Brother's Keeper

by C. E. Smith

  ‘I’ve titrated the Ativan to accommodate your increased resistance,’ Tarik says.

  ‘That’s awfully considerate,’ Burkett says.

  ‘I’d have confirmed your diagnosis with a lumbar puncture,’ Tarik says, ‘but Mr Lorie wouldn’t allow it. Now that you’re in a lucid state, perhaps you might reconsider? I could send the fluid to our new hospital in Allaghar. We could have a diagnosis by the end of the week.’

  ‘No thanks,’ he says. Tarik’s need for permission suggests not courtesy so much as discomfort with the procedure.

  ‘You are my guests,’ Tarik says, ‘and I want all of your needs to be pro­vided for, including your health. You should receive nothing but the best care during your stay with us.’

  ‘I want to know who killed my brother,’ Burkett says.

  ‘Why, the Heroes of Jihad killed him.’

  ‘I want to know which man pulled the trigger.’

  ‘What would you do if I gave you a name? Would you call the police? Would you track down this man and take your revenge? Futility on one hand and certain death on the other. Can’t you see that I’m doing you a great favor by sparing you this information?’

  ‘Is the person who killed my brother in this house?’

  Tarik laughs. ‘Is this a child’s game of Question and Answer? What if I told you yes? It would narrow your search but cause you ever more frus­tration. You would endlessly ponder each candidate, wondering who it was that listened to your brother beg for his life.’

  ‘Why would the Heroes of Jihad kill him rather than hold him for ransom? There could have been a great deal of money at stake.’

  Tarik shrugs. ‘Why are you pursuing these questions? Don’t you see that the more you know, the more likely you are to die? If you knew the name of the one who killed your brother, wouldn’t that man and his friends be less inclined to set you free?’

  ‘You were in charge of the ones who killed him,’ Burkett says. ‘Or was it you who pulled the trigger?’

  ‘You must accept that some questions have no clear answer. Those men who stopped your brother might have intended merely to take him prisoner, but perhaps things didn’t go as planned.’

  Tarik starts to go up the stairs.

  ‘You’re wrong on one count,’ Nick says.

  Nick’s voice comes unexpected, loud enough that Burkett’s headache seems to cry out with every word.

  ‘How’s that?’ Tarik asks, pausing on the stairs.

  ‘He didn’t beg for his life,’ Nick says.

  ‘How would you know?’ Tarik’s laugh sounds forced, as if Nick had touched a nerve.

  ‘He had no fear of death,’ Nick says.

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘He was alive in Christ.’

  ‘No fear of death?’

  ‘None,’ boasts Nick. ‘Unlike your cowardly fedayeen who only find courage in the form of drugs.’

  Tarik strides back into the room. Nick begins to stand but Tarik kicks him in the chest. He crumples to the floor, choking with pain and strug­gling to breathe.

  ‘The only drug addict is the man lying beside you,’ Tarik says, ‘a man whose brother begged and pissed himself before my very eyes.’

  The confession lingers in the silence that follows. Burkett sees himself swinging the IV pole with enough force to stave in Tarik’s skull. His hand finds one of the castors, then moves higher and grips the pole. He begins pulling himself to his feet. His eyes blur with pain.

  ‘If he wept and begged, you wouldn’t have killed him,’ Burkett says. He is thinking of the broken bone in his brother’s hand.

  ‘You’re wrong,’ Tarik says. ‘The weeping and begging were so shameful that we had no choice but to kill him.’

  ‘Did he disarm one of your men? Were you the one he punched in the face?’

  ‘I have better things to do than babysit drug addicts,’ Tarik says, with a look that seems to mock Burkett’s efforts to stand.

  ‘You meant to kidnap him, didn’t you? But when he punched you in the face you lost control, just like you’re losing control now.’

  ‘Your cowardice will be broadcast to the world,’ Tarik says. ‘Your fami­lies will see you renounce your God.’

  Nick’s eyes flick between Burkett and Tarik. ‘A difference between my God and yours,’ Nick says, ‘is that his grace would follow me even if I renounced it.’

  Burkett shuffles toward Tarik, squeezing the IV pole with both hands as he drags it across his mat.

  ‘That is precisely the problem with Christianity,’ Tarik says. ‘It gives you permission to sin. The result speaks for itself: entire nations overrun by laziness, vanity, and decadence.’

  Burkett feels he’s heard enough to bludgeon Tarik, but Nick stands, hunched with pain, and places a hand on the pole, as if to use it for support but clearly also to keep Burkett from taking a swing.

  Truly the pacifist, Burkett thinks.

  ‘When do you plan on broadcasting our cowardice?’ Nick asks, making no effort to conceal his sarcasm.

  Tarik turns back to the stairs. ‘Perhaps tomorrow,’ he says with a shrug, his voice sounding calm and arrogant at the same time. ‘Perhaps the next day,’ he says. ‘You’ll know as soon as we cut off the first piece.’

  21

  Electric light seeps dimly into their chamber. Though Nick is most likely still awake, Burkett ever so carefully withdraws the plastic bag – hoping what little noise he makes is masked by the distant grumble of the power generator – and swallows three tablets.

  Nick might see death as gain, martyrdom as a path to glory, but it’s Burkett who will die first. Nick has the backing of International Medical Outreach, the wife and friends raising untold thousands for his ransom. It is no doubt obvious to Tarik that one prisoner is far more valuable than the other.

  The question plaguing Burkett isn’t whether or not he will be killed, but how it will be done. Will he have to endure some kind of torture? Pieces, Tarik said. He thinks of Abu, whose severed genitals were stuffed in his mouth.

  Will they force him to read some statement? Before, he thought he would refuse, but what would be the point? Refusing would serve only to extend the pain. He’ll read whatever semiliterate manifesto they set before him.

  Or is the better option simply to fight? If he’s going to die no matter what, why should he not attack as soon as they try to bind him? They’ll assume him to be incapacitated, but no question, he can muster the strength for a last stand. He would have the advantage of surprise – the sudden transformation from dazed invalid to raging killer. He’ll snatch the nearest gun and start shooting.

  He remembers Tarik’s first visit, the morning he thought he was being led to his own death. He’d made that rash prayer: I’ll believe if you let me live. He went against his word and now the debt is being called in. It will take all his strength not to make that prayer a second time.

  ‘If they kill me,’ Burkett says, ‘would you do me a favor and make sure my father in Atlanta is taken care of? He might already be dead, in which case you have nothing to worry about.’

  ‘We’ll leave here together or not at all,’ Nick says. ‘It would be ridicu­lous to keep us alive this long only to kill us.’

  A man with a flashlight and pistol comes down the stairs. Burkett winces and raises his arm to block the light which seems to bypass some key optical filter before directly piercing his brain. It is the same man who has been administering his drugs. He kneels over Burkett and clamps and disconnects his IV and detaches the Foley catheter from its receptacle. With the barrel of his gun he waves Nick toward the stairs.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Nick asks.

  ‘Wait,’ Burkett says as the man takes his elbow.

  He opens the plastic bag and draws out the final three tablets. Nick stands watching him, his eyes expressionless.

  Bu
rkett climbs the stairs for the first time in days. He glances into the courtyard, where two of Tarik’s men stand over a fire and another squats in the opening of a tent.

  He follows Nick down the passage, their escort lingering behind them, just out of reach. He has no plan, just the desire to stay alive and a sudden, inexplicable certainty – perhaps drug-induced – that he will.

  Tarik waits in the well-lit room at the end of the hall. The pock-marked mural spreads behind him like the backdrop of a cheap play: the same bright blue stream and green meadow, the same man and woman with their gouged faces. A band of mud, left by standing water and splashing rain, skirts the base of the mural. Burkett imagines it climbing higher, eventually covering the meadow and the stream and the human figures as well.

  Akbar waits in a chair, a Kalashnikov in his lap. He wears a brace on his straightened knee, a nylon sleeve with metal rods and hinges. Two chairs are propped before a black curtain, close enough to the wall that no one could fit behind them to cut Burkett’s throat. Of course they still might kill him, but at least he’ll be able to see it happening.

  Tarik stands from his campstool and spreads his arms and says, ‘Good morning, my friends. Shall we take another picture?’

  Burkett and Nick remain silent. Their escort pulls a black mask over his face and hands Nick a copy of yesterday’s International Herald Tribune. The mask is worrisome, but surely there would be no reason to time-stamp an execution. Burkett notes a side bar on the front page: khandaros to vote on secession.

  Nick displays the newspaper for the camera. Before taking the picture, Tarik asks, ‘Do you still think you understand the Arab mind?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Nick says.

  Tarik nods and the man in the mask punches Nick in the face. Blood drips from his nostrils. The newspaper lies on the floor beside him.

  ‘Let me read what you wrote in your blog,’ Tarik says, taking a sheet of paper with printed text.

  ‘My blog?’

  ‘There’s something in the Arab mind,’ Tarik reads, ‘something that makes it more susceptible to forces of violence and shame. There is a ten­dency among them to respond violently to the threat of shame, sexual or otherwise. Similarly, Arab culture sees violence as a way of making amends for shame.’ He looks up from the page. ‘What exactly do you mean by the Arab mind,’ he asks, ‘or Arab culture?’

  Nick shakes his head. ‘I wrote that more than a decade ago. I was a different person.’

  ‘You were a soldier then,’ Tarik says, ‘attempting to understand the men you were killing.’

  With a nod from Tarik, the man in the mask unleashes a series of punches. When the chair topples, Nick tries to hold himself upright on the floor, but a kick sends him sprawling. When the man in the mask backs away, there are open wounds on his knuckles. Nick sits up, wiping blood from his face. He spits, rights the chair, and resumes his seat.

  Nick says, ‘I wrote those things before I knew Jesus Christ as my per­sonal Lord and Savior.’

  Tarik shakes his head. ‘Of those who suppress faith, the Qu’ran says, Slay them wherever you catch them.’

  ‘It also says, To you be your way and to me mine.’

  Tarik doesn’t seem impressed. ‘What is worse?’ he asks. ‘That you would defy Allah by elevating his holy messenger to the status of a god? Or that you would set out to convince Muslims of this polytheistic farce?’

  The man in the mask steps toward Nick, causing him to flinch, but instead of punching him merely hands him the newspaper, now torn and begrimed and flecked with blood. Tarik snaps a photograph.

  When they take away the newspaper, Nick says, ‘I hadn’t finished reading that.’

  It seems fitting that Nick would discover humor only after having his face pummeled by fanatics.

  ‘Is it true,’ Tarik asks, ignoring the joke, ‘that you were a member of the Navy Seals?’

  Nick stares at the ground before him.

  ‘I understand you were a sniper,’ Tarik says. ‘Which means you killed men, Muslims, from great distances, where they couldn’t see you. This seems cowardly to me, no? A courageous man would make himself known to his enemies.’

  Nick spits. ‘Is it courageous to strike a man who is your prisoner?’

  ‘Did you shoot these men in the head or heart? Personally, I would aim for the chest, a larger target, but perhaps you had other motives. Perhaps this was the source of your interest in the so-called Arab mind. Perhaps your primary aim was to traumatize the brains of Arabs.’

  ‘You couldn’t be further from the truth. You’re talking to a former soldier, a man who did a job and moved on. Some of my closest friends in this world are Arabs.’

  ‘I too happen to be a marksman of sorts,’ Tarik says. ‘My father recently built a thousand-yard rifle range in Allaghar. You might even have heard about it. Perhaps you and I can go there sometime and place wagers on who is the best shot.’

  ‘No thanks,’ he says.

  ‘In the meantime, I would like you to read a statement. My apologies for the crude penmanship.’

  He props a scrap of cardboard against the tripod. Capital letters in black ink fill the space between the torn edges:

  there is no god but allah and muhammad is his prophet. christianity is a blasphemous distortion of the truth concocted by satan to lead muslims into sin. i formerly preached christianity but i have seen that the truth must be found first in the holy and perfect qu’ran.

  The sign falls and the masked man picks it up and tries without success to brush away the dirt.

  ‘When you are ready,’ Tarik says, ‘I would like you to begin reading the statement.’

  He presses a button on the mounted camera and a red light appears. Nick remains silent, his eyes fixed on Tarik.

  ‘I don’t think he wants to read it,’ Burkett says.

  Tarik turns and asks, ‘Do you find this amusing?’ He doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘Very shortly he will beg me to let him read it.’ As he speaks his eyes fall to the long-handled bolt cutters on the table beside his papers.

  Burkett stares at the tool. The stub blades with their silver sheen look brand new, but the grips at the ends of the pipes are worn from use. Tarik spoke of pieces. This must be his instrument of choice.

  ‘Read the statement,’ Tarik says.

  The camera is still recording, but Nick refuses even to look at the words of the statement. Tarik goes to the door and summons Sajiv, who enters with a handful of zip ties. He keeps his eyes to the floor, perhaps ashamed to look upon his former chaupar companions.

  The zip ties, the bolt cutters: Burkett can see where this is heading. He looks at Nick and says, ‘There’s no shame in reading it.’

  ‘Listen to the wise doctor,’ Tarik says. ‘No one needs to be hurt.’

  ‘I’ll read whatever you want,’ Burkett says.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says, ‘but for now it’s Mr Lorie whose testimony we seek.’

  Akbar sets aside his gun to help the others restrain Nick. They tie his wrists to the flimsy arms of the injection molded chair.

  As they approach Burkett, he eyes the Kalashnikov leaning against the wall. The possibilities spring into his mind: Tarik as a hostage, flight into the wilderness, either by car or on foot, but going where? A gunfight when he wouldn’t even know where to find the safety catch on the weapon. When he is barefoot and catheterized, weakened by subarachnoid hem­orrhage and a probable skull fracture. No, it wouldn’t be much of a fight: he wouldn’t make it out of the compound alive.

  They cinch the plastic bands so tightly, two on each side, that the veins swell and the skin grows pale. At least his legs are free, but what good are they now? How far could he run?

  Perhaps he should have gone for one of the Kalashnikovs. How many men would he have to kill? Four in this room, at least three more outside in the court
yard, one of whom, the man with the scimitar, presently appears in the doorway, either as a sentry or spectator – perhaps both.

  Tarik holds the cutters upright such that they rest against his shoulder. The man in the mask kneels and begins to pry open Nick’s fist. Sajiv has to lock Nick in a bear hug to keep him still. The task of controlling his feet falls to Akbar, who despite his injured knee lowers himself to the floor and sustains a brutal kick to the face.

  ‘We’ll start at the proximal interphalangeal joint of your little finger,’ Tarik says. ‘If you hold perfectly still, perhaps we can avoid cutting bone.’

  The one in the mask has Nick’s wrist flexed against the arm support, the chosen finger pointed downward. As Tarik opens the blades, the chair twists, its legs scraping against the floor. Nick throws himself against Sajiv, and together they fall in a heap. Akbar, whose nose already gushes blood, loses his hold on Nick’s ankles and absorbs yet another kick to the head. Tarik and the man in the mask wait just beyond kicking range while Akbar presses the weight of his body over Nick’s legs. Tarik bends down and continues the operation with Nick lying on the floor. The clippers, meant for metal, seem to find little resistance in the skin and bone of Nick’s finger.

  In the silence that follows, they seem to be waiting for Nick to cry out in pain, and for a brief time, a few seconds perhaps, he resists doing so.

  The zip ties have drawn blood in Burkett’s wrists. Pain scrapes the backs of his eyeballs when he tries to look away, anywhere but the dripping knuckle and severed finger where Nick lies shivering in the over­turned chair.

  ‘The solution is easy enough,’ Tarik says. ‘You will lose one finger from each hand until you read the statement.’

  Nick answers with grunts as the man in the mask rights the chair. Tarik drops the severed digit in a ziplock bag.

  ‘Just nod,’ Tarik says, placing the bag on the table, ‘and I will give you the statement to read.’