by David Perry
The hard-packed, earthen floor had turned black as it mixed with her parents’ blood. The walls were smeared with cursed writings, using the crimson ink from her parent’s veins.
Delilah screamed and fled the house, fearing the attackers would come for her. The next ten days were a blur. She roamed the desert, stopping to steal food and sleeping in the cold night air under the stars. On the tenth day, she snuck into a house whose occupants appeared to be away. Delilah found several pieces of bread and some goat’s milk, devouring them quickly. She roamed the house. Finding a shawl, she swung it around her shoulders. When she turned, she saw the man standing in the doorway. She could see in his eyes that her-now tragic life would take another step downward into the pit of fire.
The man looked over his shoulder out the door to be certain they were alone. He blocked Delilah’s only avenue of escape. The rape lasted hours. The man relented only because he grew tired. Delilah was tied and left exposed and bleeding until nightfall.
His name was Muhsin, which means beneficent and charitable. He was far from it. The wife’s was named Fadwa. They kept her tied her up for two straight weeks. She was not allowed to bathe and was only untied so she could relieve herself while Muhsin watched. Her captivity lasted nearly a year. Muhsin beat her mercilessly, making her an example to his three daughters. During her slavery, Fadwa gave Delilah the most unpleasant of chores. The daughters ridiculed her. Once, she tried to run, but Muhsin ran her down a few hundred meters from the house. He unleashed on her a savage beating. Delilah knew then she would only be free when Muhsin and Fadwa no longer drew breath. That day, she began devising a plan.
Muhsin enjoyed his opium. As she performed her chores, Delilah stumbled upon his stash one morning. She scraped some of the powder from the small container into her palm. Over the course of a few months, Delilah managed to squirrel away enough to kill a horse. Her opportunity came one night when Fadwa had taken the girls to visit her mother in a village up the road. Delilah knew what would happen that night. Muhsin came to her. Delilah endured it. When Muhsin demanded tea, Delilah mixed a large amount of opium into it. Thirty minutes later, Muhsin was in a drug-induced coma. She found a large boulder and caved in his skull. For good measure, she cut off his manhood and stuffed it into his mouth as revenge for her father’s mutilation.
Delilah ran for hours through the night, stopping to rest for a few minutes every so often. Fearing Muhsin would awaken from death and drag her back, she refused to stop. She stumbled upon a road in the dark night. As luck would have it, a large, dark sedan was passing and nearly hit her. The car screeched to a halt. A stout, robed man emerged from the backseat along with the driver and helped her into the car.
Seeing her state of malnutrition and uncleanliness, the man questioned the young girl. Delilah sat rocking in the soft leather, crying, unable to put into words what had happened or what she had done.
“My name is Ahmed,” he told her. “Whatever you are afraid of cannot hurt you here. You are safe, my child.”
She slept on the soft leather during the ride. When she awoke, it was daylight. Ahmed coaxed her from the vehicle. They had stopped outside a beautiful religious building. “Come, child,” he said. “You are safe now. This is my mosque. No one can hurt you.”
“Where are we?” asked Delilah.
“Far away from your tormentors. Near Tikrit.”
He took her inside, where he knelt in prayer. Delilah watched, fascinated. When he was finished, he led her outside and down a path to his house a hundred meters away. The imam’s wife made her a sumptuous lunch. Delilah showered, was given fresh clothes, and slept restfully for the first time in over twelve months. Never again would she experience poverty or fear.
The cleric and his spouse guided her to adulthood, educating her and revealing to her that Allah was the one true God and Islam the one true faith.
During that time, the cleric introduced her to a very good friend of his. A young man, tall and dark, with a thick, bushy moustache. He had been exiled, had returned, and was soon to be jailed. Over the course of the next ten years, she would meet him several times more. Though he was married to three other wives over the years, that young man gave her two children and changed Delilah’s life forever. Delilah, a.k.a. Lily Zanns, had even taken his name.
Now her every action had been in preparation to avenge him, to perpetrate the ultimate jihad. Three years of tedious preparation would come down to an event that would last less than five seconds. Her children, her soldiers, were prepared, ready for battle—ready to die. After tonight, she would never see Jasmine again. She would only look upon her son many years from now. They would avenge their father, a man they had never known.
The whole world knew the public person. Zanns knew the private man—intimately. She had caressed his warm, olive skin and looked into his soulless eyes as he ravaged her in animalistic love. Though they would never be together again, she ached for those long-ago days. This mission was her final tribute to him.
Zanns removed a folded piece of paper from inside her blouse. She always kept it close to her heart, stuffed inside her brassiere. Unfolding it, she scanned Amo’s final letter to his people, penned days before his death. She read the final paragraph, her favorite passage:
Dear faithful people, I say good-bye to you, but I will be with the merciful God who helps those who take revenge in him and who will never disappoint any faithful, honest believer…Allahu Akbar…Allahu Akbar…Long live our nation…Long live our great struggling people…Long live Iraq, long live Iraq…Long live Palestine…Long live jihad and the mujahedeen.
Saddam Hussein Abd-al-Majid al-Tikriti, President and Commander in Chief of the Iraqi Mujahed Armed Forces
With two fingers, she stroked the amulet hanging around her neck. Opening it, she gazed down at his smiling face. Amo, her beloved Amo, had been taken into custody years ago, captured in a spider hole by the Americans. She’d tracked his case through the media and secret messages embedded in the web site, which were relayed through his incompetent lawyers. Then she had watched the horrific cell phone video as he was ridiculed while the noose was placed around his neck.
She missed him deeply, but she knew Saddam would be pleased by her work.
* * *
It had happened again. She’d made a fool of herself over a man.
Jason had been the latest in a string of failed relationships. Initially, he’d seemed different than the others. He was so kind and attentive. But then that brat of a son demanded too much attention, getting in the way of her quality time with Jason. And that bitch of an ex-wife was always calling to talk about the Little Prince. She, Sheila Boquist, deserved some consideration, some attention, too. What was so difficult about that?
Thinking back, the signs of the impending breakup had been painfully obvious. She’d ignored them, as always. Longer intervals between phone calls followed by less-frequent dates. Jason delivered the blow, quick and hard. His words reached inside her like hot, searing tongs, ripping out her heart and with it the painful memory of every failed relationship she’d ever had. A tear inched down her face. She shook her head, trying to shake the pain and memories.
Bastards, she thought. All men are bastards.
She inserted the key into the lock of the community mailbox and opened the tiny door. Three envelopes. Two were bills. The third was a card of some sort with her name typed on it. She opened it, read the typewritten words, and her heart soared.
Sheila,
I would like to meet you tonight to talk about our relationship. Please meet me at Maggie’s Tavern at seven.
Jason
CHAPTER 50
Christine scrutinized Jason coldly. Jason’s wallet in her pocket pressed against her thigh. It was her small, leather hostage. He was not getting it back until she knew the truth. They had agreed to meet on Sunday. But her father’s coded voice message had disintegrated those plans.
“It’s a cover for something larger. It has to be,” said Jason. �
�It’s more than insurance fraud.”
“We already talked about this,” Christine said impatiently. Jason had agreed to meet her to discuss their past, not his obsession. “We’re here to talk about what happened between us. Stop trying to avoid it. I want answers. It ends here and now!”
They were at a table in the rear of Maggie’s Tavern, an upscale but generic eatery in the Port Warwick section of Newport News. Jason sat with a view of the entrance. After following the now-dead Winstead, Jason had left the rented Fusion in the parking lot at the Colonial. That left him without a ride. He now had two cars parked at the pharmacy. Peter had given him a ride to rent another vehicle. This one was a Saturn SL1. Jason hadn’t seen anyone following them, but he just didn’t know anymore. Sometimes it felt as if he had a fleet of cars on his tail.
“Cut me some slack, will you? We’ll get to that.”
“Make it quick.”
He leaned over the table, closer. “I watched the DVD your father left in his files again. I’d looked at it for hours, but didn’t see anything that looked important. Then I saw it.”
Christine looked to the ceiling in disgust. When she looked at him again, she saw reflected in Jason’s eyes her own expanding frustration. Get to the point!
“What?” she asked with a roll of her eyes.
“It happened just as Sam Fairing was leaving the Colonial. He’d finished closing up and shutting down. Then, as he was walking out the door, he grabbed an empty prescription bag from the will-call bin.”
“So?”
“It was the same dirty, crumpled bag your father left for us in his files. The one with Winstead’s name on it. You see, after Sam left the pharmacy, he drove immediately to the Lions Bridge with the empty prescription bag. Don’t you see what this means?”
“I don’t feel like playing twenty questions. Why don’t you tell me?”
“The bag was stained with red clay. The kind of clay you find over there near the bridge and the Noland Trail. Sam left the bag there. I think I know the spot, it was a depression under a dead tree. Sam was sending a signal. It’s an old spy trick—a dead drop. Sam was signaling someone about something, or he retrieved some information and left the bag as a signal that the package was received. My guess is he retrieved a package of information or money. Then he left the bag to confirm the pickup. Except your father got there and found the empty prescription bag. That’s when he got caught.”
Christine stared at him with utter contempt.
“Don’t you see? There’s a conspiracy. The last time it happened, Winstead dropped a prescription at the Colonial on September 14. On the fifteenth, Thomas died. Your father was following Fairing the night he was killed. They found out he was on to them, and they killed him. Maybe he saw what was happening at the bridge, retrieved the bag, and whoever was supposed to find it caught him. Your father ran. He ran to the Colonial, where they caught up to him. Somewhere in all that, he was shot through the shoulder. They sutured him up, got him drunk, and made it look like he died in a car accident—”
“Enough!” Christine’s hand made a wide arc toward Jason’s face.
Jason was prepared for it. With the reflexes honed by years of training in Tae Kwon Doe, he reached up and grabbed her arm in midair, stopping it cold with a dull smack of skin on skin. Christine tried to yank her arm away. Jason held tight.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Do you understand me?” Christine seethed.
Jason held her gaze, clamping her arm in a viselike grip. He lowered it and pressed it to the tabletop. “No, it’s not enough. There’s more,” he said. “When I was looking at the DVD, I got frustrated because I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I threw a book at the mantel. A vase fell and broke. I found something inside it. It was a tiny camera and microphone. Chrissie, they bugged my house! People are following me, watching me. They’re concerned about what I know. That’s why Jasmine is so interested in me. Someone wants to know what I know. They probably heard everything we were talking about last night!”
Hearing Jasmine’s name only fueled her ire. “I don’t care! Do you hear me? You owe me answers. And I want them right now!”
“But you also want to get some things off your chest as well, don’t you?”
“You’re damn right I do.”
He raised his hands into the air, releasing her arm. “I need a drink.” Jason waved at the waitress and ordered a gin and tonic. When the waitress was gone, he said, “Okay. Go ahead. Tell me what you’ve waited all these years to say.”
Christine bit her lip, collecting her thoughts. Old passions and new jealousies swirled inside her. This was the conversation she’d dreamt about. A longing that began the day Jason had dumped her. She swallowed and began. “You really crushed me, Jason. I was screwed up for a long time. No, you know what? There’s no word close to describing what you did to me. You effed me over and effed up my head for years, in ways I could never imagine one person doing to another!”
Jason looked directly into her eyes. He nodded slightly, acknowledging his guilt. He opened his mouth, but Christine cut him off. “I spent a lot of nights wondering what I did wrong,” she continued. “What did I do to deserve to be treated that way? You freakin’ disappeared! You never returned my calls. Why? Why now, after all these years, did you come back? You owe me an explanation.” As the words flowed from her, Christine could feel the pulse in her head pumping like a jackhammer.
The waitress returned with their meals and a round of drinks. A burger, coleslaw, and steak fries for him, and for Christine, a chicken caesar salad. They ate sparingly, looking everywhere but at each other. Christine focused on a couple with two small children eating and laughing together. The kids jabbered incessantly, laughing at silly faces made by their father. Mom rolled her eyes. That family was the antithesis of her life.
Jason paid no attention to his food. “Chrissie, I’m ashamed of what I did. But not for the reasons you might think. I ran away from a problem that I should’ve hit straight on. In the years since we stopped seeing—I mean since I left—I’ve been married and had a wonderful son. Now I’m divorced. Michael’s a great kid, and I can’t imagine my life without him. But not a week goes by that I don’t think about what might have been if I stayed around. In some ways, I regret it immensely.”
“Then why did you leave?”
“Because your father’s business depended on it.”
“What? So it’s Daddy’s fault?” Her voice regained its steely timbre. “You’re blaming him now that he’s gone and can’t defend himself!”
“No. I became a liability to your father. I made a mistake.”
“You’re damn right you made a mistake!”
“That’s not what I’m talking about. I made a medication error.” Jason toyed with a fork on the table. “This is hard. It’s hard to find the right words, so please don’t interrupt me until I’m done.”
Christine sensed the forced determination in his words and read it in his tense neck muscles.
“I’d been with the Colonial for about nine months. One day in May, I refilled a prescription for a nice, elderly woman named Ada Mae Renforth. She was seventy years old and taking several heart medications.
“Two days later, your father called me into his office. He said that he’d got a call from the patient’s daughter saying Ada Mae was dead, and we’d filled the prescription with the wrong medication. She said we—I mean, I—killed her mother. After that everything happened very quickly. The family hired a lawyer who sat down with your father and his lawyers. According to them, the evidence against me was overwhelming.”
His voice cracked. He cleared his throat for what seemed like the tenth time. “The whole matter went on for a month. Your father’s lawyers said that he was underinsured and when the family sued he would lose the business—”
“I remember Ada Mae. But I never heard about any of this,” said Christine.
“Your father didn’t want you to know about it. It looked like
your father and I were going to be taken to court. They would sue and win a multimillion-dollar settlement. Needless to say, I was paralyzed with fear. I thought my career as a pharmacist was over before it ever really began.
“But the thing is, I remembered filling those prescriptions, and I know I filled them correctly, because the technician at the time had dropped Ada Mae’s pills all over the floor. We spent fifteen minutes picking them up. We tossed the dropped pills and refilled the prescription with new ones. I spent an hour making sure those pills were right. I checked and double-checked them. I remember comparing the spilled pills to the fresh ones. They were the same—round and white.
“You know, I fill hundreds of prescriptions a day. Some you don’t ever remember. Some you do, because you can associate certain events with them, like a customer yelling at you. That’s what this was like.” Jason covered his mouth with his hand. “I filled the prescription correctly.
“Your father and I met with the lawyers, and they showed us the bottle. It was the highest strength available. Blue, oblong tablets. Four times Ada Mae’s regular dose. She had renal failure. The excessive dose built up in her blood and killed her, so they said. It was the correct medication, just too much of it. I didn’t make that mistake. But they said I did.”
“So why didn’t you fight it?” Christine demanded.
“I was young and inexperienced. I was still trying to figure out how to be a pharmacist. I guess I questioned myself enough at the time. But the more I thought about it and recalled it over the years, the more certain I was that I’d filled it correctly.” He paused and took a large gulp of gin. His quaking hand rattled the ice in the glass.