MrDavid: Does that mean someone else injected him? I’m confused.
GODoherty: So was I, so I reran the syringe. Originally I took the DNA sample from a dried blood cell I found on the needle, but this time I took a second sample from a skin cell I found on the plunger of the syringe. The plunger sample matched the needle sample. He injected himself.
MrDavid: And the syringe DNA matches the file DNA?
GODoherty: And it matches with the hand DNA. But the fingerprints don’t match. And the fingerprints on the hand don’t match the fingerprint samples your undercover special ops people collected from Al-Tariq before the war.
MrDavid: But the hand is his?
GODoherty: Not necessarily.
MrDavid: I thought you said the hand’s DNA matched everything else.
GODoherty: It does. But the fingerprints on it are different.
MrDavid: ?????
GODoherty: I ran more tests on the hand. This is not Al-Tariq’s hand. Al-Tariq was diabetic. This is not the hand of a diabetic person.
MrDavid: How do you know?
GODoherty: There are tests.
MrDavid: Maybe he wasn’t diabetic in his hand. Is that a stupid question?
GODoherty: Yes, it is.
MrDavid: I have a feeling you know the answer to this and you’re not telling me.
GODoherty: I might. The file you sent me said Al-Tariq was diabetic but it didn’t say if it was Type 1 or Type 2. Type 1 is childhood onset and Type 2 is adult onset. To contract Type 1, you need to have a genetic mutation known as SUMO-4. He was obese, correct?
MrDavid: Correct.
GODoherty: Then he probably had Type 2, which starts when you eat all the time and your pancreas is constantly releasing insulin into the bloodstream, until you become hyperinsulinemic. Type 2 can be controlled through diet and exercise, but it doesn’t sound like our man was the sort of person to watch his diet or work out. Type 1 is genetic. Type 2 isn’t. The hand you sent me was not part of the remains of Mohammed Al-Tariq. It wasn’t the hand of a diabetic. It doesn’t even have enough adipose tissues to be the hand of an obese person.
MrDavid: But it has his DNA.
GODoherty: Yes.
MrDavid: How is this possible?
GODoherty: The only way I know how would be if Al-Tariq had an identical twin. Twins have the same DNA but different fingerprints. A twin wouldn’t necessarily be diabetic, if we’re talking about Type 2. Though some say obesity is genetic. Neither sample contains the SUMO-4 variation. The file you sent me doesn’t have Al-Tariq’s birth records or say anything about a twin brother, so there’s not much I can do about it from here.
MrDavid: That would explain how we could have “positive proof” that he’s dead, and yet he could still be alive. Like Saddam with all his body doubles. Only better.
GODoherty: Sort of. I think it might have been an intentional deception. The hand you sent me was wearing Al-Tariq’s ring, but the ring didn’t fit and there were no sloughed skin cells beneath the ring. I think the ring was added later. Plus it was missing the stone, whatever that means.
MrDavid: We can probably find out if he had a twin. Good work.
GODoherty: Is there anything else I could do for you, David?
MrDavid: Just what I said before. We think they may have used a container ship to ship whatever it is they’re hoping to use. I gave Walter and Tom the names of the ships that left Beirut that week. Right now we’re thinking it’s something biological. Plague, smallpox, hemorrhagic fevers, etc. Maybe somebody got contaminated somewhere along the way.
GODoherty: I think we’d have heard about it by now. I’ll look into it. Anything else?
MrDavid: Maybe one thing.
GODoherty: What is it?
MrDavid: Could you check in with Bonnie?
GODoherty: I’d be happy to. What do you want me to say?
MrDavid: I wish I knew. Just talk to her. Sometimes I think she thinks I’m just over here drinking beer and eating pretzels.
Gillian had an appointment with her oncologist, so she wrote herself a Post-it note and stuck it to her computer monitor to remind herself to search her files for anybody who worked on the docks who might have taken ill or died in the last few months. She seemed to remember a burn victim, but that obviously had nothing to do with international terrorism. It was still worth a look.
Before she left for her doctor’s appointment, she called Bonnie DeLuca and left a message on her answering machine—would she like to get together later, maybe for dinner, to keep an old woman company?
Bonnie heard the tail end of the message as she rushed in the door, but by the time she managed to return the call, Gillian O’Doherty had stepped out. She’d just come from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where a young man named Kamel Hadid had undergone spinal surgery. She’d managed to find a translator from the Boston College Foreign Languages department to help explain to Kamel what was happening to him, and she’d brought him a portable CD player and some CDs she’d gotten from the Boston Public Library of classical piano music after learning that Kamel was a budding pianist. The doctors said his prognosis was guarded but optimistic. The nerve damage was not as severe as had been previously estimated, and he’d already recovered a slight amount of sensation in his toes, indicating that he might not be paralyzed, as had first been thought.
He was a sweet kid. Visiting him had made her feel better. Maybe that could be a part of the solution to her problem, she thought. Maybe the problem was that she had a lot of love to give and no one now to give it to—maybe if she gave it to somebody else, she’d feel better. That didn’t mean having an affair, but maybe if she took care of other people and did something that made her feel useful, she’d be happier. She’d been a year short of finishing her nursing degree when she’d met David DeLuca. Perhaps, once she’d found an apartment, she’d go back and finish her degree . . .
Mahmoud Jaburi’s morning lecture nearly filled the University of Minnesota’s Northrup Auditorium, where he spoke on the subject of Globalism, Islam, and the Passion of al-Hallaj, the “Keeper of Consciences” and an ancient Muslim mystic and martyr who was becoming something of a cult figure in contemporary Iraq. Born in 858, al-Hallaj had memorized the Koran by the time he was twelve and fasted in silence for an entire year before his first trip to Mecca; he’d been imprisoned in Baghdad by the Caliph al-Muktadir in 911 for plotting to overthrow the established order, giving of his own blood and flesh in the name of Allah with his death by dismemberment and decapitation in 922, the pieces of his body burned and tossed into the Tigris. Jaburi explained how today, teenage suicide bombers visited his cenotaph in Baghdad, citing him as their patron saint.
“A spiritual awakening is afoot in Iraq, it is alive, and it’s growing, spreading from the fertile fields of the Dijla and the Furat, in English the Tigris and Euphrates, like a holy virus that will infect and purify other Islamic countries. The U.S. invasion of Iraq is converting Iraq, the most secular of Islamic lands, into the sacred land it was originally meant to be. To the pious in Iraq, the United States has done them a favor by removing Saddam, who was an obstacle to creating a pure Islamic state. The Koran teaches that before this can happen, the infidels must be removed, not just from Iraq but from the face of the planet. This is what jihad means, to these young people who pray to al-Hallaj and seek to follow in his footsteps. Hoping to plant the seeds of democracy, the United States has, quite inadvertently, unified an Islamic brotherhood that will rise in rebellion to establish a true Islamic theocracy. It is an idea that cannot be contained or controlled.”
After the lecture, he was taken for a tour of the Mall of America by a graduate student named Rajan. They rode the Ferris wheel in Camp Snoopy, ate in the fast food court, and played with blocks in Lego Land, where Jaburi bought a large set of Legos. He bought a Minnesota Timberwolves jersey in a store, from the boys’ section, and in a fancy women’s clothing store, he bought an elegant silk headscarf. His last stop was a sporting goods store. When he
was done, Rajan drove him very slowly around the mall three times.
Walter Ford, who was following them in a rental car, thought that was odd.
From the Mall of America, they drove a short way on 494 and exited at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. On the top level of the parking garage, both men got out of the car to look over the edge at the airfields below. From the airport, they took 35W downtown to the Fifth Avenue exit, took Sixth to Kirby Puckett Place, and circled the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, stopping the car, but not getting out, near intake vents drawing air to keep the sports arena’s inflatable roof aloft. Finally, the student drove the professor back to his hotel, stopping short of the foyer to show Jaburi something he had in the trunk, a navy blue and lime green Federal Express cap that the professor briefly examined.
Jaburi dined alone in the hotel restaurant and retired to his room early, earlier than Walter Ford expected him to return, forcing Walter to dive quickly under the bed so as not to be caught going through Jaburi’s things. He’d found nothing of interest, Jaburi’s briefcase full of scholarly books and academic Islamic studies journals. There was nothing remarkable about the purchases he’d made either, save one, a receipt for a handgun, a Colt automatic he’d bought with a credit card, to be sent to his home in Maryland after Minnesota’s required waiting period.
Lying on the bed, Mahmoud Jaburi made a phone call, which Ford, lying directly beneath him on the floor, was able to record, using his digital voice recorder. “Marhaba Aafia. Aini? Inshalla kulish tamam? Asgher? Nesreen?” The conversation went on for about half an hour, during which time Jaburi’s voice seemed to rise in anger occasionally. He went into the bathroom after he hung up the phone. Walter Ford considered making his escape. Yet it had been Jaburi’s pattern to go to the hotel bar before bedtime, where he would try to pick up women. Ford decided to wait. Perhaps Jaburi would do the same thing tonight.
Jaburi returned to the bed, turned on the television, and watched CNN for about an hour, focusing on news from the Middle East. Jaburi occasionally spoke to the television, and Ford didn’t think he needed a translator to guess what he was saying, cursing and arguing with the commentators. Jaburi channel surfed until he paused at a movie, something starring Sandra Bullock and Harry Connick, Jr., but apparently he didn’t like Sandra Bullock any more than he liked the news, muttering to himself and calling her, in English, a whore. Finally, Jaburi shut the television off and read for a while. Before he went to bed, he got down on his knees, facing Mecca, and uttered a prayer, which the retired policeman also recorded. From where he knelt, Jaburi might have noticed a man lying under his bed if he’d glanced in that direction, the bedspread pulled partially back on the bed, but he did not, rising to his feet and returning to the bathroom one last time to urinate and brush his teeth.
Walter Ford waited until he heard Jaburi snoring loudly, then slowly slid out from under the bed on the side opposite where Jaburi lay, tiptoeing across the thick shag carpeting toward the door. He knew now that Mahmoud Jaburi was part of some kind of plot. How sinister it was, he couldn’t be sure, but the fact that he liked to drive around large public buildings looked like he was planning something major. Ford paused, thinking. The man was asleep, vulnerable. Ford could end it, here and now, with a single bullet, fired through a pillow. It was only a fleeting thought, but it invoked the philosophical argument he sometimes raised in class—if you could travel back in time, to 1936 or so, and shoot Hitler, would you? Most college kids argued that it would be wrong. Most men over sixty didn’t have a problem with it.
Before he left, Ford stepped into the bathroom and drew a handful of hairs from Jaburi’s hairbrush. It might not be a bad idea, he thought, to have Gillian O’Doherty run Jaburi’s DNA and get it on file, just in case they ever needed it later.
When he got back to his motel, he called the only Arab-speaking person he knew, other than Sami—Sami’s sister Riva—and played her the telephone conversation he’d recorded. The telephone conversation was a man calling his wife, Aafia, the two of them talking about their kids, Asgher and Nesreen, what the son wanted for his birthday, how they were watching too much television. The male voice said that to celebrate the end of Ramadan, he wanted to take his family sailing, and he asked her to make the arrangements to have their summer place on Cape Cod cleaned and prepared for their arrival.
The prayer was also of the standard variety, the Al Fateha, then the Rukéteen, with a few added words that sounded a bit egomaniacal, the prayer of a man who clearly saw himself as an agent of Allah, if not Mohhammad’s equal, judging from the very personal way Jaburi spoke to his God, highly unusual for a Muslim. She said one line disturbed her, or rather, confused her, a part of his prayer where he asked Allah to give him the strength of al-Hallaj. Ford explained that al-Hallaj had been the subject of his lecture earlier that day.
“Well, I’m like the last person to argue with a Muslim scholar,” she said, “but from what little I can remember of my religious education, al-Hallaj was crazy. Or that’s what I was taught, anyway. He kept asking people to kill him. Something like that. It was years ago. I could be wrong.”
DeLuca ran into Colonel Reicken after dinner. Reicken said he wanted to wish DeLuca luck, and added that he’d had an idea.
“When you get back,” he said, “I’d like to sit down with you and your friend General LeDoux. Nothing formal, just a chance to debrief and get to know each other. Maybe dinner in the officers’ mess. When you get back. No hurry. Say, listen—do you know a sergeant named Jambazian from Support Services? He’s been asking a lot of questions about you. I know you were concerned about that bounty thing, and I hear he’s Arab-American. I’d keep an eye on him if I were you.”
“Thanks, sir,” DeLuca said. “I’ll bear that in mind.”
“I put in a follow-up call on the evidence we sent to Gillem, by the way. I told them to expedite. They thought they could have something for us in two or three weeks.”
“That’s great, sir,” DeLuca said. “You’re the best.”
He needed to find MacKenzie to tell her to start looking into whether Mohammed Al-Tariq had a twin. She wasn’t in her quarters, so he sought her at the Balad Ladies’ Club, an empty Iraqi Air Force storage shed some of the women in the battalion had made into their own gathering place, complete with curtains on the windows. For all the good work that men and women in the battalion were doing side by side every day, everyone agreed it was a good idea to give the women a place to socialize or piss and moan or whatever they did there. When DeLuca rounded the weather station, he found a group of women sitting at a card table, playing poker outside the BLC by the light of a single candle. Joan VanDamm was among them, rising from her seat when she saw DeLuca coming.
“Hey, Sarge,” she said, smiling. “You looking to lose some money? We have a seat open if you want to sit in.”
“Not tonight,” he said. “I’m looking for Mack, and I’m in a bit of a hurry . . .”
“I heard,” VanDamm said. “My husband said only an insane person would jump HALO into the mountains at night. He used to be a Ranger.”
“He could be right,” DeLuca said, realizing his nervous energy showed. “Is she in?” VanDamm put her hand on his arm, then pointed to a towel hanging on the doorknob. DeLuca was puzzled.
“Someone left a towel on the doorknob? What? She’s in the showers?”
“You’ve obviously never lived in a women’s dorm,” VanDamm said. “The towel means she’s indisposed.”
“She’s not feeling well?”
Three of the women at the poker table giggled.
“She’s got company,” VanDamm said quietly.
“Company,” DeLuca repeated, and then, in a rush, he got it. He felt as if, all in an instant, a giant billboard had sprung from his head with flashing lights saying, I’M AN IDIOT, in letters twenty feet high.
He understood better when, half an hour later, Dan Sykes came back to Tent City looking oddly invigorated and refreshed. When DeL
uca asked him where he’d been, he said he’d been with MacKenzie.
“Doing what?” DeLuca asked.
“What are you—my dad?” Dan said.
“No, I’m not your dad, but I am team leader,” DeLuca said. “I went to find Mack and they told me she had company.”
“We had some things that needed taking care of,” Dan said. “Personal things. As I understood it, we were both on personal time. If you needed something . . .”
“I didn’t need anything,” DeLuca said. “I mean, I did—it looks like Al-Tariq might have an identical twin that we didn’t know about. I need Mack to look into it while we’re gone. So you and Mack hooked up, then?”
Dan stared at him.
“I have no intention of talking about my private life like I’m some jackass frat boy,” Dan said. “What’s it to you?”
“It’s nothing personal,” DeLuca said, “but it is business. You tell her you have a fiancée?”
“No,” Dan said. “Why? Do you want me to? I thought what happens on TDY stays on TDY. That was my understanding.”
“What goes on between you and your fiancée is your business,” DeLuca said, “but if you fuck up the chemistry of this team by screwing over one of your fellow team members, then that becomes my business. A team works when the partners feel equal and take care of each other impartially. If two people get involved, that impartiality goes right down the toilet. Get it? That’s why they have rules against fraternization in the services.”
“Mack and I can keep our personal and our professional lives separate,” Dan said. “That’s between me and her. And for the record, we talked about it and we agreed that if it starts to get in the way of business, it’s over. I needed to release a little tension. I think we both did. That’s all it was.”
“That’s all it was,” DeLuca said. “Now who’s thinking like a frat boy?”
“Point taken. Briefing’s at 2200 hours, right?” Dan said, looking at his watch. “I’ll meet you there. I want to grab a shower first.”
Team Red Page 23
