by David Poyer
“Just ‘all right?’”
“There are problems. I wouldn’t say more than with male sailors. But… different.”
“Pregnancies?”
“A few. Not enough to affect readiness. I guess if my XO got knocked up it might, but it hasn’t happened yet.” He caught her glance. “I’m joking, okay?”
“Oh, yes … Claudia. Is she working out?”
“Yeah. She’s good.”
Blair sipped her wine. Said casually, “Have you thought about what you want to do after this tour?”
“Well, usually it’s a shore billet after a command tour. Typically at one of the staffs.”
“The Pentagon?”
“Could be.”
“You don’t have any preference?”
“Something to do with operations would be good,” Dan told her. “Maybe joint operations, it seems like that’s the way things are going.”
“I want to get a house,” she told him. “I’ll probably be in the administration for a while. I don’t see anyone taking this president’s second term away, but there are figures who won’t stay for a second term.”
“So you could get a promotion?”
“We don’t call it that, but that’s what it’d be. If I do well where I’m at. And so far, I think I am. Oh, there’s grumbling at having a woman, and a Democrat, and somebody who hasn’t had any military service.”
“I can see the point about lack of service,” Dan said, “but the other shouldn’t matter.”
“Unfortunately, for some people they do. but they’re just going to have to live with it.” She shook her head. “Anyway, that’d put us both in town. I can start looking. If I find something I can send you pictures.”
Dan felt uneasy, but he wasn’t sure why. “Look, honey, don’t take this wrong, but I don’t want you setting up some special job for me. Understand? Just let the system work. I’ll talk to my detailer and see if there’s anything in the area.”
She picked at her fish. Then said, “You don’t like it when I bring this up. But what are you going to do after you get out of the navy?”
He tried to make a joke out of it. “Just being in takes all my attention, Blair. I don’t have time to think about anything else.”
“You told me if you made commander, that’d be it. So now you’re a commander.”
“When did I say that?”
“In Philadelphia. When you were getting the Gaddis ready to turn over to the Pakistanis.”
He was trying to recover the memory. Then had it: the garden of the art museum, the Schuylkill rushing by below, its cold breath coming up into their faces in the winter dark. “I didn’t mean I’d get out when I was a commander. I meant I wouldn’t make it to commander.”
“And now you have, and you’ve got the Medal of Honor, and a graduate degree, and you’re commanding a ship. Is this the old Dan Lenson I’m-doomed-before-I-start routine?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” He had to grin, thinking she was probably right. He did tend to look on the dark side. On the other hand, that side had turned his way, often as not.
“You need me around to give you these pep talks once in a while. I don’t think your career’s over yet. If that’s what you want.”
“Can we talk about this some other time?”
“Sure. But think about it, okay? … Aren’t those boats pretty?”
“Yeah, they’re pretty,” he said. Thinking only, as he looked out at their graceful shapes outlined against the declining light, that there sure were a lot of them, crowding in through the entrance to lie shoaled against each other as the nets of silvery gain came swinging ashore.
19
THE coffee was rich and dark, the roll baked that morning. Doctor Fasil Tariq al-Ulam spread it with sweet butter and jam and ate it in small, leisurely bites in a street-front café across from the Guday-biya Palace as cars and Japanese-made trucks roared past in the early rush.
Despite the traffic it was pleasant on Bani Otbah. Palms swept the far side of the palace wall, fronds swaying in a sea wind that down here, between the buildings, he could not feel. Across a wide avenue the glass stories of a new hotel flashed in the sun. Its angular façade contrasted oddly with the ornate domes and needling towers of the emir’s palace. Younger men in Western suits, older men in spotless thobe and Western street shoes, children on their way to school walked rapidly past a gleaming new peach-colored Mercedes at the curb.
Young girls in a giggling line hugged books to incipient breasts. He watched their bare calves glowing in the sunlight. Smiling faintly, as he remembered how the fat Yemeni, bin Jun’ad, had looked away. To follow the path of jihad did not mean one lost sight of everything else.
Sometimes he found the cell’s less-sophisticated recruits amusing. They had no life outside the mosque. Could not think outside the strictures of Qur’an. But what mattered was not that you’d memorized the Book. It was whether you had the courage to kill.
The girls swept by, and he looked after them. Youth and beauty…
Spoiling the moment came a picture of his own daughter, blind, mindless, and obese. Poor simple Badriyah. She’d be eighteen now; but she’d never been able to speak, or sing, or recognize her parents … Her only pleasure was to touch soft things, velvet and silk and fur. With them in her hands she was happy. He remembered her mindless croon.
He lit a cigarette with quick short motions, struggling with anger, regret. Insha’allah. The Will of God. But these beautiful schoolgirls were even more unfortunate, doomed and damned by the blindness of their parents. The Bahrainis were the most fallen of all the Arab states. The Saudis used the island, the British used it—as the Qari had said, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service was a Briton—for years now the Americans had made it their footstool. Bin Jun’ad said there were pious men in Bahrain, but he hadn’t seen any yet. Other than the sectarians, the Shi’ites.
Too bad the Sheikh hated them. It was the furtive and brilliant Imad Mughniyeh, head of Hezbollah’s secret service, who’d masterminded the suicide truck bombing that had driven the American marines out of Beirut.
Together what could we not do, al-Ulam thought. But the Sheikh loathed the “heretics,” “apostates,” as a wolf abominates a dog. So did Mullah Omar, who was killing thousands of Shi’a as the Taliban rolled across Afghanistan.
But there were enough volunteers. With each bulldozed house, the Jews made martyrs. With each arrogant, fumbling intervention America created more shaheed. The CIA had funded the Sheikh against the Communists. How surprised they’d be when they realized he hadn’t conveniently gone away. Beneath the placid surface of the world the new and this time truly universal umma of the faithful was growing. Soon all Afghanistan would be under the control of Mullah Omar. Soon they’d strike in earnest at the land the Jews had stolen, then at the homeland of Shaitan itself.
As for himself… the final task … then, the fishing business … and perhaps then it would be time to marry again. Sudanese families would compete to provide a girl-child. Thirteen, fourteen, young enough to obey anything a husband might ask.
So, was that a plan, then? Marry again… perhaps have a normal child? Surely a son was not too much to ask of God, after his work for Him. He smoothed thinning hair. His skin prickled where powder and metal were still embedded. A blasting cap had gone off prematurely. Since then he’d seen the world half in darkness, only half in light. Fortunately, the cap had not yet been inserted into the main charge … It was growing warm, the sky rolling toward its noontime glare.
The fishing business was doing very well. Perhaps he could still become wealthy before he grew old. It was time for a younger man to do this sort of thing. Youssef, Ajaj, Mohammad Atta, several he’d helped train might serve.
But first he’d have to settle with the nervous-looking, silver-bearded Mamdouh Mahmud Salim. The Shiekh’s advisor had told him any profit from the boats was the Organization’s. But he’d made that money, with hard work in the engine rooms of decaying dho
ws, endless arguing with crews and masters about staying out overnight rather than putting in each day. Salim would have to be put straight. One way or another.
He signaled for more coffee. Dusting crumbs to the ground for the pigeons who’d flocked the moment he sat down, he lit another cigarette and shook out the newspaper. Each day he read the Arabic-language journals, Al-Quds al-Arabi and Al-Hayah, and sometimes the French Al-Watan al-Arabi; then the Gulf Daily News, to keep up his English and pick up news that didn’t make it into the Arabic press. He looked over the financials, then the soccer scores. Manchester United had beaten Arsenal six to one in the Premiership. He looked carefully at the small notices that announced arrests. This might be the first warning of a security sweep. From time to time he raised his head slightly. But no one was taking any interest in a little man in a light gray summer suit drinking his morning coffee in a shaded courtyard. Taking his ease before strolling to the office.
Only God sees the heart.
He’d not seen Nair, Abdulrahman, Salman, or bin Jun’ad for days now. They had their tasks. Left alone, they’d carry them out. Salim had warned him the SIS was a dangerous opponent. He didn’t think they suspected what he was planning. Nevertheless, the less often the members of the team met, the less chance of compromise. To become a shaheed in action was glorious; screwing up and getting caught was just amateurish.
As far as he could see, the weak link was Shawki, who worked on the American base. The one who’d taken the first team in and helped steal the plastic explosive. (Which was carefully hidden in a cool dry place at the boathouse.) He was taking an American paycheck, after all. And he was young. Their corrupt, permissive way of living, their sluttish, half-naked women could tempt a young man.
In which case he’d have to abandon the flat, the house, and the explosives and get out of the country. He kept the Mercedes fueled at all times. It was rented by the week on an American Express card. Once across the causeway to Saudi he’d be safe; the Center would pass him from hand to hand back to Sudan or Yemen or, as a last resort, Afghanistan. Until then, they were in danger on this side of the King Fahad causeway.
But he really didn’t think anyone knew they were there.
He was letting his eye run more or less automatically down the columns of print when he noticed the picture of the ship.
A Japanese warship had come in a few days before. That photo, too, had attracted his attention. But this one was American. He snapped the paper open, adjusted his legs to a more comfortable position, and read on. Then frowned, pushing his sunglasses up.
A warship … manned by women. Only the Americans could conceive such a thing! A floating palace of fornication. No doubt with television cameras to record it all. He could care less how the infidels defied God. There was room in hell for all of them. But why did they have to flaunt their dirtiness in the face of those who believed?
Because no one resisted. Because just as the Qari said, the puppet emir and his British advisors welcomed them.
The waiter, who’d been standing inside the door of the café, asked him in a Bahraini accent if he needed anything. Al-Ulam said yes, brother, another of these most excellent coffees. He brought it, fresh, steaming, and they stood watching the morning.
“Truly, God is great,” the waiter said. “To give us this beautiful morning in this beautiful life.”
“God is great indeed, ya akhi,” al-Ulam said. “You have spoken in His praise with a grateful heart. May he bless you and myself as well.”
The man nodded, dark-skinned, poor, by the ruined condition of his shoes under the apron, with great expressive eyes.
For a moment al-Ulam thought of asking what he thought of a ship of fornication violating the Lands of Faith. But even a waiter could work for the SIS. Or for the leftists, the secularists, Iranians, Hamas, Ba’athists, or the Hezbollah, any of which would be interested in a stranger who voiced opinions. The real Fasil al-Ulam was still working at his clinic in Abu Dhabi. And though he had another passport, if he was arrested, no document could save him. He’d left his fingerprints too many places where people had died suddenly.
His thoughts returned to the ship. He looked at the article again and realized it was not far away, indeed, within walking distance. He put on his sunglasses, tucked the paper under his arm, and left a couple of dinar notes on the table.
THE jetty was an extension of the Al-Fatih Highway, jutting into the harbor. New but already dirty, paint-stained, chipped where something massive had run into it. The smell of rotting fish hung in the air. Within its concrete elbow a few shabby craft were tied up, but obviously most were absent. He’d noticed the fishing dhows, bound out early on their daily routine, returning at the setting of the sun. They reminded him of his own boats, in Sudan, and for a moment he wondered if the exhaust in Number Five was holding where he’d welded it… Workers in coveralls were repairing a piling below him. They ignored him after one glance. A trim, erect figure in gray suit and white shirt, looking across the water to the much larger jetty to the east.
The warship was huge and intimidating. Built for the deep sea. It looked very dangerous and very powerful. Its sides went up and up for many meters. To guns and antennas and electronic equipment. Figures stood on a stage, repainting the side. They wore hard hats and at this distance he could not tell if they were men or women, American or Arab.
He went to stand on the far side of a concrete building, placing it between him, and the workers, and the shore. Taking a camera out of his jacket, he snapped several photographs. Slipped it back, then stood watching for several more minutes.
He was about to leave when a small craft appeared from behind the jetty. He unfolded his paper. Looking down at it, then at his watch, as if waiting for someone, he observed the boat, a gray inflatable with three men in it, as it patrolled slowly around the ship. It turned in his direction, and he tensed. But then it turned away. It swept out a wide circle, accelerating, throwing up waves that rocked across the harbor and plashed on the rocky riprap at his feet. A few hundred meters out, it throttled back again. One of the men in it, in camouflage fatigues, was searching the surface with field glasses.
He folded the newspaper with a snap and walked briskly toward the shore. Turned right, and after a brisk march along the waterfront, de-touring inland through narrow streets to avoid a repair dock, men chipping barnacles off the hulls of dhows, came out again onto the harbor front. He walked briskly down it, noting a cruise liner moored across from the warship.
“Excuse me, sir. Sir!”
“Yes?” He turned impatiently.
She was in a white uniform and a white cap. A pistol hung at her belt. A dark-haired woman no taller than he was. He was so startled and disgusted he did not at first react. Then he took off his sunglasses. Americans did not trust people in sunglasses. He said in his best English, “Good morning. I’m Doctor al-Ulam. I’ve been called to the cruise ship, there? May I pass, please?”
“Doctor?” She glanced at the white towering walls of the liner. Then back at him. “Where’s your bag?”
He smiled. “I don’t carry a bag, miss. The ship’s well equipped. I’m a specialist.”
He saw she didn’t, but that she’d let him pass. “Well… I guess that’s all right.”
He thanked her and went on. Past the smaller warship, the one with the Rising Sun flag of the Japanese. Putting his dark glasses back on so he could examine the American without seeming to.
It grew larger as he neared. The bow was a great wedged blade of gray-painted steel. It was painted with strange ghostly numbers, as if meant to be invisible at a distance. Behind it the upper works mounted up, and up, till they terminated in spinning devices so high he could hardly make them out. The ship’s voice came to him, a menacing hum of blowers and machinery. A crane idled, engine rumbling. Men in coveralls and uniforms stood back as it slowly lowered a long box to a flat area he recognized after a moment as a landing pad. A metal bridge led up to the deck. Uniformed guards glanced his w
ay as he went by, then away.
The great machine looked armored and invulnerable. The Crusaders were proud in their strength. But so had the unbelievers been in the battle of Badr, the battle of the Trench, the battle of Yarmuk.
He walked on, noting with hate the flaunting of their gaudy flag. The only weapon he saw, however, was a cannon, and it did not seem large. There must be other weapons, hidden. He saw no sentries other than those at the metal bridge. And in the inflatable boat; but he didn’t see it now.
He turned away, and climbed the steps into the hull of the cruise ship. He asked if the captain would be interested in hiring a well-qualified physician. After some time he was told the ship already had a doctor. He thanked them quietly, looking out over the bay from the lofty deck.
There was the inflatable, idling a hundred meters off. He saw no weapons, though.
Then he smiled. One man had a fishing rod in his hands. As he watched, he cast, then fixed the rod in a holder. The motor purred and the boat eased past, trailing a V-shaped wake.
Back on the jetty, he walked slowly past the destroyer again. Then, on impulse, turned and went up the gangway, the metal gridwork bouncing beneath his weight.
The sailors watched him without interest. As he stepped off, actually standing now on the deck—it was all steel, he saw, every bit of the ship was heavy, thick, welded steel, unlike the Vietnamese shrimpers, which were of thin metal, or his dhows, which were built of wood— one left the shade and sauntered over. He was large and pale, with a round face and blond hair under his white hat.
“Help you with somethin’?”
“Here’s my card. I’m a doctor. I wished to offer my services, should any of your crew need medical attention.”
The man had a southern, southwestern accent; al-Ulam guessed Texas. It brought back unpleasant memories. He trembled, keeping the hatred from his face. Smiling, an inoffensive, inquiring little man, trying to drum up a little business. Who glanced only for a moment at the empty machine-gun mount, at the padlock that secured the ammunition locker beside it.