The manager sneered again. ‘Do you need any help, boy? If so, that will cost you more.’
Amil shook his head, now feeling anger at how the man was humiliating him. ‘No, I do not need your help. I am quite able to do what must be done.’
The manager laughed. ‘Maybe so, but it will be your fault if you do something wrong over the next hour. Not mine. The time is paid for. Not anything else.’
Amil watched as the man walked away, and when Amil felt like he was no longer being observed he went to work.
~ * ~
From his inside pocket again, Amil took out his directions, put the paper down next to the keyboard, smoothed it out. With fingers now seeming as thick as tree, trunks, he started tapping at the keyboard, following the directions, feeling the twisted feeling in his guts ease away as the Sudanese’s directions worked with no difficulty, as he set up the computer to do what had to be done. He remembered, during one of the sessions, asking the Sudanese why he was being sent to do what seemed to be a simple task, and the Sudanese had replied, ‘Some of us are well known. We need to stay in the villages, in the forests, in the mountains. A young man such as yourself ... with no history, no record, he can do much.’
And of course, that had made much sense.
There. It was time.
He took out the black rectangular piece of plastic, remembered what the Sudanese had called it. A disk. But weren’t disks round? And this one was square! And was it true what the Sudanese had said, that so much information, so many words - and even pictures! - could be stored on such a thing?
He looked around the computer, found the slot that the disk went in, and inserted it. And as the Sudanese had predicted, there was a humming and a clicking noise, and when that noise ended, Amil continued, his fingers no longer seeming so thick and awkward.
On the screen something was now displayed and, reading with some difficulty, he saw that, again, the Sudanese was telling the truth. There were little cartoons on the screen, each with a number, from one to twenty, and the Sudanese had said that each little cartoon meant a photograph. And Amil had said, what kind of photographs? And the Sudanese had said, ‘Of flowers. Trees. Mountains.’
Amil had been disappointed. Pictures? That was all he had to do? Send pictures to some other computer in some other part of the world?
And the Sudanese had laughed with delight. ‘Not to worry, my son. You see, there is an infidel trick we have learned. Like a game or a puzzle. Even in a photo of a flower, an innocent-looking flower, there can be an important message hidden.’
In a picture? he had asked. How?
The Sudanese had shaken his head. ‘Not for you to worry. It is enough that you know that these pictures are much more than pictures. They are messages to our brethren, important messages that must be sent.’
Now Amil went to work again, setting up e-mail messages, with an address that meant nothing to him - a string of numbers and letters - and he laboriously went through the instructions, somehow setting up a way where a message sent across the computer lines or wires or whatever they were would also carry the pictures that were represented by the little cartoons. The Sudanese had earlier led him through this process, over and over again, and it reminded him of the long days at the madrassa, sitting cross-legged on the floor, chanting the verses from the Koran. Amil was not sure of how the Prophet, God bless His Name, would think of these complicated machines, but Amil hoped that his work today would find favor.
There. One message sent out. One of twenty.
Nineteen more to go.
He flexed his fingers, surprised at how tired they seemed, for the work was not physical yet was hard enough. Strange how that would be.
Time for another message.
He went back to work.
~ * ~
And later Amil looked up at the timer. Eight minutes to go, and only three messages left. It had gone smoothly and there was plenty of time left to do the last messages, and as he bent over the keyboard - his fingers now quite stiff - he heard some raised voices and the opening of the door. He looked up at the cafe’s entrance.
Two uniformed policemen were there.
He stopped, hands frozen over the keyboard.
And he could not believe it, but they were the two same policemen he had seen earlier, with the fierce mustaches and the wooden staves. He felt something gurgling at the back of his throat. Caught! But how? Did the policemen follow him here, did they know what he had been doing, how he had been contacted by the Sudanese?
And was his work here a failure? Before he could even finish it?
The policemen were now looking in his direction, talking to the cafe manager who was frowning. Amil tried to swallow, found his tongue was as dry as the dust outside his home. He forced himself to look away, to get back to what he was doing.
He looked up at the clock.
Just six minutes left.
Back to the keyboard, don’t look up at the clock. Send out the e-mail message.
Two left.
The voices of the policemen seemed louder. They seemed to be walking towards him.
Time. Four minutes left.
God is great, he said over and over again to himself, God is great, God is great, God is great.
The policemen’s voices were louder, there was no doubt.
They were coming closer to him.
Another e-mail successfully sent.
One left.
A glance up at the clock.
One minute.
His fingers typed out the e-mail address, and he cursed himself.
A mistake.
Erase and try again.
There. Complete.
Put the blinking little arrow over the send button and—
Click.
He looked up at the clock.
All four numerals read zero.
He looked up and saw the two policemen. Saw that they were standing only a meter or so away, and they were ignoring Amil.
Yes, they were ignoring Amil. They were talking and smiling to the two young blonde European women, the whores whose nipples were showing stiffly through their thin shirts. Hand shaking, Amil pushed the button on the side of the computer that released the disk, and he placed it back into his robe. He got up, swaying just a bit, for his legs seemed weak, and his clubfoot even more sore.
He limped his way past the policemen, smelling either their cologne or the scent of the European whores, and he went to the manager, who just nodded.
‘I am done.’
The man shrugged. ‘Is there anything else?’
‘No,’ Amil said.
‘Then that’s it.’ And the man turned away, and for a moment Amil was tempted to grab the man’s shoulder and wheel him around and speak to his face, saying, don’t treat me like that, you scum. Don’t you know what has just happened here, in your little place, a place that is obscene and should be burnt to the ground? A holy warrior came here, on jihad, and all you do is turn around and—
No, he thought. Remember what the wise Sudanese said. Do not bring attention to yourself. Leave as quickly as possible.
Which is what he did, and he gasped again, going out into the hot day, back to the noise and dust and people out in the street, just a few more things to do, and then he would be done.
Amil walked along the crowded sidewalk until he found a grated opening at the side, for drainage, and he bent down as if to adjust a sandal, and he let the black plastic square fall into the stench-filled sewage. There. He stood up and kept walking, and as he walked he carefully tore up the piece of paper with his instructions until the little pieces were thick in his hand, and when he came to a series of trash bins, he scattered the pieces of paper amongst the piles of smelly trash, fat flies buzzing in and around.
Amil kept walking, his heart light, even his clubfoot not aching as much, and as he repeated, over and over again, Allah akbar - God is great - he remembered the last thing he had said to the Sudanese, two days ago, when he had asked if wh
at he would do this day in that strange place, that Internet cafe, would make a difference, would strike a blow against the infidels.
And the Sudanese had squeezed his shoulders.
‘Yes,’ the Sudanese had said. ‘You will have struck a mighty blow against the Jews and infidels in America.’
And will some die, he meekly asked, after this task is done?
‘Many will die,’ the Sudanese had said.
And, shyly, he had asked, sir, could you tell me how many? Hundreds? Thousands?
And Amil had thrilled to the answer of the Sudanese, who had grasped his young hand.
‘Millions, my warrior,’ he had said in a fierce voice. ‘Millions.’
~ * ~
CHAPTER THREE
Just outside Greenbelt, Maryland, there are a series of office parks that stretch out like a series of glass and steel veins from the mighty concrete and asphalt arteries of I-95, traveling from Maine to Florida. One office park, called Lee Estates - for which the developer had received vicious criticism when the project was first constructed, from civil rights activists who were sure the place was honoring Confederate General Robert E. Lee - boasted a number of buildings, home to software developers, medical imaging companies, a temporary employment agency and, in one smaller building set off from the rest, an outfit called Callaghan Consulting. The building looked like a converted New England colonial-style home, complete with black shutters and narrow windows, and on this May morning Brian Doyle strode up to the quiet structure, yawning. It had been a late night the night before, and it looked like a long day was ahead, and he was not in a good mood. Thirty-five years old, a native of Queens, Brian was a detective first grade in the NYPD and still wondered how he had pissed God off so much that he had ended up here in Maryland.
A minute earlier he had parked his rental car in a parking lot set fifty yards away from the small building, and then made his way up a narrow sidewalk that led to the front entrance of Callaghan Consulting whose premises had been built underneath a number of tall oak trees. There were circular concrete planters around the perimeter of the house, and the sidewalk was flanked with odd-shaped recessed lighting with grillwork, and before entering the house one passed through an arch-shaped white trellis that boasted fake red roses and vinery. An uneducated observer would think that this small building had been set up by someone with an odd and kitschy taste in architecture and landscaping.
An educated observer - like himself, Brian thought grumpily - would know something else: the concrete planters prevented a truck bomb from being driven through the front entrance, the isolated parking lot prevented a car bomb from taking out the building, the way the building had been built under trees, was to prevent hijacked aircraft from getting a good read of the building’s location, and the sniffing devices hidden in the lighting determined if visitors were bearing any explosives, and the metal detectors in the trellis announced what those visitors might be carrying before they came through the front door.
Which Brian now did, meeting the next line of defense, a twenty-something woman named Stacy Luiz, who sat behind a wide wooden desk set on thin legs. She gave him a big smile as he came through the door and he smiled back. A nice way to start one’s day, even if it was on a Sunday morning.
‘Good morning, detective,’ she said. She wore a tiny microphone headset that looked out of place in her thick auburn hair, and held a small redialing device in her left hand. She had on a yellow dress that showed a nice expanse of cleavage, and because of the way her legs were placed under the desktop the dress displayed a lot of leg as well. There were no chairs or coffee tables stacked with Time and Newsweek and Adweek, for Callaghan Consulting discouraged visitors, and Stacy - dressed as she was - was also part of the discouragement process. The way she was positioned, the way she was dressed, was to stop men — even dangerous men, men who were on a mission - just for a precious second or two as they came through the door, and give her enough time to use her other hand, her carefully manicured right hand, which Brian knew right at this instant was wrapped around a Colt Model 1911 .45 semi-automatic pistol in a middle drawer of the desk.
Earlier on during his assignment with this oddball group, Brian had made clear his interest in seeing Stacy in a more relaxed, out-of-work setting, and she had eagerly taken him up on it, only insisting that she would pick the day and place. The day had been a Saturday, the place had been the indoor shooting range at the Berwyn Rod & Gun Club in nearby Bowie, and in the space of a half-hour she had out-shot him in every type of target and environment. That had been their first and last away-from-work encounter.
‘Still carrying that nine-millimeter piece of junk?’ Stacy called out as he walked past her desk to the short hallway behind her. Office doors lined each side of the hallway where some of the support staff worked.
‘It’s a lightweight piece of junk, compared with the cannon you’re carrying,’ Brian said, smiling back at her, seeing the carefully hidden consoles on the other side of the desk that gave immediate readouts from the explosives and metal detectors outside.
Stacy laughed. ‘I know how to carry it, and how to use it, and that’s all that counts.’
He yawned again. Up to the door at the end of the hallway, a door that looked like wood, which it partially was: wood covering metal. At the lock near the doorknob, he punched in the number combination and let himself in. The door opened to reveal a small wood-paneled room housing an elevator with exactly one button. Brian got in, pressed the button, and felt that little surge in his stomach as the elevator went down into the Maryland soil.
The door slid open. Brian went out and through another door, along a short hallway, and into a small conference room. There were six chairs around the table, and three were already occupied. He nodded at the other people in the room and sat down, sprawling out his legs. One of the two remaining empty chairs awaited whatever guest might be attending this morning, and the other, at the head of the conference room table, was reserved for their team leader. Who was always late, and who had an office out at the other end of the underground complex, along with the other team members. Coffee and juice and pastries and doughnuts were set in the middle of the table. On the far wall was a thin plasma screen, displaying nothing save a pale blue light. Laptops were set up in front of the other three participants, and Brian didn’t feel guilty that his own laptop was locked up safely in his own little cubicle.
At his left was Montgomery Zane, a black guy about his own age who was about the same height as Brian but who easily had fifteen pounds on him, all of it muscle around his neck and shoulders. He had on a dark blue polo shirt and grunted a greeting as Brian sat down, the good side of his face toward him. The other side - the left side - of Monty’s face had ripples of burn-scar tissue running down to his thick neck. Brian sneaked a peek at Monty’s laptop screen, saw that he was playing some sort of Tetris-like game, which immediately made him feel better about being laptop-less. At his right was Darren Coover, who was about ten years his junior and so slight and blond he looked like a stiff breeze would knock him over. Darren didn’t even seem to notice as Brian sprawled out, and a quick glance at Darren’s laptop screen showed streams of numbers and letters, nothing that seemed to make sense.
Across from Brian was Victor Palmer - or, as he preferred to be known, Doctor Palmer. Like Brian, he was on loan and was hating almost every minute of it. Brian quickly realized that he didn’t like the look on the doc’s face. Usually the doc had this air of superiority, like the rest of the group weren’t fit to wipe his ass after he’d taken a dump, but not this morning. He was looking around the room and nervously licking his thin lips, eyes blinking behind his round, horn-rimmed glasses. That look made him seem scared, scared for the first time in a long time, and Brian said loudly, ‘Anybody know when the princess is showing up?’
That brought a smile from Monty. But Darren continued to ignore everybody, while the good doctor still looked like he was trying to retain an enema in his bowels. Brian look
ed around at his fellow members of Federal Operations and Intelligence Liaison Team Seven, a/k/a Tiger Team Seven, and he remembered how it had all begun.
~ * ~
Months earlier there’d been a note on Brian’s cluttered desk, at the First Precinct on Ericsson Place at the southern tip of Manhattan. ‘See me soonest. L.’
L. Officially known as Lieutenant Lawrence Lancaster, known to everyone in the squad as Ellie but who was never called that to his face. Brian crumpled up the note, tossed it in a nearby wastebasket, and thought about going outside for a nice second cup of coffee. But he decided that wasn’t going to solve anything. There. A detective joke - not going to solve anything - and he hadn’t even tried. He looked at his cluttered desk, at the sparse collection of family photographs there, his ex-wife Marcy and their boy Thomas, and another one, showing a much younger Brian Doyle, a rookie in his fresh NYPD uniform, standing next to his dad Curt, wearing a NYPD sergeant’s uniform, and a goddam proud look on his face. Across from his desk was another desk, just a shade cleaner, but empty. His partner, Jimmy Carr, coming in late from the dentist or something.
Final Winter Page 2
