False Flag

by John Altman

  Michael felt at peace now.

  He coiled linguine on his fork, then kept coiling longer than necessary. He had accepted something. The struggle was done. Now came acquiescence.

  The five stages of grief, the voice volunteered, impervious, it seemed, to his surface serenity. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and blowing the holy fuck out of your fearless leader with a leg full of asphyxiating nerve agent! Beefy, Moist, Meaty, Tender, Yummy!

  Prattle on, voice. You can’t get to me now.

  Silas was telling a story. A scientist worked in a laboratory. Inside a test tube, a pink liquid bubbled. Turning around too quickly, the scientist knocked over the tube, which shattered. But instead of spilling across the floor, the bubbling pink liquid began acting out scenes from the scientist’s past. All the mice in their cages lined up to watch the show …

  “Did you make this up?” The woman sounded impressed. “It’s really good.”

  In fact, Michael could picture it vividly: the mice lining up on their hind legs inside their little cages, tiny front paws clutching tiny jail bars. Pink liquid twisting, frothing, forming images like the tattoos on Bradbury’s famous illustrated man. Here were two cops coming up a front walk. The dreaded knock on the door. “Guess you’ve got a car—came across the ticker … A 2013 Hyundai Elantra. Aqua.” How had they gotten onto the car? How had they gotten onto the goddamned car?

  Calm. Accepting. Serenity now.

  The linguine coiled like a tiny boa constrictor around his fork. The pink liquid bubbled, fizzed. Here a woman dropped a cop with a well-placed right hook. A man stepped forward, plucked a gun almost politely from the cop’s fumbling fingers, and fired two bullets at point-blank range. Then one more for good measure. Here a rabbit drooled, teeth gnashing. Screaming, kicking, convulsing, vomiting and shitting blood. SLUDGE, they called it. Salivation, Lacrimation, Urination, Defecation, Gastrointestinal distress, and Emesis. Michael had read an article on Wikipedia. He found the acronym annoyingly twee: an incongruous ray of sunshine in a dark, damp place fuzzed with moss and crawling with dung beetles.

  Here a man ate pizza with his guileless, innocent young son. “Mommy’s sleepover friend,” said the kid, with utter lack of malice. “Can I go play?” Here a young woman sat at the back of a bus. Cool gray eyes flecked with harlequin sparkles. Skillfully grafted burn scars running down her right cheek, continuing down onto the right side of her lissome body.

  Another woman sat on a couch, stirring something in a Grumpy Cat mug, speaking with great care. “I guess on some level this feels … overdue.” A man walked into an embassy and was escorted to a sterile Lucite cube of a room. The same man sat outside a Humvee in Hawija, concentrating hard on dials and joysticks as a motorcycle drove past and dropped something in the road. The same man rode past a ruined bridgehead in Kirkuk and saw a hand lying in a bed of smoldering rubble. Just the hand. A child’s hand. And something slipped loose inside him: a cog breaking inside a watch, tumbling around free, gumming up the works.

  So many stories in the bubbling pink liquid. Shifting, puddling, re-forming. In the back of a bus, a boy pressed something into another boy’s hand. “It’s a bat.” Ariella Abramovitz moaned as Ben Schoenberg worked his way beneath her damp Hanes cotton panties. In a bed built to look like a race car, a boy lay awake, crying. His older brother peeked into the room. “What’s wrong?” They stayed up half the night learning about how the Lord, Blessed be He, King of the Universe, had delivered upon well-deserving Egyptian scum ten plagues, culminating with the slaying of the firstborn sons.

  So many stories. Yet all the same story, really. The story of Michael. All leading inexorably to the here, the now. To peace, acceptance. And to determination. Most of all, to determination.

  “Daddy. Daddy.”

  Silas had stopped telling his story, how long ago Michael had no idea. “Huh?”

  “I said, ‘Can I watch TV now?’”

  He blinked. The woman was looking at him ungenerously.

  Calm. Peace. Determination.

  “Sure,” he said easily. “Go watch TV.”

  * * *

  Three days.

  Earth kept rolling eastward, into the sun. Bright morning light. Rise and shine.

  Showering. Dripping onto the bath mat. Patting lather onto cheeks. Taking safety razor from medicine cabinet. Downstairs, in the living room, Silas watched cacophonous Saturday morning cartoons with Kristen.

  Michael shaved, did a hundred push-ups, dressed. Fixed the flag pin to his lapel, squared his shoulders.

  Knowing that street traffic would be murder, he took the Metro. He emerged from the station to find Pennsylvania Avenue closed off: Capitol security running a drill. At the sight, horror flooded his veins. They knew. They knew everything. They had found the Hyundai. How had they gotten onto the goddamned car? They had come knocking on the door, and now they were giving him just enough rope, biding their time. And yes, rope was the right word—he would hang for this. That or a firing squad, or the electric chair, or a needle. Did it really matter which fucking—

  God damn it, Michael, you know you’re far gone when I’M THE MOTHERFUCKING VOICE OF REASON. Think about it. If they knew anything, you wouldn’t be here!

  The voice had a point. He drew a shaky breath, let it out. The next breath was more even. His eyes felt haunted, bulging. His face felt the color of chalk—and the same dusty, granular consistency. But he squared his shoulders again and walked forward like a goddamn man.

  He moved through the first barricade just by showing ID. At the second, he was searched. Around him, a hive of activity buzzed. Cops and cops and more cops. After Paris, they were taking no chances. In sixty hours, the president of the United States would leave the White House, climb into the reinforced limousine nicknamed the Beast, and roll up Pennsylvania Avenue. The limo had been built on the frame of a Cadillac Kodiak, but about the only other thing it had in common with a regular Caddy was the crested wreath on the front grill. Eight-inch-thick armor-plated doors supported five-inch-thick bulletproof windows. The Kevlar-reinforced run-flat tires, big enough for a Greyhound bus, could shake off any puncturing agent. Sealed interior, foam-protected Duramax diesel fuel tank. And inside the trunk, fire-fighting equipment, oxygen tanks, a blood bank, tear gas, shotguns, even grenade launchers.

  Overhead, a helicopter thrashed. On every side, sirens spun without sound, casting macabre multicolored light across the reflecting pool. Michael straightened his jacket and walked on.

  At the next checkpoint, he saw an EMT station and, beside it, a circle of sandbags. In Iraq, you expected to see sandbags, HESCO bastions stacked two-high around the compound latrines. Not here. This was new. A grenade sump, he realized. If a live explosive was found and confiscated, they had to have somewhere to put it.

  And everywhere, cops. Cops and cops and more cops, plainclothes and blue suits, from every agency. This was not just Paris. It was more. They knew something was up. They were looking out.

  But they don’t know know. Or I wouldn’t be here.

  He was finding the sense of peace again: a fine bespoke suit, tailored specifically for his broad shoulders, into which he could slip comfortably. His bases were covered. The more they tried to prepare, the greater would be the impact when it happened.

  Inside Statuary Hall, Christina Thompson gave orders. Their first dress rehearsal, she reminded everyone, but not their last. Pretend we’re live. If something goes wrong, plow through it. She was nervous. The quaver in her voice reminded Michael of his own shaky breath. But he didn’t think anyone else could detect it.

  They ran through it six times, top to bottom. By the time they quit, it was almost dark and Michael was having trouble with the prosthesis. The modular given him by DC VA, although far from the electrographic ideal, had been custom fitted by Phil Eggleston. This one was theoretically a perfect copy, at least on the outside. But the fi
xture against his stump left tiny air pockets that, with continued use, led to chafing, soreness. After his last run, he had discovered a yellow-purple bruise. Now there was outright pain.

  But tomorrow they would go all day again, because Monday and Tuesday they would have to work around Senate sessions. The final dry run would take place Tuesday afternoon, hours before the event. Every rite and ritual, every cue and placement, timing accurate down to the second. Everything just as it would be when the event was staged before television cameras and broadcast to a waiting world.

  On the way home, he made two stops. At a beauty supply store, he paid cash for a straight black wig, spirit gum, and rouge. At a PetSmart, he bought a travel cage for Licorice, whom the woman had promised to take with her.

  Back home, the vibes were mellow. The woman and Silas were watching TV again: the episode of TMNT where the turtles nurse back to health a mutant alligator rescued from the Kraang. Michael wondered whether they had moved from the couch all day. The boy curled against her, heartbreakingly trusting, the cat purring by his feet.

  For dinner they ate leftovers. For TV time, they watched a few minutes of Word World—in Michael’s mind an educational antidote to the Mutant Ninja Turtle overload. Once he was gone, who would steer Silas away from Cartoon Network, toward PBS? Stacy couldn’t resist spoiling the boy. And despite this woman’s promises, deep down he didn’t believe a word. But he had made his choices. Now he had to live with them.

  Or die with them. Right, Mikey? Wink-wink, nudge-nudge?

  After fifteen minutes, he snapped off the set. Silas asked “Kristen” to put him to bed, but Michael insisted on doing it himself. “You know,” he added, “I only get so many chances.”

  She shot him a warning look.

  “Because you grow up so fast,” he quickly added. But Silas wasn’t paying attention anyway. The boy was sucking on a plastic squeeze tube of applesauce, trying to get out the last dregs, wearing a determined expression that reminded Michael of no one so much as himself.

  They brushed their teeth together, side by side. After five seconds, Silas tried to rinse his brush. “Nuh-uh,” Michael said, frothing like a rabid dog. “Top, bottom, front, back, inside, outside.” Then he thought of the knock and talk, of Jimmy McAlester. “This guy. Loves to bust balls.”

  They were continuing their Roald Dahl kick. Tonight was Danny the Champion of the World. “I will not pretend I wasn’t petrified,” Michael read. A strange silence from downstairs. He wondered whether she was eavesdropping. “I was. But mixed in with the awful fear was a glorious feeling of excitement. Most of the really exciting things we do in our lives scare us to death.”

  “What does that mean? ‘Scare us to death’?”

  “It means it’s super scary. It doesn’t mean you actually die.”

  “But could you?”

  “Could you actually die?”

  “Yeah, could you? From being scared?”

  “I guess maybe you could have a heart attack. If something was really terrifying.”

  “What’s a heart attack?”

  “You know. The heart moves the blood around your body.”

  “It’s a muscle.” Silas touched his chest. “Right here.”

  “Right. So if your heart stops beating, you die.”

  The conversation had taken an unintended turn. Ruffling his brow, Michael lifted the book again. “They wouldn’t be exciting if—”

  “Why do you die if your heart stops beating?”

  “Because you need your blood to carry oxygen all around your body.”

  “What happens when you die?”

  For a few moments, the silence was pristine. No whisper of wind, no sound from the woman, wherever she was. The entire world waited on tiptoe for his answer.

  “Nobody knows,” he said gently.

  “Julia said you go to heaven and be with God.”

  “Julia from school?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe. Some people think that.”

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t … I’m not sure what I think.”

  Tell him about the seventy-two virgins, Mikey. Crowned with glory, spared the suffering of the grave. Guaranteed a place in paradise, sins forgiven, spared the horror of the Day of Judgment.

  “I think,” he said carefully, “that there’s something called the circle of life. It means that everything that is born eventually dies. And then the things that die turn into vitamins to help other things be born. And it’s beautiful, in a way, although it’s also sad.”

  Silas was listening very closely. Wheels grinding inside that five-year-old skull.

  “And nobody really knows what happens after you die. So people make guesses. And they come up with beliefs—that’s things they choose to believe. But nobody knows for sure. So the important thing is to live well while we’re here. To do things we’re proud of. Even if …” A sudden clot in his throat. He squeezed his eyes and lips together. Willed the clot away, willed his voice steady and clear, and opened his eyes, praying the boy hadn’t noticed. “Even if … just remember, Silas … after I’m gone … that sometimes things don’t … sometimes things might seem one way but …”

  She was in the doorway. From nowhere, silent as smoke. “Yay, Kristen’s here! Kristen, read to me!”

  She came forward. All gentle smiles. Nothing recriminating, although in her sidelong glance, Michael did pick up something that might be thought of as pitying.

  She took the book from his hand. “Run along, Daddy. I’ve got it from here.”

  “Just remember, buddy,” Michael said weakly, “I love you.”

  He just made it out of the room before the tears came. Licorice nudged his ankle, and he picked her up and buried his face in her fur. Inside Silas’ bedroom, the woman picked up with a loathsomely steady voice: “I sat very stiff and upright in my seat, gripping the steering wheel tight with both hands. My eyes were about level with the top of the steering wheel. I could have done with a cushion to raise me up higher, but it was too late for that. The road seemed awfully narrow in the dark …”

  Martin Luther King Jr. Ave. SE, Washington, DC

  Sunday, January 10, 8:00 a.m. The conference room was empty.

  No sign of Innes, Horowitz, McConnell. No courier, no zippered and locked portfolio, no leads, no assignments, no new ray of hope. The twelve monitors on the wall were dark. On Sunday, it seemed, even God rested in this Christian country.

  Dalia fell heavily into a chair, sipped her latte, and stared at the blank, empty monitors.

  They had nothing.

  She sipped again, then pushed it away. All of a sudden, it seemed too sweet.

  Start at the beginning, she thought. When in doubt, start back at the beginning.

  In the beginning, a young girl named Jana Dahan had been the target of a checkpoint bombing in …

  But no. The real beginning.

  In 1947, the UN partition … No.

  In the beginning, God created the heavens. Fourteen billion years ago, give or take. And eventually, the expanding universe cooled enough to allow the creation of subatomic particles. And He saw this and it was good.

  And subatomic particles formed elements, and elements became stars and galaxies, and then, eventually, there was Earth. And then there was life on Earth. Single-celled life. Then multicelled life. Then the first fish to drag itself onto land, gulping air through mutated gills. Then, seventy thousand years ago, Homo sapiens with its freakishly large brain. The cognitive revolution. The Agricultural Revolution, in which wheat domesticated man, training him to labor from sunrise to sunset, back bent, oversize brain baking under a sweltering sun, lugging water to spread the precious caryopsis to every corner of the globe. And then “civilization” and, with it, tribes. And with tribes, war.

  And Jews. And not-Jews. And Moses, or at least stori
es of Moses. And Nebuchadnezzar and pogroms and the Dreyfus affair and Theodor Herzl and Der Judenstaat. And Zola and Esterhazy and the Turkish sultan and the German kaiser and the First Zionist Congress and Altneuland and then, finally, Zyklon-B. Zyklon-B, Zyklon-B, Zyklon-B. And then the UN partition resolution of 1947. And then modern Israel. Never again.

  And then Sabras, the first generation born in modern Israel. And among them, Dalia Artzi. Once, there had been a young girl who thought she knew everything. Peace, peace, peace. Never again, yes, but also peace, and two wrongs don’t make a right, and then she’d had children and that had made everything more complicated. She had taken conscientious objector military deferment, sarvanim. But her children had refused. Her children had wanted to do their part. By then Dalia had steeped herself in the history of tribal warfare, the better to defuse critics who might accuse her of naïveté as she fought for peace. But had it actually stopped anyone? “Clearly you’re nobody’s fool,” McConnell had said during their first meeting. “A political naïf, perhaps—forgive me—but a tactical genius.” She had tried to explain to her children that war led nowhere, that the vast majority of all battles were strategically inconclusive. Let others die for meaningless lines on meaningless maps. Not her, and not her children. But there was another truth that swept away her truth. Never again. And to their (admittedly callow) eyes, this was the bigger truth.

  And then her son had been inside a tank. Shelling land that the world had decreed illegally occupied by Israel. And the “enemy” had taken him. And he was gone. And Dalia had spoken her mind to the microphones shoved in her face, and doomed him to remain gone. Until, that is, Meir and Feigenbaum—now sharing with their murderer an ignominious grave at the bottom of a New Jersey well—had given her a chance. In accepting their offer, Dalia had been selfish. But she had done it anyway. For Zvi.

  And then had come Jana Dahan. Wounded by a checkpoint bombing. Undercover in America. A cellar in Oregon filled with explosive and nerve toxin. A mad plot and an effort to stop it. A traitor in the plotters’ midst. And the hunt had begun. Dalia, McConnell, Horowitz. The veteran, the “woman in charge.” Nissim Dayan. The red Ford, the rust-colored Grand Marquis, the blue Hyundai. Vermont, the dead deputy, the pink mist in the toolshed. The tire tread, the widening net. And always Jana Dahan, slipping through their fingers. Again and again and again.