The Blood of Patriots

by William W. Johnstone

  “Mr. John Ward, yes.”

  She felt a jolt of fear, then—she had just placed the receipts on the counter out front. Mrs. Fawaz had not yet gone through them. Her blouse clung to her sides, damp with perspiration. She knew now how her father felt, why he needed a new shirt.

  For the same reason? she couldn’t help but wonder. Because of these people?

  Fawaz sat back, his chair bending noiselessly. Angie remembered when it was delivered. That was one expensive chair, over a thousand dollars. She began to think of things like that: the Berluti shoes he wore, the Chanel eyeglass frames Mrs. Fawaz used for reading, the fine embroidery on her pantsuit.

  “May I ask what you talked about with Mr. Ward?”

  Angie exhaled. “Gosh.” She pretended to think back while really trying to relax. “Megan, mostly. That’s his daughter.”

  “Mostly. Not entirely?”

  “Let me think. He asked how my dad was.”

  “Even though he had just been to see him?”

  “Oh, had he?” She choked on the last word. She wanted to cry.

  “Angie, it is important that we know what he is doing,” Fawaz said. He sounded earnest, concerned. “Perhaps you are aware what your friend Mr. Ward did in New York?”

  “It was something about a guy selling things on the street,” she said. “One of my—our—customers mentioned it.”

  “John Ward accosted a Muslim,” Fawaz informed her. “He was accused of a hate crime and suspended without pay from the police force.”

  “Wow. That’s serious.”

  “Yes,” Fawaz agreed.

  “Was the man breaking the law?” She couldn’t picture John Ward pushing someone around without reason.

  “We will never know because the gentleman was not accorded due process. We believe that Mr. Ward has a great deal of anger toward my faith,” he touched a hand to his chest, above his heart. “We have hired someone to keep an eye on him, very legally of course, and—well, you saw what happened. Mr. Zarif was harassed by Mr. Ward and by the chief of police. It is an ugly thing, and a very difficult time to be a Muslim. Do you understand?”

  “I do.” She didn’t. Her family was Episcopalian yet her father was a wreck. Mr. Fawaz was Muslim and he was calm as her brother’s pet turtle.

  “Did he ask anything of you?” Fawaz went on.

  “To drop off his laundry on the way home.”

  “Nothing more?”

  She shook her head.

  Fawaz considered this. “All right, Angie. Thank you for your help.”

  “So I can go?”

  “Of course,” he said. “Only—when you leave later, two young men will be riding in the back of the van. Because of his hatred, Mr. Ward believes that we were somehow involved with the attack on Scott Randolph. We are concerned that Mr. Ward may try to do harm to our property in retaliation.”

  “I don’t believe that!”

  “He may have been what the police call ‘casing’ our holdings—the shop, the van. We cannot take that chance. We cannot put you in danger.”

  “Why don’t you just go to the inn where he’s staying and tell him all this? It’s not like he’s going to be in town for very long. Or tell the police chief.”

  “Those are wonderful ideas, of course, but it’s a point of law, really. We cannot go to Mr. Ward directly. That would appear provocative. He could say we threatened him. And the police chief will not act unless there is a misdeed. Do you understand?”

  She nodded. Whatever Ward thought was happening, Angie knew she was now in the middle of it.

  “Mr. Ward will, we suspect, ask to have a look inside the van,” Fawaz continued. “If he makes such a request, you will permit him to enter.”

  “With the men inside?”

  “That is right.”

  “Whoa! Are they going to hurt him?”

  “Not at all. They will protect our property and, if necessary, simply remind Mr. Ward that his attitudes have no place in civilized society.”

  God, why were things so confusing? Mr. Fawaz sounded like somebody being interviewed on the news, totally reasonable and friendly. Now, thinking back, she had to admit that Mr. Ward had seemed a little wound up. And Chief Brennan could be a dick. She had seen it herself when she and some of her friends had a party on the river during the summer. One of the girls was underage, but not all of them were. Brennan shouldn’t have made all of them go to the police station.

  But her father was agitated about something when she saw him at the bank. And he wasn’t a Muslim afraid of hate crimes.

  “The young men who will be riding with you are my son’s friends Hassan and Ali,” Fawaz told her. “I believe you know them.”

  “I’ve met them.”

  “They have been instructed not to distract you,” Fawaz assured her. “They will sit quietly in the back.”

  “Unless Mr. Ward wants to check out the van,” she said.

  “Exactly,” Fawaz said agreeably. “When you get to your house, the boys will phone and I will come and get them. Hopefully, they will not be needed and that will be the end of this unfortunate matter.”

  Angie managed a little smile as she got up. It was cheerfulness she did not feel. She didn’t know what she should be feeling—other than scared and worried about her father. Her fear increased as she took her break. She sat alone at a table in Papa Vito’s, back in a corner by the busted pinball machine. It was quiet at this hour, before dinner. She absently checked e-mails on her phone.

  She was starting to feel like a tennis ball, not just batted to and fro but sore. How did all this happen? Not just today, but to the town? Where did the friendliness go, the comfort, the sense of having a home and a plan?

  “You shouldn’t be having caffeine, girl,” she told herself after she went back for her free refill. It was like the Coke was the only stability she had. You drink it, you know what you’re getting. Not like her day... .

  She finished, then went outside and sat on the edge of one of the small tables out front. The sun was just starting to go down; everything was the color of a hot dog bun. She didn’t know why she thought that, but it made her chuckle. She watched as the shops across the street grew redder. A chill came almost immediately. When the sun went down, the mountains sent snowy cold to fill the vacuum.

  Angie turned to the dry cleaners and noticed Mrs. Fawaz. The woman was looking at her from behind the counter. It was a blank look, but somehow ominous. Angie answered with a strained twist of her lips that didn’t even resemble a smile.

  Something was definitely wrong here, and was probably going to get worse.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Yousef Fawaz’s manner changed the instant Angie left the office.

  His effort to appear unbothered vanished in a flurry of angry gestures. He pushed his chair back, stood, kicked the leg of his desk, thrust up his open hands in anger, rolled his fingers into fists, and rattled them as he paced. After a minute he sucked down a calming breath, picked up his cell phone, and called Gahrah.

  “We need to call off today’s delivery,” Fawaz said. He was still stalking the narrow length of the office, preparing himself for a fight with Gahrah.

  “Did she tell you anything?”

  “She doesn’t know anything,” Fawaz said. “I am not surprised. Ward had to know I would ask her about what transpired at the inn.”

  Mrs. Fawaz appeared suddenly in the doorway. “They are clean shirts, probably from the gift shop,” she said. “And they are Super Rush.”

  Her husband acknowledged with a nod. He returned to the phone conversation.”The clothes Ward gave her to clean haven’t even been worn. He wanted to make sure he saw her again this afternoon, on her way home.”

  “So he suspects there is something in the evening delivery,” Gahrah said.

  “Clearly. That’s why we mustn’t make an exchange today.”

  “And give in to his terror tactics?”

  “At least deliver the package later, or directly to the b
ank now, or in the morning,” Fawaz said.

  “No,” Gahrah said. “That will only postpone a showdown. This man will not give up so easily. For all we know the police chief is involved. She may watch us, flag us for some minor or contrived infraction as they did with Hamza. We must deal with him decisively and we must maintain the flow. And it is possible we can use this to our advantage.”

  “How?”

  “Tell the girl that if Ward wants to go into the van she is to let him.”

  “But I’ve already told her we do not wish him harm—”

  “And that is the face we will present to her,” Gahrah said. “I will instruct the boys what to tell Ward—that he is risking what is left of his reputation for something that is entirely in his mind.”

  “I don’t know if that will scare him,” Fawaz said. “Ward will want to know what they are doing there.”

  “Protecting our deliveries,” Gahrah told him. “For him to push further will make him the aggressor, put him in jeopardy with the law. That may be enough. When he came to see me this morning, Ward seemed—how to describe it? Not entirely convinced. Not committed. I could see that the money was speaking to him, the way it did with Mr. Dickson, though perhaps not loudly enough. If we add other voices, in a dangerous situation where he must act or withdraw, he will be persuaded to stop.”

  Fawaz was not entirely convinced. “We tried to go softly with the farmer too, and that did not work.”

  “The farmer was different,” Gahrah pointed out. “The farmer did not have another home to go to. He did not have another livelihood. He had no reason to bend. Ward is different.”

  What Gahrah said made sense, though it failed to factor in the imponderables of human nature. But the director was in charge. “We will do as you say.”

  “What time shall I send the boys over?” Gahrah asked.

  “At 4:30,” Fawaz told him. “The girl leaves here at 4:45. You are sure they will make an effort to talk to Ward?”

  “Talk is always preferable,” Gahrah said. “I will tell them what to say and I will tell them what they must hear. Why do you ask?”

  “We do not want the girl turning against us,” Fawaz said.

  “Do not worry about that,” Gahrah said. “We have leverage with her.”

  That was true. It was not pleasant to consider, but a war sometimes resulted in collateral damage.

  Gahrah praised the prophet and hung up. Fawaz lit a cigarette and sat for a long while after their conversation. He was not schooled in diplomacy. Until six months before he and his wife had been doing this same job in Mashhad, a city of over two million and the home of the Imam Reza shrine. Because of its holy nature, Mashhad is the nation’s tourist capital—and the reason Fawaz learned to speak many languages as a boy. Perhaps, had he the opportunity, he might have become a translator at an embassy or for a government minister. But poverty does not allow such opportunities and the family was incredibly poor.

  Fawaz’s father, a tailor, always said, “It is strange how Iran under the Shah was rich in material things and poor in spiritual matters.” When the Ayatollah returned from exile, the reverse was true.

  Now, in America, with the help of his childhood friend Aseel Gahrah, Fawaz and his wife were finally able to have both. He did not like all the violence; he liked it even less than Mahnoosh who felt that the infidels were getting no less than they deserved. But it was a means to honor the cause of jihad and to serve his own means as well, for in serving his ends he honored the Prophet who said, “Do not withhold your money, lest Allah withholds from you.”

  Ward would make his own fate, as each of us does.

  Grinding out his cigarette, Fawaz went to make room in the van for its passengers.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Ward might not be a working cop anymore, but his access to the FBI’s restricted database had not been canceled.

  An oversight, I’m sure, he thought. The Feds were too busy watching for hackers to pay attention to legitimate users who didn’t belong there.

  Ward found nothing surprising online about the Midwest Revitalization Initiative, which was itself surprising. They were organized in Illinois in 2009 with funding from several anonymous sources, none of which was flagged for suspicious dealings with terrorist-linked organizations. From his Terrorist 101 training in New York he knew that anonymity for property purchases was granted only in the case of domestic individuals who were contributing to religious institutions, or those religious institutions themselves. Without a hacker, that was a dead end for now. As for the board of directors, they were all of Middle Eastern descent and none had criminal records.

  The group had tried, at first, to buy properties in Skokie, Illinois, but were perennially outbid on properties by the Skokie Investment Corporation. The SIC had links to Israeli banks, which made sense: Skokie had a heavy Jewish population. The community wasn’t going to lose a war to the Arabs, not there. Basalt was their next, and so far only other location. Ward understood the symbolism of Skokie. But why here?

  The American heartland? That was possible, but it had to be more. Perhaps the proximity to Aspen, playground of the rich and famous. And if what he suspected were true, Aspen might make a lot of sense. A lot of private planes came in and out of that airport. He was willing to bet that a lot of the overseas flights and their big-spending passengers got relatively free passes at customs.

  Ward looked up some of the reports about the Muslims in the local paper, then checked the time. He thought about calling Hunter to tell him he would get Megan but decided against it. It was best if he stayed away from them for now. Joanne was kindling and he couldn’t seem to help causing sparks.

  He had a late lunch—or was it an early dinner?—at the counter of the empty diner and chatted with his waitress. Debbie Wayne was in her early thirties; she did not wear a wedding band and he guessed, correctly, that she was divorced.

  “The economy made the problems we were already having even worse,” said the attractive redhead.

  “What did your husband do?”

  “He drove a limo for a car service,” she said as she filled a sugar container that really didn’t need filling. “He still does, though bookings and tips aren’t what they were. We were planning on starting our own car company but ...” Her voice trailed off.

  “So have the Muslims been a good thing or a bad thing for Basalt?”

  She looked at him strangely. “That just went from chitchat to something else.”

  “Did it?”

  “You a P.I. or something?”

  “Why, no one else talks about the Muslims?”

  She snickered. “That’s all anyone talks about. That and how broke we are. I don’t know. You just got that look, you know.”

  “Oh? What’s ‘that look’?” he asked around a bite of grilled cheese.

  “Your eyes don’t wander, you dress kind of city, and you actually listen when women talk.”

  He chuckled. “I’m not a private investigator, though I used to be a cop in New York until I was accused of—”

  “You’re him!” she said, pointing at Ward. “I heard some of the regulars talking about you at breakfast the other day. Then I caught a little of it on the car radio.”

  “Now I know how Lindsay Lohan feels.”

  “No, it’s a good thing,” she insisted. “I don’t know if it helps, but the folks that morning were on your side all the way.”

  “Actually, that means a lot,” he said.

  “So I was kind of right, about you being a P.I.”

  “Kind of,” he admitted.

  “What’s your interest in our situation?”

  “My daughter lives in Basalt so I was just curious.”

  “With her mother?”

  He nodded.

  Debbie refilled his Coke. “Just curious, huh? I think it’s a little more than that.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “Don’t know. But working here you develop a good ear for ‘lines,’ and that
sounds like one.”

  He smiled again. “Maybe a little.”

  “How’d your daughter end up in Basalt?”

  Ward told her. About halfway through he realized this wasn’t like talking to Randolph or Chief Brennan. The woman was paying attention to him, not just his story. It felt good and it took Ward’s mind off his objective for the first time since he went over the ridge the other night. He asked—hopefully with more subtlety than he had about the Muslims—if she were seeing anyone.

  “Not a soul,” she replied. She wrote her phone number and, after a moment, added her address on the back of a check. She pushed it across the counter. “I hope you don’t think I’m being bold.”

  “I’m from New York,” he reminded her.

  Her mouth twisted. “Dating’s a problem when you know half the eligible men in town and wish you didn’t, and the other half can’t even afford pay cable.”

  “Right now I can’t afford basic cable,” he said.

  “But I bet you know who to talk to so you can fix that.”

  He smiled. “As a matter of fact—”

  “God, I want to visit New York. I see it a lot on TV. It looks exciting.”

  “It is that,” Ward agreed.

  “It’d be nice to get shown around there by someone who knows where things happen.”

  “Pretty much on every street corner, at some time or another,” he said.

  “There, see what I mean? I like cities. I want to go to one.”

  “Hold on,” Ward said. “If you’ve never been to a city, how do you know you’ll like them?”

  “I watch a lot of CSI shows,” she explained. “They’re alive, energetic. Not like here. Hey, you can watch with me and tell me what’s real and what isn’t.”

  “I could do that.”

  “Anyway, I’m home nights. I have a second job from six to ten.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I take phone calls,” she said.

  Ward’s throat dried a little. “Oh,” he croaked.

  She struck a sacred pose, eyes up-turned, hands together. “I am none other than Madam Night Sky on the Native American Psychic Call Line.”