The Good Son

by Michael Gruber

  But maybe someone had seen it and recognized its supposed importance. She got up and found that her legs would hardly support her weight. Her face felt odd, and when she touched it her fingers came away wet. Sweat was running in streams from her hairline down to her neck, as if she had just completed a heavy workout. That was ridiculous. She hardly sweated even when she actually worked out. She ran from her office to the bathroom.

  Who was this person in the mirror? What had happened to the famously cool Cynthia Lam? A wave of nausea griped her, and she fled to a stall and heaved futilely over the bowl, willing the attack to pass. After a quarter of an hour she felt calm enough to approach the mirror again, where she dried herself with paper towels, adjusted her hair and makeup, and realized that she was feeling this way because she had crossed a line for the first time in her life. Although she had no problem with dissimulation and the subtle lie, never before had she done anything frankly illegal. She had never shoplifted, cheated on exams, or inflated her résumé, nor had she ever even had a traffic ticket. She had been a good girl and had reserved a silent contempt for those who weren’t, who committed impulsive and stupid acts.

  She practiced a disarming smile. She thought it looked ghastly but it might do for Ernie Lotz. He answered her knock, she applied the smile, and asked him if he’d found anything hot in the recent traffic.

  “Funny you should ask, I’m just about to go through the translations. I’ve been in Satcom meetings all afternoon about moving another bird to cover South Asia. Now if al-Q starts a branch in Tegucigalpa we’ll never know. Hey, is something wrong? You look terrible.”

  “I think I ate something salmonella-ish at lunch. I’m going home,” she said, and escaped.

  Cynthia had a lively interior-dialogue generator, by means of which she could usually convince herself that some course of action beneficial to her was the right thing to do, and she exercised this in turbo mode on the drive home. She played that last intercept over and over again through the headset of her memory and found she had not been mistaken in her initial judgment. The thing was so obviously a fraud, and using the same guy they’d used to fake Jafar Qasir was the capper, an easy proof of fraudulence. So why hadn’t she immediately gone to Morgan with it? Because they wouldn’t see it, they’d explain away the voiceprint comparisons. Morgan was maddened, they all were maddened by their own swelling importance, because at last, after the fiasco of Iraq, the intelligence community was actually going to find weapons of mass destruction in the hot hairy hands of terrorists. It justified their whole existence-unless it was a scam devised by a rogue element.

  Which it was, which it had to be. And so she was justified in opposing it, heroic in opposing it, the little Dutch girl with her finger in the dike, preventing another stupid war, another catastrophe for the United States, better than the FBI woman who had almost caught the 9/11 conspirators, because there would be no almost about it. Borden would find the SHOWBOAT files, and she’d put the whole thing together in a neat package, the voiceprint comparisons, the CIA plotters, everything, and take it triumphantly to Morgan; and if he didn’t buy it, she’d take it up the line, to the top of the agency. And the whole thing would wind down, the culprits would be exposed and canned, the intel world would breathe a great sigh, and everyone, right up to the director of national intelligence, would know that little Cynthia Lam had done it all by herself.

  These thoughts relaxed her, and by the time she entered her apartment she was feeling as she normally did, which was a kind of irritable discontent. She changed into jeans and a T-shirt, made a salad of field greens with a squat cylinder of tuna from the can plopped in its center, drank a glass of white wine to wash this down, and watched cable news while she did so. Then some minutes at her computer, writing to distant strangers, checking e-mail, disposing of yet another request from a Swiss banker and yet another encrypted e-mail.

  Her father called. She put his voice on the speaker while she cleaned her already clean apartment. He complained about his clients in terms that reflected the racism of a generation ago, complained about his health, asked when she was coming home, and asked for money. She listened and responded with meaningless sounds at appropriate intervals, promised a check, and got off as soon as she reasonably could. After that she watched two DVDs, one a steamy French one in which the couple rarely stopped having sexual intercourse and the other a frothy romantic comedy. She switched it off before the boy got the girl again, took a Xanax, and went to bed.

  Before she fell asleep she thought about what Borden had said, about having fun. She thought he was right, in a way. After this was resolved she would ditch Morgan and find a suitable boyfriend. She would take some of the huge amount of leave she’d accumulated and go to the islands, a warm beach with palms, and have some.

  As was her occasional practice when arriving at work, Cynthia bought a couple of coffees and sticky treats at the canteen and knocked on Ernie Lotz’s door. Ordinarily, she would hear a cheerful greeting, she’d enter, and the two of them would sit and have coffee and discuss the day’s upcoming problems, or Ernie’s personal problems if he had any that morning, and then she’d go back to her own office with a sugar-caffeine high adequate for the morning’s labor. This morning, however, there was silence behind the door.

  Could he be out sick? No, he would have called in and the group secretary would have put a Post-it on his door to that effect. She knocked again and tried the doorknob. The door was locked; then came Ernie’s voice.

  “I’m busy.”

  “I have cinnamon buns.”

  She heard movement within and the door opened just enough for Ernie’s face to appear. It was not his usual morning face. It looked like he’d recently been gut-punched.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Nothing. I’m working on a rush thing for Morgan.”

  “Can I help?”

  “No.” He started to close the door and she said, “At least take your stuff!”

  He hesitated for a second, then took the profferred breakfast and kicked the door shut. She heard the lock turning.

  Very strange, she thought, Ernie was never like that in the morning. She was the grumpy one and he the ray of sunshine; it was a standing joke between them.

  She shook off the feeling and turned to her work. People were still talking about wicked deeds in Urdu and Arabic and the great antennae were still sucking it in. She adjusted her headset and brought up the evening’s catch of sound files.

  As usual, there was nothing of vital interest. More significant was what was missing. She did not get a single call all morning, or any e-mails, and no one came to her door. It was as if she were working at a neutron bomb site. At noon, she knocked again on Lotz’s door and asked him if he wanted to go for lunch in Laurel.

  A muffled curt refusal through the door.

  Something unpleasant was happening here and she felt the anxiety of the previous day return, stronger than before. She called Borden. He must be back from Langley by now and she was dying to learn what he’d found.

  The phone rang twice and then she heard a strange voice say, “Dan Wilson.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I must have the wrong number.”

  “What number were you calling?”

  “Extension 3988.”

  “This is 3988.”

  “It is? Look, I’m trying to reach Walter Borden. This is his number.”

  “Sorry, it’s my number.”

  “Then what’s his new number?”

  “I have no idea. Have you tried the directory?”

  “Wait a minute. Are you in Internet surveillance?”

  “That’s right. But there’s no Walter Borden here.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, I can’t help you,” said the voice, and broke the connection.

  Cynthia dashed out of her office, down the corridors, choosing the stairs over the elevators, and arrived panting at the door of Borden’s office. It was cover
ed with Dilbert cartoons and the name Daniel G. Wilson was in the slot next to it. She threw the door open. A young man with thinning sandy hair and wire-rimmed glasses turned in his chair and looked at her. She stared at him and his office, which was filled with books and manuals and personal memorabilia, as if this Wilson had been occupying it for years.

  “Can I help you?” he asked.

  She shut the door, turned, and ran. She ran out of the building and got into her car. She drove to Laurel, to the strip mall, and went into Pho Bac. The waitress gave her a peculiar look and asked her if there was anything wrong. Cynthia forced a smile. There was nothing wrong. But she needed a drink and she ordered a vodka martini. And comfort food, hot and spicy: banh bop dumplings, and a bo kho with lots of chili sauce. And another martini to help her think.

  She stayed there for over an hour, going through her options. The main thing in her favor was that she was right. Yes, she had cut corners, and the business about roping Borden into looking for SHOWBOAT and Ringmaster was highly irregular, but agencies spied on one another in various ways all the time, and okay, she had violated security clearance protocol, but wasn’t this a special case? She just might be able to make the argument. Suppressing the Paidara intercept was perhaps an actual misdemeanor, but she could not imagine that anyone would come down hard on her for that, if they even knew about it. And, most significantly, she was right; there was no bomb plot, and therefore the location of the fictitious bombs was a nullity, disinformation rather than intelligence. It wasn’t as if she had compromised national security in any way. Perhaps a bit of a cowgirl, was Ms. Lam, inclined to go off on her own, but that was not entirely a bad thing in the intel game. Looked at positively, it might even be described as flair. After all, there was Harry Anspach. In any case, Anspach would understand, yes, and Morgan wouldn’t dare come down too hard on her, having himself taken sexual advantage of a female subordinate and so forth, not a scandal NSA wanted to get into.

  She drove back to NSA, angry with herself for the momentary panic but feeling confident that she would be able to brazen it out. She wondered briefly what had happened to Borden and then dismissed the thought. Borden was an adult with a million-dollar skill set. He would be fine, whatever the government chose to do. Again, it wasn’t as if they had compromised national security.

  She parked and walked through the lot to her building. There was a black car parked at the entrance. It had its rear door open and a couple of men in suits were standing in the road, watching her approach. She was composing a smile on her face when she recognized that they were the same two men who had been studying her in the parking lot yesterday, the ones who hadn’t smiled back. They didn’t smile back this time either. Instead, they flashed their ID: NSA Office of Security. Then they ushered her into the black car and out of her life.

  18

  A t dawn, before the azan has sounded for the Fajr prayer, Bahram Alakazai sweeps into the prisoners’ room with his usual guards and announces that an important al-Qaeda leader, Khalid ibn Hassan al-Zaydun, has been killed by an American missile strike, along with twenty innocents, as a result of which there will be an execution that day at noon. Before that, the people will gather to hear the lies of the infidels and apostates refuted by those who know the true word of God. He speaks for some time. When he leaves, Sonia asks Manjit what he thought of the speech and the man.

  “I thought he was needlessly prolix and vehement,” replies the Indian. “Why bother making such a passionate speech to his victims? We are certainly unlikely to convert to his way of thinking, and he need have no concern for what we think. I believe the real audience was his Praetorian guards.”

  “I believe you’re right,” says Sonia. “He has the sound of a man unsure of his authority.”

  “Your plan is working, then.”

  “There is no plan. I told you already, people come to me and I help them. If Alakazai came to me I would try to help him too.”

  “Do you think you could? He’s a true believer, and in my experience true believers are essentially unreachable by ordinary therapeutic means. They don’t suffer. Every setback or difficulty is projected onto others or onto the supposed enemy. Any offered help would appear as an assault on the perfection of his interior constructs, and we would undoubtedly see an abreaction, which, given the situation, might be personally dangerous.”

  She looks at him and sees the sly smile on his face. “Yes,” she says, “and wouldn’t it improve therapeutic practice immensely if all therapists were held hostage by heavily armed patients? It would at least limit the power games we so often play. But no, I think our host is beyond my help. It will require a miracle to penetrate the armor of his righteousness.”

  “And are you preparing such a miracle?”

  “Manjit, what a conspirator you’ve become! Always seeing plots, with me in the center. Karl-Heinz is the same. Frankly, I almost wish there was some secret scheme to get us out of here, because I fear that the most likely outcome is that Alakazai will make a holocaust of all of us at once to reestablish his bona fides among his more bloodthirsty troops.”

  Before long these troops appear and once again herd the prisoners against one wall of the room, while others move the charpoys against two other walls, leaving the wall with the door in it clear. Sonia notices that Idris and the handsome man whom they had seen before Cosgrove’s execution are seated on the wall opposite from where Alakazai sits, not in the seats of honor at his side where they had previously been placed.

  From Sonia’s right comes a whisper: Amin. “I see we have a full house again. And I notice Idris has fallen out of favor with Alakazai. He has been exiled to the opposite wall.”

  “Yes,” says Sonia quietly, “and so have the Arabs and their leader.”

  “A Pashtun by his looks. What do you suppose they’re doing in the village?”

  “Making bombs, according to Rashida. The Pashtun calls himself Abu Lais.”

  “All of them are armed to the teeth. Do you notice a certain tension in the air? Perhaps this is your doing.”

  “I did not discourage it,” says Sonia.

  Now, again, the emir rises and voices the statement of grievance: the murder of a leader of jihad, and his family and friends, all innocents, by the weapons of the great Satan, and the consequent demand on the cursed apostate Sonia Laghari that she choose who should be killed in just revenge. Sonia names Harold Ashton, and he is duly pulled out into the center of the room by the man in the black striped turban, Sarbaz Khalid Khan, and his usual sidekick, the shaven-head with the bushy beard.

  Ashton is pale but stands straight with his legs slightly apart and his hands clasped in the small of his back-parade rest, Sonia thinks; it is a military stance and must have some symbolism for the Englishman, a kind of defiance in his last moments. He addresses Alakazai directly, speaking good Pashto in a loud clear voice.

  “Emir, noble Pashtuns, believers! I greet you as one of your enemies. My tribe is the Ingrezi, who ruled this land in your fathers’ time. I was born here and my father and his father, and we drank the milk of your women from the breast when we were babies, the same milk as you drank. I tell you this so that you know I am not a stranger, but a milk brother to the Pashtuns. My grandfathers fought your grandfathers, and their fathers before them, two hundred years of fighting. Once you defeated us, and we defeated you every other time. Let others argue if we were good rulers or not, but I think we were not the worst. When we ruled, a child could walk unmolested from Peshawar to Kerala with a bag of gold in his fist, and perhaps that is no longer true. In any case, we were not thrown from the country by force of arms, but we grew tired and poor and changed our beliefs. We thought it was wrong for one man to go to another’s house and rule him, even for some great good. I still believe it is wrong, even to do it in the name of God.”

  He pauses to see how this is going down and looks as though he finds it satisfactory. At least he is a man and is speaking to them in their own language, and in the kind of
oratorical phrasing they are used to in their own jirgas.

  “When I was a youth I was a warrior, as you are now, and killed and saw much death in different places. I am your prisoner now, but only because I came, as I thought, under a truce, as a maker of peace with these others, and had not thought the Pashtuns would make war on unarmed old men and women. But I was wrong. When I fought as a warrior, perhaps you would not have captured me and perhaps some of you would be dead. But no matter. I fought alongside your fathers, and even some of you perhaps, in the Russian jihad, although I am an unbeliever. And after what I saw there, being no longer a youth but a man and growing tired of war, I began to think. I thought about the Pashtuns, and how they loved freedom and how well they fought to defend their homelands, and how little they got from it, how for many, many years the great powers had used them as pawns. And in the Russian jihad you were pawns too, for you would not have won without the help of the Americans and the Pakistanis. And beyond the Pashtuns I looked at the whole of the umma and I saw what we see today and what has been true also for hundreds of years: a people who are weak and poor and backward and ignorant. From Pakistan to Morocco, the Muslims invent nothing, manufacture nothing that anyone wants to buy. Is there a Muslim cell phone? Is there a Muslim car? Is there even a Muslim gun or a Muslim bullet? You know there is not, although you use these things happily enough. Was this why the Holy Qur’an was given to you, so you could be like the birds who peck grains from the dung of cattle?”

  Uproar: they did not like this, not so much for the analysis as for the use of “dung” and “Qur’an” in the same sentence, but he was not dismayed.