by Ben Coes
Speaking to his father, then thinking about this . . . it was almost too much. The pressure between the two colliding forces caused him to feel physically ill. He bent over, clutching his chest, knelt on the ground, overwhelmed by an alien surge of anxiety. Uncertainty.
“Stop,” he said out loud to no one. “Stand up. It’s time.”
He went back to the mirror. Slowly, he let his anger transform itself into focus. He reached down and turned the water on, then splashed his face several times. Whatever epiphany had occurred, whatever moment of regret, realization, or loss of will, was gone now. Before him stood once again the hardened animal he’d become; Fortuna, son of Aswan, blade of Allah.
He walked through the bedroom and opened the door.
Karim stood in the hallway. He had a serious expression on his face.
“What is it?”
“Your cell rang. It was Laurent.”
“Yes?”
“Something’s wrong.”
Fortuna walked back into his office. He closed the door behind him.
He dialed a number. He knew it by heart.
“Yes,” the voice said.
“What happened?”
“Something’s wrong, I’m afraid.”
“What? Speak.”
“It went badly on the rig.”
“Badly? The rig is gone, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. But someone fought back. He killed all of our men.”
“What do you mean all of our men?
“You heard me. He killed them all.”
Fortuna hesitated. “Esco?”
“Yes.”
“Who was it?”
“We don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“The helicopter came into Cali as planned. But Esco wasn’t on board. Only the pilot and a stranger. He shot one of the men on the rooftop of the building.”
“What did he look like?”
“They said he was bearded, long hair, Caucasian. American.”
“It sounds like the one in charge of the rig—Andreas. Was it him?”
Silence on the other end of the line.
“They were supposed to leave him on the seafloor,” said Fortuna.
“Yes.”
“Well, then they fucked up. Where is he now?”
“He’s in Cali. This only just happened. The chopper crashed into a building. They shot him after the chopper landed. They think they hit him. But—”
“He’s gotten away?” Fortuna could scarcely believe what he was hearing.
“They’re tracking him. He was bleeding badly. But, yes. They’re still chasing him. He killed three more men.”
“For fuck’s sake. Do you realize what Esco knew?”
“Yes,” Laurent said once again.
“You listen to me. You’re to fix this. End it. We have no idea how much Andreas might have learned. Esco knew the targets. Esco knew everything. We trained together. If he got anything out of Esco we—” Fortuna didn’t care to finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.
“I’m nearly out of men, Alexander.”
“Do it anyway. Call me when it’s done.”
Fortuna hung up and dialed a different number.
“Yes,” the voice said.
“Where are you?” asked Fortuna. “Can you talk?”
“No, I can’t talk,” said the voice. “What is it? Be quick.”
“One of the survivors,” said Fortuna. “He could be a problem.”
“I know. Andreas. He just made contact.”
Fortuna closed his eyes. “How much did he know?”
“He knew the name of the explosive. I don’t know what else, specifically.”
“He could know more.”
“They’re extracting him inside the hour.”
“That can’t happen. You have to take him out, Victor. My men are all dead.”
Vic Buck chuckled humorlessly. “Just take him out, right? You gotta be kidding. I’m standing in an office two doors down from the head of counterterrorism. Now I’m supposed to hunt down your problem? Fuck that.”
“He could know enough to find me,” Fortuna said evenly. “If he finds me, he finds you.”
Buck’s voice turned savage. “Watch it. Don’t forget what I do for a living. I won’t be threatened. I could just as easily remove you.”
“If suicide’s your taste, you could try,” said Fortuna. “But that would also leave you fifty million dollars poorer.”
“Funny.”
“If they extract him, you’ll be in the gallows within a week,” continued Fortuna. “And I’ll be dead. We both know the situation. We need to do something.”
Predictably, the promise of more money—obscene money to a government official like Vic Buck—worked.
“I’ll do what I can,” said Buck. “If your fucking martyrs had just done their job at the rig—”
Fortuna let out a long-held breath as Vic Buck, director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s National Clandestine Service, hung up the phone.
Fortuna stood up and opened the door to his office, walked through his bedroom, along the long hallway, past the kitchen, into the media room, and sat in a big leather chair. He turned on the plasma.
“Can I get you something to eat?” Karim asked.
“Yes. Anything. Pizza.”
Fortuna flipped through the channels until he came to Fox News. On the hundred-inch screen, a male reporter stood in front of KKB’s headquarters building on Fifty-ninth Street.
. . . the terrible news has sent shock waves through the energy industry. Ted Marks, apparently still clinging to life in a Denver hospital while Nick Anson along with Anson’s wife, Annie, just days after announcing the historic merger of the two large energy concerns, burned to death last night in a fire at Marks’s ski house in Aspen. . . .
Marks alive was another disappointment in a mission that had started so well. But the CEO’s survival did not compare to the threat of a living, breathing Dewey Andreas. Quickly, Fortuna clicked through all of the news channels. Nothing yet, other than the fire in Aspen. Not a word about Capitana or Savage Island.
He walked to the kitchen.
“Have we heard from Mahmoud?” Fortuna asked, urgency in his voice.
“Nothing,” said Karim.
“They say Marks is still alive. If they captured Mahmoud—”
“Let’s be patient, Alex.”
Fortuna went to his bedroom and put on Lycra running shorts, a blue T-shirt and a pair of running shoes. In the gym, he climbed onto the treadmill, set the timer for forty-five minutes, and started running.
His body felt good, strong, no pain. After twenty minutes, he’d run four miles. He was running his usual 5:00 pace. During his junior year at Princeton, he’d run a 4:20 mile. He looked down at the timing split on the treadmill. He pushed in the setting for 4:30. Four and a half miles into his run, he began pacing at a 4:30 mile. He felt the pain in his legs first, then his head. His legs moved furiously and the sweat poured down his forehead. He grimaced as the first minute passed. He worried he might fall off the back of the treadmill but he kept pushing. Soon the second minute passed, then the third. In front of him, in the mirror, he saw his own reflection for a brief moment. He looked slightly crazed, out of control, not exactly the same form he had in college. Still, how many thirty-six-year-old men could run a 4:30 mile? He crossed the four-minute mark. The pain now occupied every fiber in his body. His mind, which had carried him this far, began to abandon him, telling him to hit the red Stop button on the console. Something deeper spurred him on. He counted the final seconds as the distance meter clicked toward the mile mark. At 4:29, he completed the mile. Fortuna reached forward and pressed the down arrow, slowing the treadmill. He reset the meter at a 5:30 pace. He would run another five miles at a more relaxed pace.
But as he ran, he could only think of Esco. As much as he tried to put it out of his mind, he could not. The first time he had met Esco was a decade ago. Esco,
thirty years old at the time, had just quit his job as a teacher in Calcutta. They met on the Crimea Peninsula, at the Hezbollah training camps his father had arranged to send him to. They had shared a tent together for more than a year, before he started at Wharton. It was at Crimea they learned how to plan, to build the cell, to fight, to kill. He recalled Esco’s hearty laugh, his calm demeanor, and engineer’s mind.
Fortuna tried to use the pain of the run—in his head, his lungs, his legs—to blot out the anger he now felt, and the sadness at the loss of his friend. Finally, he found a way to stem the emotion that welled up inside of him for his brother in arms. It was fury, plain and simple, a deep, abiding rage that coursed up into his body as it built. The fury overtook him as he ran, even faster now, sprinting all-out on the machine, the red rage crystallizing into a single word: Andreas.
21
CAMPO SHAR-AL-NES
BROUMANA, LEBANON
THIRTY-ONE YEARS AGO
Mattie, three and a half years old, climbed slowly to the old, twisted juniper and sat down. She put her thumb in her mouth.
“If you hide there,” said Alexander, “Nebbie won’t find you. Hide behind the juniper. I’ll rescue you. Don’t eat the berries.”
“Is this okay?” she whispered.
“Perfect.”
Down the hillside, Alexander could see the houses at the edge of Ruwaisseh. It was so hot the rooftops appeared to melt in the haze. He smiled. They’d be here soon. It was time to hide.
In Broumana that summer, the day and night blended into an endless hot continuum. On the hillside above the Lazarists Monastery, the juniper berries were mottled with the first patches of red as they ripened. They’d make Mattie hard to see, even in her orange tunic. Nebbie would find her, but it would take time. She was a sacrifice.
Downhill a distance, Alexander found the rock; he’d seen it before and had made a mental note of it. It was an odd formation that spread out horizontally atop the hill, like a reclining woman. This was where he knew Father would lay their belongings: the old wicker lunch basket, a jug of water, and the prayer blankets.
From the village he heard voices, still some five minutes distant. He took off his clothing—all of it. He rolled it up then tucked it in a small hole he’d dug, then covered it with dry soil.
He lay down in the dust. It was scalding hot, but he endured the pain. He rolled slowly down the hill, turning several times. He could taste the dirt in his mouth.
Voices grew louder, followed by the crunching of sandals on the hillside. Alexander crawled back up the hill and nestled beneath a ridge on the side of the big rock. He tucked his head into his lap so that only the smooth surface of his brown, dust-covered back would show. He had become part of the stone.
“Here we are,” said Aswan, Alexander’s father.
Alexander listened as the sack was placed down on the ground. A tingling sensation filled his heart. He didn’t move. They placed the sack on the rock so close to him he could feel a small breeze when the sack was opened.
“I’m so hungry I could eat a horse,” said Father. “Don’t you have something to do, Nebuchar?”
Alexander hated his older brother. Nebuchar refused to play with Alexander, too old and mature for games with his five-year-old sibling. Except on Sundays, family day. Father made him play. Nebuchar would oblige him grudgingly, though secretly he relished the actual moment of discovery, enjoyed it because with his fist he would rap Alex and even Mattie with a hard knuckle to the skull.
While Nebuchar began to search, Alex could hear his father setting out the plates. He smelled the chicken and garlic, and the figs, he could even smell the rice. His favorite meal. His father cooked only on Sundays and it was the only dish he knew how to prepare, but he did it with elaborate care, in honor of their late mother, he said. The way father did it, the figs cooked for three whole days in the small tandoor oven, heated by the fire, so that they melted in your mouth when you bit in.
“You might as well come out. You know I’ll find you.” Nebuchar walked to the base of the big cypress. There was a small notch that was just big enough for a coyote or a small child. Empty.
“Mattie!” he yelled. “Alex!”
From the distance, his father laughed. “What? Big man can’t find his little brother and sister?” Their father now sat on the rock, not more than a foot from Alexander, drinking a cup of water. “Do I need to come and help you, Nebbie?”
“No! I’ll find them.”
Nebuchar walked around the cypress toward the juniper, this out of sight from his father. He saw little Mattie, smacked her in the head.
“Got you!” he yelled as Mattie screamed and began to cry. “Where’s Alex?” he demanded.
“I’m not telling. I hate you, Nebbie.”
“Tell me or I’ll hit you again.”
“No!” she yelled and she ran to her father.
Nebuchar circled the hillside slowly, eventually reaching the picnic site.
“You hit a three-year-old girl?” their father asked angrily. “That’s the sign of a weakling and a coward. You’re twelve. No lunch for you today.”
Nebuchar was silent. Alex bit his tongue, tempted to laugh.
“I know what goes through that mind of yours,” said his father. “I’d suggest you say nothing for one minute. If you raise your voice at me or so much as kick your foot in the sand I’ll send you back down to the house and you’ll spend the rest of the day washing the tiles on the roof.”
Alex shuddered with pleasure, wishing he could see Nebbie’s face.
“Where is he? I can’t find him.”
“What do you mean you can’t find him?”
“He’s nowhere. I’ve looked everywhere.”
Father removed Mattie from his lap and served her a plate of the chicken. She stopped crying and began to eat.
Father stood and did a slow turn, looking in all directions. “Alexander!” he yelled. “Alexander!” Father took a walk down the hill, then returned. “He’s gone, I tell you.” Father laughed. “He beat you. And soundly at that.”
“Yeah,” said Nebuchar, “but when I find him—”
“When you find him you’ll congratulate him and leave him alone. Do you understand?”
“Okay.”
“Well, anyway, let’s eat. I must get back and prepare for tomorrow’s lecture.”
“But Alex,” said Mattie. “Where’s Alex?”
“He’ll show up,” said their father. “I know Alex. Wherever he is, he’s okay. Let’s eat.”
Aswan made himself a plate of chicken, put the cover back on the dish and set it down.
“Jesus Christ, mother of the lamb!” He’d put the dish down on Alex’s back. Alex stood up, naked and covered in dirt from head to toe.
“Alex!” Mattie yelled. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Alex crossed his arms proudly. “That’s how you hide from the wolf.”
“Well?” his father said, laughing, looking at Nebuchar. “Don’t you have something to say?”
“Congratulations, dragon,” he spat out.
Alex smiled. He walked to the tip of the rock. He knelt down and brushed the layer of dirt from the hole, and pulled out his clothing.
His father chuckled—and continued to do so the rest of the day. “You’re brilliant,” he said. After Alex dressed, he handed him his plate of chicken. “How did you think of that idea?”
Alex’s eyes peered out coldly through the brown dust caked to his face. He stared at his brother. “To hide from the wolf, the only way to survive is to hide in plain sight.”
“To hide in plain sight,” his father repeated that evening after prayers. “To hide in plain sight.”
The wisdom of a five-year-old.
In one brief moment, all of Aswan’s unfocused hatred coalesced into a stark course of action.
When the three men arrived that evening, as they had every Sunday evening for two years running, Aswan described a vision that would serve as a bl
ueprint for the terror to come.
“I’ve had a vision, brothers,” he said after the tea was poured. “I know how we’ll stab a dagger into the heart of our enemy.”
The group of men, four in all, began as a prayer group at the University of Beirut. Aswan, who was chairman of the European Languages Department at the university, had been the last to join. He didn’t like to proclaim his religious identity; he thought it was a private matter, for family only.
After his wife Rhianne died, though, Aswan changed. He changed in so many ways even he didn’t understand them all. His temper, which before had smoldered like a fire within, calmed. He found that his love for his children, his patience, his joy from being with them, grew. He also began to pray more. Hours at a time. As he did so he became closer with the true meaning.
But if the temper abated and the love of family grew, in some way it was balanced by something else that happened. Aswan began to hate those he saw as responsible for his wife’s death. And the hatred became interwoven with prayer.
At his wife’s funeral, a colleague from the university named Mohammed invited him to join the small prayer group. At first they devoted the time to prayer, but that soon changed. They started to drink tea and talk, then pray, until finally the prayers ceased altogether and only talk happened.
But the talk . . . oh, the talk. The discussions, they all felt, were nearly as important as the prayer. Because as they talked, they all found a common thread, which became a powerful tether uniting them. They hated America.
Mohammed had earned his Ph.D. at Harvard, as had Palan, the third member of the group. They had shared an apartment on the outskirts of Cambridge. The fourth member of the group, Binda, was a junior professor at the university. Like Aswan, he’d never been to America. But like many who’ve never been, he hated it with even more intensity than the others.