by Dan O'Shea
“Address I got puts him in the Old Colony Building,” Lynch said. “That would have been hot shit a century ago, but it’s a pretty big step down from the MacMillian digs now.”
“So maybe something,” Bernstein said.
“Maybe,” said Lynch.
Telling’s office was on the fourth floor, the hallway lined with tall wooden doors framing long pebbled-glass inserts, the doors all with the old-fashioned transom windows over the top. Old wood, old stone moldings. People would have said faded grandeur maybe twenty-five years ago, but it was still fading. Telling was in 412, “Douglas Telling, Immigration Law” stenciled on the window. The door was ajar; Lynch nudged it open.
Telling was behind a beat-up desk, wearing a dress shirt that was probably expensive when he bought it five or six years ago. Tie on, hanging down, collar open. First impression, the place was a mess, but as Lynch looked at it he realized it was just full of files. Files piled on the desk, files stacked on the metal shelves along the right wall, files lined up on the floor.
Telling looked up. “So you’re the cops?”
“Kate Magnus gave us your name,” said Lynch.
“About Membe?”
“Yeah,” said Lynch.
“And you think this ties in to Stein somehow?” Telling asked.
“It might,” Lynch said. “We’re checking.”
“And that’s why you’re here, because otherwise Membe’s just another dead nigger, and not even a citizen nigger, right?”
The fire again. Lynch turned his palms up. “I do something to piss you off?”
“Didn’t have to,” Telling said. “I wake up that way.”
“Think maybe you can give it a rest for a minute, so we can get through this?”
Telling nodded. “Fine.”
“You handled the immigration work on Membe?”
“Yeah.”
“Anything in his file you think might have followed him over here?”
Telling snorted. “You’ve got no fucking clue, do you? If Membe got killed over there, it wouldn’t be because he was Membe. It would be the West African version of roadkill – just mean he stepped out in front of the bullet. You guys and your motives and shit. Most of this world, you don’t need a reason to get dead. Could be his great-grandfather looked sideways at some asshole’s great-grandmother sixty years ago, and the asshole was in the wrong tribe. Could be one of Taylor’s former punks was sitting in a bar and couldn’t remember whether he had a round in the chamber, so he takes the shot to find out because it’s easier than pulling the bolt back and checking. Could be anything at all, but whatever it was would be some dumb-ass trivial bullshit. People don’t follow refugees across the Atlantic to kill them over dumb-ass trivial bullshit. They just kill whoever else is handy.”
“So why’d he get asylum, then?” Bernstein asked.
“Because his life was in danger.”
“You make it sound like everybody’s life is in danger over there,” Lynch said.
“Everybody’s life is. But the sisters can’t get their hands on everybody. They get their hands on who they can. And they send me the files. And if I can find a way to make a case, then I make a case.”
“I thought asylum had to be based on a specific risk of persecution,” Bernstein said.
“You get a look at Membe’s right arm?”
Lynch nodded.
“That specific enough for you?”
“What I got from the ME, that was a few years ago,” Lynch said.
“You wanna get philosophical, then I’ll get philosophical. I don’t give a shit. I don’t care if it was two weeks, two years, or two decades ago. I work with a number of relief agencies, all over the world. They come to me with somebody who’s gonna die where they are and who maybe won’t if they come here and I can spin a way to open up the ol’ Golden Door, then I’m gonna go for it. Because the rich fuckers that run this country and the racist lemmings that spend their days listening to the bloviating yahoos on talk radio, they want to nail that door shut. Most of this world is a huge fucking cesspool that people shouldn’t have to live in. Most of this country isn’t.”
Little pause after that, not the kind of comment that invited a response.
“Didn’t you used to be with MacMillian?” Bernstein asked.
“Yeah. Up until 2004.”
“Kind of a change of pace,” Bernstein said.
“Always did some immigration stuff to help the firm hit its pro bono targets. I mean the pro bono stuff in a firm like that, mostly it’s a joke. Something we use to numb the consciences on the new associates until the work and the money suck out their souls. But I was a proper North Shore liberal. Had a couple million bucks worth of house up in Lake Forest, condo in Aspen, garage full of Beemers. Had a son. Then 9/11 happened, and my son decided to sign up for Bush’s jihad, probably mostly to rebel against me and my bullshit. And he got blown up. And my wife turned into one of these America-as-a-fetish Palin worshipers because it was the only way she had for his death to make sense. And I just couldn’t go into the office anymore and help another CFO find ways to run circles around the SEC. Because it occurred to me that my son, misguided as he was, stuck his ass out further for something than I ever had. So my wife got the house and condo and the Beemers and the money, and I got this.”
“Fair trade?” Lynch asked.
“Screw fair,” Telling said.
“This Membe Saturday looks like a dead end,” Bernstein said, him and Lynch back in the car.
“Something screwy, though. I mean, why shoot the guy? Because he saw the car? You got people parked all over there every game night. There’s no reason for the shooter to think anybody’d be looking at him.”
“But if it’s not about the shooter, then it’s about Stein. So now you’re wondering what some refugee has in common with Stein,” Bernstein said.
“And I feel kind of stupid wondering that,” Lynch said. They drove for a few moments. “Do me a favor, though, OK? We ever get a call out back to Telling’s office, let’s punt on it. Guy’s gonna eat a gun someday. I don’t need to see it.”
Bernstein’s phone went off, some kind of hip-hop crap.
“What the fuck is that?” Lynch asked.
“New ringtone,” Bernstein said. “Little Kanye. Upping my street cred.”
“Well, answer the damn thing before I put a round through it.”
CHAPTER 12
Hardin dumped the room service tray from breakfast outside his door. He’d been staying in the hotel room as much as possible, keeping his head down. He’d taken the underground tunnel from the hotel over to the Macy’s on State Street, picked up some clothes. Everything he had he’d bought in Africa, and most of it came from Europe. He couldn’t put his finger on it exactly, but over here everybody else’s clothes looked just a little different. Different wasn’t what he needed just now. Macy’s had been a shock. Marshall Field’s was gone. He remembered when he was a kid, the Field’s out at Fox Valley Mall. Not where he shopped, of course. Sears was splurging in his family. But he remembered hanging around in Field’s, the rich people carrying around those dark green bags with the script on them, bags he always figured would smell like money. Field’s was the sort of thing that felt permanent when you were a kid, like Pluto being a planet. People liked to switch that shit out on you when you weren’t looking, remind you that nothing stuck, that the whole world and everything in it was circling the drain one way or the other.
He fired up his laptop, checked his e-mail. Nothing he needed. Reached for the remote. He’d watched more TV in the last day and a half than he had in the previous twenty years.
And there was that fucker Fenn, some Oprah special, tears in his eyes, running through that child abuse crap he started peddling a few years back. And then Oprah had to cue up the tape – the cell phone video from the damn Darfur party that had had a short run on YouTube back in the day.
“That’s really when I knew something was wrong with me,” said Fenn.
“I’ve been doing the work in therapy, and I’ve been trying to make it right with people I’ve gone off on. But I look back at this, and I think of all the damage I did to the good work that Jerry Mooney was trying to do. And I worry about Nick Hardin – he’s the guy I’m taking the swing at here. I mean, this cost him his gig with Jerry, and who knows what else a guy like that has.”
Hardin noticed they’d cut the tape right after Fenn took his swing and Hardin took his fall. Didn’t show Hardin busting Fenn up.
Just great. All Hardin wanted to do was to keep his head down for a few days while Fouche put a deal together. Then he and his $10 million would find some place nice to live out their days. Now his face and his name were on Oprah.
Hardin suddenly remembered bivouacking in some pissant village in the ass-end of Benin maybe fifteen years ago, back in his Legion days. This old jou-jou insisted on throwing the bones for them. She threw Hardin’s, and her eyes got big, and she grabbed Hardin by the arm. “Beware the black woman with a million eyes. She will be your downfall.” It creeped Hardin out a little at the time, but he hadn’t thought about it in years. He never figured she meant Oprah.
Too many people had seen him at the Hyatt. If the bad guys didn’t have a line on him already, they would soon enough. Time to move. And time to find a fucking gun.
Beans Garbanzo and Snakes DeGetano were two hours into their second morning sitting on Hardin’s car when Snakes took a look down at his picture and nudged Beans. “Here he comes. Make the call and pull up behind him.”
Garbanzo pulled out his cell.
“Yeah?” the voice answered.
“It’s Beans. I’m working that thing for Tony Corsco. Kill the camera.”
“OK, you got ten minutes max. Ping me when you’re clear .Just remember, I don’t need anybody getting curious about convenient camera outages, so grab him and run. Don’t leave a mess there, give anybody a reason to start checking for pictures.”
CHAPTER 13
Dr Atash Javadi walked along the shore of Lake Michigan on the Northwestern University campus with a slight, olive-skinned man. Javadi had been a youth of twenty in 1979, the year the Shah fell. He had been the intellectual playboy scion of one of Iran’s wealthiest families. Now, with degrees from Cambridge, Yale, and Dartmouth, he was one of the West’s leading scholars on the Islamic world and the professor of Middle Eastern studies at Northwestern University. An ardent and frequent critic of Islam, he was a regular guest on various news programs and a long-time favorite of the American right.
He was also a devout Shiite and had, for his entire life in America, been an agent for MOIS, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and National Security.
“The things that they hoard shall be tied to their necks like a collar on the day of resurrection,” said Javadi. “So sayeth the Holy Koran. Cling not to greed, my friend.”
“He must pay their wages in full,” replied the olive-skinned man, “and give them even more out of his grace. So also sayeth the Holy Koran. And my wages are late. Stein is dead. Heinz is dead. I have your devices. Yet Tehran has my money and I do not.”
Javadi smiled an ironic smile. “You quibble over money? Now? On the brink of a triumph that will forever secure in legend the name of Husam al Din?”
Al Din scowled. He had no use for legends and less for names.
He’d only been a few weeks old in 1978 when the Israelis bombed the refugee camp in Lebanon. His parents were killed, and he was just another orphan raised by the PLO. In the camp, they called him Ahmad, but his parents must have called him something. So far as Husam was concerned, Ahmad was just his first cover. A name was just another tool. In New Mexico, he had been Ricardo Orendain. Since arriving in Chicago, he had been Marco Pelligrino and then Dmitri Stavapopolus. With his fine features, light olive skin, and brown eyes, he could pass for everything from a Spaniard to an Indian.
In reality, he was Palestinian. He’d had the religious indoctrination as a boy, the feeble mullahs and their nonsense. There is no God but Allah, and Mohammad is his prophet, the United States is the Great Satan, all the rest of it. But Husam believed that reality was the best teacher.
And reality was this: Any time Israel wanted, the jets came and bombed the camps, and the Palestinians had to hide in the rubble like roaches. If Israel decided to destroy Beirut, they destroyed Beirut. If there was no God but Allah, why then did Yahweh get the F-16s and Abrams battle tanks, leaving Allah’s people to fight them with AK-47s and stones? Husam had no more faith in gods than he had in names.
But he had a talent for killing. He had been a very bright student, the brightest boy in any of the classes in the camp. And so the men in the keffiyehs had taught him as well. Pistols, rifles, explosives. How to fight with his hands and with knives. A Kalashnikov – this was a god he could believe in.
When he was fourteen, he had his first exam. He remembered crawling forward in the dark toward the Israeli roadblock. Watching for a long time to be sure. Two soldiers outside the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the armored personnel carrier that was another gift to Yahweh from America, Israel’s real god. After an hour, the doors to the Bradley opened, and the two soldiers traded places with two others inside. Four soldiers in all.
The instructions for this initiation were simple: Leave the camp, kill at least one Israeli, and return alive. The other boys had all chosen civilians, random killings of unsuspecting targets. And when they had returned to the camp after emptying a clip into some old woman driving back to some kibbutz, he would join in the celebration of their heroic acts. In truth, these cowards disgusted him with their weakness. He was determined to do better.
At any time, he could kill the two outside the Bradley, but the muzzle flash would give away his position. He was not interested in learning how good the soldiers inside the Bradley were with the 20mm cannon and 50mm machine gun. But these Israelis were complacent. It was a quiet sector, routine duty. He watched for an opportunity. It took him more than three hours to move to a slightly elevated position behind the Bradley, giving him a clear line of sight into the vehicle when the doors opened. At the next shift change, all four soldiers were within a narrow field of fire, the door to the vehicle directly in front of him. Ahmad was calm. Many of those he trained with would have cut loose with a long burst of automatic fire, sweeping the weapon back and forth. But Ahmad flicked the selector switch to semi-automatic. Three-round bursts, twenty rounds in the magazine, one spare magazine. Ahmad knew that if he had to switch magazines before the Israelis were down, he was as good as dead. Ahmad sighted on the Israeli standing in the door of the Bradley. If he could drop him in the doorway, the others might trip over him trying to get inside.
Ahmad fired, all three rounds hitting the Israeli in the torso, the soldier falling on the ramp. Ahmad swung the rifle a couple inches left and hit the second Israeli with a burst. The target went down, still moving, but down. The Israelis were well trained. The other two both dove to the ground, rolling apart so that they were separate targets. They had seen the muzzle flash. Both brought their Galils to bear, first one, then the other, raking the ground in front of Ahmad’s position with controlled bursts. Each moved further out as the other fired – fire and maneuver, looking to flank. Ahmad slid slowly down the small embankment and rolled to his left, timing his movements with the firing by the Israelis to cover the noise. As one of the Israelis fired at the spot where Ahmad had been, the other got up to run further right. Ahmad hit him in the back with a burst. The final Israeli turned his fire to Ahmad’s new position, but Ahmad still had the advantage of elevation. When he heard the Israeli stop to change clips, Ahmad sighted carefully, hitting the Israeli in the face and helmet.
Ahmad had fired four bursts – twelve rounds. He knew he still had eight rounds in his clip, but he swapped in his full clip and watched the scene for a moment. The second Israeli was still moving, trying to crawl toward the APC. Ahmad put a three-round burst into the soldier’s head. He then put a single round into the heads of ea
ch of the other Israelis, just to be sure. He walked down to the Bradley and looked inside. He knew he couldn’t loiter, but he wanted his first mission to cement his reputation. There were two large fuel cans in a rack on the outside of the APC. He moved them inside the vehicle. He cut both pant legs from the uniform of one of the dead Israelis, sliced them in sections, and tied the sections together to make a fuse. He opened the first fuel can, shoved the fabric inside, let it soak a moment, and then pulled most of it out, wadding the end of the fuse in the opening to the fuel can. He set the fuel can in the ammunition storage area inside the APC. He opened the second fuel can, pouring the fuel over the ammunition first, and then splashing it around the inside of the machine. He backed out of the vehicle, trailing the soaked cloth behind him until it ended a meter or two past the end of the ramp. He lit the cloth and ran. Ahmad knew the flame would race up the fuel-soaked cloth and that the fuel can at least would explode and ignite the rest of the fuel within the APC.
He was one hundred meters away when he heard the whomp of the fuel can and saw his shadow flash in front of him from the sudden light. Within another hundred meters, he heard the first of the 20mm shells go off, then another, then a staccato cacophony of exploding ordinance; then he was staggered by the force of the blast as the vehicles main fuel storage tanks blew.
Ahmad knew the Israeli combat patrols and helicopters would saturate the area between him and the camps. He ran south, toward Israel.
For two days, Ahmad dodged patrols, slowly making his way back to the camp. By the time he returned, he was a legend. The fourteen year-old boy sent out to kill a single Israeli who had instead wiped out an entire Bradley crew and their machine. And he had a new name, this one of his own choosing: Husam al Din – the sword of faith.
Just because he didn’t believe in names did not mean one could not serve his legend.
And his legend grew. As a youth, he became the most feared operative the PLO had. As the power of the PLO faded and Palestinian allegiance shifted to Hezbollah and to Iran, al Din shifted as well. But the movement’s increasing penchant for suicide bombings and the attendant promise of heavenly virgins held no attraction for al Din. He had, by then, sampled the earthly variety, and preferred them.
