Fear City

by F. Paul Wilson

  The smile vanished. “What?”

  “Out.”

  “Hey, listen, I can make it worth your while.”

  “Out. Don’t make me say it again.”

  The guy got up and stormed out, slamming the door behind him. As the vibrations faded, Julio came over with a pint of Rolling Rock.

  “Another one looking for a hit man?”

  Jack nodded and sipped. Damn, that tasted good. “Would you believe arson and murder?”

  Julio flexed his muscles under his tight black T-shirt. He’d been putting extra effort into his workouts. Maybe he thought it made up for his height—or rather the lack of it.

  “Arson and murder … man, with all the offers you get, you could clean up in that business.”

  Jack laughed. “You’ve got that right.”

  Amazing how many people wanted someone dead.

  “You need a partner?”

  “You want in?”

  “Nah.” Julio shrugged and headed back toward the bar on the other end of the room. “I think I stick with pouring beer.”

  6

  Hadya Allawi kept her hijab tight around her head as she passed the Al-Salam Mosque. She walked on the opposite sidewalk to keep her distance from it. She had little choice about her route: John F. Kennedy Boulevard was a main thoroughfare through Jersey City and if she wanted to shop in Journal Square, she had to pass it.

  She glanced at the graffiti-scarred doorway in the right corner of the building. She used to climb the steps inside to worship in the mosque on the third floor but had stopped once Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman took up residence and began spewing his bile. She could almost feel the hate seeping through the windows overlooking the street. She sent some straight back.

  The Qur’an said not to hate, but how could she not hate the blind sheikh for the ways he had twisted her brother into a monster?

  She loved her life here in America, even if she could not fully participate, even if some Americans were put off by her Muslim dress. Not that she wore a burka or would even consider it. But her hijab that left only her face exposed and her long sleeves and dark stockings even in summer caused occasional stares. Why aren’t you dressed like us?

  She’d seen orthodox Jewish women with scarf-swathed heads and similar clothing subjected to the same mildly disapproving scrutiny. Strange how two cultures so at odds in world politics were so alike in their lifestyles.

  Hadya took a more relaxed view. Weather permitting, American women exposed far more of their skin than Hadya could ever be comfortable with. But on a warm day she might remove her hijab to let the breeze ruffle her hair. Kadir had caught her that way once in Lincoln Park. He hadn’t said anything at the time, but shortly afterward he’d assaulted her, tying her in her bed and shaving off her hair, right down to the scalp. Of course she’d had to keep her hijab on after that. She still seethed with the humiliation. She’d fled his apartment and moved in with Jala who also worked in Uncle Ferran’s bakery.

  Her hair had grown back but the terror and humiliation of those moments remained as fresh as if it had happened only yesterday. Even now she had to force her hands to unclench the tight fists they had formed.

  More than her style of dress sequestered her from American culture. Although Islam kept her from nightclubs and bars, she wouldn’t care to go even if it didn’t. But she wished she could feel more a part of the culture and still remain a good Muslim woman. She enjoyed going to the mosque for prayers—as long as it wasn’t the Al-Salam with that awful Sheikh Omar—and even enjoyed the fasting of Ramadan because she always lost weight. Staying slim was no easy task when tempted daily by the delicacies of the Ramallah Bakery.

  Today the bearded older man she so often saw parked in either an old car or a pickup truck here and there along the boulevard—always in sight of the mosque—was absent. Sometimes if she passed on the same side of the street she would see a Thermos and food and field glasses on the front seat. He was obviously watching the mosque. Although he didn’t look it, she hoped he was FBI and looking for evidence against Sheikh Omar. She couldn’t very well pray to Allah for something bad to befall an imam, so all she could do was hope that the government found evidence against him for some crime that would allow his arrest. Then perhaps Kadir would have breathing space to come to his senses.

  She shook her head. How naively foolish she would be to believe that. Sheikh Omar had so thoroughly poisoned his mind against America that he would never find his way back to sanity. Because that was how she thought of her brother now: insane.

  She didn’t want her mad brother to ruin her new life in America.

  She glanced again at Al-Salam’s door. On occasion—just last week was the most recent—she had seen Kadir standing out front in a cluster of his jihadist friends. Unable to escape Sheikh Omar’s gravitational pull, they had followed him here from Brooklyn to resume their orbit around him. She’d noticed some new faces lately and that disturbed her. One of them had moved in with Kadir. Under the blind sheikh’s influence, her brother intended to bring jihad to America. She had no doubt that these newcomers were going to help him make that a reality.

  She shuddered, and not from the cold wind blowing down the street. The Americans she’d met in her two years here were good people. They knew nothing about Islam. She knew they thought Muslims dressed funny, but she’d experienced no prejudice, no hate. She doubted they ever gave a second thought to Muslims as they went about their workaday lives. But if Kadir and his fanatic friends brought terror here, Americans would start thinking about Muslims, and they would not be good thoughts.

  After Kadir’s assault and moving in with Jala, Hadya had continued studying English, learning enough to work the front counter and deal with the customers. A fair number of them spoke Arabic but the majority were Americans who’d developed a taste for Middle Eastern pastries. She was building a life here, she saw a future here, something she’d had no hope of in Jordan. Kadir was out to ruin all that.

  She could not allow it. She had been keeping watch on him in a desultory fashion. She would have to take a more vigorous approach now. Kadir would not steal her future.

  7

  Jack was still at his table, working on his second beer, when a sixty-something guy with short gray hair that poked every which way stepped through the door and looked around. His straight spine and the way he held himself screamed ex-soldier. Jack knew him: Dane Bertel. He wished for a place to hide but none was to be had, so he waved. Bertel’s eyes lit and he headed Jack’s way.

  “Always know where to find you,” he said, smiling as they shook hands. He sat opposite him and pointed to Jack’s glass. “What’re you drinking?”

  “Rock.”

  “You never change.”

  “Oh, and you do, I suppose?” As Bertel laughed, Jack said, “Want one?”

  “Don’t mind if I do, but I’m paying.”

  Jack signaled to Julio for another pint. “That means you want something.”

  Bertel put on a hurt expression. “Must you be so cynical?”

  “Must you be so you?”

  “Couldn’t I just be stopping to spend a little time with one of my favorite former employees?”

  “You could, but we both know you’re not. How’s business, by the way?”

  “Good. And as long as people keep smoking and certain states keep taxing cigarettes up the wazoo, it’ll stay good.”

  Bertel ran stamp-free cigarettes from North Carolina and sold them to middlemen in places like Detroit and Chicago and Jersey City. After fitting the packs with bogus tax stamps, they wholesaled them to bodegas and delis and newsstands. Everybody along the chain made out—except the local tax men, of course.

  After Julio delivered his beer, Bertel said, “How about you?”

  “Keeping busy.”

  “Too busy to help out a friend?”

  “We’ve been down that road and you know the answer.”

  Jack had driven the Jersey City run for a while. Good money but thing
s got complicated. Despite his diminished income these days, he wasn’t the least bit tempted.

  “You’re welcome back any time, you know that. The door’s always open. But that’s not the kind of help I’m looking for.”

  Jack leaned back. “Shoot.”

  “It’s those Mohammedans.”

  “Aw, man…”

  Bertel had a bug up his butt about militant Mohammedans—his word for Muslims—especially some blind preacher in Brooklyn. He got all paranoid on the subject of how they were out to blow up America. He’d been going on about it for years, but so far, no bombs, no nothing.

  “Hear me out, Jack. I’ve been keeping an eye on those guys—”

  “You’re still hanging around that Brooklyn mosque? You might as well become a member.”

  “They moved to Jersey City. Sheikh Omar got kicked out of Al-Farooq and so now he’s at Al-Salam on Kennedy Boulevard. In the meantime, a couple of new players have come on board. One’s passport says ‘Abdul Basit’ but that’s bogus.”

  “See? This is what I mean—how do you know that? You’ve gotta be ex-CIA.”

  “We’ve been over and over that. The only ‘ex’ I am is law-abiding citizen.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “Because you’re paranoid.”

  “I’m paranoid?”

  “Anyway, I don’t know who this new guy really is, but he stinks of terrorist. And guess who he’s rooming with?”

  “Sacco? No, wait. Vanzetti?”

  “Not funny. He’s bunking with Kadir Allawi, the guy we followed up from Virginia in that truck—”

  “The truck that mysteriously blew up?” Jack said, giving him a look. “We never did get around to discussing that.”

  Bertel spread his hands. “Nothing to discuss. I don’t know a thing about it. But guess who else has been hanging around this Jersey City mosque? A Pakistani named Aimal Kasi.”

  Jack shrugged. “That’s supposed to mean something?”

  “I recognized him from when I saw him in the cab of the aforementioned truck in Virginia—before Kadir and your slaver buddy Reggie took it north.” He laced his fingers together. “It’s all interconnected, all of a piece.”

  Jack couldn’t hide his exasperation. “I know they’re connected. What I don’t know is why I should care.”

  “You’ll care like crazy when things start blowing up.”

  That again. “You said you needed help. What help?”

  “I need an extra set of eyes on the Al-Salam Mosque. I can only spare so much time. I need backup.”

  Jack needed maybe a nanosecond to think about that.

  “Sorry. No can do.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I have a life and I’ve no room in it for sitting somewhere on the other side of the Hudson watching a mosque.”

  “Aren’t you from New Jersey?”

  “The operative word there is ‘from,’ and I plan to keep it that way.”

  “If you won’t do it for me, do it for your country.”

  “I’m not doing it for anyone.”

  “Christ, Jack, I’ll pay you.”

  “You’re not hearing me, Dane. My life is in a good place right now. I don’t want to mess it up.”

  Jack figured he was overstating, perhaps, but not much. Yeah, he’d blown it with Cristin and his finances could be better, but his life had been sailing through placid waters for nearly two years straight now. Nothing like the two mass murders he’d witnessed and the one murder he’d committed himself during his first eight months on his own.

  Yeah, this was definitely a good place.

  “I hope you won’t regret it.”

  “Dane, isn’t this a job for the CIA or the FBI or some other acronym? As you said, I’m a guy from Jersey, and you’re—well, who knows what you are, but whatever you are, the feds are better equipped to handle this kind of thing. You should be talking to them instead of me.”

  His eyes bugged. “Don’t think I haven’t! They won’t listen. They’re blowing it! They’re worried about assassinations.” He spoke the word like it tasted bad.

  “I’d say that’s a good thing to worry about.”

  “Not assassinations of Americans. Foreigners. They hauled in a whole bunch from the Al-Farooq on suspicion of some plot against Boutros-Ghali—”

  “And he is…?”

  “Secretary General of the United Nations. Sheikh Omar’s got it in for him because of his ties to Mubarak who, I’m sure you don’t know, is—”

  “Head honcho in Egypt. You’ve talked about him before.”

  “At least you were listening. Omar hates them both. But the Fibbies should be worried about bombs instead of assassinations.”

  “You’re talking about what—blowing up the UN?”

  “Why not? Wouldn’t that cause a shitload of terror?”

  “It would sure improve the view of the East River.”

  Bertel gave him an angry stare. “Do you have any idea how many lives—?”

  “Okay. Bad joke. Poor taste.”

  “But maybe it won’t be the UN. Maybe it’ll be the World Trade towers, or the Empire State Building.”

  “The Empire—now that would piss me off. That’s where King Kong died.”

  Bertel was turning red. “This isn’t a joking matter, Jack. These assholes want to put their holy war on the map and they’re looking to make a statement—the bigger and badder the better. And they don’t care how many people they kill along the way. In fact, they want maximum body count.”

  “But for all you know, the feds may have a guy inside who—”

  “They did! But they let him go. A lousy five hundred bucks a week for the inside scoop from one of Omar’s bodyguards and they blew it.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I’ve got a source.”

  “From when you used to be in the FBI?”

  “Stop it, Jack.”

  “Okay. And while we’re stopping things, let’s stop this conversation, shall we? You go ahead and play your undercover games, but I’m for leaving it to the professionals.”

  Bertel gave him a hard glare as he rose from his seat. “Someday I’ll say ‘I told you so,’ but I won’t get one damn lick of pleasure out of being right.”

  Then he stomped out.

  Julio slowed as he circled by. “You on the rag or somethin’? You pissing them off one after another today.”

  Jack only held up his empty glass. He felt bad for Bertel. The old guy was so invested in his conviction that local Mohammedans were plotting major damage. But from what Jack had seen of them, they appeared to be a bunch of bumblers. He couldn’t see them getting their act together for anything major.

  8

  Ernst Drexler arrived ten minutes late without an apology. Nasser al-Thani would have loved to say something—didn’t Drexler always make a remark when he was even a minute late?—but the meeting had been called in haste and so he held his tongue.

  As usual, they met in Roman Trejador’s current hotel suite. Spanish by birth, he had Latin good looks and appeared perpetually tanned, his dark hair only recently showing a touch of gray at the temples. With no family and no permanent residence, he lived in a series of hotels around Manhattan. Sometimes in a chain, like a Hilton or a Hyatt or a Westin, other times in boutique hotels, but only in those that could provide a luxury suite.

  No enduring residence, and no enduring relationships outside the Order. The women in his life were high-end call girls. This was an ongoing cause for concern among certain members of the Order’s High Council, but Roman Trejador’s defense was that, absent the distractions and demands of a wife and family in a permanent residence, he was able to focus his attention more keenly on the responsibilities of being the chief actuator for the Ancient Septimus Fraternal Order. And since he was the best there was—arguably among the best ever—the High Council let him live as he pleased.

  Trejador wore his tacky silk smoking jacket, Drexler wore his perenni
al. never-mind-the-season three-piece white suit, and Nasser wore a gray thobe, floor length with a simple round collar.

  Their host said, “At this late hour I assumed we’d all have had our dinner, so I ordered no food.” He raised a snifter of amber fluid. “But there’s brandy on the bar, Ernst. Nasser already has his water from the fridge.”

  “It’s a cold night,” Drexler said, inserting his black, rhinoceros-hide cane into the wrought-iron umbrella holder and rubbing his hands together. “A brandy sounds good.”

  His words carried a vague Austrian accent. Perhaps a decade younger than Trejador, he had a sharp, aquiline nose and combed his glossy black hair straight back from his widow’s peak.

  Nasser was the youngest man in the room by a good ten years. The other two were seasoned actuators. Nasser was being groomed for the post. As Drexler splashed some brandy into a snifter, Nasser sipped his spring water. He’d been raised in Qatar, where alcohol was permitted. But despite that and his years at Oxford, he’d never developed a taste for it.

  Swirling his own glass, Trejador turned to him. “You said you had important news, my friend. The floor is yours.”

  Nasser appreciated the “my friend.” Over the years he had grown comfortable with Trejador. Not so Drexler. He couldn’t imagine anyone being comfortable with Ernst Drexler.

  “I didn’t think this could wait until our regular meeting. I received a call today from one of our jihadist friends.”

  “Them again!” Drexler said, dropping onto a nearby love seat. “They want money, I suppose.”

  “You suppose correctly.”

  Drexler shook his head. “You called us here for that? Tell those dummkopfs to—what’s the American expression?—pound salt.”

  Yes, very hard to be comfortable with Drexler.

  “I have a feeling this time is different. I’ve dealt with Kadir Allawi before. He’s highly motivated and fanatically dedicated to jihad.”

  “As are we,” Trejador added with a smile.

  Indeed, we are, Nasser thought.

  Not for any religious reason, but rather for the chaos it would bring. The Order was all about chaos.