by J. G. Sandom
Decker got up, strolled across the garage, and sat down right beside him. As it turned out, the snitch was also the local bookie and odds-maker, and the kind of man you went to when you wanted something organized, a union meeting or retirement party handled without incident. His name was Akbar. He was a Yemeni who spoke machine-gun Arabic with the cutting accent of the Horn of Africa. Within five minutes, Decker and he had made their way to the far corner of the garage, behind a beat-up gold Impala, where they began to talk in earnest.
How long had he been working there? asked Decker. Where did he live? How long had he been in America? Where was he from originally? This was followed by a fair amount of banter about his hometown in North Yemen, about the difficulty of making a living in America, about American movies and American women, about American food, about what he missed most about his homeland. After a few more minutes, as they sat together on a nearby bench, Decker finally brought up Ali Singh and Salim Moussa. The man stiffened. His eyes narrowed into slits and he turned away. But Decker was insistent. “You were friends with Ali Singh and Moussa when they worked here. I know you were,” he said. “Perhaps you still are. It is common knowledge. Why do you deny it? Are you ashamed of them?”
The Yemeni folded his arms. Then, as if he had rehearsed this movement, he leaned against the wall of the garage and simply sat there without speaking, staring off into space.
After a full minute or two, he finally said, “We talked together, that much is true. But I didn’t know them very well. Only enough to learn that they are pious men, good men, unlike so many others here who claim that they are Muslims. Yet they eat pork, and drink and copulate with whores.”
“Why are you so afraid?” said Decker.
“Afraid?” The Yemeni laughed. “Why should I be afraid? The fact that you are speaking to me, right now, at this very moment, has already marked me for death. And if I am already dead, why should I be afraid? I have nothing to lose.” He shook his head. “No, my friend. It is you who should be fearful. You are not dead. Not yet.” Then he turned and looked away, and added in an off-hand kind of way, “What are you going to do now? Arrest me? Is that your plan?”
Decker remained impassive.
“Go ahead. Arrest me then. I will tell you nothing.”
Decker shook his head. “No, I don’t want to arrest you.”
Akbar looked even more confused. Then he began to smile. “I did not think so. A fool could see that it would be a fruitless exercise.” He grinned. “And you are clearly not a fool.”
“I’m going to arrest him,” said Decker, pointing at the Alpha wolf.
Akbar looked horrified. “Zahid Tafari! But why? What has he done?”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s done something or other, somewhere along the way. First, I think I’ll check with Immigration. Just in case. Then I’ll see if the IRS can audit his returns – say for the last three years. Then–”
“What do you want to know?” said Akbar, looking down. It was as if all the air had been suddenly let out of him. “There is a reason why you cannot find this young Sudanese named Salim Moussa.” He looked up, frowning petulantly. “For one, he is not Sudanese. His parents are, or were, but Moussa was born right here. In New York. Or, more precisely,” he said, “in a town called Yonkers.”
It turned out later, much to everyone’s surprise, that Akbar was telling the truth. Salim Moussa had indeed been born in Yonkers to parents of Sudanese descent, had gone to local elementary schools, to the local junior high school and for two years to Yonkers High School before dropping out his junior year. Apparently, he got picked on a lot while in school. His parents were poor. His dad was a bricklayer, his mother a K-Mart cashier. He did a few odd jobs after high school, worked construction for a while during the summer months, cleaned pools and tended gardens – that sort of thing. He fell into a crew of second-story men but he never got into trouble himself. Then, just after his twenty-first birthday, when he was still living at home, he went into the city and got a job at the Imperial Taxi Company in Queens. A month later, he moved into a small apartment near Randall’s Island. He kept mostly to himself. He was a quiet neighbor. He was practically invisible until, one afternoon, something happened.
He was taking a fare along First Avenue up to York and Seventy-second when this red town car, a Caddie, swept out and clipped him in the rear. His cab hooked over to the left. He struggled to straighten her out, slammed on the breaks, and pulled over, shaking. His fare, a young businessman in a charcoal suit, jumped out and dashed across the avenue into another cab. The town car that had clipped him hobbled over to the side. The impact had torn the Cadillac’s bumper loose and it screeched across the macadam, showering sparks. A man climbed out of the Cadillac and looked down at the damage. He was huge, and white – a Russian, it turned out, from Brighton Beach – with a bullet-shaped head, close-cropped blond hair, a lantern jaw and washed-out light blue eyes. He wore a beautifully tailored sharkskin suit, jet-black. He said something indiscernible. He scratched the bristle on his chin. Then he approached Moussa, stepped up and slammed his palms into his chest. Moussa flew backwards onto the hood of his cab, the wind knocked out of him. He had been thrown off by the opulence of the suit. He started to protest when the palms smashed into him again. He tried to step away but the Russian towered over him. He held him down.
“You. Monkey man,” he said. “You are going to fix my bumper.” The Russian brought his fist back as if to strike him, but it never happened. A hand materialized from nowhere and wrapped itself around his wrist. Another man stepped up, a black man. A second cab had pulled up by the accident. Moussa recognized him. His name was Ahmed, an Imperial Taxi driver. A Sudanese, like his parents. Ahmed bent the fingers, hand and wrist of the Russian back along his arm, back and inward across the mighty shoulder, until he crumpled to his knees. “You’re breaking my wrist,” the giant Russian screamed. He tried to punch Ahmed with his other hand but the Sudanese stepped gingerly away.
“Get into your car,” Ahmed said to Salim Moussa. “Now.”
Moussa didn’t argue. He jumped back into his yellow cab, started her up, and peeled out along First Avenue. In less than fifteen minutes, he had made it back across the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge to Queens.
Ahmed, it turned out, was a devout Muslim. According to Akbar, Salim Moussa and Ahmed became fast friends after that incident. Moussa started to take Arabic courses at the same mosque in Queens where bin Basra and Singh were later arrested. He learned self-defense and how to pray. He became a completely different person.
In 1999, Salim Moussa got his wish and traveled to the Sudan, his parents’ birthplace, and then to Russia and a host of Newly Independent States. He returned to the United States on July 12, 2001, only a month or so before the attack on the World Trade Towers. But unlike Akbar and so many others, he had never been interviewed after 9/11. He was, after all, an American.
Akbar finished his story. He looked at Decker and said, “Is that what you wanted to hear? Is that what you were looking for?”
“Just one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Where could I find this Ahmed now? Salim Moussa’s friend?”
“In Woodlawn Cemetery. It is unfortunate, but he was killed during a robbery about a week ago. It happens. It is one of the unpleasant unpredictabilities of the job.”
The agents headed back across the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge into Manhattan. They drove in Kazinski’s SUV south on the FDR, and made their way to Greenwich Village. The owners of East Village Jukebox – a pair of gay men from Long Island named Gerald and Ted – claimed that they couldn’t remember much about Salim Moussa, except that he came and went at odd hours, as he pleased. But he was a good worker and never complained, honest and sober. He seemed painfully shy about his English, being a Sudanese. Moussa never initiated conversations and kept his political and religious views to himself. He was certainly a religious man; he prayed five times a day, and went to Mosque each Friday.
Wil
liams asked the owners if they wouldn’t mind showing him all the work orders processed over the last few months while Moussa was employed there, and they were more than happy to oblige. They still remembered 9/11. That event, and the recession which soon followed, had decimated their business. Jukeboxes were discretionary items, after all. “You don’t suddenly get a feeling in your stomach at 3:00 AM to run out and pick up a couple of jukeboxes,” Gerald said. “No,” said Ted. “You don’t do that.” After about fifteen minutes, the owners finally returned, their arms laden with files. “Knock yourselves out,” they said in unison and left the room.
“Now why,” Williams wondered aloud, “would a boy who grew up in Yonkers be shy about his English?”
“Maybe he’s ashamed of being an American,” Kazinski said.
The agents spent the next few hours pouring over the work orders – mostly independent restaurants and bars, a few chains such as Hallahan’s and Rock ‘n Roll Planet, as well as some private residences. There were dozens and dozens of them. But, except for some shoddy bookkeeping, nothing seemed amiss.
At one point, Decker got up to take a break. His eyes were strained from the close reading. He was getting a headache. He made his way to the rear of the dealership. The place was packed with jukeboxes. Many were standard CD/DVD players, clean-lined and contemporary. A few were classic vinyl Wurlitzers, or spanking new Rock-Olas with patented SyberSonic sound, colorful plastic accents and bright multi-colored lights. Some contained water, busy with columns of bubbles or tropical fish, while others looked more like giant standing lava lamps. Decker proceeded past another office into a narrow corridor. There was a bathroom to his left. He ignored it. The corridor led to a set of stairs by a payphone. He started down, heading toward the basement.
The walls were brick here. The corridor turned, then vanished into darkness. Decker felt the wall for a light switch and flipped it on. Bright fluorescents flashed like lightning overhead, spreading along the corridor, illuminating it one section at a time. Decker made his way down the passageway, his footsteps echoing. The corridor pitched to the right, then jogged left. Finally, Decker noticed a change in temperature. It was getting warmer and his nose was suddenly assaulted by the distinctive odor of a gym – the smell of sweaty socks and sneakers, fresh mold and dank humidity. The corridor led into a narrow L-shaped basement room, a kind of changing area, with a few metal lockers propped up against the rear wall and a pair of wooden benches. There was an alcove on the far side of the room with a single shower and a torn white plastic shower curtain. Decker noticed a calendar on the wall; it was from last year, some kind of promotional piece from Wurlitzer, with a busty girl wearing antlers writhing on a snow-sprinkled, cherry-red jukebox.
Decker walked over to the lockers and inspected them one by one. Most were empty. One hid an old gray sock, another a pungent pair of sneakers. He slammed the lockers closed as he finished searching them, and the noise reverberated in the enclosed space. Somewhere upstairs someone had flipped on a jukebox. He could hear Elvis Costello lamenting. Well it seems you’ve got a husband now. He opened the last locker, peered inside. Someone had left behind a dark blue windbreaker. Decker checked the pockets. Nothing. He looked behind it. Nothing. He looked down. There were a couple of sheets of paper at the bottom of the locker. He picked them up. The first was blank. So was the second. He could see where they had been torn off from the pad; each sheet was trimmed with ragged paper pigtails. But as he was about to put them back, the top sheet caught the bright reflection of the fluorescents overhead.
Decker pitched the sheet to the side, just slightly, trying to catch the light. The reflection bounced and he saw the outline clearly, the arabesque, the invisible calligraphy. Someone had written something here; or – more accurately – on the sheet immediately above it in the pad, and the indentation had come through. You could see the imprint clearly in the light.
Decker placed the paper on the bench. He took out a mechanical pencil from the pocket of his blazer and began to shade in the impression, exposing the outline underneath.
It was indeed some kind of Arabic script, but he could barely make it out: Death Will Overtake You. And a number: 54,000.
While similar in design, this illustration was clearly different from the one which he had spied through Moussa’s window. The PC wallpaper had been less florid, less ornate.
I hear you let that little friend of mine take off your party dress. Decker folded the piece of paper and slipped it into his jacket. Ahhhllison . . . my aim is true. My aim is true. My aim is true . . . .
“Find anything?” Warhaftig said.
Decker almost slammed into Warhaftig as he turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs. “Not really.” He started up the steps.
There was a payphone at the top of the landing, and Decker noticed someone had torn the wallpaper off at a seam. The naked concrete was spattered with phone numbers. “How about you? Any luck?” For some reason, Decker could not tear his eyes away from the wall.
“Just those work orders,” Warhaftig said, huffing up the stairs behind him. “Kazinski’s heading back. You coming?”
“Going uptown,” said Decker.
“What for?”
“Thought I’d visit Doctor Jusef Hasan.”
“That guy from Columbia?”
Decker nodded. “If anyone can help me decipher that wallpaper, it’s probably him. He’s an expert on Islamic culture and calligraphy. I already tried the CIA and NSA. Not a peep. They’re clueless.”
“He’s a nut, Decker. I’ve seen him on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer. He’s a radical extremist, always bitching about how the Patriot’s Act is unconstitutional, that sort of thing. What makes you think he’ll talk to you? You’re the establishment, the enemy. And besides, Homeland Security considers him a risk.”
Decker turned. “He’ll talk to me,” he said.
Chapter 13
Saturday, January 29 – 1:34 AM
Kazakhstan
The truck pulled up beside a three-story brick warehouse on the outskirts of Gurjev on the Caspian Sea. Gulzhan and his men got out and stretched their legs. As they flexed and moved about the cobblestone courtyard, three men appeared in the headlights of the truck, emerging through a corrugated iron door. They approached Gulzhan and embraced him, one by one.
The first man was small, with a narrow face and frame, interminable black eyes and ebony hair. He had the body of a gymnast, supple and muscular. He wore a pair of green fatigues and a tatty brown turtleneck sweater.
“Salaam, Ali Hammel,” Gulzhan said.
“Salaam,” Hammel replied. He touched his hand to his heart and kissed his fingertips.
The second man stood in stark contrast to the first. He was huge, with a large melon-like head, thick wavy black hair, and a long bushy black beard. His eyes seemed perpetually in motion, ox-like, taking in the truck, the men, the moonlight on the black canal that winked at the far end of the alley, adjacent to the warehouse. When he was satisfied that nothing was amiss, the herd safe, he hugged Gulzhan with transparent glee.
“Salaam, Auwul,” said Gulzhan. He slapped him on the back. The large man grinned, his huge teeth glistening in the tangle of his beard. “It’s good to see you again. You’re looking fat, and happy.”
The third man stepped in from the side. He had a lean and predatory look, like a jackal, a thin henna-red beard, and piercing almost amber eyes. His head was shaved. He wore a camouflage jacket that hugged his narrow waist, a pair of green parachute pants, and thick black Army boots taped up around the ankles. “Where is the other truck?” he asked.
Gulzhan glanced about. “I have bad news,” he said. “Uhud is dead.”
The man’s eyes narrowed to the shape of almond shells. “How?” he replied.
“His truck was ambushed near Zhetybay. A’ in sh’Allah.” Gulzhan paused for a moment, glaring at the ground. “One of our informers called me.”
“And the HEU?”
“Do not worry, Ziad,
” Gulzhan said, patting his vest. Then he added, “What about Kunabi?”
“On his way.”
“Good, good.” Gulzhan looked over at the truck. He seemed distracted for a moment, as if he were checking the pressure of the tires. Then he turned and said, “Let us sit and eat.” He stretched his back, craning his neck with surprising dexterity. “It has been a long drive, and we are hungry.”
The men began to file back toward the warehouse, all save Ali Hammel, who hovered for a moment in the courtyard. When everyone else had disappeared, he turned toward Gulzhan, saying, “What happened to Uhud?”
“I told you,” Gulzhan said.
“Do not play games with me, Gulzhan Baqrah. I know you too well.”
Gulzhan shrugged. He studied the small man next to him. “Very well,” he said. “You knew him too, didn’t you, Ali? I’d almost forgotten. Friends, perhaps. And I’m sure El Aqrab will want to be informed.” He spat and started slowly down the alleyway that ran along the warehouse, back toward the canal. Hamel glided at his side. When they had reached the dock, Gulzhan stopped and stared up at the warehouse, blanched by the light of harbor cranes. It was a three-story brick structure with large frosted windows reinforced with chicken wire. A series of sliding doors ran almost the entire length of the ground floor facing the canal. At one end, an abandoned furnace chimney clung desperately to the side, illuminated by a streetlight.
The building had once been a manufacturing center for farm equipment – oxen plows and fencing, cisterns and windmills – before being converted into a warehouse. But following the collapse of the Soviet Union, business had fallen off. The warehouse was all but empty now. Only a clothing importer still used the facility from time to time.
