Heart Strike

by David Bishop

  Could this be why so many of the privileged in the Middle East frequently come to America and the U.K?

  He ordered a burger, fries, and a Guinness, another American product he had come to love. Guinness was really an Irish dry stout, but he had learned of it in America. Most of his journey into manhood had been traveled in America and, along his journey, he became more westernized than he cared to admit.

  A few minutes later, he watched the bountiful barmaid again coming toward him carrying his Guinness. Her nimble hips guided her around the tables and chairs like the felucca sailboats he used to watch tacking through the waters of the Red Sea and along the Nile.

  I’ve never seen a beer delivered with such munashida—such appeal.

  She stopped suddenly, dropped a circular coaster in front of him and placed his beer on it. A tiny portion of the Guinness splashed onto the stiff paper and wet her fingers. She faced Faraj, smiled, and licked them.

  Faraj knew she had no real interest in him, still he felt lucky to be seated in her section. Many of the coeds at Georgetown had told him they dug his accent. He was six-foot-two and weighed a bit over two hundred pounds.

  American women do say that size matters.

  The clerics had preached there was little difference between the Americans, the Brits, the Australians, and the Canadians. They were all dirt and, if it were not for the Israelis, they would be the cruddiest dirt on earth. Scum. That’s what he’d been taught. This prescription conflicted with the experiences of his own life. This barmaid, her name badge read Wendy, might be misguided, but she could not be scum, even if her real name was not Wendy.

  Oh, sure, there were Americans and westerners from other countries he’d come to know on the Georgetown campus whom he neither liked nor respected. There were many he thought were good, at least good enough. And there were a few really fine people, like Dorothy. All these people couldn’t deserve to die simply because they were not Muslims. Certainly, Dorothy didn’t deserve to die. As for Wendy, as the boys at GU would say, she was a keeper.

  It would be two more afternoons until he visited the dead drop to get his orders. He knew nothing of the specifics of his mission. He reasoned that it had to be profound. The cause had not invested years and lots of money first training him and later secreting him inside America so he could carry out a trivial task.

  These thoughts left him when he saw Wendy returning with his burger plate pleasantly positioned just below her breasts.

  Looks like she’s delivering her tits on a bun.

  The showy barmaid placed his meal in front of him, put her bare hand on his shoulder and leaned in. “Another Guinness, Mate?”

  She’s British. I really dig the accent and her lean-in.

  “When you see my glass nearly empty, bring another.”

  Beer and boobs. God, help me, I must be at least half American. I’ll need to say more tawbah when I get home, before Salat al-ʹisha.

  Faraj was snagged on an imponderable: would he obey the order in the dead drop or would he not? If left only to himself, he would continue his education and pursue medicine as a career, and continue his fascination with American women. That much he admitted to himself. However, the tenets of his training required he ignore his own reasoning and carry out his mission or be damned. Beyond that, there was his family to consider. Still in Egypt, his family was vulnerable to retaliation and would be filled with shame if he failed to complete his mission as ordered.

  I know my task will be horrible. But I cannot shame my family.

  He needed to talk with someone. Only Dorothy came to mind. He could never tell her he was a sleeper cell under orders to perform an act of terrorism. He couldn’t even share the specifics of his mission, once he learned what those were. Still, he had to talk with someone. Dorothy was the closest to family he’d had since leaving Egypt to come to America.

  Dorothy will report me. She’ll have to. She’s a solid citizen.

  Chapter 24

  It was after midnight when Linda unlocked her beach house in Sea Crest, Oregon. She left the front door open, walked through the master bedroom and out the glass slider.

  Ryan shut the door, put their suitcases next to the bed, and went out onto the deck. Linda was leaning on the railing looking at the ocean.

  “It’s good to be home.” She inhaled, filling her lungs with the salt-tinged air.

  “You still think of this as home, not Kansas?”

  “Oh, they both are, I guess. But here is … special. Listen to that ocean. There’s no better way to fall asleep or a more naturally relaxing sound.”

  The gentleness of the night replaced the brightness of the day. The clouds glowed with the soft light of a white chocolate moon. Its surface appeared to have finger smudges. The moon’s reach glazed the smooth water beyond the breakers. In close, the foamy waves silently slid over the darker wet sand. A white, bark-stripped log beached by some storm, quietly rested down-beach, ever alert for the next raucous sea that would allow its escape to another shore, possibly in another land.

  Linda looked over at Ryan who stood stone still staring at the surf. “You okay, sweetheart?”

  “Me? Yeah. Sure.”

  The direction of his gaze remained unchanged.

  “Don’t lock me out. … Talk to me.”

  “I was just thinking … it’s … nothin’.”

  “Come on. Give.”

  “Expecting they won’t let many old shooters into heaven. When my days are done, I’d settle for here. My ashes mixed with the dry sand for eternity.”

  Linda gripped his upper arm in both her hands. “You’re quite the philosopher.”

  He smiled, then looked away.

  She circled around to face him and put her arms around his neck. They embraced hard and long. “How ‘bout we walk into town to unkink from our flight? We can get something to eat at Millie’s Sea Grog.”

  They walked along the road, entered Millie’s, sat, and ordered. When their food came, they ate with an unspoken eagerness. Linda ordered a bottle of wine. When it came, Ryan didn’t look at the label. He poured for them both. The wine was the color of golden straw with a light aroma of lemons and something his nose didn’t know.

  An hour later, coming back, Ryan tied his shoelaces together and draped the joined shoes over the top of his arm. Linda slipped off her espadrilles, and stuffed them into her pouchy purse that hung on her shoulder. They walked in the sand. When they were most of the way home, they pulled up and stood a few yards above the gathering surf. Soon, the spreading ebb of the sea crept over their toes.

  The water glistened in the moonlight while they listened to the clashing of the waves and chattering of the gulls out for a night soar. He took her hand. “Your beach has the feel of faraway places.”

  “Places you’ve been? Memories?”

  “I wasn’t thinking of any place in particular, just someplace away from … everything.” He kicked out, throwing a splash of the sea at itself, then walked out of the surf and sat on the sand.

  Linda stood, looking down at Ryan. “What you’re doing, it’s … important, isn’t it?”

  “Sure. It always is. Each mission is planted in fate-of-the-world soil. That’s … a bit dramatic, but it sometimes seems that way.”

  She stooped and eased down next to him, her knees up, her arms wrapped around them. “But it does make a difference. Doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah. I suppose. One never really knows what would have resulted if the action taken hadn’t been. I’ve come to realize that if whatever I’m doing is not done by anyone, the world will still keep on turning. That whether my mission is done or not done, innocent people will still keep dying. Babies will still keep being born.” He reached down and scooped up a handful of sand. “If this expanse of beach I hold in my hand,” he tossed the handful a few feet away, “was over there would it really change anything at all? Anything worth risking your life? Maybe ending your life?”

  Linda released her hold on her knees and turned to him
, her toes clawing at the firm sand. “You’re tired, darling. We need to spend these couple of days sleeping, loving, and just lazing around. Nights on the beach, walks, whatever. Okay?”

  She looked into his eyes. He squeezed her hand. “I am tired. It’s not something I like to admit.”

  “Hey, this is me. You can be honest.”

  “I know. Thank you. Christ, listen to me prattle. Yes. This is important. President Wellington has a good plan. It can make a difference. I believe in him.”

  “Then so do I. The president’ll be speaking tomorrow night, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “What about?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t expect he’ll publicly mention his doctrine. Not before I’ve carried out the second half of the mission.”

  “Will I be going with you again, on what I’ve heard you refer to as phase two?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? In for a half a loaf, in for the whole.”

  “The fact that you were followed in Paris confirms our ruse of being tourists is out of the bag. I’ll be moving from one country to the next more rapidly. The exposure of our cover as sightseers eliminates the need to dally.”

  “And then there’s that Middle Eastern female thing. I guess that’s part of it, too, right?”

  “Not much. This trip is not about arguing for social justice. It’s about getting the necessary audiences and delivering the president’s message. Tell me you understand.”

  “I do. I guess. Damn it.”

  “You remember that shirt, I guess it was more of a blouse? You wore it not long after we met a couple of years back. The time we left Vegas to drive to Sedona, Arizona.”

  “Describe it.”

  “It was yellow. It looked like sunlight against your brunette hair and tanned skin. You wore it on our flight east to Baltimore.”

  “Okay. Yeah. What about it?”

  “You were wearing it the first time I ever saw you.”

  “The night in the alley?”

  “Several days before that.”

  Linda scraped up her own handful of slightly moist sand. “I didn’t see you.”

  “Hmm, hmm.”

  She patted the sand between her hands, cupping it into a molded gritty softball. “Go on.”

  “Oh, nothing. It’s silly anyway.”

  “You started it. Finish it.”

  “You looked like every wonderful, beautiful woman I’d ever wanted to know. My grandma would’ve said I was instantly smitten.”

  Linda smiled and tossed the balled sand into an approaching wave about to curl around for its return to deeper water. “We’ve known each other almost three years. But, in all that time, we haven’t spent more than, what, three months together. Tell me about your life.”

  “What’s to tell?”

  “Don’t you do that again.”

  “What?”

  “Start something and then wrap it up in your cloak-and-dagger secret shit. I want to know about your upbringing. Your parents. Your first love. All of it.”

  “That could take all night.”

  “It’s warm and the sun won’t be up for hours. When will we have a better time?”

  “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Jump in, adjust as you go.”

  Ryan leaned back, his hands settling on the sand. “Eventis stultorum magister – Youth is the teacher of fools.”

  “I hope you’re going to get more understandable than that.”

  “It means that life just stacks up. The weeks pile high. They become months which in turn grow into years. Then, suddenly, you’re older … and …”

  “Start when you were a kid. When you first imagined what your life would be, or what you wanted it to be.”

  Ryan bobbed his head and raised his eyebrows. “I was one of those foster children moved from house to house, family to family. Fortunately, we stayed within the same school district. My best friend and I grew up playing soldier in the neighborhood and the mountains near where we lived. We saw every war movie ever made. World War Two, Korean, hell, even the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. When we weren’t watching we were reading books like The Three Musketeers, lots of Louis L’Amour westerns, and The Man in the Iron Mask. We watched those films and read those stories over and over. At some point, we just knew we wanted to be soldiers. It was all vague. We were kids. We just knew we wanted to be adventurers. We wanted to defend America. We were big and strong, tough—at least we thought so. As we grew we decided to be marines, then later we leaned toward becoming Special Forces, rangers or seals or something like that. Driven by testosterone, we were convinced we could, singlehandedly, keep America free and safe while living a glory-filled life.”

  “That was all you two envisioned?”

  “Well, cleavage often entered into our imaginings.”

  Linda leaned close and tugged easily on two fingers of his leg hair.

  “We watched and re-watched a couple of films: Rita Hayworth in the movie Gilda, and an older film my buddy’s dad had on Beta: the Howard Hughes film, The Outlaw. That was a Billy the Kid movie starring Jane Russell.”

  “Not Jennifer Gray with Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing? I loved that movie. Or, seeing you like the old movies so much, maybe Ginger Rogers dancing with Fred Astaire?”

  Ryan shook his head. His lips pursed. “I remember Dirty Dancing, but we were teenagers when it came out. Jennifer Gray was a bit young for us, for fantasizing. As for Ginger Rogers with Astaire, she was hot, but between the censors back then and the image Astaire was going for, Ginger was a bit too glamorous. Rita Hayworth and Jane Russell were more … earthy. More raw. The expectation was always there that Rita would, at any moment, rip off her clothes and jump Glenn Ford. Or that Jane Russell would grab her Mexican blouse, already out over the ends of her shoulders, and drag it down over her breasts. We knew they wouldn’t. The movie censors in those days wouldn’t allow it. But the fantasies of young men aren’t constrained by such limitations.”

  “I have one of those off-shoulder, elastic-topped blouses.”

  “I’d like you to wear it sometime.”

  “You’re only here a few days before heading back to Washington. How about tomorrow night? We could barbeque something out on the deck, then take a walk on the beach. As I recall, in that movie, Jane Russell wore that top lying on the hay in a barn. I don’t have a barn.”

  “But Jane and Billy The Kid didn’t have a beach. We’ll improvise. Find a spot where the moonlight shines just right on you.”

  Linda squeezed his hand. “You men are all alike.”

  “Would you want us any other way?”

  “Not this woman. But, we digress. Back to the story of your life.”

  “One of my early assignments took me to Iraq and Iran where I spent the next couple of years with various tribal fighting units. In Iran, I met a woman. We fell in love, had a son, and settled in the southwestern region of her country.”

  “Did you like it there?”

  “Mm hmm. Hanging with the intense fighting men of the Middle East can make a man feel he’s the normal one.” He grinned. “But, seriously, they were some really good people.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Who?”

  “You know. Your wife.”

  “It … doesn’t matter.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Alaleh.”

  “And your son, what is his name?”

  “Ramin.”

  Linda drove her fingers into the sand, gripping a fist full. “Are your wife and son waiting for you in Iran?”

  “They’re both dead.”

  Linda stopped her hand, opened it, and turned to face Ryan. “What happened?”

  “Faction fighting with the Kurds.”

  “I wasn’t aware they fought.”

  “In the Middle East everyone fights, or is affected by those who do. After World War I, the European powers redrew borders. When they were done, Kurdistan, the nation home of about thirty mi
llion people, disappeared. Absorbed as parts of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, wherever. As for my family, I’ll never know who caused what or who raided whom. In that part of the world such occurrences are all too commonplace. In the end, it matters little. They are gone. It is done.”

  “Do you hate the Kurds?”

  A cloud, passing the moon, briefly shadowed his face. “No. The common people there are trapped by history and events not of their making. I don’t assign blame.”

  “Then who? Where is the blame?”

  “The enemy remains terrorists. They’re haters not healers. Damn near all the factions there come down to being directly or indirectly about the ancient frictions between the Sunni and the Shia. For me, Putin said it best. ‘To forgive the terrorists is up to God, but to send them to him is up to me.”

  Linda stood, Ryan did too. She hugged him, her eyes just above the crest of his shoulder. They stayed quiet for a while, Ryan staring at the sky out to the horizon. Eventually, she put her open hand on his forearm. “I must tell you all of this scares me. I worry about you.”

  “Worry is a prayer for what we don’t want, to paraphrase an old saying.”

  “Are you okay now? I mean, since your family—”

  “Life goes on, doesn’t it?”

  The sadness behind his put-on smile made Linda’s insides shiver.

  “What other choice do I have? That’s the whole story of my life … the family part.”

  “Thank you for telling me. What came next?”

  “After several years of assignments I can’t talk about, for the CIA and the DIA, I went to work for Webster. Then I met you. From then on, you know a good part of it.”

  “Not so fast, mister. What about when you met me?”

  “I wanted to know everything about you.”

  “Such as?”

  “Just like you’re asking me tonight, the story of your life. Your favorite flavor of ice cream. Your favorite everything. I wanted to see where you slept. Watch you take off your clothes at the end of the day, and hold your towel while you took a shower. Be with you while you cooked breakfast. See how you dress when you go out with a man you want to seduce. The foods you like. Movies. Music. The whole salami. All of it.”