“Still, you have to tell them?” Jules asked.
“No other way.”
“And they’ll want your head on a stake.”
“My world and welcome to it. You wouldn’t want to be me.”
The two friends stared at each other a long moment in silence.
“We could take Hasad’s advice,” Jules said.
“Which was?” Elena asked.
“Get the hell out of Dodge. Just forget about the whole thing.”
“And let ‘a pair of setting suns sink the U.S. forever’?” Elena asked.
“So what are you going to do?” Jules asked.
“Look for a bullet to bite on?” Elena asked.
“Or I could buy us a few drinks at that bar next door,” Jules said.
“Good idea,” Elena said.
The two friends headed for the TGI Friday’s across the side parking lot.
2
“You are in a universe of pain.”
—Adara Nasira
The unconscious, naked man hung from a ceiling crossbeam by his manacled wrists. A bucket of warm liquid hurled in his face woke him.
Rashid’s eyes blinked open, and he wearily reexamined his surroundings. The dirty-gray room was part of a concrete blockhouse—twelve by eighteen feet, a ten-foot ceiling, a dirty industrial sink in the corner, three chairs, a metal table, and two other inhabitants. A dark-looking man in work boots, Western jeans, no shirt, a beard, and long hair was staring at him. Rashid remembered him from his last few sessions. They called him Ali, and he was bad news.
Five feet from him, slightly to his right side, a woman sat in a chair. Dressed in black Levis, a Rolling Stones T-shirt, and black boots, she was smoking an unfiltered Gaulois Bleu. She stared at Rashid, eyes black and hard as onyx, unfeeling as the abyss.
She’s new.
What does that mean?
What is she doing here?
Across the room, six or seven feet away, hung a large tarnished wall mirror. His captors apparently wanted Rashid to look at himself, probably hoping it would frighten him into a full confession. He had to admit what he saw—through a single bloodshot eye—was hardly inspiring. His body was covered with whip welts and burn marks. He’d lost most of his body fat. All that was left was skin and muscle stretched tightly over bone, everything about him hard planes and sharp angles.
The man walked up to him.
“Who are you?” Rashid asked him, his vision, once more, blurring, shifting in and out of focus.
“Let me introduce myself,” his interlocutor said. “Again.”
His dirty work boot buried itself in Rashid’s groin. The blinding pain knocked Rashid unconscious.
He awoke to another bucket of foul-smelling liquid.
“What’s that?” he asked, spitting some of it out of his mouth.
“Camel piss,” the torturer said.
“In case you see us as gratuitously cruel,” the woman said, “the urine does serve a purpose.”
“No shit?” Rashid said.
“It is an excellent conductor of electricity,” she said.
Glancing at the table, Rashid spotted the old hand-crank field telephone with some wires dangling from its front screws. The wires had clamps on them.
Uh-oh.
This is new.
“Where’d you say I am?” Rashid asked again, confused.
“The hole that empties into hell,” the woman said, taking a long pull on her cigarette.
“I don’t see any holes,” Rashid said, glancing around the room.
The bearded man reared back and kicked him in the stomach so hard he fainted again. When he came to and his breath returned, his vision was spinning.
“Oh, yeah,” Rashid said, slurring his words. “I see now. You’re right. It’s a great big black fucking hole. There, right in front of me. Middle of the room. Can’t see how I missed it.”
“Let me try,” the woman said, pushing the man aside and approaching Rashid. “Why did you return to Pakistan?”
“I wanted to buy a pachyderm ranch.”
“But there are no pachyderms in Pakistan,” the woman said.
“I was misinformed.”
The man stepped forward and hit him with a left hook that almost dislocated his jaw.
“How stupid are you?” the woman shouted at Ali. “You don’t hit him in the mouth. He needs his mouth to talk.”
She had a point. It took him several minutes before he could move his jaw well enough to enunciate words.
“Again,” the woman asked, “why did you betray the ISI? To whom were you sending those e-mails?”
“I lied about the pachyderm ranch,” Rashid said feebly. “I admit it. It was a mistake.”
“Why are you here then?” the woman asked.
“I came here to invest in a rat factory.”
“A rat factory?” the woman asked.
“Haven’t you heard?” Rashid said. “Apple’s trained rats to assemble iPhones, and now they want to build rat factories all over Pakistan. I want in on the ground floor because Pakistan’s got some really great rats. You can’t tell me there aren’t any rats in Pakistan. Pakistan’s nothing but rats. Some of the fattest, strongest, smartest rats on earth come from Pakistan, and—”
The man delivered a blow just under his heart. A stunning shock exploded in his chest, a thunderbolt of pure, incandescent agony. A massive sun, bright as a nuclear fireball seen close-up, blinded his vision. It exploded into thousands of stars, each of those slowly going out, slowly, slowly, one at a time, until there was only a single sun left. When it was gone, he was gone as well.
Another bucket of camel piss and again he was unfortunately awake.
The woman got up from her chair, walked over to him, and gently massaged his cheek. This close she was blindingly, achingly beautiful. At her touch, he almost cried.
“My friend,” she said, “I’ve tortured many men, and in the end they all accept the truth of their lives—that everything they fought so hard to conceal from me was a fool’s errand. Their loves and hates, joys and sorrows, agonies and ecstasies were all part of the same fraudulent fantasy, the mistaken belief that their secrets mattered, that they had once been someone who mattered, that they had had a body, a soul, that they had actually … lived. But none of that counts. In the end, it all comes to the same thing: the dream dies, the vision fades, the dreamer dims and vanishes, ephemeral as a snowflake on the scorching desert sand. So why hold out? It’s all for nothing. It’s all part of the same vain folly. It never meant anything at all.” Then, to his surprise, she kissed him on the lips. “Give it up. Why did you return to Pakistan? To work as a CIA double agent?”
His voice was starting to wheeze and crack, but he still got it out.
“I came for your Indian food.”
“But this isn’t India,” the woman said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Rashid said. “Your stuff’s way better than the shit I get in Delhi or Calcutta. Ever had the curried goat in Karachi? Tandoori in Islamabad?” He somehow managed to close his eyes and smack his lips. “They’re to die for. I could live on that shit.”
This time when the bearded man went to work on him, it seemed like the beating would never stop, and only the woman’s intervention brought it to an end.
“Your file says you graduated from the Kakul Army Academy at Abbottabad,” the woman said, her voice distant and tinny in his ears. “That’s Pakistan’s premier military school. What did they teach you there? Hold tight against pain? Never give up? It sounded brave and noble back then, but, Rashid, you’re no longer at the academy. Those teachings can only hurt you in your current state.”
More camel piss, more punches, more temple bells chiming in his ears.
“Where am I?” the hanging man asked, coming to again, his voice raspy and ragged.
“You are in a universe of pain—lost amid the pathos of dead dreams and past things,” the woman said. “A world in which you have nothing left to lose and nothing left to love.”
The hanging man stared at her empty-eyed, silent.
“Rashid,” the woman said, “you must understand you have no choice. We have techniques that can make the deaf hear, the blind see, the dead walk, and most important, the dumb speak—speak, sing, roar, shriek, giggle, thunder, chortle, whisper, banter, chatter, tintinnabulate, and sob. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Did you ever think of bribing me?” His voice was a reedy whisper.
“It is possible,” she said, glancing at her partner. “I can call our bankers in Islamabad. How much would you want?”
“A hundred trillion dollars.”
“Why did I think you’d say that?” she said, suddenly smiling.
She walked over to the desk and began unspooling the red copper wire attached to the hand crank phone’s side. She checked the connections, then led the wire over to Rashid.
“The Koran tells us that a woman should never touch a man’s genitals. I think the one and only God would grant me special dispensation to do so, since I only seek to torture a man to death for His sake.”
She coiled the copper wire around his member, his testicles, and his ears. Strolling back to the field phone, she said merrily:
“Do I hear a phone ringing?”
She turned the crank, and the phone started to ring.
Rashid bounced on his chains like a yo-yo. His screams singsonged up and down with every bounce and jounce … till he passed out.
When he came to, he could barely talk or see.
“Wow,” the woman said, “when I hear apes ululate like that they’re usually throwing shit with one hand and masturbating with the other.”
“Or doing it with both hands and both feet,” Ali said grinning.
Then both of them exploded into laughter.
After which she began to turn the hand crank again.
PART V
When the stars shall fall …
When Heaven shall be stripped away,
When Hell shall be made to blaze,
Then every soul shall know what it hath wrought.
—The Koran LXXXI, xxxii, 1–5
1
“So there’s no honor among genocidal maniacs?”
—Hasad ibn Ghazi
Hasad climbed the long switchback trail up the rocky hill toward the safe house. It was near the Afghan border. Vast expanses of arid wilderness stretched in all directions, uninterrupted by dwellings or towns. The turquoise sky was cloudless and clear with dim black mountains lining the horizon’s rim. The sun burned overhead at its zenith, blindingly bright as a welding torch.
Soldiers idled outside the stone house, smoking cigarettes. One of them went in to announce Hasad’s arrival. Lieutenant General Jari ibn Hamza, who was dressed in desert camouflage and whom he’d met before, came out to meet him. Shaiq ibn Ishaq—former Saudi intelligence minister, current U.S ambassador and oil mogul—accompanied him. He was wearing a powder-blue summer-weight suit, and Hasad recognized him from the media photos and interviews. The third one—the army colonel—he did not recognize, and he was the one who bothered Hasad. The other two he dismissed as functionaries and bureaucrats. The general might have lived by the gun once but not for decades. His reflexes, any indifference to pain and death that he might once have had, were terminally blunted by easy living. The colonel, though, was a different story. His head was hairless and hard. A lifetime of soldiering in the raw Pakistani wind and the scorching desert sun had tanned him dark as an old hide. His eyes were fixed on Hasad, sizing him up, taking his inventory, eyes flat and emotionless, eyes that neither asked nor gave. The colonel’s right thumb was hooked casually inside his belt buckle near a Russian-made 9mm Makarov. Impervious to the fine desert sand of this world, it was the best pistol ever made for desert fighting. The colonel holstered it crossways on his left hip so he could pull it out quickly not only while standing but also while sitting down. Hasad knew instinctively that the colonel’s right hand would never be far from that gun, that the hammer would be back and safety would be on for quick firing—what the Americans called “cocked and locked.” One quick thumb flick, the safety would be off, and it would be full rock and roll. If the colonel drew it, someone would die.
The other two men might playact at being tough. The general might have even been tough once. The colonel, however, was the genuine article. Nothing showed in his cold eyes except maybe a faint glimmer of amusement. The colonel, he would have to watch.
If this meeting went south, Hasad would kill him first.
“Let’s walk,” General Jari said.
They headed up another goat path about two hundred yards up the mountain, stopping at a cluster of small boulders.
“You came up $20 million short,” Hasad said.
“Circumstances changed,” Shaiq said. “We now need you to lead the attack in the U.S.”
“That wasn’t part of our agreement,” Hasad said.
“You really think we give a shit about agreements?” the general said, smiling.
“I give a shit,” Hasad said, “and I want my money.”
“My friend, the Koran does not countenance greed,” Shaiq said with patronizing irony.
“Too bad you didn’t hire a more devout killer,” Hasad said.
“Look on the bright side,” the general said. “Help us out, adapt to our new circumstances, and you will have wealth beyond measure, as well as Allah’s blessings.”
“You must have other men available,” Hasad said.
“None as good as you,” Shaiq said.
“Bullshit,” Hasad said.
“I wish it were so,” the general said, shaking his head sadly. “But good help is so hard to find.”
“Good health, too,” Shaiq said. “Anything can happen to a man these days.”
“‘Allah has not promised us tomorrow,’” General Jari said, quoting an old Arabian proverb.
“But you promised me another $20 million,” Hasad said, “and I never agreed to setting off any nukes.”
“It’s a long trek back down that hill.” Shaiq pointed to the goat trail, leading back down to the safe house.
“You might not make it,” the general said. “Your sister might not either.”
His sister had died three months ago of stomach cancer in Malta and he’d scattered her ashes at sea. Nor had he been that close to her.
But they did not know that.
And they’d just threatened him and her.
That he would never let slide.
“One more job,” Shaiq said. “That’s all we ask.”
“Accompany the men and materiel across the ocean,” the general said. “Get it all to the safe house. Work with the men there. Instruct them, give them their orders, explain the plans, then carry out the D.C. operation. That’s the only strike you’ll have to handle personally.”
“I wasn’t supposed to handle any of the nukings personally,” Hasad said. “That was the contract.”
“That was the contract,” the colonel said.
“And you are?” Hasad finally asked.
“The illustrious Colonel Abdul al-Hakeem,” General Jari said, introducing them.
“I know the name,” Hasad said. “I’ve heard of you.”
“And I you,” the colonel said.
“Then you know in my world a deal is a deal,” Hasad said.
“Unfortunately for you,” the colonel said, “you’re in my world now.”
“Look on the bright side,” Shaiq said, giving Hasad an ingratiating smile, attempting to defuse the argument. “This way you get all that money and a free ocean voyage to boot.”
“An ocean voyage that will do you good,” the general said.
“Sure,” Hasad said softly, “across the ‘wide water, inescapable.’”
“What’s that?” the general asked. The allusion confused all three of the men.
“Literature,” Hasad said. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Perhaps, but nonetheless there’ll be a $20 million bon
us on top of the agreed-on $20 million,” Shaiq said. “I personally guarantee it.”
“Your word of honor?” Hasad asked with bitter disdain.
“But of course,” Shaiq said, smiling brightly.
“The money’s nothing to him,” the general said. “A gratuity.”
“I spill that much,” Shaiq agreed.
Hasad stared at them a long moment. “So there’s no honor among genocidal maniacs?” he finally said.
“I’m so glad you understand,” Shaiq said.
The Saudi ambassador then treated Hasad to his most obscenely conceited, supremely condescending smile.
The smile of a man holding an ace-high straight, wired.
A lockup hand.
“You’re so good at what you do,” the colonel said. “How could we let you walk away?”
“Think of it this way,” Shaiq said cheerfully. “Do this, and you’ll never have to look at us again.”
“Yes, I will,” Hasad said.
“Really?” the general said, smiling. “When?”
“When I see your souls in hell.”
Hasad started back down the hill.
2
The chickens came home to roost.
Rashid al-Rahman lay naked, bound, and gagged on the floor of a windowless confinement cell in his Pakistani safe house. Enclosed on all sides by cement-block walls, his cubbyhole was pitch-black and no bigger than a closet—so small he didn’t have enough room to stretch out. Not that he could have had he wanted to. His ankles were lashed flush against his wrists, which were cuffed behind his back.
His only bathroom facility was the floor.
How the hell did I get here? he thought forlornly, looking back on the events of the last several months.
He blamed it all on that psychopath, Hasad. That’s where it all started. Pakistan’s ISI—its central intelligence service—was arranging an alliance between ISIS and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the dreaded TTP, and Hasad hired Rashid to help. A terrorist group even more savagely sophisticated than ISIS, it was far more dangerous than the Islamic State because of its access to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons industry. A massive government-run enterprise, Pakistan’s nuclear program employed over eighty thousand scientists, engineers, and technicians, all of whom had access to the fissile bomb-fuel storage facilities. Many of them were willing or could be forced to help the TTP steal enough fissile bomb-fuel to cobble together several simple but devastating Hiroshima-style nukes.
And Into the Fire Page 8
