Nuclear Surprise

by Rob Carnell

  He went up the stairs into his room making sure the stairs and landing were deserted. Then he went out the window onto the fire escape landing and lowered the ladder to Geraldine who quickly scaled the steps. The ladder sprang back into place and they made sure they were quiet inside.

  The pair had spent more than a dozen nights together here in their six month liaison.

  As they lay cuddled close together Geraldine had an idea.

  "Have you ever been to Maine?" she asked.

  "Actually, in the United States, I have never been outside Boston."

  "Good. It is time we spent a weekend away together. I know just the place" giggled Geraldine.

  They both finished lectures early the following Friday. Geraldine pulled up outside the Brotherhood building in her old car. Kamal was already waiting for her.

  "Hi Kamal, would you like to drive?" asked Geraldine with a beaming smile.

  "I am sorry, but I cannot drive a stick-shift" said Kamal who was quite embarrassed.

  "Don’t worry I will give you some lessons when we get to Maine. There are lots of quiet roads up there."

  Kamal threw his small bag into the back seat and they slowly drove north in Geraldine’s battered old yellow Volkswagen. Kamal couldn’t help thinking that the car sounded a lot like his mother’s sewing machine! He cast his mind back to some old newsreel footage he had seen on television of Hitler riding in a Volkswagen.

  Geraldine knew the eastern states quite well having been born in Vermont, and set course for Maine. This part of the coast was beautiful and had the added benefit of perhaps being the lobster capital of the world. This worked well since this was Geraldine’s favorite food.

  "You will just love Maine. I guarantee you will get the best lobster you have ever tasted in a little town called Wells" bragged Geraldine.

  Unfortunately, Geraldine had neglected to ask Kamal if he even ate lobster. In fact, Geraldine had no idea at all about Islam and the religious practices observed by its devout followers.

  After a couple of hours cooped up in the small car, they pulled into a little place just off the road through Wells. It was a timber shack right on the ocean. She hurried inside.

  Geraldine pointed to the lobsters in the tanks with their claws securely clamped with a stout rubber band. Each tank had different sized lobsters. They started at one pound and went up from there.

  "How big a lobster can you eat?" she asked excitedly.

  "Geraldine, I don’t eat lobster" explained Kamal.

  "Nonsense, I will order you the pound and a half serving."

  Kamal was not happy, but decided that sex with Geraldine held a much higher priority than his religion at this particular point in time. Priorities were important to Kamal.

  They sat down at a long wooden table. Overhead there were rolls of paper towels strung on a wire to assist in cleaning up lobster juice from the fingers.

  It did not take long for the steaming lobsters to arrive. They were served on large plates with a little coleslaw, some fries, and a beer.

  Kamal just looked at the big red thing on his plate.

  "Don’t be embarrassed, I know there are no lobsters in Riyadh! Here, let me show you how to eat it!"

  "First you hold it like this, then twist the tail section" the tail came off in Geraldine’s hand.

  "Next, you put a fork into the tail bit and pull out the flesh like this." It looked simple the way Geraldine did it. Kamal was surprised with her dexterity.

  When all the meat was stripped from the now bare carcass he could no longer delay the inevitable. He cut off a bit and dipped it into the butter sauce as instructed. Then he bit off a small piece.

  At first he chewed the crustacean gently, unsure how horrible the taste would be. But, he was astounded. The firm white flesh was sweet, quite unlike anything he had ever eaten before.

  It was undoubtedly the most exquisite taste sensation he had ever experienced.

  He had also seldom tasted alcohol and certainly never beer. But, Kamal decided that this was probably not the time to mention that both lobster and alcohol were forbidden to his strict religious upbringing.

  After lunch, they used lots of the paper towels to clean themselves up before retiring to the bathroom to complete the job. Eating lobster was messy work, but well worth the effort!

  Chapter 12

  Ocean View Motel

  Wells, Maine

  24 Years Ago

  * * *

  "WHAT DID you think of lunch?" asked Geraldine while they strolled back to the Volkswagen hand in hand.

  "It was not what I expected!"

  "What did you expect?" asked Geraldine

  "I am not sure, but I guess I expected it to taste terrible!"

  The drive to the small motel was only a couple of miles.

  Geraldine checked into the small room paying cash in advance. She signed in using a false name since she was still nervous of what her girlfriends would say if they knew about Kamal.

  Kamal grabbed the suitcases from the car.

  She looked so beautiful with those flowing red locks. They made love immediately.

  As they lay in each others arms afterwards, Kamal decided that now was the time to explain a little more about Islam. It was his duty to at least try and explain his religion to unbelievers, and to maybe convert the occasional infidel.

  Kamal broached the subject gently, but it did not take long for Geraldine to become agitated.

  "That is ridiculous who could ever live with all those rules?" asked Geraldine as she began to laugh.

  "You must not laugh at my beliefs!" said Kamal sternly.

  This brought even stronger laughs from her.

  "If you believe all that shit, you are weird."

  "Silence woman, you will not disrespect Allah."

  "Who do you think you are talking to, your dog? Spat Geraldine.

  "Shut up woman!"

  "I don’t believe this. I don’t know you at all. We are done" said Geraldine with finality, "I am out of here".

  She rose and started to pack her bag.

  "Sit down, I am not finished!" commanded Kamal.

  "I don’t give a flying fuck if you are finished or not. I am leaving! Find your own way back home."

  Kamal grabbed her by the left arm, but Geraldine countered with a stinging slap across Kamal’s face with her right hand.

  The red rage swept across Kamal’s face and Geraldine realized that this situation was getting out of hand. She was scared. She went to run across the room but Kamal grabbed her and threw her on the bed. To stop her from screaming, he held a pillow over face. Time seemed to stand still for Kamal. What seemed like just a few seconds was in reality much longer. He had never had to deal with an uncooperative woman before, but his teachings were quite specific on how to handle this eventuality. It was the man’s duty to train the woman and he could rule with an iron hand.

  When her screaming and thrashing stopped, Kamal decided he would continue their conversation. However, when he removed the pillow and he saw the wide unseeing eyes, he realized he had made the biggest mistake of his young life. He had never learned to do CPR, but he made a vain attempt anyway. He neglected to tilt the head back to hyper-extend the neck and open up the airway. There was no reaction and it quickly became evident that Geraldine would argue no more.

  Kamal had no remorse. In fact he was furious with her. It was her fault entirely. She should not have mocked his faith.

  Not sure what to do, he slipped from the room and made a call on a nearby pay phone to Roy, his terrorist contact in the U.S.

  "Roy, I have a problem" began Kamal, who quietly explained the whole mess.

  "You did the right thing. Women must be shown their place. They have no right to question their man. Lock the door and wait for me. I will be there as soon as I can."

  Kamal was sobbing. He could not believe what he had done to the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She still looked beautiful lying peacefully on the bed with her red hair s
hining. He was strangely excited and he made love to Geraldine one last time.

  Not quite sure why, Kamal removed a small pair of scissors from his bag, and cut off all Geraldine’s hair. He put this in a plastic bag and hid it in his jacket pocket.

  Roy arrived four hours later with another man who did not speak. His tongue had been cut out during torture in the Iran/Iraq war.

  There was a small rowboat attached to the roof of their old maroon colored Ford Taurus.

  They quietly wrapped Geraldine’s body in a black plastic bag they had brought with them, and transferred it into the trunk in the dead of the night.

  Then they drove to a deserted spot on the coast. Roy unpacked some tools from the trunk and laid them on the ground next to the body in the bag. Next, at Roy’s command, they all stripped naked.

  "Kamal, you must learn to fix your own problems" explained Roy.

  "Cut up the body" he ordered.

  "I could never do that. I love her" said Kamal with a bowed head.

  "If you don’t then if you are caught you will be executed or spend the rest of your life in jail. It is your choice. Choose wisely." said Roy rationally.

  Eventually Kamal realized that he had no other choice.

  Tears were streaming down his face as Kamal began to cut at Geraldine’s neck with his hunting knife. It was much more difficult to do than he had expected, he seemed to saw for hours before her hairless head finally separated and rolled across the wet ground.

  Roy and the other man then drew their knives and dismembered the rest of the body.

  They lifted down the rowboat from the top of the car. Inside was a lobster trap. Roy threw all the body parts except the head into the trap. They followed this by a few bricks to add weight. The other man put the boat in the water and put the trap inside. He rowed about half a mile offshore and threw the trap weighed down by the bricks over the side to feed the local lobster and crab population. They figured most of the flesh would be gone before morning anyway. The trap was rusty and it would soon breakup scattering the bones across the ocean bed.

  The three men then went for a quick dip in the icy ocean to remove any blood and re-dressed.

  Roy wrapped the head in another plastic bag and put it in the trunk of his car then drove them back to the hotel.

  "Where are the keys to the girl’s car?" asked Roy.

  "I am not sure. I think they are in Geraldine’s handbag inside the room."

  "Get them. While you are there wipe down anything you touched to remove your fingerprints."

  Kamal took a few minutes to wipe down the door knobs, bathroom taps and the bedhead. He found the handbag and brought it together with their other belongings out to Roy’s car.

  Kamal gave Roy the keys, who in turn tossed them to the other man. Kamal rode with Roy.

  They drove for an hour in convoy before they pulled into the woods and buried Geraldine’s head in a deep hole.

  Kamal was comforted on the drive home by the feel of Geraldine’s red hair in the plastic bag in his pocket.

  By the time they made it back to Boston it was morning. They parked the Volkswagen in the car park of a mall and then drove Kamal back to the Brotherhood building.

  Back at the motel in Maine, the maid cleaned the empty room and unknowingly erased all remaining DNA evidence.

  The next day Kamal was sitting quietly on his bed and spotted the bag containing Geraldine’s long red hair. He had thrown it on his desk when he unpacked his pockets before going to bed.

  He opened the bag and kept running his fingers through the soft hair.

  Later that day he took the hair to a custom jewelry manufacturer. The craftsman designed an amazing gold bracelet with the hair woven into the piece. The bracelet would take 6 weeks to make, and would become Kamal’s most treasured possession.

  Chapter 13

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  Cambridge, Massachusetts

  24 Years Ago

  * * *

  HALF WAY through a mathematics class two men in ill-fitting suits entered and strode to the front of the room.

  "I am detective Mike Slattery" said the older shorter man.

  "I am detective O’Brien" said the younger man who could have been a linebacker in another life.

  "We are investigating the disappearance of a student by the name of Geraldine Flynn" explained detective Slattery.

  "Has anyone seen her recently?" asked O’Brien.

  One of the girls piped up and announced "She hasn’t been to class for a few days."

  "How long exactly?" asked the big guy.

  "I don’t think she has been to class all week" replied the girl.

  "Anyone else seen her?" enquired O’Brien.

  When there was no more information forthcoming from the students, Slattery walked to the front of the room and placed a handful of business cards on the desk "if any of you think of anything at all that might help us find Geraldine, please call me."

  Ten minutes after the detectives left, Kamal’s heart was still racing. He thanked Allah that the bracelet was not scheduled to be complete for some time yet.

  Chapter 14

  Boston Muslim Brotherhood

  Cambridge, Massachusetts

  24 Years Ago

  * * *

  THERE WAS a feint pounding on the door while Kamal was in the shower. He thought it was the caretaker, so he opened the door wrapped in only a towel.

  Kamal tried to hide his surprise when detectives Slattery and O’Brien barged straight in.

  "What are you doing here?" asked Kamal trying to sound in charge.

  "How about we ask the questions lover boy?"

  "All right, I understand. Go ahead and ask whatever you want. Just let me dress first."

  The detectives made no attempt to leave Kamal alone as he quickly pulled on his clothes.

  "Why didn’t you tell us at school yesterday that you were Geraldine’s boyfriend?" asked O’Brien.

  "But I am not her boyfriend" said Kamal unconvincingly.

  "We checked around. It seems Geraldine’s friends have heard about her mysterious lover, and you go sailing with her all the time. We put one and one together and we came up with you as Don Juan" explained Slattery falling into the good guy routine.

  "Where is she, what have you done with her?" asked bad cop O’Brien.

  "I have no idea what you are talking about" said Kamal sounding as indignant as he could.

  "Then you won’t mind letting us take your fingerprints to compare them against her car that we found in a mall parking lot" said bad cop.

  "Be my guest. What would be the point of that? Geraldine often picked me up and we went to the river together. We sailed a boat together."

  "Ok, I guess that explains it" said good cop Slattery.

  "Where were you last weekend?" asked O’Brien.

  "Why I was here all weekend of course. We have exams next month. I was studying" explained Kamal.

  "And the other students here will confirm that I guess?"

  "I expect so, but I did spend most of my time here in my room."

  "Did you eat with the others?"

  "I don’t really remember. I know I had a pizza one evening."

  "And you deny being Geraldine’s boyfriend?" asked Slattery.

  "Of course I do, we were just friends, that’s all. Besides she was not Muslim anyway" said Kamal.

  "What do you mean was?" asked O’Brien sharply.

  "Is or was. Either way she is not Muslim, so we could not be together" explained Kamal trying not to dig a larger hole for himself.

  "Don’t leave town" said O’Brien "Here is my card. Call me if you mysteriously remember anything you want to tell me."

  The two detectives walked silently to their car. They knew never to discuss a case until they were out of earshot.

  The older Detective Slattery asked O’Brien, "What do you think of Pashwari?"

  "I think he knows lots more than he is telling us. My gut tells me that
this he is up to his neck in this. Maybe this guy even murdered the girl and hid her body" said bad cop O’Brien, "what do you think?"

  "I think you will make a very good detective" said the older policeman. "But until the girl turns up either alive or dead we move on to the next case."

  When they got back to the station O’Brien wrote up his case notes and these were entered into the police computer.

  He noted that Kamal Pashwari was a person of interest in the case, but stopped short of calling him a murder suspect.

  Kamal revisited the jewelry store two weeks later and picked up his bracelet containing the woven locks of Geraldine’s hair. He never ever took it off after that day.

  Chapter 15

  Tropicana Casino

  Atlantic City, New Jersey

  23 Years Ago

  * * *

  IT WAS difficult for Kamal to settle back into university life without Geraldine. He tried never to show it outwardly, but his fellow Islamic students at the Brotherhood suspected correctly that Kamal was actually quite depressed.

  He needed to do something different as he seemed to have fallen into a rut. One day at the cafeteria in M.I.T. Kamal overheard some mathematics students talking about how they were winning money in casinos. It seemed they had developed a way to count the exposed cards at Blackjack and they had developed a winning system of play.

  Kamal went to the M.I.T. library and found a book written by an ex IBM mathematician called Dr. Julian Braun. It hypothesized a method of playing Blackjack to win money with a minimum of risk. Kamal had no need of additional funds, but needed some excitement in his life. He practiced every night until it was second nature to him and decided now was the time to try out his new skill.