“Play it smart, Robert. Don’t complicate things for yourself.”
“Or for you.”
“Right. For me too. Be here at eight. I have a nine o’clock with DSS at State.”
Brixton was curious about why Kogan wanted to see him. He’d already been suspended; the next move could be dismissal. On the one hand, he didn’t care. If Kogan fired him—and if he did, Brixton knew that he would do it with regret—he’d simply pack up and head back to Brooklyn, where people talked straight, even the mobsters he knew there. On the other hand, he liked working for Mike Kogan and knew that Kogan had been right when he’d said that finding good jobs wasn’t easy for a fifty-one-year-old guy.
He also second-guessed agreeing to join Mac and Annabel Smith for dinner. Attending a dinner party wasn’t something that he, or anyone else who’d lost a daughter, should be doing.
But what was the alternative?
Sit alone in the apartment, get stinking drunk, and cry? Find some down-and-dirty bar where he could do the same thing and have the bartender call for a cab to take the sot home?
Besides, he was still staying at the Smith’s apartment. What was he going to do, sulk in the Smith’s spare bedroom and listen to the dinner-table chatter through the closed door?
And he was anxious to spend more time with Will Sayers. Who knew what the rotund editor would have come up with about Paul Skaggs between lunch and dinner?
Before leaving he dialed the number for Flo Combes in New York.
“I was hoping you’d call,” she said.
“I’ve been busy and—”
“You don’t have to explain, Robert. It’s just that I’m worried about you.”
“No need, sweetie. I’ll be fine. I’m staying at the Smith’s apartment. Remember them? You picked me up there after my tussle with that psychopath who tried to kill me.”
“How could I forget? They’re such nice people.”
“Things okay with you?” he asked.
“Things are fine. Negotiations with the bank for a loan to open the dress shop are stalled, so I’m cooling my heels while they straighten it out. In other words I’m free and can come down to help while you go through the mess you’re in.”
“Come to D.C.?”
“Yes. I know, I know; tough guy Robert Brixton doesn’t need anybody to help him. He’ll do it himself. But sometimes we need someone, Robert, at least somebody who cares. I’d really love to help.”
“Look, Flo, I appreciate the offer but—”
“Just thought I’d ask.”
He heard the tears in her voice.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
“I miss you, damn it! I wish that we were together again. I’m sorry for all the hateful things I said. I’m sorry that I called you a loser and a hopeless cynic and—I’m just sorry about everything.”
“Maybe when things blow over we can take a stab at it, Flo. Right now my head is swimming with Janet’s funeral, being suspended from the agency, the media chasing me, and trying to prove that the congressman’s son was with the suicide bomber in that café. I just can’t handle another complication.”
“I understand,” she said.
“I hope you do. Look, I’m sorry to cut this short but I have to run. I’m having dinner with the Smiths.”
“Okay. I just want you to know that I’m here for you, at least in spirit, and that … and that I love you.”
“I love you, too, babe,” he mouthed silently into the dead phone.
* * *
Brixton’s visceral reaction to Asal Banai when Mac Smith introduced her was that she was strikingly beautiful. Large brown eyes were set in a perfectly formed oval face the color of coffee with cream. Her pitch-black shoulder-length hair, carefully tended to frame her face, shone in the overhead lights. She was about five feet five inches tall. He surreptitiously took in her figure, the sort of body that stayed in shape without hours in a gym, rounded and firm, classic. Still, he detected a subtle sadness that came deep from within, source unknown.
Brixton figured that maybe before he arrived, Mac and Annabel had suggested to Sayers that the topic of the café bombing be avoided unless he raised it. They studiously ignored that subject, and Brixton was grateful for the opportunity to talk about other things. Asal may have been given the same suggestion, because she didn’t mention it during the initial conversations when, drinks in hand, they had settled on the terrace. The mood was kept lighthearted, with Sayers telling tales of when he’d been a reporter in Savannah and the characters there he’d run across.
It was Asal who shifted conversational gears after dinner, when she asked Brixton about homeland security and whether he thought the nation was adequately protected in light of the café bombing. Mac and Annabel’s expressions indicated that they weren’t sure what voicing that question would spur in Brixton. To their surprise—and relief—he enthusiastically opined about the terrorist threat to the nation and how he evaluated the government’s lame response.
“So you don’t think all these agencies and people make us safer?” Asal asked.
“Hell, no,” Brixton replied. “SITQUAL—the agency I work for, or did work for—is one of two thousand private companies charged with homeland security. Two thousand! Add them to the thousand of other government intelligence agencies in the business of protecting us from terrorists, and it becomes a joke. Everybody reports to the director of National Intelligence, and he reports to the president. You think he knows what the hell is going on? With more than three thousand separate agencies all doing the same thing and not talking to each other and turning out fifty thousand reports a year? He doesn’t have a clue. How could he?”
Mac Smith laughed. He and Annabel had become comfortable with Brixton’s cynical view of the government and how it worked, finding it amusing at times and almost always thought-provoking.
“What does SITQUAL stand for?” Asal asked.
“Ready for this?” Brixton said. “Strategic Intelligence Tasking. Don’t ask me what QUAL means. I think they decided they couldn’t just call it SIT because it sounds too much like a command you give a dog, so they tacked on the QUAL.”
“For ‘quality’?” Sayers asked lightly.
“If you say so.”
“It is part of the State Department?” Asal asked.
“We report to them,” Brixton said. “We’re supposed to gather info on people working at foreign embassies here in D.C. A couple of congressmen decided that staffers at the embassies might be infiltrating our security system and promoting terrorism, so they told State to add more investigators. Naturally, Congress wouldn’t give them more money to do it, so they outsourced it. State hired my buddy, Mike Kogan, to put together a group to keep tabs on these people.” He guffawed. “He hired all former cops. Mike’s a good guy, got us top-secret security clearances. You know how many people working on homeland security have top-secret clearances? Eight hundred and fifty thousand. That’s more than the whole population of Washington, D.C. Don’t think I’m telling tales out of school. The Post did the exposé, named names, laid it out for those who think we’re safer after nine/eleven because of the overkill.”
“The government always operates on the theory that if something’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing,” Sayers chimed in.
“Tell Asal why you left New York and came here to D.C. to work,” Mac suggested.
Brixton laughed. “It’s a long, sordid story, something to do with my roughing up the wrong person who worked for the Russian embassy in New York. He got drunk and pulled a knife on someone and then turned on me. They said I used excessive force. He’s lucky I didn’t break his neck. They even suggested I take anger-management courses. Can you believe that? Hell, I’m the original flower child. It was me that Joan Baez and Bob Dylan were singing about.”
Sayers laughed, shaking the table. “Robert Brixton,” he said, “the original flower child. Believe that and you’ll believe I’m a bathing suit model. Time for me to drag my bones home.
”
Asal also took the opportunity to call it a night.
“You can’t leave because you’re living here,” Annabel told Brixton.
“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, Robert,” Mac added.
“I know that, and I really appreciate it, but I made a pass by my apartment before coming, and the media types have departed. I think I’ll head back. Things to do.”
“Whatever you say,” Mac said.
Before he left, Sayers took Brixton aside. “I called Charlie McQuaid, the guy I told you about. He said he’d be happy to meet with you about Samuel Prisler. Here’s his number.”
Brixton packed his belongings, and he and Asal Banai left together ten minutes after Sayers. On the ride down in the elevator, he asked, “Up for a drink?” He wasn’t concerned about offending her Muslim background, because he’d noticed that she’d enjoyed wine during dinner.
“Oh, I don’t know, I…”
“Come on, just a quick one. I’ll drive you home after that.”
Her smile was welcoming. “All right,” she said.
They walked across the vast Watergate property and settled in a secluded corner of the infamous complex’s hotel bar.
“I’ve never been here before,” she said.
“I’ve stopped in a couple of times. Makes me feel like a D.C. mover and shaker.”
“Are you?”
“A mover and shaker? Afraid not.”
“I hope you don’t mind my saying that I know about your daughter and that I am very sorry for your loss.”
“No, it’s okay. I have to get used to it. Reality. That’s what it is, reality.”
“But so painful.”
“This helps,” he said as he lifted his martini to her. “Here’s to meeting you.”
She clicked the rim of her glass against his.
“I like your friend Mr. Sayers,” she said. “He’s funny.”
“Yeah, he’s always got a story to tell. He’s a good friend.”
“He’s helping you with…?”
“With the situation I’m in? You’ve read about it.”
“Yes. They say that the man you shot, the congressman’s son, wasn’t there when the explosion happened.”
“‘They’?”
“The newspaper and the television.”
“Newspapers and television are wrong. The congressman is wrong.”
“I believe you.”
“Glad to hear it. That makes two believers—you and Will Sayers.”
“The Smiths?”
“Oh, them, of course. The number is up to four. Mind a question?”
“A question about what?”
“The young woman who blew herself up. As hard as I try, I can’t even begin to imagine what could make her do that.”
Asal cupped her hands around her wineglass, and her expression became thoughtful. She said, “Are you asking me that because I am an Arab woman and should have some deep understanding of why another Arab woman would do such a thing?”
Brixton nodded. “I suppose I am,” he said.
“I could take offense at that question.”
“I don’t mean to offend you. I’m just trying to understand why my daughter is dead.”
“I don’t know why anyone does terrible things,” she said. “It is not only Middle Eastern terrorists who kill innocent people. There are hundreds of hate groups here in America that kill other innocent people. Your Ku Klux Klan is an example. The man who blew up the building in Oklahoma City is another. So many.”
“I know,” he said, “you’re right. Where were you born?”
“In Iraq.”
“You’re a Muslim?”
“I was raised in the Muslim faith but don’t practice any religion these days. I sometimes go to a Unitarian church near where I live. I like the minister there and what he preaches.”
“What does he preach?”
“To love and respect all living things.”
“Shame that suicide bomber didn’t hear a few of his sermons.”
“There is nothing in Islam that says you must kill innocent people. I respect my heritage and the religion I was brought up in, but I now live in America. People shouldn’t stereotype all Muslims because of the actions of a few.”
“Do you think I’m doing that?”
“I hope you are not.”
“I’ll try not to.”
As the conversation shifted to less-contentious topics, Brixton took the occasion to appreciate her physical beauty. Her occasional laugh was playful yet sensual, her voice pleasing with a touch of an accent. Funny that he never thought of Middle Eastern women as being particularly beautiful. He’d obviously missed something. There I go stereotyping.
She ordered a second glass of wine. It was a refill for Brixton.
“I didn’t think Arabs drank alcohol,” Brixton said. “Is that stereotyping?”
She laughed. “The very pious ones don’t drink alcohol, but liquor stores—alcohol shops, they’re called in Iraq—are very popular. Iraq is one of the most secular countries in the region. There was a time when Saddam Hussein was in power that most were shut down, but since he is gone, many have opened again. I have friends in Saudi Arabia, where to drink alcohol is punished severely. But when my friends travel, as soon as the plane takes off, they are asking the stewardesses for bourbon or Scotch. Or flight attendants, as they are called now.”
“I still call them stewardesses,” Brixton said. “That’s hypocritical if the Saudis punish people for drinking and then go ahead and drink themselves.”
“You don’t like hypocrisy, do you?”
“Who does? That’s why I got out of Washington years ago—couldn’t hack the hypocrisy.”
She changed the subject, either because she didn’t want to pursue it or because she had other things on her mind.
“Tell me more about what you do for the State Department. You work for…?”
“SITQUAL.”
“What do you do there?”
“Keep everyone at the embassies safe. Want to see my cape?”
“Your cape?”
“My Superman cape. Robert Brixton, savior of mankind, protector of the innocent and—”
Her laugh was more spirited this time.
“Funny?”
“You remind me of that man Rooney, who was on television every week.”
“Andy Rooney? I loved him. He told it like it is, pointed out all the stupid things we do, like texting while you’re driving. Can you believe that we have to have a law prohibiting people from texting while they drive, a law so that dunderheads behind the wheel know they shouldn’t do it? Pathetic!” He realized that he had gone off on a tangent and said, “Here I am mouthing off about things you couldn’t care less about. Tell me about you, Asal. What’s this organization you work for?”
“It is called the Islamic Partnership, a nonprofit agency. We have offices here in Washington and Baghdad. Since the American troops left Iraq, there has been a great deal of trouble. The Shiite majority oppresses the Sunni minority. We try to bring pressure on the Shiite government to be more inclusive.”
“You’re a Sunni.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes became moist for no apparent reason.
“Is something wrong?” Brixton asked.
“I am sorry. It is just that there are times when I think of my brother and—please excuse me.” She pulled a tissue from her purse and dabbed at her eyes.
“What about your brother?” he asked, not certain whether he should pursue what was obviously a painful subject.
“He is a prisoner in Iraq.”
“A prisoner? What’d he do?”
“He was born a Sunni.”
“And he’s a prisoner because of being born?”
“He’s a prisoner because he has stood up to the new Shiite government. When Hussein was in power, the Sunnis prospered. Now it is different. My brother led a protest group against the oppression of Sunnis. That is why he has
been taken a prisoner and remains in an Iraqi jail—no lawyers, no contact with anyone, including me.”
“There’s nothing you can do?” Brixton asked.
“I am doing what I can. A friend is helping me, but I do not know how successful he will be.”
“We never should have gone into Iraq. It was all based on a lie.”
“It is a shame that your President Bush didn’t agree with you.”
Brixton decided to get off politics and asked, “So what do you do with this partnership group of yours—raise money, that sort of thing?”
“We are always raising money. One of our major projects is bringing deserving young Arab women to the United States for education at your universities.”
They traded life stories, Brixton abbreviating his and hoping that he didn’t come off as a lunatic. There had been a lot of violence in his life, now that he thought about it. He realized how much he enjoyed spending time with this quiet, gentle woman whose soft voice was soothing.
His cell phone rang, and Brixton cursed under his breath. “I should have turned it off,” he said. “Excuse me.”
He went outside to take the call. Brixton railed against people who talked on their cell phones in restaurants.
“Robert, it’s Marylee. I don’t want you to forget the pictures for the funeral home.”
“I’ll be back home in an hour. I’ll gather up what I have and get them to you tomorrow.”
“And I don’t want the media there.”
“Look, Marylee, I’m doing everything I can to avoid the media. If they show up, there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t come.”
“I’ll forget you said that. Even if I didn’t come, there’s no guarantee the press won’t be there looking for me.” He heard a sigh. “I don’t want to get into an argument. You’ll have the pictures in the morning.”
“Important call?” Asal asked when he rejoined her.
“Nothing that couldn’t have waited until I got home.”
He looked at the cell phone that he still held in his hand. “I hate these things. You ever notice how everybody walks around with one glued to their ear, like they’re all really important, expecting a call from the president or some other big shot, or they sit staring at it hoping they’ll get a message that they won the lottery?” He placed his credit card on top of the check.
Margaret Truman's Undiplomatic Murder Page 11
