by Blake Banner
“I’m here, dude.”
I turned to Marni. “Go to Boston, now. Get Kenny, whoever is there, tell him what’s happening. Move west.”
She shook her head. There were tears in her eyes. “I’ll call him. But I am staying with you. There is no time to argue. I’ll make my own choices. We are what we are, remember? Get going and do what you’re best at.”
I took her in my arms and kissed her, clinging to her fiercely, to the feeling of her body, her living warmth. I knew I would probably never have that again, and if I died that night, or if she did, I wanted to have that memory alive in my mind to the last moment.
I resisted the temptation to speed. I needed to remain inconspicuous, and I knew that when Abbassi left the club, as he must, Gantrie would let me know. So I could take my time and think things through. In the parking garage I had taken my Smith & Wesson 500 with the short barrel from the trunk of the Zombie, and slipped it into my waistband. I didn’t plan to kill anyone just then, but I wanted to make an impression on Abbassi when I spoke to him. I wasn’t going to go into the club after him. If my hunch about what was going to happen at the UN the next day was right, Abbassi would be leaving within the next hour or two. So I could wait for him outside, where there would be less witnesses to what went down.
I parked at a meter outside the Sushiden Restaurant, with a clear view of the 49 Club entrance in the arcade. I called Gantrie.
“Talk to me.”
“There’s not a lot happening, man. It’s hard to tell, but I think he’s been moving toward the door. He keeps stopping. He’s probably talking to people. You there? You going inside?”
“No, I’m outside, waiting for him near the door.”
“What’s happening, dude? You should tell me…”
I gave him the bones of what I suspected and he went quiet. Eventually, he said, “Man, that is so fucked up. What is wrong with people?”
“I don’t know, Gantrie. Maybe nothing. Maybe this is just what people are like.”
“I don’t want to believe that, dude. Wait! He’s on the move. He’s going for the door!”
“I’ll call you.”
I climbed out of the Zombie and into the milling crowds that populate the streets of the City that Never Sleeps. I crossed toward the brightly lit doorway of the 49 Club. There was no long line or throng waiting. It was invitation only and if you weren’t on the list, you didn’t get in. I strolled to the arcade and stopped just past the door to light a cigarette. The doorman watched me for a moment with incurious eyes, then looked away. The door opened as I inhaled. I glanced over and saw Abbassi, in an evening suit, step onto the sidewalk. He was maybe four or five long strides away, looking toward the street. I half frowned and half smiled for the benefit of the doorman. Then I stepped toward him and called out, “Hey, Abdul! How you doing, man? Long time no see!”
By the time I’d finished, I was drawing level with him and he’d turned to look at me. He frowned. I knew him well. I had studied every feature of his face, every movement and mannerism of his body. But I had done it from a distance and he had never seen me. He didn’t know me. Not yet. He shook his head. I smiled.
“Don’t you remember me? Yeah, man, you remember, from Baykhan!”
I saw him freeze. I shifted my jacket, pulled the Smith and Wesson with my left hand, and rammed it into his side while I put my right arm around his shoulders. I spoke quietly, still smiling broadly. “This is a Smith & Wesson 500, Abbassi. It’s loaded with 700 grain ammo. If I pull the trigger, it will blow you in half. And believe me, if you give me cause, there is nothing I would rather do. So smile and laugh and walk with me, and maybe you’ll get through the night alive.”
We started walking toward my car. I kept talking as we went.
“Do you remember Baykhan? I was the guy you were looking for. All those old men and women and children you killed? They were all innocent. They hadn’t helped me at all. I stole the water. How does it feel to have the blood of innocent children on your hands, Abbassi?”
His breathing had grown shallower and faster. I knew he was thinking of making a run. I gripped his shoulder with my hand. “I don’t need to kill you, Abbassi. I can just blow your leg off. Do I need to do that?”
He shook his head. “No. Who the hell are you?”
“I am your nemesis. I am real bad news. But if you cooperate with me, we’ll have a little chat, then I leave and you continue on your murderous way.”
We were approaching the trunk of my car. He glanced at me sidelong. “Are you CIA? Delta?”
I snorted. “This is a private enterprise, pal. Relax. You’re not going to prison. I just want to talk to you.” I popped the trunk, pushed him toward it and said, “Hand me that kit bag.”
Then three things happened almost simultaneously. I heard Mclean’s voice shout, “Freeze, Walker!”, I smashed Abbassi in the head with the revolver and heaved him into the trunk, and, as I slammed it shut, I looked around to locate where Mclean was.
He was halfway across the road, with Jones, and they were running toward me. By the look on their faces and the snub-nosed .38s in their hands, I guessed it wasn’t with the purpose of greeting an old pal. I didn’t want to get shot, and I sure as hell didn’t want to start shooting Feds, so I shoved my piece back in my waistband and went to meet them with my hands raised, shouting, “OK! OK! OK!”
All around us, people were screaming and running, backing away and peering at us from a distance as that familiar scene from the TV was played out in real life for them. Mclean and Jones took up their stances, training their guns on me, and shouted again, “Freeze! Get on the ground! Hands behind your head!”
I dropped to the ground, but not as they expected. I did a fast, low, spinning sweep and knocked Mclean’s feet from under him. He landed on his back with a big whoomph! that sounded painful. But by then I was already standing again and moving. I stepped toward Jones, who was wide-eyed and gaping down at his partner. I levered his piece out of his fingers with my left and put a straight right into his jaw. Then I ran back to the Zombie, climbed in, and moved out of there, burning rubber.
I made it to Madison Avenue and headed north at a steady pace. There was silence from the trunk, so I figured I’d knocked him unconscious. I didn’t think I’d hit him hard enough to kill him. If I had, we had a real problem.
I crossed over the Madison Avenue Bridge and turned east toward Hunts Point. There was a dive there on Bryant Avenue where you could rent rooms by the hour for cash, no questions asked. Most of the screams you heard in that place were simulated pleasure, but not all of them.
Fifteen minutes later, I pulled off Randall Avenue, past the fat, half-naked girls standing on the corner in red vinyl skirts and leather pants, and crawled up toward the rooming house. I parked out front and went inside. Joe, hairy, toothless, and unshaven, was sitting behind his counter smoking. He blinked at me as I came in.
“I need a room. Top floor. Four hundred bucks says you keep quiet. I’ll be back if you tell anyone I was here.”
He shrugged and spat on the colorless, threadbare carpet. I handed him the money and he handed me a key. I went out to the car, opened the trunk, and dragged Abbassi out. He was awake but he was groggy and bleeding from his head. I pulled my piece, shoved it in his back, and said, “Walk!” Joe was reading a magazine as we climbed the bare, wooden stairs. He didn’t see a thing.
Upstairs, I pushed him into the room. It was a seedy box with a single bare bulb, a black window, an old bed, and a chair. I locked the door and told him to strip down to his underwear. Then I dragged the chair to the middle of the floor, facing the bed, and made him sit on it. I pulled the three sets of cuffs from my jacket that I’d collected before I left my apartment. I cuffed his wrists to the back and his ankles to the legs. When I was done, I switched my cell phone to record. Then I sat opposite him and lit a cigarette. He looked scared. I figured he wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of torture, but he was recognizing the lead up to it. I i
nhaled deeply and blew smoke up at the ceiling.
“You going to be tough, Abbassi?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You know what happened to Aatifa, don’t you?” His skin went pasty. I went on. “He talked. He was very cooperative, but I needed him to know that I was not bluffing. Do I need to prove that to you?”
He shook his head. I sighed, as though I was losing patience.
“Let’s get some ground rules clear, Abbassi. When I ask you a question, you give me clear, succinct answers. I have no time for ambiguities or body language. Don’t nod or shake your head at me. Talk to me. Do you understand?”
He swallowed hard. “Yes. I want to cooperate with you.”
“What is contained in the canister that will be ruptured by the bomb at the UN?”
“SF2, it is a genetically modified virus…”
“I know what SF2 is. I also know that it is a theoretical biological agent. It has never been manufactured.”
He nodded. “That was true until recently, but Professor Benjamin Wilde, at the Biochem Labs in Virginia, he produced a sample for us…”
I interrupted him. “Benjamin Wilde?”
“Yes…”
“Is he here now, in New York?”
“Yes.”
“Was he at the Hennessy debate?”
“Yes, it was former President Dick Hennessy who introduced Professor Wilde to the Prince, knowing that they could do business. The Professor was looking for a buyer. They came to Prince Awad’s house after, to discuss the disturbance…”
Ben.
Ben had sold the canister to Awad, to plant at the conference. I stood and went to the window and leaned against the frame, looking down at the filthy yard with its trash cans and limp, dingy washing hanging out to dry in the night. I said, “Why?” He didn’t answer and I turned to face him. “Why?”
His bottom lip was quivering and he had tears streaming down his cheeks. He reminded me of a woman I had seen once, kneeling at his feet, weeping just that same way. I figured, absently, that that made me like him. I reached down and pulled my knife from my boot.
“Why, Abbassi?”
Fifteen
Maybe the question triggered some deep conditioning inside him, because a fearful, resentful anger twisted his face and he thrust his chin out at me. “You fucking Americans! You think you own the world! You and fucking Israel, marching everywhere with your tanks and your missiles, murdering Arab women and children! Killing in Palestine, killing in Syria, in Iraq! Stealing our oil and our land!”
I rested my ass on the windowsill, waiting. I could see the hysteria building in him, like the rage of a cornered rat. His voice rose to an ugly whine. “You fucking imperialists! You make war on us because you care only about our oil! You are shaytan! You ally with the Israeli, Jewish pigs to rape our country and steal from us! But Allah is merciful! Allah is great! He will guide our hand in war and we will kill you all! All of you will die!”
He rasped in his throat and spat at me. It was ineffectual and sprayed over the filthy bed. He went on.
“You can kill me! You can torture me! Like you torture our brothers in Guantanamo! But you cannot torture Allah! You cannot kill Allah!”
His voice trailed off. His eyes were wide with terror. I sucked on my cigarette again and as I let out the smoke I said, “Murdering Arab women and children…”
“Every day in Syria, in Afghanistan!”
“Like Sayad, last year, where you teamed up with ISIS and wiped out an entire village, murdering fifty women and children. Arab women and children.”
He screamed, “They were collaborators! They will burn for eternity in hell! You cannot do this to me! It is against the Geneva convention!”
“Really? They will burn in hell for eternity? Even the kids? Like the thirty kids and the thirty-seven women you murdered because you thought one of them had given me water? And they were all innocent of the crime you accused them of.”
He screamed again, hysterical with terror, “They were collaborators! They were infidels! God has said: The unbelievers among the People of the Book and the pagans shall burn for ever in the fire of Hell, for they are the vilest of creatures! God has said, in Repentance 9:73, ‘Prophet! Make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home!’”
I said quietly, “And you are the instrument of God’s wrath and punishment, right?”
He stared at me a moment before answering.
“We are all the instruments of God. Allah is merciful. But only some see it. You who are blind will burn for eternity! It is written. And the angels shall laugh at your suffering, and mock you.”
“And that gives you the right to massacre women and children.”
“To fight the kafir is the greatest thing that a Muslim can do, and he will live in the grace of Allah for it! Nothing is so hateful in the sight of Allah as a kafir! Allah has spoken through Mohamed, ‘When the sacred months are over, slay the idolaters wherever you find them!’”
“And that is why you are placing this bomb at the UN.”
He spat at me again. “And because Islam is uprising. We are sick of your exploitation, of your imperialism, of your looting and raping of our countries!”
“And I guess Prince Awad feels that way too, huh?” He didn’t answer. He just stared at me. I went on. “Prince Awad, who stands at around number forty in the Forbes list of the world’s richest men.”
“Allah is merciful! Allah has guided his hand!”
“You’re full of shit, Abbassi. You know who owns Arabian oil? You know it as well as I do. Arpetco, the Arabian Petroleum Company. It’s state owned, which means it’s owned by the Awad family, because they are the state. If anybody is raping and pillaging the wealth of your country, it’s them. Now cut the bullshit and answer my question. What does Awad gain by bombing the conference?” He drew breath, I could see he still had that crazed look in his eye so I cut him short. “One more crazy bullshit answer and I will take your thumb off. Give me a straight answer that does not involve Allah or the great shaytan.”
He swallowed.
“The climate is changing. There are droughts coming and crops will soon start to fail. When the crops fail, there will not be enough food for everyone. There is very little agriculture in our countries, and the people will starve.” He leaned forward. “There are too many people in the world—too many unbelievers! Africa and Arabia, the Muslim world, will suffer most, because the Jews and the Christians own all the good land! The believers will starve in the streets, and the west will turn its back on us, like always! Steal what is ours and laugh! Let the Muslims die! It is not your problem!”
“Stay focused, Abbassi.”
“Professor Benjamin Wilde gave the Prince information, that you fucking Americans are hoarding genetically modified seeds! Seeds that can grow in drought conditions! You can water with salt water! Grow anywhere! Denying these seeds to the Muslims so that we die of hunger and thirst when the sky burns!” He paused, staring at me with rage in his face. “So we bomb your fucking UN! Which is the fucking servant of the U.S.! To make the world wake up to the Muslim problem! We are exploited! Enslaved by the U.S.! But Allah will guide our hand in war and now, when the Earth is burning and people are dying with no food and no water, we will bring suffering to you and we will take what is ours!”
I shook my head. “You don’t hear yourself, do you?”
“Eh?”
“Never mind.” I frowned and scratched my head, trying to make some sense of what he said. “So the bomb is to bring the Muslim plight to the attention of the world?”
“It is the will of Allah. Allah is merciful!”
“Yeah, he’s doing a great job.” I stared out the window again, down at the filthy yard. I didn’t think Abbassi had any more idea of why he was bombing the conference than I had. He’d been told Allah wanted him to do it, and that was all he needed to know. He’d been fed reasons he wanted to beli
eve, that fit in with his own, twisted view of the world, and he didn’t question them. I wondered for a moment if even Prince Awad knew the real reason why he was bombing the conference.
I turned back to Abbassi. He hadn’t been hurt so far, not badly, he’d given me a lot of mouth and got no comeback, so he was looking defiant.
“OK, Abbassi, here’s the million dollar question. Give me bullshit and I start taking you apart. Literally.”
He swallowed and the defiance slipped a little from his face. “What?”
“Where is it?”
His lip started quivering again. “I don’t know. Please. I don’t know…”
“Who does know?”
His head went on one side and he started sobbing. “I don’t know. Please. I don’t know. I am just…”
I sighed. “What? Just a warrior of God? A jihadist?”
“Please, I don’t know. I don’t where it is, please.”
“Aatifa, Ali, and Hassan were going to deliver it to the conference. Now they are dead. You must have made alternative plans.”
He was shaking his head. “No, no, I’ll tell you everything I know. I’ll tell you. That was a distraction. They were meant to get caught. It was not the real bomb. I don’t know where the real bomb is. Only one person knows…”
“That was a feint? They were meant to get caught at the entrance?”
“Yes! The canister was empty!”
“So the real bomb?”
“I am not told. This was not my mission! My mission was to prepare the false bomb!”
“Jesus Christ! The whole damned thing…!”
“I did not plan it! I did not plan it!”
I snarled at him, “Who employed you?”
“Prince Awad!”
“How did he choose you?”
He was sobbing noisily. “I don’t know! I don’t know! Please, be merciful! I have answered your questions! I have told you everything I know! Please! Be merciful!”
I stared at him. “Should I learn from you, Abbassi? Should I learn from you how to be merciful?”