What about Ben? Or Pastor Grainger? Possibly. He would have to approach them circumspectly to determine what their food preferences were. Was it possible Grainger would find Escargo a la Bordelaise un-Christian, even satanic?
Officers Mangioni and Jackson? They held Ari in high esteem, believing Ari had busted a spy-and-drug ring while simultaneously solving the murder of one of their peers. They were also a bit in awe of his alleged connections within the government—not suspecting that not all of those connections were necessarily benign. Ari would have to deal with them the same way as the pastor and veteran: with all the caution of a trainer appeasing a pool of crocodiles with raw cauliflower.
And then he thought of one more guest, the one whose adventuresome palate so upset the Mackenzie household. Why not? There was a good chance ISAF and whoever else in the government was interested in Ari already knew where he lived, by virtue of the GPS. They had edited this information and passed it on to...the Koreans.
The Korean wrecking crew and ISAF. An unsettling combination. But inviting Sung-Soo Rhee to his private gala would be pushing his luck too far.
Karen? Highly doubtful. He had only seen her eat at McDonald's and Baskin & Robbins. The same went for Fred, her partner. And the mixture of her plus the Mangioni and Jackson team plus Bristol Turnbridge might prove toxic and ruin any subterfuge Ari concocted for the occasion. Yet he felt he would be remiss in not inviting the deputy marshals. Besides, toxicity had its uses.
There was a good chance that no one would come, of course. No certain date had been fixed, nor number of guests. He would have to work hard if he wasn't to end up doing the unthinkable: asking Madame Mumford to prepare her creations for his freezer.
He needed no Rolodex. Phone numbers stuck in his mind like so many numeric flies to a glue board.
He would start with the easiest first:
"Pastor Grainger!" he announced brightly when a mellow voice responded. "This is Ari Ciminon. I wanted to invite you and your lovely spouse to a most excellent dinner of French cuisine."
"That sounds wonderful," Grainger responded. "I didn't realize you were a chef."
"Not in the least. But I have arranged for an imminent Frenchwoman to prepare her best."
"I'm all for that. When?"
Madame Mumford had given him several weekday nights when she would be available.
"This Wednesday?"
"Perfect. I'm open. I'm sorry to day my wife is in Idaho visiting her sister, but if you'll still have me I'd be glad to come."
"Of course!" Ari said, pleased that the invitational process was going so smoothly. "You will be most welcome."
"I'm glad you called," Grainger continued. "Ben Torson mentioned something about a commitment to attend church this Sunday."
Ari was glad the pastor could not see his expression tumbling into a gloomy chasm.
Ari believed his visits to Tuckahoe Library would soon have to come to an end. Anyone monitoring the GPS in his car would know about them, and a cursory investigation would reveal he was not there to read. In fact, very few library patrons were there to read. Most were clumped around the public-access computers provided by the County of Henrico. This included Ari, who could not communicate privately through his home computer because his keepers assiduously kept track of his internet use. And indeed, sometimes he did check out a book.
He had made friends with one of the librarians, who often assisted him with the library computers' idiosyncrasies. Lynn gave Ari an oddly blank look when he descended the stairs to the computer workstation lobby.
"You didn't go see Dr. Hoffman," she said when Ari leaned up against the reference desk.
Ari recalled the name of a doctor she had given him during his last visit. He had not looked well—and that was before he took a tremendous pounding from one of Uday Hussein's hired assassins.
"You've been checking on me?" Ari asked, managing to convey his annoyance as friendly chagrin.
"No, you just don't look much better. It's been weeks since I saw you." Her soft brown eyes narrowed. "You said some pretty ominous things. And now that I look at you...have you been in a fight?"
"I was changing a light bulb and fell off the ladder," Ari shrugged. Besides his wife, this was the one woman he believed he should not lie to, but this falsehood came smoothly, without a trace of guilt. He was, after all, protecting her.
Lynn straightened, her hands splayed against a large dictionary on the counter before her. "You were in the hospital?"
"For a couple of weeks."
Lynn craned her head over the edge of the large reference desk. "You didn't break any bones?"
"I was most fortunate."
"But what was so bad that you had to stay in the hospital two weeks?"
Ari had stepped into that one. His lies had become careless, lately. He all but announced them, as if to say, 'See? I'm lying to you. Isn't it amusing?' But wasn't that the way of his father? Baba would grandly declaim: "I'm going to the Imperial Palace. Isn't that grand?" or "I'm off to the front. I'll come back a hero!" And there was a chance—an almost equal chance in both situations—that he would not come back alive. Was Ari adopting his father's perilous savoir faire?
"I exaggerate, perhaps," Ari sighed. "Could I be subconsciously begging you for sympathy?"
"You could have called."
With Uday hot on his heels? Hardly.
"I apologize profusely, but I cannot express the truth to you," Ari said, dropping the facade of benighted innocence.
Lynn was well beyond the phase of bereavement for a stillborn romance, but there was no hint of irony in her face. The shades of sadness were fading into rueful amusement mingled with growing concern. There was also a trace of impatience. She wanted no more of Ari's vacuous chitchat.
"Your usual station?" she said, nodding down the row of computers.
"I've offended you," Ari said, with a touch of sincere breathlessness.
"I suspect you've been very much yourself," said Lynn, pushing away from the dictionary and circling around the counter. "I would be stupid to take offense."
"I should be speechless," said Ari.
"Yes, you should be. Ari...that phone call you had me make a few months ago...and all these email accounts I set up to you...are they..." She paused thoughtfully. Incapable of producing a true frown, she transferred her doubts into her narrow, pursed lips. Otherwise, there was no rupture in her air of polite efficiency. "I don't think 'legal' is the word I'm looking for. But for a while I was beginning to wonder if I was on the verge of becoming a second-rate gun moll."
"Gun moll..." Ari mused.
"Of course, we never did become.... Talking to you, going to the movies...it was all very nice. But we never..." Her sudden blush highlighted several attractive defects.
"Gun moll..." Ari repeated.
"Never mind," she said, regaining her inner balance. She nodded in self-assertion. "Lucky for you, there's plenty of openings this time of day."
She was referring to the vacant slots in the central row of computers near the center of the room. She began to lead Ari to his usual cubicle, but his attention was drawn to a young man sitting at a terminal at the opposite end of the row.
"No, Ari," said Lynn, grabbing him by the coat sleeve. "You've tormented that poor boy enough."
Hearing the hissed remonstration, the young man raised his head from the screen. Seeing Ari, he quickly alt-tabbed off the screen he was viewing and began to get up.
"That's all right, Mr. Toomey," said Lynn reassuringly. "I'm putting him over there."
She sounded as if she was promising to cage a rowdy pet. Ari put the lie to her words by slipping out of Lynn's grasp and occupying the seat next to the young man.
"Ari, I promised Mr. Toomey you wouldn't harass him."
"Harass? I'm merely fascinated by his researches. I'm full of wonder at the advanced state of American students."
But what Ari took for an amusing pastime could be seen as unadulterated intimidation by others
. It appeared ogling porn on the library computer was perfectly within the young man's rights. He never got far in this endeavor, since the library's filters locked up Toomey's computer soon after he contemplated his first nude. This did not prevent Ari from sacrificing decorum for his personal entertainment.
"What do you have in store for us today?" Ari inquired. "More Iron Age artifacts? Or the classical Venus de Milo? Or shall we analyze buxom blondes in those classic Mickey Bogart novels?"
"Mickey Spillane or Humphrey Bogart?" the young man hissed.
"I am glad to see you are so cultured. In that case, we can move on to the great phallic Washington Monument—"
He was cut short when Lynn pinched his ear and did not let go. It was not a friendly pinch to awake him to his rudeness, but a real attack that dug into his cartilage. He suppressed a yelp of pain and leaned forward. She did not let go. He leaned in the other direction. The fingers remained clamped. But when he stood his height played to his advantage and she lost her grip. He clasped the side of his head, glaring down at her.
"I meant that," she said, her face blazing red. She was breathing hard, either from effort or the unaccustomed physical intimacy. She might have reacted the same way had they embraced.
Ari whirled when he heard Toomey snickering, but Lynn grabbed his arm and began pulling him towards the opposite end of the row.
"I wish you would think of how your behavior affects me when you act this way," Lynn whispered, pointing at a chair.
He sat, still holding his ear, amazed that this small woman had been able to inflict such pain. He had killed men for less. He had killed men who had done nothing to him at all. He had been under orders, of course, but that did not lessen the fact that, with few exceptions, he had felt very little remorse in the course of his duty. In some respects, he was blandly practical.
Lynn pulled up a seat next to him and poised her hands over the keyboard. "The usual?"
Ari nodded.
She proceeded on her now well-practiced routine of creating a new email account for him, complete with false name and address.
"Will 'Italianjerk' do as a handle?"
"What?" Ari protested.
"Too late, I've already submitted it. Remember, this is set up for English, so you'll have to use the Google Translator. You remember how, of course."
"I—"
She stood. Ari watched as she returned to the reference desk. Then he caught Toomey leering at him and bared his teeth in response. The young man flicked a disdainful brow and returned to his screen.
Ari stared at his own monitor so long that the screen saver came on: the Henrico County logo. He lurched forward and banged on the space bar, bringing his blank email template back on screen.
He discovered he was sweating profusely. After removing a flash drive from his pocket, he shrugged off his coat and draped it over the back of his chair, the bottom of it crumpling on the floor. He inserted the flash into a USB port. A series of ghastly images appeared as thumbnails on his screen. The latest set of images from CENTCOM. Unwilling to make the thumbnails larger, he squinted at each screen until he found the image he wanted. He attached it to the email, then composed a brief note in the Translator:
What are these three jokers doing in Nineveh province? Don't know who the cameraman is. They torched Abu ibn Abd Al-Samad, who didn't belong there, either. Hope your move goes well and that no assassins interrupt your progress. Wherever you go, work on your language skills. Indigenes have greater respect if they understand you.
He studied the Google translation, which was roughly adequate and at least maintained the integrity of the Arabic alphabet. He copied and pasted it into his email, typed in his latest cell phone number, and hit the arrow-shaped 'send' icon. He logged off the new account, rubbed his still-sore ear, and glanced in the direction of the reference desk. Lynn was not there.
As he put on his coat he cast a furtive glance down the row. Toomey was gone. His computer had no doubt locked up. Without his usual library attendant to unlock it for him—the assistant most familiar with his perversions—he had had no choice but to jump his cyber-ship.
"Is Miss Gillespie available?" he asked at the desk.
"She's on break," said the woman sitting in for her. "Can I help you?"
"You are most kind," said Ari, stimulating a bemused expression in the librarian as he turned and walked away.
Lynn was waiting for him outside, sitting on an uncomfortable-looking cement bench, looking neat and demure in her coat and white gloves. Standing at Ari's approach, she pierced him with a look of sorrow.
"I'm sorry, Ari."
"It was painful," Ari informed her. "Surprisingly painful. And I've been tortured by some of the best."
"Don't joke. My behavior was unprofessional."
"I have seen librarians pinch ears before," said Ari, telling the truth.
"Not in this country. Someone else might sue me!"
"Such is not my inclination."
"I'm relieved to hear that, although I shouldn't admit it."
"In fact..." Ari rubbed his sore ear. "I found it rather enchanting."
And he leaned down and gave her a peck on the forehead. She smiled.
"Let's not both of us be rash."
"Someone must maintain standards," Ari agreed sadly.
"Even if I love you," Lynn said quickly, then darted around him for the library entrance. She stopped and turned. "Just a bit," she amended before disappearing inside.
A terrible longing swelled inside Ari. It was accompanied by a brief flutter of sexual interest. Dumbstruck over the idea of lusting for his friend, he absorbed a gust of wind like a cold shower. Before his marriage, Ari had occasionally approached sheikahs (the Iraqi equivalent of madams) to procure a prostitute. He thought such a thing more problematic in America, or at least in his neighborhood.
He was crossing the parking lot when his phone rang. Jumping into his car, he whipped off his gloves and took out his phone.
"Abu Jasim! You must have been sitting at your computer!"
"In a room without furniture in a farmhouse without charm."
"You moved to the countryside? But all farmhouses are charming."
"Not this one." Abu Jasim's voice echoed in a distant, empty room. Ari was familiar with the scenario. "The furniture will arrive within the week. The wife may never arrive. She's not keen on country life."
"You've isolated yourself," Ari said.
"What do you expect after that last escapade of yours? I couldn't walk down the street in Montreal without people staring."
"You get stares wherever you go," Ari observed to the spitting image of Saddam Hussein. "I would recommend plastic surgery, but you might come out looking worse."
"As if that was possible," Abu Jasim groused. "What's this picture you sent me? How did you get it?"
"I got it in the course of my work. It's part of a video. These three jokers were making a human bonfire on Route 12. Sayid Mohammed Al-Rafa'ee, Hasan Al-Jamil, Abu ibn Al-Quassim, plus an unseen cameraman. The victim is Abu ibn Abd Al-Samad."
"Are they related to the editors at Risalat al-Islam?" Abu Jasim asked. He was referring to a dissident Shia newspaper shut down by Saddam in the 70's.
"Not the editors, but they were on the staff. How did you know?"
"Saddam talked about their parents," said Abu Jasim. "Some fled overseas after the clamp-down. Some went to Syria. They were mixed up in some bombings. They hit the Iraqi Embassy in Beirut in 1980, didn't they?"
"Nineteen eighty-one," said Ari. "But I don't recall—"
"Saddam dreamed up some really interesting tortures if they or their children ever showed their faces in Iraq again. Not that they wouldn't have deserved it. They were a bad lot to begin with. Did you know they—"
"I know their families' records," said Ari. "It is true that they were not simple scribes."
"Oh. Right. Of course."
"But it is my understanding that they have become sedate Americans,” Ari conti
nued. "Saddam is gone, so the children felt free to go back. But why would they be killing one of their own?"
"Those idiots are always killing each other off," said Abu Jasim, referring to the multitude of insurgent groups operating in Iraq and beyond. "Someone fucks up, someone questions their leader's authority and threatens to join another group of idiots, and zip!"
"But why in Iraq? They were all here, in the States."
"Maybe Samad began working for the Coalition and the others didn't like it."
"They filmed the execution as proof that the job had been accomplished," Ari said. "As if they had to prove the job was done to whoever sent them there."
Abu Jasim's grunt conveyed all the ills of the world. Everywhere one looked, evil triumphed. Big deal. What's new?
"So what kind of trouble are you in now? Even you shouldn't mix it up with these guys. You think they’ve…what’s the word the Americans use? ‘Radicalized’? Then they would hate everyone and everything. They'd castrate their mothers if their mothers had balls. Which, considering the monsters they may have given birth to—"
"An interesting notion," Ari cut him off. "But why are you saying this? What more do you know about them? There is no need for concern. Right now, they're in Iraq—"
It was Abu Jasim's turn to cut him off. "No they aren't."
"Pardon?"
"Don't 'french' me. I get enough of that around here." Abu Jasim paused. "The reason that picture in Nineveh got my attention so fast…well, these might have been nice boys growing up, but they've turned real bad—as you can see in the picture. But there's more."
"What do you mean?"
"Remember those phony ID's I had, when I bought my van? You remember my new van? The one so badly scratched and dented in the woods?"
"Yes," Ari sighed, sensing a blackmailing hand browsing through his wallet.
"You remember where I got those ID's from?"
"The Chaldean Gang," said Ari slowly. "I believe I suggested you stay away from them in the future."
"Hey, they're your kind of guys: Assyrian assholes. But I wouldn't try to convince them that you were one of them, if you know what I mean. Anyway, you also told me not to wet my pants when the bombs are falling, and guess what?"
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