The Zarrabian Incident

by C. A. James

  FBI Special Agent Omar Bashir finished drying his plate, knife, fork, and cup and carefully put them back in the cupboard. His little apartment had a dishwasher, but he never used it. One or two meals a day alone—it would take two weeks to fill the dishwasher with dishes. It was much easier to just get the job done by hand. He dried his hands and hung the dishtowel neatly on its peg.

  Five steps to his living room and he sank into his oversized tooled-leather chair-and-a-half. It was nice.

  Bashir contemplated his little apartment. With his modest FBI starting salary, Bashir had made the choice to go compact to save money and then use the money he saved to fill the place with the best-quality stuff he could afford. His first paycheck had gone to the big leather chair, followed quickly by a massive stereo system, a top-of-the-line Mac Pro with two high-resolution screens, a Mac laptop for portability, a beautiful coffee table, some simple but elegant pictures he’d found at a street fair, and a genuine Persian rug to soften the hardwood floors.

  He grabbed his laptop off the coffee table and checked his email. Junk and spam. Nothing from McCaig.

  The message he’d crafted for McCaig had been a challenge. He wanted something that McCaig would spot on the Craigslist Rants and Raves section, but that everyone else would think was just a normal rant. The Rants and Raves section was filled with nonsense, genius, racism, love, heartbreak, and hope. Posts ranged from barely literate to masterful, centered somewhere around the writing abilities of the typical American high school graduate. Which is to say, Bashir waded through a lot of crap before getting the feel of a typical rant.

  Maybe his message had been too obscure? Would McCaig figure it out? He clicked on his browser and went to the Rants and Raves page. He found his post.

  Bruce Springsteen: Hey Boss

  Hey Bruce, you are The Boss. You earned the name. I love your music. I miss our partnership. We made good music together. I learned so much from you. Things aren’t the same since you left. In fact, things just aren’t right. I couldn’t do what you asked. You warned me, and now I’m listening, Bruce. Things are not right. I’ve tried to find a new Boss, but there’s nobody like you Bruce.

  Would “Hey Boss” catch McCaig’s eye? If it did, would McCaig know what the message meant? To Bashir, it jumped out. In fact, it seemed too obvious. Would anyone else see it and know he was trying to contact McCaig?

  Stop being paranoid, he told himself. Even if someone suspected, which was highly unlikely, and they tried to trace it back to the origin, they’d discover it went through two privacy “anonymizers” that hid its true origin. Very hard to trace. And if somehow they did trace it, they’d find out it was to a fake email account. And if they tried to trace that, they’d discover the email had been set up through TOR, “The Onion Router.” TOR wasn’t just hard to trace, it was impossible. Even the NSA hadn’t fully cracked TOR. There was no way to connect the Craigslist “rant” to Bashir.

  Six p.m. The clock seemed frozen. Even though it was only thirty minutes since the last check, he clicked on the TOR browser app and logged in to his fake email account again. Nothing.

  His mind drifted back to the meeting with Smith. The more he thought about it, the less he liked it. Smith’s attempts at manipulation were surprisingly transparent and ugly. The guy was normally such a rigid, bureaucratic suit-and-tie guy. This time, he’d lost his cool, tried to cover it up, used scare tactics, and finally tried to act fatherly. All done badly. Bashir was almost embarrassed for Smith, but his disgust at Smith’s amateur psychology overrode any pity he might have had for the man.

  And then, the slip about Zarrabian being alive. That had sent alarms ringing in Bashir’s head. That was big. Really big. And it was clear Smith was lying when he tried to cover up his slip. Zarrabian alive? McCaig on the run? It didn’t make sense.

  Bashir didn’t consider himself much of a psychologist or sociologist. He just paid attention in life. There are things people say, and then there are the things they don’t say. It’s in their body language, choice of words, the tension in their voice, the shifts of their eyes. These things are at least as important as their words. Whether it’s a soldier at a checkpoint or a boss in a law-enforcement agency, knowing the difference between bluster, indifference, and danger is how you survive.

  Smith was hiding something, and he was afraid of something. That much, Bashir knew. But what?

  He idly checked his fake email account again and was startled to see a reply. He hesitated, almost not daring to open it. Probably spam—it was scary how fast the spammers found you. He clicked the email.

  Re: Bruce Springsteen: Hey Boss

  The Boss never forgets his fans. Did you know I’m playing tonight? It’s a private party for Saylor. Dylan might be there. Call! 9PM. --Bruce.

  Saylor glanced at the clock. Nine p.m. Christine Garrett should be here soon, assuming she was keeping her promise.

  Saylor rocked Marina gently, swinging the librarian’s chair back and forth with a task the office-chair’s designers surely hadn’t anticipated. Her little girl was fast asleep, breathing softly, swaddled in her favorite blanket and wrapped in her mother’s arms.

  Some time during the evening, the town’s lone night-time patrol cop would cruise by, checking the library to keep away miscreants and vandals. The first time he’d spotted her working late, he’d knocked to “double check” that she was all right. He was a kind man, around her age, handsome and fit. He obviously liked Saylor, but he wasn’t her type. After a few more checkups, he’d gotten the message that she wasn’t interested. Now he just politely waved if he saw her working late. It was nice to know he was around.

  This town held few men her age with whom she shared any interests. There were few young men at all. She and a couple of girl friends, single moms she’d met when they brought their kids in, would sometimes joke about the dearth of available bachelors. “Does he have all of his teeth? Is he off parole? Go for it!”

  There was a light tap on the door. Saylor went to the door and peered through the glass. It was Christine Garrett. She was accompanied by two men. Saylor opened the door and immediately tensed. She recognized both.

  The first was the FBI agent whose picture had been all over the news. He was a “person of interest,” and anyone who saw him was supposed to call the FBI. She thought that there was something fishy about that “wanted” announcement—she had a deep mistrust of the government. Most FBI, NSA, and CIA business was inherently fishy, in her opinion, but she never expected to see this FBI agent face to face.

  The second was Middle Eastern. He had been here before. She remembered how he’d gone straight to the computers, politely turning away her offers of help. Now he was in the company of Christine Garrett and retired FBI Special Agent TJ McCaig, the very man who’d cast doubt on the government’s official story, and who admitted he was friends with the terrorist he was pursuing. On top of that, the government had gone overboard to contradict McCaig—the attack on McCaig’s credibility came from the White House itself. There could be no doubt who this Middle-Eastern man was.

  “Ms. Dylan,” began Christine.

  “Call me Saylor.”

  “OK, Saylor. Thanks for letting us use your library. It means a lot. Really a lot. I don’t know how much you follow the news . . .”

  “I follow it.”

  “Right. Of course. So this is retired FBI Special Agent TJ McCaig.”

  Saylor nodded.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said McCaig.

  “And this is,” said Christine, then hesitated.

  “I know who he is,” said Saylor. “This is not exactly what I expected when I agreed to help you. This man—Zarrabian, is it? Isn’t he supposed to be dead?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Christine, “which is why we’re here.”

  “He’s the most wanted terrorist in the world. You just waltz in here like it’s nothing? Why shouldn’t I call the police right now?”

  “He can’t be wanted,” said McCaig. �
��He’s dead, remember?”

  Saylor gave him a withering look. “This isn’t funny.”

  “I’ll be straight with you,” said Christine. “I had a colleague dig around about you and your political views during your time at Berkeley. War protests, an arrest at a sit-in, and now blogs, tweets, discussion groups . . . you’re not exactly enamored of our government.”

  “So I’m a radical liberal, bordering on libertarianism, with strong socialist tendencies. Therefore I must hate the government. Therefore I’ll welcome a terrorist with open arms. Do I have that right?”

  “I didn’t presume—”

  “You did presume. Ms. Garrett, I’ll give you thirty seconds to give me a better answer than that. Then I’m calling the police.” She looked back and forth between McCaig and Zarrabian. “Assuming, that is, that your two accomplices don’t tie me up or something.”

  “No, I won’t tie you up,” said McCaig. “He probably won’t either.”

  “Well? Twenty-five seconds,” said Saylor.

  “Every argument should stand on its own merits,” said Christine, “but I can’t explain this in twenty-five seconds. So I’m going to rely on my reputation, something I hate to do. You know who I am. I’m a liberal, like you. I’ve made my career reporting on corruption, greed, graft, the environment, local and state politics, and anything else you’d care to name. I’ve been nominated for journalism awards, earned a Pulitzer Prize, and was honored by the ACLU last year for a series I did on the rights of undocumented immigrants. Surely you know I’m devoted to honest and accurate reporting.”

  “Keep going,” said Saylor.

  “Agent McCaig spent twenty-eight years in the FBI, and until just a few days ago was considered one of the most honest and competent men in the agency. Since you’re a librarian with a graduate degree, you may have read more than the superficial stories about what happened in Cordo, Texas.”

  “That was a political cover-up if ever there was one,” said Saylor. “You got screwed, Mr. McCaig.”

  “Exactly,” said Christine. “So here’s the closer. Why would McCaig and I, two people whose lives show dedication to truth, democracy, and justice, show up here with the most wanted terrorist in the world?”

  “I have no clue,” said Saylor.

  “But you do know one thing, don’t you?”

  Marina started to stir, and gave a little cry. Saylor instinctively held her tightly, and rocked her. Saylor looked back and forth between her three visitors. Finally she spoke. “Yes. There must be more, lots more, to this story than what I’ve heard on the news.”

  “Exactly. My twenty-five seconds are up and you’re still not on the phone.”

  “Ms. Garrett told me you were top of your class at Berkeley,” said McCaig. “I believe it.”

  “Keep talking, Ms. Garrett.”

  “We’re not the enemy,” said Christine, “and Colonel Zarrabian is not a terrorist. It’s complicated, very complicated. We think there’s a conspiracy at the highest levels of government. And I’m not talking about some conspiracy dreamed up by tin-foil-hat-wearing nut-jobs who see spooks behind every tree. This is the real McCoy.”

  “Suppose I don’t call the police. Yet. What do you need from me?”

  “We need time, and we need to use your computers. There are things, it’s, well . . .”

  “Ms. Dylan,” said Zarrabian. His voice startled her. “Let me be blunt and say things Ms. Garrett is reluctant to say. You are correct that I am the man who destroyed the Golden Gate Bridge. You also know that a second attack, one that could have been catastrophic, was stopped yesterday. You saw this news?”

  “Of course,” said Saylor.

  “Those men trained with me. I knew them. There is a third team. They will strike soon. We must stop them.”

  “We?” said Saylor. “We’re going to stop them? What are you, a bunch of vigilantes? Are you channeling Schwarzenegger, or maybe Bruce Willis? You three are going up against armed terrorists? It would make much more sense to call the FBI and tell them where these guys are and what they’re going to do!”

  “I am the FBI. Or was,” said McCaig. “That didn’t work out so well. It’s complicated. First, Colonel Zarrabian doesn’t know where or what they’re going to do. That’s why we need to use your computers, to figure it out. Second, did you forget where this started? Does ‘government conspiracy’ ring a bell?”

  “I don’t need your sarcasm, Mr. McCaig,” said Saylor. “OK, I’m not buying this conspiracy theory yet. But you’ve got me boxed in. Your reputations do impress me. I shouldn’t be wowed by your reputation, Ms. Garrett, but I am. Maybe there are hidden cameras somewhere and some TV host is going to jump out and say ‘Surprise, Saylor! See that camera over there?’ Because the only other possibility is that you people are actually serious.”

  “Deadly serious,” said Zarrabian. “Make no mistake. This is not a game, Ms. Dylan. It is no joking matter. These men are as real as I am standing here before you. They could kill thousands of people and cause billions in damage. We must figure out what they plan to do. If the conspiracy originates in the government, as we believe, then we must find another way to stop them.”

  “So we’re going do some hero thing? Maybe sneak up behind them and stab them in the back?”

  “You’re a librarian,” said Christine. “You know the power of the press. The way to get past government conspirators is to shine a bright light into their dark, smelly business.”

  “You guys are serious, right? I know, asked and answered. But this is a lot to swallow all at once, even for me. You get that, right?”

  “Yes, we—” said Christine, but Saylor continued talking.

  “A well-known reporter marches into my library. Who’s with her? The world’s most wanted terrorist who killed some cops, destroyed a major landmark and transportation corridor, and dropped a few hundred cars and trucks into the deep blue sea. And he claims to be what? Misguided? Now you’re sorry about the bridge, and we’ll all forgive you?”

  Zarrabian took a step forward. Saylor backed up and kept her distance.

  “Ms. Dylan,” said Zarrabian, “How old is your baby? Eighteen months, perhaps?”

  “My daughter. She’ll be eighteen months old next week.”

  Zarrabian gave a sad smile. “I had a wife and daughter. I was told they were both killed by an American cruise missile, that the United States launched an unprovoked act of war against Iran, killing many innocent civilians, including my beautiful wife and daughter. I was kept isolated for six months, my heart broken, my anger growing. They showed me and the other men false news stories about a war between our two countries. We believed our actions were legally and morally justified. Yesterday, I learned from Captain McCaig and Ms. Garrett that it was all a lie. There was no cruise-missile attack. My wife and daughter may not be dead. It was both the happiest day of my life and the most shocking. It has been a very difficult twenty-four hours.”

  He fell silent, staring at the floor.

  “My God,” said Saylor. “If that’s true, it’s horrible.”

  “And then I was told that my country was launching a legally justified attack against the United States of America, and that as a soldier, I was carrying out legal wartime activities.”

  “Your government never ratified the Geneva Convention. How can you claim that you’re following rules of war that your country never agreed to?”

  “You have a beautiful daughter, Ms. Dylan, and you get to hold her in your arms every day,” said Zarrabian. “Now there is hope that I may see my daughter again some day. If I am lucky, I will spend my life in prison, and perhaps she can visit me. If I am not so lucky, I will be killed in the next few weeks. Either way, it will be OK, because now I know that my little girl is alive, that she has a mother to love her, and that she will grow up to be a woman and have children of her own.”

  Saylor looked down at Marina, sleeping in her arms. The thought of losing her was unimaginable. She looked back at Zarrabian. Sh
e could see the sadness and sincerity in his face.

  The light of headlight beams swept across the parking lot.

  “Uh oh,” said Saylor. “Everyone over there, behind those shelves. Officer Raphael is making his rounds.”

  Christine, McCaig and Zarrabian quickly moved out of sight. Saylor sat down behind her desk and leaned forward into the light of her reading lamp, pretending to read. The patrol car cruised past the front doors. She looked up, spotted Officer Raphael’s wave, waved back, then returned her attention to her book.

  She was about to drop the charade and call the others out when there was a rap on the door. It was Officer Raphael. She unlocked the front door.

  “Hey, Raph, what’s up?”

  “You’re working late, Saylor.”

  “Yeah, I had some stuff to clean up; some kids thought it would be funny to mix up some of the bookshelves. Plus I’ve got a big book order that needs to get sent off by morning. I’ll probably be here for a while.”

  “You want me to bring you anything? Hamburger? Burrito?”

  “That’s real sweet of you, Raph, but I already ate.”

  “OK, well . . . hey, you know anything about that RV that’s parked down the street? It’s a very odd place for someone to park.”

  “RV? No. Well, maybe. There was a couple in here from out of town just before closing time. Looking for travel info. Maybe they walked over to Denny’s or something. Why? Is it illegal to park there overnight?”

  “No. Some towns don’t allow it, but it’s not like we have a lot of people in RVs cluttering up our little town. Just damned strange, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, for sure. Hey, if I see them tomorrow, I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “OK. Well, good night, Saylor. You take care.”