“Unclean! Unclean!” she cried out. “This monster is not to touch the body. Father himself forbade it.” Immediately there was an uproar, for she had looked upon her father’s nakedness. Rahman’s face went pale. She saw that he was afraid—afraid of what she would do next—afraid that she would call out the name of the one he had wronged. But she could not utter it, although it was as near to her as her own. She felt paralyzed. She could neither weep nor shriek, only feel her knees buckle, her heart pound in its secret prison. The hot rage that coursed through her found no tongue. Mute seconds passed, until she was ejected at last into the arms of the women in the adjoining room. The last thing she saw was Rahman, gloating at her, as the door was shut in her face.
* * *
Ali and Harry entered the small guard-chamber in front of the isolation room. Ali lingered in the doorway, breathing deeply to calm herself, while Harry sized up the three uniformed police guards and called out to one sitting at the table looking at a magazine.
“How’s our man doing, Officer … Dayton?” he said, reading the man’s name off his badge. “Any peep out of him?”
“Naw. He’s just sitting on the bed with his eyes shut, mouthing to himself in Arabic. Something like a rosary, from the sound of it.”
“We need to have a look-see.”
“Be my guest.”
Ali shuddered as Harry took out his gun and laid it on the table. She didn’t like guns and had never thought that he might have been carrying one. As he went to the inner door and keyed the combination, she eyed him charily. What other surprises might he have in store?
The ten-by-twelve-foot isolation room was mint green—green having been chosen by the psychiatrists as the most soothing color for the desperate and the deranged. There was a small bed with an iron frame and a thin mattress wrapped in taut military style with a green woolen blanket. Rahman was lying atop the blanket, his right wrist handcuffed to the bed frame. Even from a distance, the shock of seeing him gave Ali a knot in her stomach. The face of a man who could murder a thousand people. The face of a man who wants to kill my Jamie.
Rahman did not notice Ali, who hung back, watching through the doorway. He did glance at Harry as he came in, but then shut his eyes and continued his recitations.
Harry nodded to the guard who sat in a white plastic chair next to the bed. “Why don’t you take five? We’re gonna need to talk to him alone.”
“Oh, thank you, Jesus!” said the guard. “I’m going nuts with all this chanting.”
As the guard edged past him, Harry picked up the chair and moved it away from Rahman against the far wall, facing the bed. Then he signaled Ali to come inside. Her steps were almost silent, but Rahman seemed to sense a new presence and opened his eyes. As soon as he recognized her, he sat up abruptly.
“Aliyah, do you gloat to see me in the hands of the unbelievers?”
“What have you done, Rahman?” said Ali in an uncertain, reedy voice. “In the name of God, what have you done?”
Rahman jangled his handcuff mockingly. “Shall I dance for you, like a monkey in my cage?”
“You’ve gone too far this time!”
Rahman smiled at her—a smile dipped in strychnine. “Remember how we parted, standing over our father’s shroud? You on one side, and I on the other. ‘If I look on you again, may it be at your grave,’ you said. Those were brave words, I thought. Not like women’s words. How proud I was of you, even as I hated you.”
“Is there really a bomb, Rahman?”
“Yes, there is.”
“Here? In this hospital?”
“Why not?”
Ali’s voice quavered, even as it swelled. “Because it is a place that is sacred to God. Warfare is forbidden here.”
“I could show you hospitals in Gaza razed to the ground by these idolaters and Jews. Shall they wound us, and we not wound them?”
“Gaza be damned!” she exclaimed, so shrilly that Harry was taken aback. “You did this for money. Filthy money. You’re a thief—nothing more.”
“You talk of money! How much did you take to sell me to them?”
“I wouldn’t take one cent for you. I would give you for nothing to the lowliest dog on the street.”
Rahman grinned perversely. “So you did give me to them!”
“No, Rahman. Until this moment I would not have believed that you could get mixed up in such a thing as this. I didn’t want to believe it, even of you.”
Ali had been unconsciously edging toward the bed, and was already within reach of Rahman’s free hand.
“That’s close enough,” Harry said. “Why don’t you sit in that chair over there?”
Ali looked at Harry and Rahman, then grudgingly sat down on the very edge of the chair. “Why this hospital, Rahman? If you want to kill me, why do you have to do it this way? Why endanger all these others? There are innocent people here. There are sweet little children who have never thought harm to any living being.”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“Do you know what it is we do here?” said Ali. “It is a house of God.”
“Who are you to speak to me about God?”
“I know that killing is wickedness, and that a man one day answers for the evil that he does.”
“In the Hadith it is written, ‘God can change good into evil and evil into good.’ What you call wickedness, I call devotion.”
Ali’s eyes flared. “You follow the doctrines of men, not God. When did God give men the right to change evil into good?”
Rahman waved his free hand in the air. “It is written, ‘Slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them … Strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and be unyielding to them; their abode is hell, and evil is their destination.’”
“That was written in the midst of war.”
“We are at war now.”
“Oh, Rahman! A man can justify anything. What you are doing is wrong. Every religion condemns it. Rationality condemns it.”
Rahman dismissed her with a cutting motion. “It is written, ‘O you who believe! surely from among your wives and your children there is an enemy to you; beware of them.’”
“I am not your enemy.”
“Then why did you come here with this man?”
Ali started to rise, but Harry motioned her back down. “I asked her to,” he said. “She’s risked a lot to come down here and try to help you out by talking some sense into you before it’s too late. She’s trying to save your life, dumb-shit. You should kiss the ground she walks on.”
“Why should I? She’s your whore.”
Ali shot out of the chair, and this time Harry couldn’t hold her down. But instead of charging Rahman, she began to pace up and down the cell, finally stopping at the door and pressing her forehead against the tiny observation window. “Rahman, you’re a fool,” she said. “I never met this man until today. You always were one to judge others by your own lewdness.”
“I see what I see.” Rahman made a contemptuous hissing sound through his teeth. “I didn’t ask you to plead for me. I owe you nothing.”
Ali looked back over her shoulder. “What would Father have thought of this bomb?”
“Who are you to talk about Father?” said Rahman. “You dishonored him!” Rahman tried to slide to the edge of the bed, but was prevented by the handcuffs. After an angry tug on the chain, he moved back a little, with just his left foot dangling over the side. “He made a sacred promise, and you … you … shit upon it. A lawful contract of marriage, with a man of immaculate faith and reputation … a golden consort … forsaken by you, so you could go a-whoring after an unbeliever, a braying colt of an ass.”
“A-whoring? Aren’t you speaking of my husband, Kevin?”
“He was no husband. Without Father’s blessing, it was not a marriage—only whoredom. And now you have deserted that man, too, and defiled yourself with another.”
“What did
you say?” Ali turned around and faced him with a startled look.
“I said you have deserted the man whom you call your husband, infidel though he be.”
“What do you know of my affairs?”
“I know as God grants me to know. Listen to me, Aliyah, the Almighty is ever merciful. It is never too late to return to Him. If I could persuade you to do so, it would be the greatest happiness to me. It would be worth a hundred martyrdoms.”
Ali edged toward him. It turned her stomach just to look on him, knowing what lay behind his sanctimonious smirk. “Damn you, you hypocrite! How dare you question my devotion! The pillars of my faith are as good as yours. They are to help God’s children, to say ‘Yes’ to His created world, and to meet Him, not in the darkness of superstition, but with the totality of my mind and will. I question, because He made me to think. I live and love, because He made me to feel. I reach out to the sick and the dying. This, brother Rahman, is my Call. I submit myself to it in truth and humility.”
“Justify what you will, you are still an apostate.”
Ali edged closer, bending low, her face only a foot from his. “It’s easy to accuse, brother, isn’t it? But you are the libertine, not I. It is you who says, ‘All is permitted.’”
“I do not betray my family and the traditions of my people.”
“You betray mankind.”
Rahman tugged at his handcuff. “You drove Father to his death. You defied him. For years you refused to speak to him. The torture of it broke his heart.”
“I honored him in the highest way possible, by following in his footsteps.”
“You killed him.”
“No, Rahman. Do you speak of what broke his heart? You know full well what it was. He told me himself. Look me in the face! Don’t hide your eyes from me! Say her name, Rahman! Say her name!”
“Go to hell!”
“Wafaa! Tell me about Wafaa, Rahman! Wafaa! Her name was Wafaa! Even you cannot forget her!”
“You faithless whore!” Rahman lunged three times against his shackles, so violently that the bed slid along the floor. Unable to reach Ali, he pursed his lips and spat at her, hitting her with a slimy gob just below the right eye.
In a flash, Harry was on him, shoving him and the bed back against the wall. He swung his fist as if to pummel him, but Ali quickly stretched out her hand between the two men. For a moment, no one said anything. Harry stepped back, his fist still clenched. Rahman sat panting against the wall.
“Very brave of you.” Ali’s voice was quavering, but she spoke clearly and evenly, directing each word like a scalpel. She looked for words that would cut him to the quick. He deserved no pity. He had already killed one whom she had loved. And now, he had stretched his hands toward Jamie. “Save your courage, my brother. You talk of death as though it were an exercise in penmanship. But it is not death that awaits you. It is pain. Yes, pain. Did you not think that they would torture you? To save two thousand lives, will they not torture you? They will find out how weak you are, Rahman. They will, because I will tell them. I will tell how you shrieked like a baby when you cut your foot on a nail. I will tell how you let your teeth rot, for fear of the dentist. You have a woman’s skin, Rahman. You fear pain more than anything in the world.”
“Get out!”
If she could have, she would have poured boiling oil on him. But she had only words. “Look at you. See how you’ve broken out in a sweat. And this is just me, Rahman. When the torturer arrives, he will go to work on you in earnest. How long will you hold out then? How long before you lie on the floor, whimpering and begging for it to stop? You will tell everything, betray everything. And after they have broken you, after you have beheld the faces of the comrades you have dragged after you into prison, then let me hear how boldly you talk.”
“Get out! Out!” shouted Rahman.
Ali was shaking. She saw terror in Rahman’s eyes, and it made her want to hurt him even more. But that very desire turned against her and sickened her. She realized to her surprise that her fear of Rahman had never been about what Rahman might do to her. It was about this—the monster of rage and cruelty that lurked within her, waiting to take control.
The thought carried with it a wave of nausea. “Please let me out of here!” she said, turning toward Harry, while Rahman unleashed a guttural torrent of vituperation. “Now!”
At that moment, there was a noise behind her, and Ali turned to see the door open as two of the men who had presided over her interrogation—the short Asian and the tall African American—rushed into the room.
“What in God’s name is going on here?” shouted Lee in a thin, strained voice.
Rahman was still at fever pitch. “So, you have all ganged up to kill me!” he shouted to Lee and Scopes.
Seeing Harry, Lee’s eyes flared. “Both of you, out of this room! Now!” he said.
Scopes moved toward Harry to give the command some muscle, but Harry raised his hands in warning.
Rahman was yanking at the handcuff and jerking the bed forward. “I’m not afraid to die!” he screamed. “Don’t listen to this lying bitch! I’m not afraid!”
Lee extended his arm, pointing toward the open door. “That’s an order, Mr. Lewton!”
The veins in Rahman’s neck stood out like ropes. “Go on! Kill me! Paradise awaits!” he shouted.
Harry took Ali gently by the arm and started for the door. Suddenly, there was a crash as Rahman leaped to his feet, completely overturning the bed and smashing the frame against the floor in an attempt to break free.
“Kill me,” he bellowed, “but not until I have strangled this lying whore, this murdering she-wolf!”
Ali was knocked against the door jamb as the four uniformed police officers rushed past her into the isolation room. Harry pushed her quickly through the guardroom and into the ER corridor. Behind her she could hear the policemen cursing, the bed frame crashing, and above all Rahman screaming the shahada, the Arabic profession of faith, “La ilaha illallah, Muhammadur rasulullah!”
“I’m sorry,” said Ali with her hand half-covering her mouth. “I tried to reach him, but I … I can’t. I’ve made things worse for you, haven’t I?”
“No,” said Harry, re-holstering his gun. “In fact, you’ve been very helpful.”
“How?”
“Well, for now let’s just say that some critical questions have been answered.”
“Are you in trouble with the FBI?”
“I can deal with them. But it might be best if you cleared out of here.” There was a rumble and then another metallic crash from the isolation room. “Why don’t you go on to the ICU? I’ll check back with you once things quiet down.”
“Yes,” she said with a sigh. It had been forty-five minutes since she had last checked on Jamie. “That’s where I belong right now. I’m of no use here.” She looked at Harry. He was standing straight as a ramrod, his jaw set forward a little, but his eyes were calm and gentle. She had trusted him and things had turned out a disaster, but his eyes told her not to worry.
She turned away and crossed through the Acute Psychiatric Unit, reaching the elevator just in time to stop the closing doors with her hand.
I misjudged this man, she thought as she stepped inside. He marches to his own drummer, and not at the bidding of the FBI. I am glad—glad—that I took a chance on him.
* * *
As Ali disappeared into the elevator, Harry turned to see Raymond Lee hastening toward him. “Mr. Lewton, that racket you hear is your career going down in flames.” Lee pointed imperiously toward an empty, semi-darkened X-ray room and ushered Harry into it.
“You’ve obstructed a Federal investigation and tampered with two material witnesses against my express orders,” he said. “That’s two felony counts. You have ten minutes to get your goddamned ass out of this hospital, or I’ll have you arrested.”
Harry squared his stance, although he kept his voice down low. “I’m sorry, but you can’t throw me out. Arrest me if you think y
ou can explain that to the TV cameras. But until then, I’m a private employee of Fletcher Memorial. Only Dr. Gosling has the authority to relieve me of duty.”
“Oh, he will! By God he will! When I get through with you, you’ll be lucky to find a job guarding a lemonade stand!”
“First listen to me.”
Lee was waving his arms, pointing blindly at the ceiling. “Did you think we wouldn’t see you on the security cam?”
“Hear me out, for Chrissake! I’ve found out a thing or two.”
“Really? It better be fucking good.”
Harry waited and made Lee take a breath before he answered. “Well, for starters, there’s no setup between Al-Sharawi and O’Day. She’s telling the truth when she says she hasn’t spoken to him in years. I could see that in ten seconds. He’s got no hold on her whatsoever.”
“So you say.”
“And one more thing. I’m pretty sure the little weasel doesn’t know where the bomb is. He never once tried to bargain for it. And if he isn’t in control, it means somebody else is in on this. Somebody on the inside.”
“What makes you so goddamn certain?”
“Intuition. Knowledge of human nature.”
Lee laughed dismissively. “Well, I’ve got news for you. I already know all of it. It turns out that Al-Sharawi is a plant. He’s a CIA informant. He’s doing his fucking job, and if you will kindly get out of my way and let me do mine, there’s a chance he may be able to tell us what he knows.”
“CIA? Are you serious? This man is a fanatic. There’s no way he’s with the CIA.”
Lee started to raise his finger to drive home a point, but, just then, there was a sound of running footsteps and one of the ER doctors sped past the door, his long white coat trailing behind him. He was followed by a couple of nurses or techs in scrubs—also in one hell of a hurry. Harry noticed that the overhead pager was sounding:
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