Dead on Arrival

by Mike Lawson

  Then, for the first time, he and the boy made the 120-mile journey to a city that sat on the western edge of Lake Erie. He stopped the car on a hill and pointed. He pointed at the refinery – and at the tanks inside the refinery that contained the chemical.

  19

  Mahoney sat in his condo at the Watergate, staring out the window holding a glass filled with bourbon and crushed ice against his forehead. He had a headache, and the cool glass made his head feel better. It never occurred to him that the bourbon in the glass had made his head hurt in the first place.

  Mary Pat had purchased the condo after his fifth term, maybe thinking that after having served in the House for ten years, her husband’s career in politics was secure enough to invest in a permanent D.C. residence. He liked the place mostly because it was a quick drive to his office and because of the view. From where he sat he could see the dome of the Capitol, all lit up at night, looking like a cathedral – a cathedral where the unholy gathered.

  Naturally, living at the Watergate made him occasionally reflect on Richard Nixon. What had always amazed Mahoney most about Nixon was not the cover-up and all that stuff. What had amazed him was that the man hadn’t liked people. Mahoney couldn’t imagine being a politician and not liking people. Clinton, Kennedy, Truman, Bush – all of them had seemed to genuinely enjoy spending some time with the folks who had elected them. It was certainly that way with Mahoney; it wasn’t an act with him. He took real pleasure eatin’ barbecue with a bunch of blue-collar guys and their wives. But Nixon, that gloomy bastard, always came across as a man who preferred to hide in his office, the door bolted, having as little contact with the common folk as he possibly could. Hell, even an asshole like Broderick seemed to like people – or at least some of them.

  Based on the mail Mahoney had been getting, a lot of folks back home favored Broderick’s thinking, which wasn’t all that surprising. Not only were people scared, but Mahoney’s district included Boston, a city where not that long ago a black man entering certain parts of the town was likely to get an Irish thrashing. There may have been a lot of liberal thinkers at Harvard and MIT, but in places like Southie and in suburbs like Revere and Chelsea, people tended not to be so cerebral.

  But Broderick’s bill was just wrong. To Mahoney this wasn’t a matter of constitutional law, although the Supreme Court might have a problem with it. It was instead a matter of fairness. An American citizen had a right to be treated like all other Americans until he did something illegal, something that could be proven to violate the law. And there was something else. It was one thing to think of Muslims in the abstract, faceless strangers practicing their incomprehensible religion, but when you actually knew a good decent Muslim family the way Mahoney knew the Zarifs – well, it changed the way you thought about what Broderick was proposing.

  The problem was that Broderick’s damn bill just kept gathering momentum. You couldn’t turn on a television set without seeing two people debating it, and the editorial pages of every newspaper in the country had been devoted to the topic for the last three months. Oprah, of course, had a show where she dressed in a burka and compared the Muslim registry proposal to the Holocaust and Japanese internment camps and lynchings in the South. God bless Oprah.

  And lately, almost assuredly because of all the media attention on the subject, other things were starting to happen. Customs agents on the Canadian–Michigan border riddled a car with bullets and killed the driver – a turban-wearing Sikh, not a Muslim – when he attempted to flee a security checkpoint. It turned out the man had two pounds of hashish hidden in his spare tire. Subway cops in Chicago stopped three Muslim teenagers who ‘looked suspicious,’ and when the teenagers sassed the cops, one of them got thumped with a nightstick and was still in a coma. In Kansas City, an Arabic-looking kid was jumped by two college football players because they’d seen the kid shove a parcel into the courthouse mail slot and run away from the building, which in fact the kid had done. He worked for a law firm and was dropping off a transcript that the courthouse clerk had wanted back that night, and he was running to catch his bus. His neck was accidentally broken during the tussle. In Dallas, people stampeded out of a Wal-Mart, screaming their heads off, when a Muslim woman entered the store with a bulge under her coat. It turned out that the woman had not wrapped sticks of dynamite around her torso; she was pregnant.

  Mahoney could understand that people were afraid. They were terrified that they or their loved ones might be the victim of the next suicide attack. He could also understand why the Japanese were put in the camps after Pearl Harbor and how McCarthy had been able to whip the country into a Commie-hunting frenzy in the years following World War II when ol’ Joe Stalin had the bomb. He didn’t like it, but he could understand it. And he also knew that if Broderick’s bill passed, people would one day regret what they had done just as they now regretted having interned the Japanese fifty years ago. But what really pissed him off were people like Bill Broderick, politicians who took advantage of a frightening situation and fanned the flames of hatred and bigotry to get their way.

  What he wished was that something else would happen – he didn’t know what, but something. Some scandal, some crisis; hell, even some natural disaster. Anything that would take people’s minds off the Muslims, anything that would change the current focus and provide some time for people to come to their senses.

  Dear Lord, Mahoney prayed, please let things just quiet down for a while.

  It had been a long time since John Mahoney had prayed.

  20

  Mustafa Ahmed was praying as he walked slowly across the Capitol’s grounds toward the West Terrace. There were tourists everywhere, even as cold as it was. He stopped when he reached the wooden sawhorses barricading the steps leading up to the Capitol and looked up at the building, a building he’d always loved.

  Before 9/11, people could simply walk up the steps and stand on the terrace and look back at the National Mall, or they could walk right into the Capitol itself and look around. But no longer; all that had changed. Now, to see the interior of the building, tourists had to go through a visitor’s entry and pass through metal detectors and wait while their bags were searched. And the exterior of the building, including the West Terrace, was surrounded by wooden and concrete barricades, and behind the barricades stood uniformed U.S. Capitol policemen. Mustafa could see two of the policemen standing there now, up at the top of the steps, and just as he crossed the barrier a third officer joined the other two men.

  ‘Sir,’ one of the policemen called out, ‘you can’t come up this way. You need to use the tourist entrance.’

  Mustafa ignored the cop and slowly continued up the steps.

  ‘Sir!’ the cop yelled. ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  And then Mustafa opened his raincoat.

  Beneath his raincoat was a canvas vest, and attached to the vest were twenty small bricks of C-4 explosive. White, red, and blue wires connected the bricks to each other. In Mustafa’s right hand was a dead man’s switch. The switch was a black tube about four inches long, and wires ran from the switch, up his arm, through his coat sleeve, and connected to a detonator. The switch was called a dead man’s switch because if Mustafa took his thumb off the little button on the top of the switch – or if his thumb was to come off because he had been killed – the C-4 would explode.

  Mustafa continued to walk up the steps, his pace measured, his arms spread wide. The U.S. Capitol policemen, all three of them, now had their weapons out. They were screaming at Mustafa; they were screaming at the tourists to run away; they were screaming at one another.

  Then one of the policemen shot Mustafa three times in the chest.

  The last thought Mustafa Ahmed had before he died was: Thank God. They hadn’t lied to him when they said the bomb wouldn’t explode.

  DeMarco and Mahoney had been in their respective offices when Mustafa Ahmed was killed.

  Mahoney’s office was on the second floor. It was spacious, filled with his
torically significant furniture, and had a view appropriate for a man of his station. He had been sitting behind his desk, sipping coffee laced with bourbon as he listened to one of his staff brief him on a bill having to do with tax benefits for people who made fuel out of corn, a subject simultaneously so boring and so complex that it made his brain ache.

  DeMarco had been in his windowless box in the subbasement, and the only thing historically significant about his office furniture – one wooden desk, two chairs, and an empty file cabinet – was that the items had been purchased when Jimmy Carter was president. When Mustafa Ahmed was killed, he had been on the phone trying once again to contact the air marshal who had shot Youseff Khalid.

  According to structural engineers hired by Fox News, had Mustafa been allowed to enter the building, and had his bomb exploded inside, the dome of the building might have collapsed into the rotunda, and then all the rubble would have continued downward, squashing DeMarco pancake-flat as he sat in his office.

  Mahoney would most likely have died too. But in Mahoney’s case, he could have been killed if the bomb had exploded when Mustafa was standing on the West Terrace steps. The walls in Mahoney’s office could have imploded and crushed him, or the glass in the windows could have blown out, a million sharp pieces, severing Mahoney’s head from his thick neck.

  Mahoney had not heard the shots that killed Mustafa but he did hear the sirens. It seemed that every car in Washington equipped with a siren was simultaneously headed toward the Capitol. He was wondering what all the commotion was about when two plain-clothed U.S. Capitol policemen burst into his office and told him he had to leave immediately. As the security guys were hustling Mahoney from his office, he asked what the hell was going on.

  ‘Some Muslim son of a bitch just tried to blow up the Capitol,’ one of the cops said. ‘We need to get you out of here until we can sweep the building.’

  DeMarco left the Capitol along with a few hundred other people like himself – meaning those not sufficiently important to warrant personal protection. He was standing on Independence Avenue, watching all the cops milling about, when a woman grabbed his arm. ‘Come on, honey,’ she said, ‘let’s go over to Bullfeathers and get us a drink. You know they’re not gonna let us back in for a couple of hours.’

  The woman – a forty-year-old redhead with a body sculpted by some sadist who taught aerobics – worked for the Majority Whip, and whenever she saw DeMarco she treated him to a smile that was more than just friendly. According to Mahoney’s secretary, a woman who could be relied upon for such information, the redhead was recently divorced and was trying to make up for twenty years of monogamy.

  DeMarco wanted to know about the dead man lying on the West Terrace steps, but when he saw all the news vans he figured he’d learn more sitting in a bar and watching television than he would by bothering the Capitol cops.

  ‘Sounds good,’ he said to the redhead, but he felt leery, like a little kid who’d just been offered a ride by a stranger.

  21

  DeMarco turned down an offer from the redhead – to make him a good home-cooked dinner – even when she winked and said that dessert would be something special. Two hours later was ringing the doorbell of a large expensive home in McLean, Virginia. The home belonged to a lady named Emma.

  The door was answered by a young woman in her thirties. The young woman was tall and willowy and blond and lovely. Her name was Christine and she played a cello in the National Symphony. Christine was Emma’s lover.

  DeMarco had known Emma for a decade, but Christine had only been with her the last three years. During those three years, DeMarco discovered that he and Christine had absolutely nothing in common. He thought classical music was a cure for insomnia and she thought people who liked football were direct descendants of Attila the Hun. So their conversations, most times they met, usually went like this:

  DeMarco: ‘Hey, how you doin’?’

  Christine: ‘Fine. How are you?’

  DeMarco: ‘Good. Is Emma here?’

  Christine: ‘She’s in the kitchen.’

  But this day their discourse was slightly different. When Christine answered the door, DeMacro could see she was holding something in her hands. He studied the thing. He knew it was technically a dog, some micro-breed with long hair and bulging wet brown eyes and legs the diameter of a pencil. DeMarco also noticed the critter was trembling even though it was cupped in Christine’s graceful hands. Maybe the cold air coming through the door was causing the tremors, but DeMarco suspected the animal shivered whenever a door opened. Each time it was exposed to the outside world anything bigger than a hummingbird could swoop down and carry it off in its talons.

  Oh, boy, DeMarco thought. He knew Emma liked dogs, but real dogs, practical dogs – dogs like German shepherds and Doberman pinschers and bloodhounds. She would not like something that looked like a furry hand puppet. And Emma was a neat freak. She wouldn’t appreciate canine hair on her upholstery or tiny dog turds on her manicured lawn. DeMarco was guessing that the prissy mutt in Christine’s hands was a source of high tension in her and Emma’s shared domain.

  ‘Ah, see you got a dog,’ DeMarco said.

  ‘Yes,’ Christine said, clutching the animal to her small bosom, looking defensive, looking ready for a fight.

  ‘What’s its name?’

  Christine blinked once and said, ‘I named him Joe. I always wanted a little Joe of my own to boss around.’

  He was pretty sure she was pulling his chain, but not completely. ‘You’re kidding,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe,’ she said.

  Christine not only played the cello at the professional level, she had a master’s in mathematics, music and math seeming to go together. She could be a bit of a ditz at times but she probably had an IQ that was in a category of its own. In a verbal sparring match, DeMarco figured he was likely to get a bloody nose.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s … he’s really cute. Is Emma here?’

  ‘She’s in the kitchen,’ Christine said, and walked away, stroking the dog and cooing to calm its nearly shattered nerves.

  DeMarco strolled into the kitchen. Emma was sitting at the table reading the business section of The Washington Post. DeMarco knew Emma had money, and he suspected this might have something to do with the fact that she read stock reports instead of box scores.

  Like Christine, Emma was tall and slim. She had features that DeMarco always thought of as regal, a profile you’d expect to see on an old coin from some ancient land ruled by queens. She had a perfect straight nose, a broad forehead, and intelligent light-blue eyes the color of faded denim. Her hair was cut short, flawlessly styled, a blondish shade with a little gray streaked in. She was at least ten years older than DeMarco, maybe fifteen, but in much better condition. She played racquetball and ran in marathons but not just to stay in shape. Emma liked to beat the competition.

  DeMarco poured himself a cup of coffee. He loved Emma’s coffee, and he should – it cost about forty bucks a pound. He sat down across from her but she continued to read, pretending he wasn’t there.

  ‘Hey,’ DeMarco said. ‘Just met your new dog.’

  ‘Don’t start,’ Emma muttered.

  DeMarco grinned. ‘What’s its name, by the way?’

  ‘What do you want?’ she said, still looking down at the paper.

  ‘You wanna hear a conspiracy theory?’ he said.

  ‘You bet,’ she said, and now she looked at him and smiled. ‘I love conspiracy theories. They’re almost always wrong, but I like to hear them anyway.’

  ‘You don’t believe in conspiracies? You, of all people?’

  Emma was, without a doubt, the most enigmatic person DeMarco had ever encountered. She refused to discuss her past, and although DeMarco had known her for more than ten years, he knew almost as little about her today as he did when he first met her. She was gay but she had a daughter, yet he didn’t know if her daughter was adopted or her natural offspring. He knew she was wealthy but h
ad no idea of the source of her wealth, whether it was inherited or earned. He knew she had worked for the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, but he didn’t know if she’d been civilian or military, or if she’d been a spy or a handler of spies or someone who analyzed the intelligence provided by spies. Naturally, everything she had done for the agency was classified Top Secret, but even if it hadn’t been she wouldn’t have told him anyway.

  She also claimed to be fully retired from the agency, but he suspected that this wasn’t totally true because there were times when she was gone for extended periods and couldn’t be reached and never returned looking relaxed and tanned like a person who had enjoyed a restful vacation. She knew people in virtually every segment of the government, had particularly close ties with people in intelligence and law enforcement, and knew folk with a wide range of illicit skills – skills such as wiretapping and forgery and safecracking. And these people she knew always seemed to respond instantly when she asked anything of them, but why they responded – out of past loyalty or because she had some particular authority – he didn’t know. But there was one thing he did know: She believed in conspiracies, because she had almost certainly engineered a number of them herself.

  DeMarco had met Emma by saving her life. He had just dropped off a friend at Reagan National Airport and was about to leave the terminal when this complete stranger – this elegant middle-aged woman – jumped into his car and told him to drive to the Pentagon. When he’d asked why, she pointed over her shoulder at two men running toward his car and told him the two were armed and were going to kill her – and would probably kill DeMarco as well if he didn’t step on the gas. Having no choice he drove, and when the men gave chase and started shooting at them, Emma got on her cell phone, talked to someone at the Pentagon, and five minutes later choppers and SWAT vans intercepted them. And that was his introduction to Emma – just a guy parked in the wrong place at the wrong time who saved her life by giving her a lift.