Prepared For Rage

by Dana Stabenow

  She'd formed the habit of going in to work early, because the Arabian Knight (when the secretaries over at admin found out he was royalty he'd had a new nickname before lunch, although the astronauts had several, much less complimentary ones) had taken to appearing promptly at eight a.m. each morning, ready to tolerate, if not with good humor then at least with equanimity, whatever indignities his infidel babysitter would inflict on him that day. She had begun to feel a faint hope that he might not, after all, kill them all on orbit.

  That morning he came to her with a request that, on the face of it, seemed innocuous. He would be doing daily television broadcasts from the shuttle, which would be launching on the day of the full moon. They'd be on orbit for eight days, which meant the moon would be visible toward the end of the mission. He wanted to observe the new moon during one of the broadcasts, which would naturally enough go out over

  the family network and appear on virtually every television screen in the Islamic world from Morocco to Indonesia.

  She took this first to Rick and then to Joel. Neither had a problem with it. "Anything that keeps him out of our hair," Rick said. So the request had been approved, and no one thought much more about it until two days later when they were going over the on-orbit schedule, revised now to accommodate the Arabian Knight's broadcasts, and Laurel said, "Wait a minute, isn't the moon a big deal in the Islamic religion?"

  No one on the Carnivore Crew knew. Joel was summoned, and he scurried away in search of the nearest imam, who when found allowed as how, yes, the moon was a big deal in the Islamic religion. Joel came scurrying back and Rick Robertson sat his royal pain in the ass down and went over the script for his lunar broadcasts word by word.

  The Arabian Knight was upset. "It's not even Ramadan!"

  "I don't care," Rick said later. "Nobody's issuing a call to prayer from one of my missions."

  He glared at Kenai, who thought of protesting that it wasn't her fault, and settled instead for a wooden "Yes, sir."

  The sooner they launched, the better.

  Cal laughed when she told him. "Who knew dating an astronaut would be this entertaining?"

  "Always glad to provide the light relief," Kenai said, yawning, and reached up to turn out the light. She tucked the receiver between her ear and the pillow and snuggled in.

  "Am I going to see you again before you light the candle?"

  She smiled to herself. Cal was coming along in astronautspeak. "I don't know. Probably not."

  "We still on for going away when you get back?"

  Her mind was filled with nothing but the mission, but she was willing to play along with the notion of a future after orbit. "How's your schedule looking?"

  "We'll be headed to dry dock in Alameda by the time you get back. Refit and repairs and then back to Kodiak."

  "Are you going north with her?"

  "Yeah, for another year."

  "And then where?"

  "Don't know yet."

  "What's on your dream sheet?"

  He smiled to himself. Kenai was coming along in Coastiespeak. "Not much, yet. I can't decide if I want another boat."

  "You went to the Academy, right? So you've got your twenty in?"

  "Yeah."

  "Do you want a shore job?" She couldn't decide if she liked the idea of him more available to her or not. Assigned to a ship, he would be gone on patrol half the time. It seemed to be working well for them so far. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

  "I don't know. I don't like doing the same thing over and over again, I know that much."

  "So, not another 378."

  "I don't think so. And no guarantee I'd get one anyway, in fact probably exactly the opposite. There are more people waiting for the captain's chair on a cutter than there are waiting for a seat on a shuttle."

  "Mmm. Where are you that you could call me, anyway?"

  "Can't say. BSE Brief stop for fuel."

  "And you're low on fuel why?"

  "Chasing go fasts."

  "Catch any?"

  "Not yet," he said grimly. "At this point we're all looking forward to the shuttle launch as the highlight of the patrol."

  MIAMI

  Six months. He had never stayed so long in one place before, not since he was a child in Pakistan. At first it made him uneasy. He'd kept his head down, reporting in to work every day without fail, keeping close to home in the evenings. His plan was already in place, his team was recruited and ready to move at a word from him, he had arranged their transportation. There was nothing now to do but wait. Waiting was good. His enemies might hope that he was dead, and the more time passed without word or deed from him, the more they would believe it.

  He'd seen on Irhabi's blog that Ansar was still looking for him. Which meant that the old man was still looking for him, because Ansar would be happy never to see Akil again, happy to step into the power vacuum left by Zarqawi's death. Akil had given some thought to the possibility that Ansar had been the one who had betrayed Zarqawi's location to the Americans, before dismissing the notion. Ansar simply hadn't the courage it took to betray a friend. Neither had he the intelligence to plan it.

  What he did have was the ambition to exploit the results.

  Akil didn't trust any of them. He had trusted Zarqawi because Zarqawi had stood by him, in spite of his not being Jordanian, in spite of his pioneering of the Internet, in spite of his refusal to lip sync his way through prayers with the rest of them. He'd never lied to Zarqawi. He could barely tell the difference between Sunni and Shia, and he didn't care if the whole world bowed toward Mecca. He hated the West for reasons of his own, and he would do everything in his power to bring it down. He'd proved it over and over again to Zarqawi, with the result that Zarqawi had trusted him completely, going so far as to make him his second in command, a signal honor in al Qaeda for the not Saudi- or Jordanian-born.

  He did not contact Ansar, or the old man, or anyone from the organization. He had let all previous email addresses lapse, so he could say with perfect truth that he had received no message recalling him to Afghanistan. When his mission succeeded, they would know where he was, or at least where he had been. Even the old man would be forced to judge his precious money well spent.

  So far as he could tell, the American authorities remained ignorant of his activities. He had seen nothing, in the Miami Herald he read every morning or on the television in his room or on Internet news web sites, that led him to believe that they even knew he was in the country. So far his cell was holding together, maintaining an admirable silence. Yussuf and Yaqub had done a good job of recruiting.

  There was a soft knock at the door. "Mr. Sadat? Dinner is ready."

  "I'll be right there," he said, and shut down his computer. He'd bought it to satisfy the curiosity of his landlady's daughter. He only rarely used it to access anything more alarming than a Hotmail account registered to an Isaac Rabin, which he used to subscribe to online versions of The NewYork Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Atlantic Monthly. Isaac Rabin belonged to Slate.com and iTunes, too, through which he downloaded news programs from NPR to his iPod. He'd also found a Baywatch fan podcast he listened to while taking ever-longer walks that were beginning to infringe on the edges of the Everglades.

  Somewhat to his own surprise, he liked Miami. It was a vibrant city, filled with color and light and just the right amount of civil corruption, or at least enough to make him feel right at home. Everything was available here, for a price, including anonymity.

  He left his room and went down the hall to the dining room to find Zahirah and Mrs. Mansour already seated. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting," he said, pulling out what had become his chair and sitting down.

  "You work too hard, Mr. Sadat," Mrs. Mansour said in scolding tones, and passed the pile of bread rounds, still hot to the touch. The tagine was spicy, and he tore the naan into shreds and mopped his plate clean.

  He sat back and Mrs. Mansour beamed at him. "I like to see a young man enjoy his food."

  "
I would be very hard to please indeed if I did not enjoy the food set before me at this table," he said.

  Zahirah smiled at him, and again he was struck at how much she reminded him of Adara. "Are you ready?"

  He drove the three of them to a nearby theater complex where they each bought their own tickets to a Will Ferrell comedy and went inside sedately to find seats. Halfway through the film he whispered, "Will you excuse me?" and slipped out.

  There was a coffee shop next door with an online computer free of charge to customers. He bought a latte with a shot of butterscotch syrup and waited tranquilly for the Goth gentleman with the black eye shadow and the multiple piercings to finish his purchase of a studded dog collar from an Internet store called Radiance Bound.

  Online, he accessed a remote server, ran through a number of fairly simple algorithms, another much more complicated one, and sent out several emails.

  He had mail waiting for him at a server in Canada. The cell was proceeding as ordered, slipping into Haiti one at a time, some through Mexico, some through Canada, a few even through Miami. They had no idea he was in Miami, of course.

  He knew a real temptation to join them, to be in at the kill, for once to be an eyewitness to all his work and worry, to see a plan of his very own come to fruition with his own eyes.

  It was impossible, of course it was. The chances of detection were high, the chances of survival very low. He had further work to do elsewhere. He could not waste the years of expertise he had accumulated for vanity's sake.

  Still, he thought wistfully, it might almost be worth the risk.

  Yussuf had reported in with his usual diffidence. Yaqub had written with his usual effusiveness, repeating that his life had had no meaning until Isa came into it. Akil distrusted such fulsomeness, but Yaqub had thus far proved trustworthy. If Yaqub survived the operation-extremely unlikely, in Akil's opinion-a more permanent place might be found for him. His would be a growing organization, after all.

  A tentative hand touched his shoulder. "Mr. Sadat, what are you doing?"

  He turned his head and saw Zahirah standing behind him, an expression of confusion on her pretty face.

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  The familiar tapping of slender heels preceded the equally familiar tap at his door. "Mr. Chisum?" Melanie's artfully tousled blond head came into view. "Mr. Labi on line one. He says it's urgent."

  After Omar Khalid was exiled to Tajikistan, Ahmed Labi was one of the few remaining agents fluent in Farsi and Arabic they had managed to keep in D.C, as opposed to the wholesale shipment of anyone with even a passing knowledge of any Middle Eastern language directly to Baghdad. Ahmed also had a working knowledge of Urdu, useful in Pakistan. "Ahmed, this is Patrick. What's up?"

  Ahmed's voice was tense. "I've got something. I think you should come down here."

  "On my way." Patrick hung up, put on his suit jacket, straightened his

  tie, and shot out his cuffs. He marched out into the outer office. "Melanie, you really must start using the intercom to let me know when I have a call."

  She said, perfectly calmly, "But I find out so much more when I can hear even a part of your conversations, sir."

  His mouth opened, and closed again.

  She held her serious expression for as long as she could, before it dissolved in a loud, joyous belly laugh. He stared, transfixed, as her creamy skin flushed; the line of her throat revealed when her head fell back, those lovely breasts outlined by the clinging blue of her sweater set. For a woman getting on forty, she had a lovely figure. He wondered how it would hold up divested of angora wool.

  He pulled himself together. Company ink, he reminded himself firmly, and marched out into the corridor with the spine of a soldier on parade. He'd reprimand her later. Not anything permanent, heavens no, just a verbal warning, a hint toward the desirability of discretion in the workplace.

  Oh, how he hoped she wasn't sleeping with Kallendorf.

  Two floors down he was sitting across from Ahmed, examining a sheaf of papers, printouts of emails and web searches. "They just popped up two days ago," he said, sounding almost as dazed as he looked. "It was like magic. One of the geeks was trying out a new search algorithm, looking for names and pseudonyms of people on the list. We totally lucked out."

  Patrick couldn't believe his eyes. "You're sure this is Yaqub Sadiq?"

  In answer Ahmed tossed a photo across the desk. "We tracked his IP address to an apartment in Toronto. That's a photo we took of him on the street outside. And you're gonna love this."

  He tossed another photograph to Patrick, and grinned. "That's his German passport photo."

  Patrick still couldn't believe it. "He actually used his own name?"

  Ahmed sobered. "If what you've learned is true, if Isa is operating independently of bin Laden, then he has to be recruiting from outside the organization. Al Qaeda has a pretty discriminatory recruitment process. Fanatics get in. Dummies don't. If it's like you said, Isa doesn't have that discretionary process to draw on anymore."

  Patrick still couldn't believe it. "Which means he's hiring morons?" Ahmed grinned, white teeth gleaming beneath a flourishing black mustache. "Let us say rather that young Yaqub Sadiq is very probably not the sharpest tack in the box." He stood up, cramming a wad of paper into his jacket pocket. "Wanna go for a ride?"

  15

  TORONTO

  Until now, his decision to join with Isa had seemed the single most romantic action of his life, a joyous response to a call to adventure. He cast off the shackles of home and family with a light heart-an added benefit was an escape from the increasing suspicions of Janan's husband-and followed where Isa led, first to England where he had thoroughly enjoyed seeking out and recruiting the young men who now looked to him and Yussuf like prophets, then to the camp in British Columbia where he had found the training much less amusing, and now to Toronto, where, using the identity papers their forger had prepared, he had found a job as a barrista in a Starbucks and rented a room in a boarding house.

  After a month he had moved in with Brittany, the blond night baker who provided the coffee shop's pastries. She was starry-eyed in love with him, and he with her, too, of course, that went without saying. He was particularly in love with her working nights, as it left her side of the bed free for a rotating cast of young women picked up across the espresso bar, attracted to his dark and (he fancied) dangerous good looks. He played fair, he told them firmly that his heart belonged to Brittany, but he did not discourage them from trying to change his mind.

  He'd never suffered from a lack of feminine attention, even in the more strict Muslim community of Düsseldorf in which he was raised. In England his eyes had been opened to the possibilities for casual sex in Western culture, but in Toronto he felt as if he'd discovered a gold mine.

  No, he'd never been more content, and he was grateful from the bottom of his heart to Isa for plucking him out of a world where the consequences for sex absent marriage could place one's life in literal peril. He was mindful of the debt he owed; he checked his email religiously, following Isa's diversionary instructions to the letter. He'd written them down, strictly against orders, but they were so complicated he was afraid he would forget them, and he'd taped the scrap of paper to the bottom of a drawer in Brittany 's jewelry box where, amid a tumble of rhinestones and sterling silver, it would surely never be found.

  Six months later he felt increasingly at home in the West, and it was a rude shock when he checked his email one evening and found the command to move on waiting for him. He went online and bought the ticket to Mexico City, and made reservations for the second flight, but the adventure seemed to have leeched out of his relationship with Isa. When Brittany came home the next morning, fragrant with yeast and sweat, and launched herself at him with her usual lusty joy, he made love to her with a single-minded ferocity that at first surprised her and then subsumed her. "Wow," she said after she caught her breath. "Where'd that come from?"

  "I love you," he said, rais
ing his head. "Let's get married."

  She looked surprised and pleased. She was also a little puzzled. "Why now?"

  He bent his head to kiss her. "I can't wait any longer."

  "I didn't know we'd been waiting," she said.

  He made love to her again without answering, and that afternoon they dressed and drove to Niagara and were married. It was a nondenominational service and therefore unrecognized in his religion, but he was nevertheless enchanted with the whole notion of Brittany forsaking all others but him so long as they both should live. They drove home and celebrated in bed, and she was late for work that night.

  Naked, he got up and went to Brittany 's computer and logged on to the Internet from home, something else Isa had strictly forbidden. He checked his email. Nothing more from Isa, but a message from Yussuf, a discreet reminder to bring currency, as all of their transactions after they bought their airplane tickets would be in cash.

  On impulse he emailed Yussuf back (also forbidden) to the same email address (again, forbidden). Suppose they didn't go?

  He had a reply less than an hour later. Four words. He will kill you.

  "He won't find me," he said out loud. Isa was brilliant, no question, but by his own orders Yaqub had assumed the alias on his forged papers, papers ordered and bought by himself and Yussuf. Isa had never seen them. He had deposited the modest (almost meager, he had thought at the time) stipend Isa had doled out before they parted into a credit union, and sank without a trace into Toronto 's millions. Again by Isa's orders, they communicated only by email, and that sporadically and from continually changing email addresses and computers. No phone numbers to trace to a physical location, no paper trail in a name Isa would know, a different IP address for each email. His identity appeared to be bulletproof. So long as he didn't draw attention to himself, he could live here indefinitely. As of today, he was even a married man. Children would undoubtedly follow. He smiled to himself. And as he was now married to a Canadian, Canadian citizenship would surely be that much easier to acquire.