by Mark Gilleo
Clark pressed down on the suitcase until the latches were aligned. With a final grunt and additional ass weight, the old American Tourister finally complied.
“Did you get my medicine?” Maria asked for the fifth time.
“I have all your medication, Mom. It is in the backpack. I have your shampoo, your make-up and your hair dryer. I packed five pairs of shoes and enough clothes for a month-long trip around the world. We are good to go.”
“And why am I going to Annapolis again?”
Clark had given the truthful answer multiple times, but his mother, on this day at least, was not absorbing the facts. Clark finally succumbed to a brief explanation. “Because there are some things I need to do, Mom.”
“But I’ve been living alone for the last year. I don’t need you to take care of me.”
“You’re going to have to trust me on this.”
“I trust you. I trust you,” Maria Hayden said as Clark dragged the third suitcase towards the door.
“I have another question,” Maria said, sitting down on the sofa as if she were unaware of the impending departure.
“What, Mom?”
“Why am I going to Annapolis and did you pack my medicine?”
Chapter 52
Saturday night brought in half of the Kabob Keeper’s weekly business, but Tuesday night brought in the weekly quota of weirdoes from the local design school. Nestled between the backside of the Crystal City Restaurant, a strip joint with a family-friendly name, and a 7-11 that hadn’t shut its doors since 1969, the Kabob Keeper took up residence among a set of shops that had once been under the single roof of a carpet store. The parking lot was tight, the spaces full, and the smell of puke and urine from the back door of take-it-off central tended to waft over during the summer.
Ariana parked her blue Toyota at a space with a broken meter on 23rd street, a few hundred yards from the Kabob Keeper, and walked once around the block. The pulsating rhythm of pole-dancing tunes could be heard in the parking lot, an old chair with a sordid history left to prop open the back fire door. The 7-11 parking lot had surveillance cameras, and although she could never avoid all the cameras in a city with eyes on every corner, she wasn’t above avoiding the ones she knew about. But time was short. And, if things went well it wouldn’t matter how many cameras had captured her image. Dressed as an Americanized woman, complete with Levis and a sweater, Ariana felt like a foreigner as she entered the restaurant. She knew every food by sight, could taste the dishes with her eyes, knew the ingredients by the smell. Her mind drifted back to her youth: carrying bowls of sevian, nehari, mango, and milk tea to her grandparents across the street in her native homeland.
A dropped dish brought her back to the restaurant. She felt a tension that heightened her awareness. The Kebob Keeper may have been named to appeal to the masses — the office workers, young professionals, and college kids who wolfed down the curries and kebobs, but the eyes of the workers told Ariana something else.
Ariana nodded as she approached the counter and the elderly man in a sweaty white t-shirt nodded in return before turning his back and retrieving a loaf of nan from the inside of the cylindrical clay oven.
“Excuse me,” Ariana said over the din of orders being relayed. “I’m looking for Khalid.” She pulled out the handwritten note she had received from the imam and moved it gently between her thumb and forefinger.
The man put the nan bread on a tray with the long thin metal rod that he wielded effortlessly. He looked at the group of design students, all with different color hair, waiting at the far end of the counter for their food. His focus on the waiting customers drew Ariana’s attention to the other end of the counter, and the man grabbed the note from Ariana’s hand. It was a professional move, Ariana noted, and one she shouldn’t have fallen for.
The old man unfolded the note as he turned to face the soda dispensers. He finished reading and looked over his shoulder at the clock on the wall. “You are right on time,” he said in Urdu.
With the nod of his head he motioned her behind the counter.
“The imam only sent three,” the old man in the t-shirt said in a whisper as they approached the office in the back of the store. The heat from the kitchen, initially a welcome from the cold, became more oppressive near the rear of the restaurant. Ariana understood why the old man’s shirt was clinging to his body. The four-man kitchen staff moved swiftly through the heat, perspiration on their faces. The clank of metal pans was interrupted by a ringing bell indicating that an order was ready.
Through the stainless steel shelves, Ariana felt eyes watching her every move.
The old man pushed the office door open and the three volunteers sat up in their chairs. They were seated at a round table. Used Styrofoam plates balanced in a stack in the small wastecan near the desk. The smell of lamb filled the room, hanging thick in the air. Ariana was suddenly hungry. Freeze-dried meals had made great improvements over the years but they couldn’t compete with handcooked meals. Even those made in quantity.
Ariana nodded to her host and the old man shut the door as he left. Three young faces looked up at her. They all had similar features. Pointed noses, narrow chins.
“Brothers?” Ariana asked after a moment of silence.
“Yes,” the oldest of the three answered. “My name is Farooq. We have met.”
Ariana recognized the young man’s wispy sideburns and peach fuzz, intermingled with the random long whiskers. “You are the imam’s understudy.”
“Yes,” Farooq answered.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-one. My brothers are eighteen. They are twins.”
“Fraternal…”
“Yes, fraternal.”
The pudgier of the two brothers dipped his head and spoke. “My name is Jameel.” He was wearing a tattered New York Giants jacket and a pair of sneakers that he tapped on the floor in a smooth steady beat.
The slender twin looked up with naturally wide brown eyes. “My name is Omar.”
Ariana nodded. “You know why you are here?”
“Yes,” Farooq answered.
“I need an answer from all of you.”
The twins both raised their voices and replied, “Yes.”
“Farooq, Jameel, and Omar,” Ariana said rhetorically, as if measuring their names and the suitability to the task. The brothers looked at each other and smiled as if they had been recognized for greatness.
“So everyone knows why they are here. If anyone has cold feet, they need to leave now.”
Ariana waited for a response. No one moved.
“I’m glad you have chosen to stay the course. I would not have enjoyed killing all of you in this room. Three brothers would have been messy.”
Fear joined the smell of lamb in the air.
“Here’s the deal. It’s very simple. I will pay each of you $10,000 dollars to help me for the next forty-eight hours. If you agree, however, you will do exactly as I say, exactly when I say it. There will be no negotiations. No complaining. No questions. Unless the questions are operational in nature.”
Jameel looked at his older brothers before speaking. “How do we know you have the money? Or that we would live to see it?”
From her purse Ariana pulled a ten thousand dollar stack she had received from the imam. She put the money on the table and the eyes of the younger brothers stared, their eyelids refusing to blink. “I have the money. Living to see it, well, I have no guarantees. That is in Allah’s hands. Tell me who should receive it in the case of your death, and I will see to it that they do.”
Farooq looked at his twin brothers and shook his head towards them. “We are here for our father and Allah, not for the money.”
Jameel and Omar nodded in agreement.
“Very well then,” Ariana said. “You have passed the second test. I am looking for men of conviction, not greed.”
The young men stared ahead stoically until Ariana asked, “Where is your father?”
“Dead,�
� Omar answered from beneath his wide eyes.
Ariana paced back and forth slowly, her eyes moving deliberately from one recruit to the other. “This is your last chance to run,” she added, moving her body to mockingly create an opening towards the door.
She was the only one smiling.
Forty-eight hours. The countdown was on.
Chapter 53
Clark went through the daily delivery from Mel, stacking and sorting bills and junk mail into separate piles. The thought of sitting down and writing checks, stuffing them into envelopes, getting stamps, and having the postman pick them up was almost comical. He hadn’t written a check in over a year. The younger generation had found the Internet and electronic bill payment. And they were not coming back to the “write it, stuff it, lick it, and send it” world.
Clark got to the last letter and his heart sank a little. Neatly printed on the business envelope was the name of his father’s company, Hayden Ltd. He ran his finger down the side of the envelope and began reading at the top of the sheet near the word “invoice.” There were half a dozen line-items, three with prices in the BMW, low-end Mercedes neighborhood. Clark scanned the dates, looked up at the name on the invoice again, and reached for the phone.
He spent five minutes navigating the hide-the-real-person voice commands of the company’s main customer service number. His seventh correct selection came with a reward. “Hunter Scientific,” the female voice on the other end of the phone answered with uncommon morning pleasantness.
“Good morning. My name is Clark Hayden, and I need to speak with someone in the billing department.”
“This is the billing department.”
“Thank God.”
“I get that response a lot,” the voice said. “How can I help you?”
“I’m looking at an invoice for my father’s company and I think there’s a mistake.”
“There could be. Let me pull it up for you. What’s the account number?”
Clark found the account number at the top of the invoice and read it slowly to the woman. As they waited for the information to pull it, the woman gave Clark her speech for the week.
“We have had an unusual number of billing errors this month. One of the ice storms last month took down some trees nearby which hit a transformer. We got a surge of electricity to our computer system here. Caused us to lose more than a few records. It has been a big mess. We have been going through files manually. A lot of end of the year documents are going out. The early bird taxpayers are calling us non-stop for documents.”
A one syllable chuckle escaped Clark’s mouth. “You think you’ve had a bad month, let me tell you about mine. I have had run-ins with the IRS, the FBI, and the police. Two of my neighbors have died and another’s house burned down.” Clark stopped himself before he labeled his missing neighbor a terrorist with connections to the Pakistani government.
“You win,” the woman said. There was a pause and the woman segued into a work conversation. “My computer is back up … Now what exactly were you looking for?”
“I’m looking at what I assume is the latest invoice for my father’s company. My question is how could my father’s company receive an invoice for machines that were delivered a few weeks ago if my father has been dead for over a year and his company only had one employee — my father?”
There was a long silence on the phone. Clark tried to resuscitate the conversation. “Helloooo…”
“That is a good question, indeed,” the woman answered. Through the phone Clark could hear the keystrokes being pounded frantically.
“And when was this account closed?”
“I don’t know exactly. The summer before last. Eighteen months ago maybe.”
“That is interesting,” the woman answered, sounding concerned. “My system shows that your father’s account was never closed. In fact, it has remained active for the past year and a half with ongoing activity.”
The bile in Clark’s stomach churned and almost made an unexpected appearance. “Exactly what was ordered?”
The woman read from the list on the screen. “Multiple orders of aluminum, magnesium, titanium. Cylinders. Sheets. Blocks. Total weight over two hundred pounds. There was a separate order for bolts, servos, connectors, sixty feet of wire. Twenty feet of yellow, red, blue. I have a record of seven shipments over the last eighteen months.”
“Shipped to this address?”
“Which address is that?”
“The one where I received the invoice. 203 Dorchester Lane, Arlington, Virginia.”
“No. That’s listed as the previous address of Hayden Ltd. That invoice was probably processed manually and they used the old address. These seven orders were shipped to 9345 Georgia Avenue, Northwest. Warehouse C, Washington, D.C.”
“Wait, wait,” Clark said, frazzled. “Let me get a pencil.”
“I’ll hold,” the woman in billing said as if she were doing Clark a favor.
Clark ran, his wool socks slipping on the floor as he turned the corner in the kitchen. He stuck his hand into the junk drawer and pulled out a pen. He swiped the Post-it notes off the counter, his mother’s guide to her daily routine, and sat down at the table. His hand shook as he fumbled with the top of the pen.
“Go ahead.”
Clark scribbled the address on the paper. “Could you fax me the list of shipments? I don’t have a fax, but I can give you a number where I can pick it up.”
“Not a problem. But you know, the invoices have all been paid in full. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
Lisa knocked on the door once, then entered the house panting. Her face was flush from the cold and the sudden burst of exercise.
Clark got up from the round dining room table which was littered with papers and files. His hair was unkempt, but the bounce in his step had returned. Lisa was glad to see that the energetic guy she had first met had reappeared, evicting the slow moving replica that had taken over her boyfriend with increasing frequency.
“You look alive.”
“Amazing, because I haven’t slept in a week,” Clark said.
Lisa placed some folders on the coffee table. She unzipped her coat and put it over the arm of the sofa. She reached out and gave him a hug. Clark buried his nose in her neck for a moment and then put a kiss where his nose had been. He inhaled her perfume, a vast improvement over his non-showered body.
“I brought my video camera and the fax. Though I have no idea what you are up to. I also found some information that may be helpful,” she said, patting the seat next to her on the couch.
“Helpful is something that has been lacking until this morning. Or maybe luck would be a better word.”
“What’s with the fax?”
“It looks like my helpful neighbor has been helping herself to my father’s company, using it as a means to order whatever it is that she was after. I’ve been contacting different companies for the past hour and she has been busy.”
“Why would she do that? If she had connections at the embassy, she could get anything she wanted.”
“Maybe she was working on something unsanctioned.”
“Maybe. But I’m not so sure terrorism is that discerning. I did a little poking around after you mentioned seeing Liana at the embassy. I ran a check on Ariana’s and Nazim’s credit cards.”
“Smart girl. Still within the domain of the IRS.”
“Except that I’m not investigating your neighbors.”
“So you fat-fingered a key and got the wrong address. The same thing happened to me.”
“And then I continued my way through the wrong file?”
“It happens,” Clark said sarcastically.
Lisa shook her head and tried not to smile. “Anyhow, there’s no record of Ariana purchasing a plane ticket on any of her credit cards. In fact, there are no charges at all on any of her cards since the first week of January. No withdrawals from the bank either.”
“Me
aning she had cash, which comes as no surprise.” Clark thought about his next statement. “You know, there is a possibility that my parents’ problems with the IRS may have been orchestrated by Ariana. The timeline fits.”
Lisa put on her auditor’s cap. “I’m not sure what the motive would be, but nothing would be a surprise at this point.”
“That’s good, because I’m all out of my befuddled look.” Clark examined the papers on the table. “Anyway, I have been going through my father’s files. All the blueprints he has. All the material he ever ordered. I took inventory of the material in the garage. Whatever Ariana was after, she hid her tracks. But the address I was given may have the answers.”
“I think the combination of materials and machines being ordered, and the fact that there is ricin involved, maybe you should just eat some crow and call the FBI back. Just to be sure.”
“I will, but first I need to borrow your video camera.”
Chapter 54
Abu sat slumped in the desk chair in the office. Ariana watched him from her seat across the room. A small metal green wastebasket was between his legs on the floor. His breathing was labored. He hunched over, coughed, spit blood into the trashcan, and then tried to straighten himself, pushing on the arms of the chair.
Karim motioned Ariana to the door of the office. As she reached the doorway, Karim whispered, “You think he will make it?”
“No. I would guess he has less than twenty-four hours.”
“Maybe we should keep him in here. The new recruits don’t need to see what is waiting for them. They are young; they may not have the needed conviction once they see the outcome.”
“I can solve that.”
“I trust that you can,” Karim said.
“Get the troops ready. I’ll be a moment.”