habit of twirling her finger around the lanyard of her ID badge. But she said nothing, asked nothing. She forced the men who had summoned her to make the first move.
It was the Asian who spoke. “Good morning, Dr. O’Day,” he said in an officious tone. “I am Special Agent Raymond Lee, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This is my colleague Special Agent Terrell Scopes, and over there is Captain Glenn Avery, of the Chicago Police Department.”
“Am I in trouble?” Ali asked coldly.
“No, certainly not. We just have a few questions.” From his jacket pocket, Lee took out a digital voice recorder, about the size of a pack of gum, and laid it on the desk. “For the purposes of accuracy, this interview is being recorded. This is as much for your benefit as ours. Do you object?”
&
nbsp; “No,” she said. But her eyes spoke otherwise. Of course I object, they said. I object to being brought down here this way. I object to answering any questions from you at all.
“Are you aware that this hospital is currently operating under a Code White?”
Ali glowered at Harry, who looked back with a face of stone. “A bomb threat, yes,” she said curtly.
“Could you state your full name for us, please?”
“O’Day, Ali, MD, FRCSC, FACS.”
“Have you ever used any other name?”
Ali shifted in her chair. She felt her own hand touch her throat. The question had surprised her. “Excuse me. Do I need an attorney here?”
“To state your name?”
“I am not comfortable answering questions without knowing why they are being asked.”
“Of course, it is your right to consult an attorney. You may use that telephone to call one, if you wish. Advise him to meet you at FBI Headquarters, 2111 West Roosevelt Road.”
Lee’s tone was matter-of-fact, but the threat was obvious. “Are you arresting me?” asked Ali.
“No, but I do have the power to hold you for questioning, for up to twenty-four hours.”
Ali leaned forward, pushing against the armrests of her chair with both hands, as though she were about to get up. She dared not show weakness in the face of such intimidation. If she did, they would be all over her. “Excuse me, but I have a patient in critical condition. If you’ve been watching television, you would know that there is a very important experiment in progress. I don’t have time for idle questions.”
“And we, Dr. O’Day, have a bomb threat to concern ourselves with. The quickest way for you to get back to your patient is to answer our questions freely and candidly. These are not provocative questions, Dr. O’Day. I have simply asked you whether you have ever used any name other than O’Day, Ali, MD, FRCSC, FACS.”
“Yes.”
Lee looked at her expectantly, but she added nothing more. “And what would that name be?” he finally asked.
“My birth name was Aliyah. Aliyah Al-Sharawi.”
“Aliyah Sabra Al-Sharawi?”
Ali threw up her hands. “Yes. If you know that, why did you ask me?”
“Were you born in Masr El-Gedida, Egypt?”
“Yes. Heliopolis is another name for it. It’s a suburb of Cairo.”
“You are currently a non-naturalized foreign resident of the United States?”
“I am a Lawful Permanent Resident. I have a green card.”
“By virtue of your marriage to Kevin O’Day?”
“No. My father came here on an H1-B visa when I was seven years old. He was a cardiologist. I have been here legally all of my life, except for my medical school training at McGill University in Montreal.”
“Why aren’t you a United States citizen?”
Ali looked away, toward the file cabinet on the left side of the room. Why are they asking this? Is it a test? How much do they already know? “I applied for citizenship,” she said, a little less assertively. “The application was rejected.”
“That’s very unusual. Why was it rejected?”
“By virtue of … family connections. Certain undesirable connections.”
“Undesirable in what way?”
“Politically undesirable. It was just after September 11.”
“You would have been at least twenty-five years old then. Why did you wait so long to file an application? Why didn’t you apply, say, when you were eighteen?”
Ali paused. There was a painful familiarity to these questions. “My family opposed it.”
“Why?”
“My parents were very conservative. They expected me to return to Egypt to marry. I had been promised to a cousin of mine.”
“But you didn’t return?”
“No. When I finished medical school, I decided that I had the right to choose my own life.”
“Is your father still living?”
“No. He and my mother are both deceased.”
“Do you have any other relatives living in this country?”
Here it comes. Ali looked down at her own feet, rocking them back and forth ever so slightly, as she waited for the questions to lead to their inevitable object. She knew these men. She had met their kind before. Here they sit, like a row of vultures. They’ll peck and tear until not a shred of dignity remains, until I crumple at their feet like a pile of bones picked clean.
She was determined not to go along meekly this time. “I don’t know,” she said, lifting her voice defiantly.
Lee appeared to take no note of her challenge. For a long while, he sat, fiddling with a paper on the desk. Then, casually—as though he were simply thinking aloud—he asked, “Who is Rahman Abdul-Shakoor Al-Sharawi?”
Ali started at the mention of the name, as much as she had known it was coming. “My brother. My half-brother,” she replied.
“Which?”
“Half-brother. My father’s son by a different mother.”
“And where does he live?”
“I don’t know,” she said, heavily enunciating each syllable.
“Is he in the United States?”
She shuddered at the suggestion. Here? Have I not left him a thousand years behind me, to stalk and rage in another world? “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in three years. Not since my father’s funeral.”
“Was he in the United States when you saw him last?”
“Yes.”
“How did he gain entry into the country at that time?”
“I don’t know.”
“He didn’t move here with you and your father and mother?”
“No. He’s more than ten years older than I. He didn’t live with us at that time.”
“He came later, then. About five years ago. On a student visa, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t?”
“No, I don’t. My brother and I have not been close.”
“You mean, your half-brother.”
Why are they fussing about such minor details? Do they think I’m lying? “Yes. My half-brother. He doesn’t approve of my way of life. We have had very little to talk about. He was present for a time in this country—I don’t know for how long or why. I saw him occasionally in my father’s house.”
“Was he a member of an organization called the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know what the Muslim Brotherhood is?”
Be careful what you deny. This is a trap. “It’s a political organization. An opposition to the government. It’s been outlawed. Some say it is terrorist. Others say it is working for democracy. It claims to work for social justice and the eradication of poverty.”
“Is your brother a member of the Al-Quds Martyrs’ Brigade?”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
“I know nothing about it. All I can tell you is that I am not a member of either. I am not political. Nor am I religious. I am a doctor. Medicine absorbs my whole life.”
Avery raised his eyebrows. “Do you pray?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you pray? It’s a simple question.”
Every muscle of her body stiffened. This new tack of questioning was something she did not expect—and it was not aimed at Rahman. “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” she replied.
“You said that you were not religious. I’m just trying to make sure what you meant by that. Muslims have a special way of praying, don’t they?”
“I meant that I am not religious. Nothing more, nothing less. I did not say that I was an atheist.”
“You don’t wear a head scarf.”
“It’s called a hijab,” said Ali, emphasizing the word contemptuously, as though speaking to a child. “No, I don’t wear it.”
“Why not?” asked Lee.
She felt a cold sweat break out on
her chest and along her spine. This was not about the hijab. They were trying to implicate her. But in what? In the Brotherhood? An old, deep current of fear rose to the surface. She knew she had to hide it, for men like these smelled fear like bloodhounds. Looking down, she saw her fingers entangled in Jamie’s lanyard. She abruptly pulled them free. “I refuse to answer any more questions along these lines,” she declared. “These are improper questions. Even as a resident alien, my freedom of religion—or freedom from religion, as the case may be—is protected by the constitution, by federal statute, and by case law. If you persist in this line of interrogation, I will engage an attorney to file a complaint.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lee. “We’re just trying to get a sense of who you are.”
The condescension in his voice infuriated her all the more. “I am a doctor. I am employed by this hospital. That’s who I am. If you wish to accuse me of something, do so. But I resent being subjected to offensive and demeaning insinuations that, simply because I have a Muslim name and background, I am something less than loyal. There are at least a hundred Muslims employed in this medical center. Most of them are residents or staff physicians. Are you planning to call every one of us down here to undergo this absurd questioning? Do you seriously think that I may have planted a bomb in this hospital?”
“I don’t rule anything out,” said Lee.
“Then you are a fool!” Ali blurted. She knew instantly that she had gone too far. It was dangerous to get carried away in front of these men. Fear and anger were traps, and at all costs, she had to keep control over herself. But she felt like she was losing the battle. Old humiliations of the past had gotten a grip on her. She tried to adopt a more moderate, reasonable tone, but she could not disguise the tense vibrato in her voice. “I told you, I am a doctor. I have dedicated all the powers I have to the preservation of human life. I have taken an oath to help the sick and dying. ‘First, do no harm’ is what I have sworn. Could such a person become a murderer? Could I possibly be so lacking in mercy, or integrity, or judgment as to want to kill my own patients? And what of myself? Would I place a bomb, or countenance anyone placing a bomb, in the place where I myself live sixteen hours of every day? That would be suicide, would it not? What reason could I have for doing this? I would have to be insane. I ask you, do I seem to you to be insane?”
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