He could raise a fuss. He could tell Karen that he believed...he knew...that his life was in danger here. And the prospect of moving to a more congenial location was not entirely unpleasing. When Ari first moved here he had sensed a cold reserve in the residence. Very little that had happened since then had changed his opinion. And the odd plasticity of social life was certainly off-putting. When an Iraqi smiled, he either liked you or killed you. When an American smiled, he might like you, or kill you, or both. It was purposefully ambiguous, a staged meaninglessness. More habit than heart-felt. It was the smile he had seen in abundance at the furniture store—the smile of salesmen.
Yet years of traveling in strange and often dangerous territories—from the Rue Saint-Denis to the cold, hollow wilds of Cheekha Dar on the Iranian border, from battlefields to menacing rendezvous—had planted in Ari a longing for place. It did not quite matter which place, although Paris had some distinct advantages over scruffy Richmond. But half a year had passed, and Ari had begun to sense a kind of settlement in his soul. The Mackenzies were phony, Howie Nottoway was strangely creepy and the Wareness's were relative strangers. The same percentage of personality types could be found in tribes large and small. Unsuspectingly, he had stretched out invisible tendrils to the community. And while the community did not particularly want him (and would want him even less if they found out who he really was), the emotional vines were maturing. Some of these people knew his background, and bonds of trust were the strongest, short of family.
And then there were Fred and Karen. Doing their job, or trying to. He had grown rather fond of their naivety, laced with a degree of ineptitude. Karen encountering her first headless corpse, Fred charging stupidly into a gunfight against heavily armed opponents...what wasn't there to like and admire, even after all the criticism? They had been trained in a profession that dealt with the ugly things in the world. But one had to actually live in horror to truly comprehend it.
Welcome to Babylon, Ari had told Karen when they discovered the corpse of Mustafa Zewail.
She was backing around the circle at the end of the lane.
"You want to get your car out of the driveway?"
Ari nodded and hopped into the Scion. He hated the car, not only because it did not suit his rather grandiose sense of automotive esthetics, but also because he had been unable to locate the GPS buried somewhere in its frame. He was starting to wonder if the entire car might not be some oversized tracking device, on a par with the hormone-driven giants of produce departments. But now the GPS presented an unanticipated threat. When Ari visited a prison to translate for an Arab inmate, Karen had found out immediately. Her database was tied in to the state's DOC database. Who else had that kind of access?
He parked his car on the side of the road while Karen gunned the moving van backwards up the driveway. Fred had hopped out to direct her, hollering at her to stop before the high truck rammed the top of the garage door. He slid open the truck panel and three men and a woman jumped out. They voiced some complaints about Karen's driving.
"We rattled around back there like a broken bag of marbles."
"What a bunch of wusses," Karen shot back as she emerged from the cab.
Fred let the loading ramp drop and began to lower it. Ari jumped aboard.
"Whoa! What do you think you're doing?"
"Are we not going to unload this furniture?"
"Not 'we'. 'Us'. What if you sprained your pinkie and couldn't do your job? Let go of that couch! We'll handle it. Why do you think I brought along all these wusses?"
An agent standing next to Ari took up a cushion and threw it at Karen, who was unwary and took a full thwack. Ari, who had looked forward to an upper body workout, decided he was not really dressed for hard labor. He jumped out of the cargo bay and stood in the way.
"Wanna move?" said one of the agents he did not recognize. "Sir?"
"Chiedo scusa," said Ari, bowing a few feet to the side of the driveway.
"Je suis Américan." The agent thumped his chest and joined the others inside the van.
"Jahech," Ari smiled. He snagged Fred as he came by.
"Deputy Fred! You shouldn't be doing this so soon after being shot. Is your wound—"
"Perfectly healed," Fred grimaced as he huffed a settee through the door.
They worked quickly, unloading the heavy pieces and shuffling them like pros. Which did not prevent Ari from crooning over his new acquisitions and harrowing the laborers with death threats whenever they thudded (ever so gently) against walls or doorsills.
"You wouldn't really cut off my testicles and stuff them into my mouth, would you?"
"Would I say such a thing?"
"You just did. And in case you didn't notice, I wasn't born with testicles."
"I'm grief-stricken."
They were halfway through when they proved their furniture-moving bona fides were incomplete.
"The carpets!" Karen shrieked.
The cheerful chatter that had accompanied their labors up to that point subsided into grim embarrassment when they realized they had forgotten something so fundamental. They had been goofing off, in effect, and a reshuffling of bulky furniture so they could lay down the carpets was their punishment. They flinched under Ari's gaze, as though their error had transformed him into a real customer instead of a bogus client. As if lost time really mattered.
Gratified by their sheepishness, Ari toned down his churlish directives to small, firm requests.
"That goes over there. Thank you. Please move the couch a little to the left. Thank you. The dinner table needs to be centered. Thank you. Would you allow me to make coffee for all of you?"
"Sure," said one of the workers.
And then Ari remembered he only had two cups, apologized for his unfulfillable offer, and became nearly as quiet as everyone else—who at least grunted with effort. He overheard one deputy comment on the fact that there was no bedroom or basement furniture. They were saved the chore of dragging heavy furniture up or down the stairs. This put him off the idea of getting a king-size bed.
"I will have you all over for dinner," he asserted as they neared completion.
Karen drew up. "You're cooking?"
"I wouldn't dare," Ari chuckled.
Karen was agreeable to sitting at the new dining room table for some take-out.
"In fact, I have great hopes of hiring a real chef for a special meal."
"We'll need to get clearance for that," Karen frowned. "We can't have any old Tom, Dick or Jane waltzing in here. Why do you think we're doing all this moving for you?"
"I don't think she would be agreeable to a background check," said Ari, alarmed by the possibility that Madame Mumford might shun him completely if confronted by investigators. And what if they found some inaccuracy in her green card application? She might be deported back to France!
"I really don't think that's necessary," he protested. "I've already had visitors."
"Two cops...that was bad enough. But I heard there was a girl in here, a little girl..."
"A neighbor looking for her cat."
"And who else? I can't count on you being truthful, you understand."
"Me?" exclaimed Ari, thinking he had also had a killer in his house: Detective Louis B. Carrington. He wouldn't be coming back.
"Just check, first, would you? We're not going to torture any confessions out of him or her. Just talk."
Which would amount to the same thing, Ari believed, already dismissing Karen's admonishment from his mind.
As the rooms filled up, the hollow aches of the house were suppressed under the carpets and new furniture. The echoes that had first greeted Ari receded to a sense of hopeful occupancy. He caught Karen's ear.
"Should I tip your workers?" When she did not answer, he reached into his pocket.
"Jesus, Ari! Don't bring out your flash roll. We're on the clock here. We're getting paid."
Ari, never averse to keeping his money, left the roll in his pocket.
"Why
did you ask me who else had access to your tracker?" she whispered. There had already been enough mishaps in this assignment to ruin her career. It sounded to her as though this was something that needed to be nipped in the bud.
Ari thought a moment.
"Would ISAF have—"
"Why are you asking? What happened?"
Ari filtered through what he knew of Karen and settled upon her reaction on hearing that the late Mustafa Zewail had received letters filled with racial epithets. 'Hate mail' Karen had called it.
"I received a phone call from someone unknown."
"But no one knows your number!" said Karen, absorbing a sharp breath. "What did they say?"
"He called me a bad name."
"Like what?"
Ari covered his eyes. "It's too horrible to repeat."
"Bullshit," said Karen, raising a fist.
Lowering his hand, Ari shrugged. "He called me a nigger."
"No shit."
"Indeed."
"But you aren't...I mean...well, some low types might consider..."
"It was too much to bear. I broke my phone."
"We'll get you a new one," Karen asserted. "Something...more useful."
Something bugged, Ari thought, capable of instantly tracking outside calls.
"That would be most kind," said Ari, who had about fifty cell phones hidden away upstairs.
"What else did they say?"
"That they would torture and kill me." Ari mused for a moment. "And that they would visit rapine upon my body."
Karen formed a skeptical moue. "There might be an ounce of truth in that ton of bullshit."
"That is an interesting formulation…but I disgrace."
"You 'digress', Ari. You've been handing out your phone number to strangers, haven't you?" The bottom of Karen's eyelids seemed to turn up, an odd illusion that made it seem she was wearing mascara—which she never did. Not to Ari's knowledge. She had learned to trust Ari's silences more than his heavily vocalized excuses, and took his non-response as a verifiable 'yes'. "OK, you tell me what you were doing at Beacon Corner Salvage and I'll tell you what I know about ISAF."
"I was watching computers being destroyed," said Ari. "What do you know about ISAF?"
"Nothing." She held up an envelope. "Here, this came through your mail slot. I picked it up before we laid the carpet."
Ari took the envelope. It was addressed: Occupant.
"How did they know I was here?" he asked, staring at the return address, which belonged to a cable company.
"Our traditional reaction is to toss that kind of garbage in the garbage, unopened. I'm going. We've sweated enough for one day. Oh, and..." She took out an encrypted thumb drive and laid it on the kitchen counter. "Do some work, for a change."
Another load of gory images from Iraq. Ari looked at it sourly.
Ari saw no call for door-slamming, but that was what Karen did as she exited through the garage. Was she angry at Ari for planting suspicions in her mind? She already harbored doubts about ISAF's interference in domestic affairs.
He opened the junk mail. It wasn't junk mail. Not entirely. He read:
"An offer you won't see anywhere else! More HD and On Demand Services, Ultra-fast Internet. Don't miss our Triple Play!"
This actually interested Ari. Should he invest in cable? He'd better get a television, first.
He was also interested in the personalized scrawl at the bottom of the flyer:
"Hey, Diddlewit. If you know what's good for you, you'll take the next flight back to the desert. Want to learn more? Meet me at Harrowgate Park at 7."
Ari looked at his watch.
CHAPTER TWELVE
First Battle of Fallujah
When Ghaith strode to the head of the classroom, the teacher took one look in his eyes and backed away.
"Be seated against the wall."
The teacher opened his mouth, a ferocious anathema forming on hollow air. Ghaith cocked his head forward ever so slightly and the hot air dribbled into silence. The teacher had so often told himself and his students that death was nothing to fear in a good cause that he had come to believe it. But Ghaith's expression clearly indicated that death was a prize he only reluctantly awarded after a long and horrifying expiration. The teacher sat against the wall.
Ghaith turned to the boys. They had rolled up their makeshift bedrolls after being awakened by the pre-dawn explosions rolling in from the city's outskirts. The Americans had blown up the berms in synchronized blasts that violently shook every wall in Fallujah. But only a few of the boys had whimpered. The rest stiffened with eager resolve to do their duty. Aching for the proverbial Paradise of Virgins, Ghaith thought. And not a one of them would know what to do with a virgin if you threw one on top of him.
Gunfire and explosions shook the soggy atmosphere. A rare downpour had set the boys to marveling. It must be a sign from Allah. Earlier, a man from the Council had appeared and ordered Ghaith to prepare his miniature army for battle. Ghaith had sent him on his way with a calm assurance.
Hours passed. The teacher had regaled the boys with tales of honor, of honorable deaths, of heroic eviscerations. Ghaith bided his time. And then he heard the telltale, exquisitely irritating whine of a drone. Standing, he ordered the teacher away and took his place at the front of the room. The boys gaped at him.
"Ah, the Americans," he shook his head as a distant blast shook the walls and rained plaster. "A feeble people. I'm going to tell you about some real he-men. Long before Iraq, long before Muhammad, long before Persia...there were the Assyrians."
Ghaith would not have admitted to strutting back and forth across the room, but that was what it amounted to.
"The Assyrians make the Americans look like castrated peacocks. They wiped out their enemies, they boiled rebel kings in oil, they cut off tongues, gouged eyes and trampled the little people of the world under their feet."
The little people in front of him gaped. This was all pre-Islam stuff, scarcely worth mentioning and severely skimped on by the teacher. Besides, Assyrians today were much reduced and tucked safely away, where they could harm no one.
Another blast shook the walls. Ghaith threw up his hands in disgust.
"Americans! Bah! All noise. And you should learn this above all: noise is meaningless. When you hear all this booming, think of your silent prayers. Which do you think means more?"
He glanced at the teacher, anticipating a nod of approval. Certainly, he could not disagree with that.
The teacher was glowering at him.
From the growing growl of battle, it seemed apparent the enemy was taking aim at the souk. Well, no wonder. During the first occupation, before the Blackwater massacre, the Americans had slipped agents disguised as locals into the neighborhoods. They had soon discovered the souks were major providers of weaponry, everything from rifles to RPG's. They had raided the weapon shops, but these had re-stocked rapidly after the first withdrawal.
"What does what you say have to do with the great martyrs?"
This bit of insolence came from the dark, intense boy who had answered the teacher's challenge regarding the sura. He showed no fear of the manmade earthquakes beneath them. He was either very bright or very stupid. And since Ghaith himself was trembling inside, he hoped it was the latter. At any moment a shell could come roaring in and turn this group of boys into collateral corpses.
They all jumped when a chair piled carelessly on one of the desks fell over. All but the sura boy, who kept his eye on Ghaith.
The school room door slammed open and two insurgents strode in, sweating, their eyes wide with excitement.
"What is this?" one of them demanded. "Why are these boys still here! They're needed!"
"Ah," Ghaith nodded, strolling past the boys to the back of the room. "I was waiting because I needed to inform the Council of an unanticipated blessing...but let me show you. Come this way."
One of the insurgents was dressed in old worn trousers, a T-shirt and sneakers. Ghaith thou
ght the series of oily streaks running down from his left shoulder must have been caused by cosmoline residue from the mortar shells he had been carrying. He was unarmed. The second man carried an AK-47. An ammonia-like odor betrayed recent use. Like most of the insurgents, he had probably been streaking across the streets, taking pot-shots at the enemy before disappearing around the next corner. His dishdash was grimy with dirt and plaster, as if a ceiling had dropped down around his head—which was no doubt exactly what had happened.
"A blessing?" the man wearing a T-shirt asked, curious, but still stoked with wrath.
"Mortar shells. Hundreds of them. This way."
The insurgents followed Ghaith out of the classroom. The end of the hall opened upon a broad conference room. On one side a sheet-covered rope had been stretched from one end of the room to the next. Ghaith strode over and pulled the sheet aside, revealing ammunition crates stacked against the wall.
"I found this while I was wandering around last night. Someone on the Council must have thought ahead. The boys can run the shells straight to the battlefield. You didn't know about this?"
Their dumbstruck looks as they inspected the crates provided his answer. The man with the AK still wore that expression when Ghaith slammed his fist in the back of his neck. He fell forward onto a crate.
The mortar man reacted quickly, grabbing a crowbar used to open the crates and leaping at Ghaith, who danced backwards as the iron whiffled past, then jumped forward and jammed a finger in the man's eye. His gasp of pain was cut short when Ghaith picked up the rifle and shot him.
The first man lay groaning. Ghaith had hoped his blow had snapped his neck, then decided he had seen too many movies. He took aim at the man before remembering the mortar shells. Dragging the moaning man a short distance away, he dropped the leg and pressed the barrel of the gun to his head.
He fired two shots.
Though his ears were ringing, he still sensed someone's approach. He had turned, gun raised, when the teacher stumbled into the meeting room. He had drawn a Parabellum from under his robe.
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