Love Thy Neighbor

by Mark Gilleo

  Chapter 5

  The beat up black Volkswagen Golf turned around at the north end of Dorchester Lane and made the trip down the street in the opposite direction. They watched the houses pass by in descending number order and slowly pulled up to the curb in front of number 202.

  Karim, Syed, and Abu looked at each other. Their dark black eyes exuded a seriousness that sent shivers down the spines of everyone they encountered, most recently the young girl behind the counter of the gas station mini-mart near Culpepper, Virginia.

  Syed, his head touching the fabric on the ceiling of the car, looked at the number scribbled on the torn corner of white paper. “That’s it,” he said to the two other men. He folded the Northern Virginia street map and shoved it into the small pocket on the lower half of the door.

  Karim killed the lights and turned off the engine. All three men looked around at their surroundings and tried to get their bearings. “Who goes?” Karim asked, his hands still on the wheel. His unshaven face hid the gauntness in his cheeks, the physical effects of weeks on the road easier to hide than the psychological ones.

  No one moved. Karim spoke again. “Either someone volunteers, or we all go.” Thirty hours after meeting in a truck stop outside of Houston, trust was earned slowly. Suspicion, even of one another, was their shared lifeline. “Then we all go,” Karim added with a very slight accent. Syed and Abu nodded in silent agreement.

  Karim looked around. “Let me pull the car on the other side of the street and away from the front of these two houses. I would prefer to be out of sight and heading in the right direction if we have to leave suddenly.”

  The neighborhood was quiet. The clock on the dash read 2:13. Give or take an hour, they were on schedule. It was easier said than done when every step was revealed by a distant master on intermittent communication according to an unknown timetable.

  Syed opened the passenger door and unfolded his six-foot-three frame from the small German compact. Abu, the smallest of the three, pushed open the back door and a loud screech rang out into the night. All three men ducked as if the sound were gunfire, as if stooping would save their lives. “Quiet,” Karim said, the white of his eyes visible in the darkness.

  “If we had a better car…” Abu answered

  “The car is fine,” Karim answered, usurping the role of leader. “Let’s go.”

  Syed led the way across the yard and the three men turned their back to a stiff wind. Flakes of snow whipped by in streaks of white. They knocked lightly on the door, waited, and knocked harder. “Where are they?” Syed asked, towering over Abu and Karim.

  “What makes you think it is a ‘them?’” Karim asked. “We have no idea who is on the other side of that door.”

  Abu, his cheek scarred, checked the handle of the ten-inch knife in the small of his back.

  Maria Hayden’s eyes had opened with the screeching car door. She slept light. Always had. The side-effects of the myriad medications she took daily had stolen a decade of shut-eye from her life. A faint knock on the door forced her to sit up in bed. The second knock led her to slip on her bathrobe and walk in short strides to the front door. She watched through the stretched tunnel-view of the peephole as the hand of a dark-skinned man reached towards her door and knocked again. Her heart skipped a beat. She let go of the edge of her robe and leaned closer to the peephole. She placed her palms on the wood panels of the door and switched to her right eye. The fourth knock was even louder and Maria jumped slightly, her right hand hitting the chain on the unlatched chain lock over the deadbolt.

  The subtle but unmistakable sound of metal hitting the door brought the unknown standoff to a pause. Karim glanced up at Syed’s face then shifted his stare to Abu. The group froze. After seconds that passed like hours, Karim broke the silence.

  “Assalamu alaikum. We have traveled a great distance and pray for your hospitality.”

  Abu shook his head.

  Karim repeated the standard Arabic greeting followed by the specific words he had memorized long ago.

  Syed spoke to his two accomplices. “Something is not right. Let’s go.”

  Abu quickly agreed with the taller Syed. “He’s right; let’s go.” Karim took one look at the Hayden’s front door and the numbers 202 that ran down vertically. Without speaking he nodded and flicked his head towards the car. Maria Hayden watched as the three men vanished beyond the vision of her peephole. Hands shaking, she took one more look outside the edge of the living room window and saw nothing but darkness. She walked back into her bedroom and opened the phone book to the listings in the blue pages.

  The three men waited in the darkness of the black car to see if the neighborhood had noticed them. A porch light three houses away was the only company for the increasing wind and heavier flakes of snow. Karim started the car as Syed checked the scrap piece of paper with the house number on it. Abu cursed from the backseat. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Karim hit the headlights and Syed yelled.

  Standing in front of the car in a winter jacket and black hijab, Ariana stared at the three men with an expressionless face.

  “What the hell?” Karim asked as Ariana approached the side of the car. She knocked on the driver’s side window which Karim rolled down with the manual handle.

  “I believe you have the wrong house.”

  Karim and Abu looked at Syed who sheepishly consulted the number on the paper for the tenth time. “It’s the house number I was told.”

  Ariana stared through him. “I’m going to give you instructions and you are to follow them exactly. There is a Giant supermarket about a mile from here off Curtis Trail Boulevard. It is open twenty-four hours a day. It’s not too far from 395 and there are always other cars. Park in the side lot, away from the main road. Go into the store and get some bread, milk, and whatever else you want to eat. I will meet you in the side parking lot when you get out of the store. Be ready to get whatever you need from the car. You will be leaving it there.”

  “Why milk and bread?” Karim asked.

  “Because I need milk and bread,” Ariana answered.

  “How do we know we can trust you?” Abu piped in from the back seat.

  “Because I haven’t killed you already,” Ariana answered.

  The three men in the car paused momentarily. Karim nodded and put the car into first gear. Ariana watched as the black VW drove out of the neighborhood. She went into her house, grabbed a black cylindrical item from under the sink and headed for her car.

  Maria Hayden picked the beige phone off the stand on the bedside table. Hands shaking, she unfurled the curly wire that ran between the handset and the base of the phone. She pinched the receiver between her ear and shoulder and carefully punched the numbers as she read them from the phone book. She listened to three rings before a woman’s voice answered from the other end.

  “Central Intelligence Agency.”

  “Hi,” Maria said nervously. “My name is Maria Hayden and I would like to report some terrorists.”

  The soothing voice on the other end of the phone showed no emotion. “Yes. What is your location?”

  “Arlington, Virginia.”

  “And where are the terrorists?”

  “They were at my front door.”

  “What were they doing?”

  “They were knocking.”

  “Can you describe them for me?”

  “Three Middle Eastern men. One was tall. One was shorter. The other had a beard.”

  “When did this occur?”

  “About five minutes ago.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “They disappeared?”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ms. Hayden?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know they were terrorists?”

  “What else would they be?”

  “Of course,” the woman replied from the three person call center staffed in an unnamed building in downtown McLean not far from Langley.
“Could I get your address and phone number, please?”

  “Sure,” Maria answered. She gave the information slowly, carefully spelling out her address in full and repeating her phone number twice.

  “Ms. Hayden, if you see these men again I suggest that you call 911. They can respond much faster than we can.”

  “911?”

  “Yes, ma’am, the general police emergency number.”

  “But you are the CIA; it’s your job to catch terrorists.”

  The voice sighed ever so perceptibly. “Yes, Ms. Hayden. I will pass your information along.”

  “I see,” Maria Hayden replied, not sure if the conversation was over.

  The woman with the soothing voice let Maria know it was. “Have a good night, Ms. Hayden.”

  “Good night,” she answered into the dead line.

  Ariana parked next to the black VW and looked around. The side parking lot of the Giant supermarket ran to the back of the building and sat in a small gully that could be tricky to navigate in the snow. Ariana stepped from her beige Toyota Camry and made one lap around the VW, taking inventory. She walked away from her car and as she turned the corner to the large brick structure she hit the auto-lock button on her keychain. Her car alarm chirped as she headed for the store entrance.

  Karim, Syed, and Abu were in the frozen food section, throwing a combination of vegetables, cheese pizzas, and organic complete meals into their cart.

  “I can’t believe our contact is a woman,” Abu said with distain. “They are soft.” In the light of the frozen food aisle, the pock-mock scar on the right side of his face was obvious, almost gruesome. The flesh had a texture that was neither human nor reptilian, but somewhere in between. “And I don’t like being threatened by a woman.”

  Karim spoke. “We don’t know anything yet. She might just be an intermediary. Her sex doesn’t matter. Only her conviction concerns me. Nothing else.”

  “I assure you that I am not soft,” Ariana said.

  Syed and Abu jumped and let the door to the freezer slam shut. “Shit,” Syed said, adding some intelligence to the conversation. “That is the second time you have snuck up on us.”

  “I know,” Ariana said. “I am unimpressed.”

  Karim looked at Ariana, their eyes locking. He slowly redirected his eyes downward and she felt his eyes cover her body from her hijab to her toes.

  “There are supposed to be four of you,” Ariana said.

  “As you can see, there are only three,” Abu said.

  “Did we lose one?” she asked.

  “I was told to pick up two,” Karim answered.

  “Who told you?”

  “A voice on the phone.”

  “How did they reach you?”

  “I went to an Internet café and checked a pre-arranged email account. In that account there was a draft message. A message that had never been sent so it couldn’t be monitored. I followed the instructions in the draft email. I bought a pay-by-the-minute cell phone at a 7-11, and saved the number in a different draft folder in another pre-arranged email account. Then I waited for a call. They told me where I could pick up a car. I got the car and met these two at a truck-stop outside of Houston.”

  “How did you two know where to go?”

  “We were told before we crossed the border.”

  “Crossed the border? Together?”

  “No,” Abu answered. “We met in Houston.”

  “So there are only three.”

  “Yes,” Abu answered.

  “Meet me outside at your car in five minutes,” Ariana said over her shoulder as she walked away.

  The three men rounded the corner, each with a brown bag in their arms.

  “Put the food in the trunk of my car,” Ariana said, motioning towards the Toyota. “Open the back of your car and get your stuff.”

  “What do we do with the car?”

  “I said we are going to leave it.” She reached into her pocket and shoved the electric screwdriver into the screw on the license plate. The screwdriver buzzed for a few seconds, went silent, and then buzzed again. Karim took three worn backpacks from the back of the VW and threw them in the Toyota. Ariana removed the single license plate and threw it in the trunk of her car with the three backpacks and groceries.

  “Get in,” she said.

  “Do you think it is a good idea to leave the car here?” Abu asked.

  “I think it is a better idea than parking what is likely a stolen car in my driveway.”

  Karim smiled as he got in the passenger seat.

  “Now what?” Abu said.

  “Now we wait. I was told to receive four people and there are only three of you.”

  Chapter 6

  Beautiful trouble arrived in a burgundy four-door Ford 500 wearing a business suit, glasses, and carrying a handful of legal accordion folders. Clark heard the car door slam and he picked up his pace. He shoved the old Hoover in the hall closet and pulled the sliding metal doors shut. He walked past the open bathroom door and saw his mother applying the finishing touches to her lipstick in front of the mirror.

  “Are you ready, Mom?” Clark asked.

  “Finished,” she answered, turning off the light.

  Clark made one pass around the dining table and took a last glance at the stack of files. He looked at the set of mechanical pencils resting next to the calculator and decided they were too geeky for his own good. Studious was good, geeky was not. He swiped the pencils off the table and threw them in the small drawer in the corner cabinet. He plucked a pen off the kitchen counter and threw it on the table as he headed for the front door.

  The word “geek” bounced around in Clark’s head as he eyed the studious-looking IRS auditor with silky auburn hair coming up the front stairs. Well, this may not be so bad after all, he thought.

  Clark took quick steps to the door in anticipation of a closer look at his guest. His first sight was an eyeful of an official Department of Treasury IRS Auditor badge extended into his face.

  “Lisa Prescott. IRS auditor.”

  Clark smiled. Just like in the movies.

  “Hi. I’m Clark Hayden, please come in. I hope you didn’t have too much trouble finding the place.”

  “The neighborhood is a little counter-intuitive. I called you from the gas station on Route 110 and it still took twenty minutes to get here.”

  “Yes, these old neighborhoods can be tricky.”

  “The dead ends don’t help.”

  “We like to call them cul de sacs,” Clark said. “Dead end is passé. We’re shooting for something more yuppie. Change the clientele in the neighborhood.”

  IRS Auditor Prescott looked over at the dining area table and nodded almost imperceptibly. “Is that where I should go?” she asked.

  Clark cleared his mind of lust and snapped to attention. “Yes. May I take your coat?”

  Lisa removed her outer layer. Clark tried not to stare. She couldn’t have been much older than he was. Maybe she had a year on him, certainly no more than two. Clark took her coat, looked around, and put it on the arm of the sofa.

  Lisa found a dining room chair and sat down, her bust concealed behind her oversized brown folders. Clark noticed a cup of coffee on the table that he hadn’t seen the IRS auditor bring in. He read the wording on the side of the cup aloud.

  “Jammin’ Java.”

  “Yes.”

  “I like that place. It’s hard to find a good coffee shop that plays live music.”

  “It is the only one that I know of,” Lisa answered. “But what I really like is open mic night.”

  “You sing?”

  “No, but I go sometimes to listen. There’s more than just singing.”

  Maria Hayden came from the kitchen and introduced herself. She followed with further niceties. “I put the kettle on. Can I interest you in a cup of tea?”

  “I have a little coffee left, but some tea would be nice,” Lisa answered with a beautiful smile underneath her button nose.

&n
bsp; If Clark had stopped to listen, he would have heard the proverbial gloves hitting the floor as the minx in front of him sharpened her bureaucratic claws.

  Clark positioned himself in the chair directly across from Auditor Prescott. “Can I call you Lisa?”

  “No you may not.”

  “How should I address you?”

  “Ms. Prescott.”

  “You can call me Clark.”

  “Fine, Clark it is. As you may know, I’m investigating your mother and father for tax discrepancies over the last two tax years. As I mentioned over the phone, they filed a joint 1040, so even though your father is deceased, and please accept my apologies, your mother is still responsible for the information presented on those forms. Her signature is there. She benefited from any misrepresented tax information that would have enriched your father’s financial standing. I think it is safe to say that these infractions are, what I would consider, severe.”

  “What does ‘severe’ mean?”

  “Generally I classify severe as any infraction that could result in jail time.”

  Clark looked over at his mother in the kitchen and then back at Auditor Prescott. In a quiet voice he spoke with conviction. “My mother is seventy-five years old and she has diminished mental capacity. It would never happen. No one in their right mind would put her in jail.”

  “Never say never, Mr. Hayden.”

  “Clark.”

  “Clark,” Prescott repeated. “Do you have power of attorney over your mother’s affairs? Without it, I am not authorized to speak with you.”

  “No, I don’t. My aunt does. My mother will answer your questions and I will sit next to her.”

  “Fine. But I will not be directing any questions towards you. If you choose to obtain a Power of Attorney, I will need a copy for my files.”

  There was something about being reprimanded by someone his own age that made the whole exchange more insulting than it was. Clark didn’t know what to make of the IRS auditor. Her eyes showed kindness and warmth. Her tongue was as sharp as a razor. Auditor Prescott ran some hair behind her left ear. “Can we get started?”