* * *
Charlie Dean sat on the narrow bed, staring at the posters of players from the Detroit Tigers and Red Wings, interspersed with smaller pictures of rap stars and musical groups. Change the uniforms and faces, and Kenan’s room would look like a lot of boys’ bedrooms across the U.S.
Date the posters a bit, replace the rap stars with Hendrix, and maybe it would have looked like the one Dean shared with his brother when he was a kid.
“He was always a good student,” Mrs. Conkel told him, continuing to describe her only son. “But he drifted. It was like he wasn’t challenged much in school. Things came too easy at first, and then when they didn’t, he didn’t want to bother. You know what I mean?”
“Sure,” said Dean.
He and Sabot had searched the house; Kenan wasn’t there. He wasn’t here in a larger sense, either — everything in his room appeared to date from high school.
His parents bounced back and forth between denial and an almost unworldly numbness. Mrs. Conkel had mentioned twice that Kenan didn’t have a license and therefore couldn’t have taken the family car. Her husband wondered aloud whether he should find a lawyer, but made no move to do so.
“Are either of you Muslim?” Dean asked Kenan’s parents.
“Of course not,” said Mr. Conkel.
“Were you surprised that Kenan converted?”
“He didn’t convert. That nonsense ended two or three years ago.”
“Why do you say that?” Dean asked.
“Because Kenan stopped talking about it, that’s why. We’re Catholic, not Muslim.”
“What does being Muslim have to do with anything?” asked Mrs. Conkel.
“The man who was killed was Muslim, and he had been at a mosque just before the murder,” said Dean. “Kenan seems to have been there, too.”
“I doubt it,” said Mr. Conkel.
“Kenan went through a phase,” said Mrs. Conkel. “He was looking for something.”
“We go to church every Sunday,” said Mr. Conkel, his voice insistent. “When he’s home, he comes with us.”
Mrs. Conkel nodded. There was no point arguing with them, so Dean changed the subject.
“Why do you think he would take the car without telling you?” asked Dean.
“He wouldn’t. He doesn’t have a license.” Mrs. Conkel turned away, but not before Dean saw the tears she was trying to hide.
“Do you know where he would go?”
She shook her head. Her husband shrugged.
“Relatives?”
“We don’t have any nearby, and Kenan wasn’t close to any of them,” said Mr. Conkel. “These people — would they threaten my son?”
“It could be,” said Dean. “We don’t know who they are.”
“Is this some sort of radical group?”
“Possibly,” said Dean.
That wasn’t the answer Mr. Conkel had hoped for. The expression on his face, which had mixed anger and pain and disbelief in roughly equal portions, turned entirely to anguish.
“Kenan would never hurt someone. Never,” said his mother, tears flowing from her reddened eyes. “He wouldn’t kill this man. He’s not a murderer. He’s not.”
“All right, calm down, Vic. Let’s just calm down.” Mr. Conkel glanced at his watch. “How long is this going to be?” he asked Dean. “I gotta get to work. I work six days a week, just to send him to college. You know? It ain’t easy.”
Dean took another of the Marshals Service cards from his pocket. The number would be answered by the Art Room.
“If you remember anything, please let me know,” he said, handing it to Mr. Conkel. “You should report the car stolen with the local police department.”
“It’s not stolen if my son has it,” said Mr. Conkel. “Right?”
“It is if you didn’t tell him he could take it.”
“They’ll arrest him and throw him in jail,” said Mrs. Conkel between sobs.
“That may be best thing that ever happened to him,” said Dean.
CHAPTER 102
Dr. Saed Ramil lay on the bed in his suburban Baltimore home, staring at the ceiling fan as it spun in an endless circle. He’d been married for a few years after Vietnam, but the marriage had fallen apart for numerous reasons, and ever since then he’d lived alone, without even a pet to keep him company. He was used to silence, long ago realizing that it was composed of many sounds: the slow swish of a fan, a distant car door slamming, the flutter of a bird hunting for food before dawn.
The voice had not returned since he left Detroit. He was glad — he didn’t want to be insane.
If he’d had a blow to his head, a shock to his brain stem, he could understand it. Pulmonary disease, anemia, a central nervous system disorder — a wide range of conditions could cause auditory hallucinations. Unfortunately, none applied.
Lack of sleep, food or water deprivation — these might explain it. Yet they did not seem satisfactory excuses, either.
Psychological stress. Well, he couldn’t argue against that. But if it was stress, did it mean he’d never be able to do his job? Would he have to give up being a doctor entirely?
And if it was stress, why didn’t he hear the voice now?
He couldn’t argue that what the voice said was false. Asad bin Taysr was an enemy of Islam, and the world was surely better that he was no longer here to spread his hate. Ramil knew this in his heart.
God spoke to the Prophet, Peace Be Unto Him. So why did Ramil dismiss the possibility that Allah was speaking to him? If he believed in God — and he did — should he not accept the possibility that this was God talking to him, not stress, not something caused by a random bump on the head?
Ramil was a good Muslim, but he was not a prophet. What he had heard must be the result of stress and perhaps his own wishful thinking.
He continued to stare at the fan, not quite sure what to believe.
* * *
CHAPTER 103
By the time the plane landed in New Orleans, the Art Room had IDed the passenger in Seat 2B as Joseph Roberts. According to his ticket and the Department of Motor Vehicles, he lived in a large Detroit apartment building; a crosscheck showed that there were at least four other adults with addresses there. He had no credit card, didn’t own anything that had to be registered, and did not appear to have had any brushes with the law.
Lia, who had plenty of experience with Karr’s “hunches,” scowled as the plane rolled up to the gate. Picking at straws was not one of her favorite pastimes.
“Comin’ at ya,” said Karr as the plane started to unload.
“Peachy.”
Lia drifted back toward the middle of the small knot of people waiting for relatives and friends, sipping her coffee to ward off her nagging jet lag. Like most of the Gulf Coast area, the airport still bore the mark of Katrina’s ravages. Though it had been well over a year since the hurricane struck, debris still littered the highway and edge of the parking areas. On the other hand, the rebuilding effort was everywhere in evidence, with cranes rising above new steel skeletons as the nation worked strenuously to erase the horror of the storm and shame of its aftermath.
Karr’s blond head loomed over the crowd; Lia sidled to the right to get a better view of the young man directly in front of him. The kid looked like a well-dressed toothpick, nervous and jumpy, eyes darting back and forth. She started paralleling him as he walked, her focus not on Roberts but on anyone who might be trying to spot someone tailing him. She turned sharply on her heel, gesturing as if she’d forgotten something; no one seemed to notice. Now at the back of the crowd, she swung around a few yards behind Karr, who was still a few feet in back of Roberts.
“Any time,” muttered Lia, indicating to Karr that he could peel off whenever he wanted.
A man in a black suit stood about thirty yards from the flow of passengers from the plane, arms at his side. Robert approached him tentatively; the man tilted his head slightly, then whirled around and walked in the direction of the d
oors.
One of the FBI agents assigned to help them was sitting in a car ready to pick Lia up and follow Roberts. But Lia had also left two cars outside, and so she followed Roberts to the open-air parking lot, where he and the other man got into a Chevy Impala. Though it dated from the 1960s, the car had been restored and its paint gleamed in the sun. Lia got into her rental and pulled out behind it; a small video bug on her bumper gave the Art Room the license plate number.
“Nice car,” said Rockman. “Sixty-eight Impala. Bet it’s got a short block, four on the floor, headers. Doesn’t handle, but it can haul.”
“If I want Car Talk, I’ll turn on the radio,” Lia told him.
They drove west and then north, weaving through the highway work and escaping the built city area and suburbs. Within an hour they had left the interstates, following a succession of state and then parish highways; a half hour after that they were on local roads, only some of which were paved. Swamp and more solid land alternated in an intricate patchwork arranged by man and nature according to a logic so tangled it was indecipherable. Reminders of the hurricane were everywhere: trees that had been pushed off the road and then forgotten, flattened and roofless houses. But nature as well as man had started a recovery — the vegetation was lush, with new growth springing up to replace what had been lost.
“I’m going to lose him soon,” said Lia, who had to keep slowing down to avoid being spotted. “These roads are empty. Where’s that plane?”
“We’re still working on it,” Rockman told her. “The plane we’ve borrowed from customs had engine problems and we’ve gone to a backup.”
A plane might not have helped; the canopy was so thick it looked like early evening rather than noon, and in some places the trees hung so low over the road that they swatted Lia’s windshield. Fortunately, the old Chevy kicked up rocks and dust as it went, making it easier to track. Then suddenly the road turned back to macadam. Lia sped up, realizing she was probably going to lose them.
“I see where you are,” Rockman told her. “There’s a farm just to the west, some sort of fields that are cut out of the jungle there.”
A dirt road swung off to Lia’s right. By the time she saw the dust hovering in the air near the intersection, she was by it. She hit the brakes and threw the car into reverse.
“I have a turnoff here,” she told Rockman.
“You sure he took it?”
“Somebody did.”
“I don’t see it on the map,” said Rockman. “You sure it’s there?”
“No, Rockman. I like to share my hallucinations.” Was it all men she had a problem with, or just the dumb ones? Lia braced herself as the car bumped off the pavement. “I’m going up it. Where’s Tommy?”
“About five minutes behind you.”
“Have him stay on the macadam.”
After about fifty yards the trail narrowed and then swung hard to the left, then widened and zigzagged through a grove of thick trees. The road dipped downwards and straightened, a swampy ditch on either side. A tangle of fallen trees sat on the right; Lia noticed a clearing beyond them. There was a trail there.
Two men in dark green clothes appeared from behind the tangle. Both men had shotguns.
Lia continued past, her eyes riveted on the road.
“I think I found out where they went,” she told Rockman, slowing to take the next curve.
CHAPTER 104
Kenan had never been in the St. Louis airport before. Not sure where he had to go to catch the connecting flight to Mexico, he stopped to read the signs. As he did, someone bumped into him from behind. Caught by surprise, Kenan flew to the ground. Unable to get his hands up in time to break his fall, he took most of the blow on his chin. The pain blinded him, a searing shock he felt in his back and skull as well as his face. Tears welled in his eyes, not merely from the pain of the fall but from the last twenty-four hours.
God had forsaken him. He was alone among the People of Hell, without friends, without hope.
A strong hand gripped his arm.
“Let me help you up,” said a calm voice.
Fighting back tears, Kenan struggled to his feet.
“Are you all right?” asked a man with yellowish skin. He was roughly Kenan’s age, but built like a football lineman.
Kenan managed to nod.
“You dropped this,” said the man, scooping up a book from the floor. He placed it in Kenan’s hand, then started away.
Kenan, dazed from the floor, stared at the book, a cheap paperback thriller.
It wasn’t his.
The man was gone. Kenan tucked the book under his arm and stepped to the side. He moved his jaw up and down, pushing against the pain.
Kenan glanced at the cover of the book. It showed a nondescript skyline framed by a red explosion in the background. Not only wasn’t it his, but it wasn’t the sort of thing he would read. Kenan glanced around, looking to see where it had come from. There were no bookstores nearby, no magazine stands. Obviously the man who’d bumped into him hadn’t had it.
Unless he was a messenger, sent to encourage him.
That wasn’t part of the plan. And the man didn’t use any of the words the mujahideen used to identify themselves to others.
But the book must be a message, Kenan thought. Nothing happened randomly — all was part of God’s plan, waiting to be revealed. It was meant to encourage him, to keep him from giving up.
Kenan’s hand trembled as he looked at the cover again. It showed an explosion deep in a city — God’s wrath, surely.
He took a deep breath, then began looking for the flight board, book in hand.
CHAPTER 105
The bus stopped in front of a store that sold tractor parts. Marid Dabir descended the steps confidently, pretending he came to the small northern Ohio town once or twice a week and knew exactly where he was going.
In truth, it looked as foreign as the moon. He began walking back in the direction of the cluster of businesses they had just passed a half mile away. Small houses bunched together on both sides of the highway, their roofs shimmering in the afternoon sun. Dabir reached a gas station which doubled as a convenience mart and went inside. Thirsty, he took a bottle of water from the cooler and brought it to the counter.
“How do I get to the town library?” he asked the clerk as he paid.
“Black Mountain Highway, next to the town hall,” said the girl.
“How do I get there?”
“Well, um, let me see. Chris?” she yelled to one of her coworkers near the back of the store. “Library. How do you get there?”
The clerk, a woman in her mid-thirties who stood about five foot, came up the aisle. “Go up 55, take a left and a quick right, two miles to Black Mountain Highway, make a right, three miles on your left.”
“Is there a bus there?”
“Bus?”
“I don’t have a car.”
The clerk gave him a suspicious look. “There’s a taxi service in Redstone. The number’s on the phone outside.”
“You need to go to the library?” asked a woman in her mid-thirties. She slid a bag of potato chips onto the counter.
“I’m supposed to meet a friend there,” said Dabir.
“We’re on our way there. We’ll give you a ride.”
“Thank you,” said Dabir. He took a step back, making way for the woman’s child, a four- or five-year-old who leaned up against the counter and retrieved the bag of potato chips.
“Let me pay for that before you take it,” the woman told the child.
Dabir followed them outside to a small red SUV. The woman strapped the boy into a car seat in the back.
“Go ahead, get in,” she told Dabir. She held out her hand. “My name’s Debra.”
“Thank you. I’m Robert,” he added, using a name from one of the credit cards.
“Really? That’s my son’s name.”
“A good name.”
“You don’t live around here.”
“My f
ather did. I’m visiting an old school friend.”
The woman’s cotton dress rode up on her thigh as she backed out of the parking space. Dabir wondered if the Lord had put her here to tempt him, or to help him.
Perhaps both.
“I thought you were from overseas,” said the woman. “Because of your accent. Somewhere in the Middle East. We visited Egypt last year.”
“My family was from Egypt,” lied Dabir. He knew it was his dusky face that had tipped her off as much as his accent. “We moved here when I was eight.”
He thought of killing her and taking her car. He would have to use his bare hands, but it was not difficult; he had killed two men that way, and both were twice her size.
“Where do you live now?” asked the woman.
“Detroit,” said Dabir.
“You took the bus?”
“Yes,” said Dabir.
The boy in the back dropped his bag of potato chips and began crying. As the woman reached across the seat to retrieve it, she brushed against Dabir’s shoulder.
The Devil is tempting me, he thought, holding his breath.
They turned down an empty rural road. Dabir decided that he would kill her here. But as he turned to grab her neck, a siren sounded behind them.
He jerked back in his seat, absolutely still. Debra slowed and pulled toward the shoulder. The police car closed in behind them, then passed, lights flashing.
“Probably just going to lunch,” muttered the woman, pulling back onto the highway. “He startled me.”
“Yes,” said Dabir. He said nothing the rest of the way to the library.
* * *
A story on a Detroit newspaper’s website that Dabir read at the town library said the police had no new leads in the murder and suicide in the city two days before. While Dabir still did not entirely trust the American media, these reports gave him hope that the brothers had in fact accomplished their mission and then were caught by the police and either forced to kill themselves or did the honorable thing. In any event, Asad bin Taysr had been killed. Dabir could go back now, not to Europe but to Pakistan, and take his rightful place at the Sheik’s side.
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