by Thomas Hopp
“What teamwork!” McKean exulted.
I turned my attention to the Sheik. I expected to see the skin peeling off his face and hands. Instead, he had managed to get both of his reddened eyes open. He stared supplicatingly at McKean, who covered him with his own golden handgun. When he began daubing at the liquid on his cheeks with his fingertips, McKean’s face registered unrestrained glee. Janet broke into a chuckle, wearing grin to match McKean’s.
The Sheik looked at his moist fingertips. “This - ” he stammered, “this is not acid.”
“Quite right,” McKean agreed. “The liquid in the electrophoresis apparatus is relatively harmless. Nothing more than a sodium dodecyl sulfate solution.”
“Sodium…what?” Abdul-Ghazi blinked his red eyes at McKean.
McKean picked up the container and gazed through one of its clear sides at the suds streaming down the wall. “Dodecyl sulfate,” he repeated. “Detergent. A common ingredient in shampoo, also known as lauryl sulfate. It’s quite harmless, although it can sting when it gets in one’s eyes. Can’t it, Sheik Abdul-Ghazi?”
The Sheik cursed under his breath in Arabic. He reached inside his coat, and I pointed Fuad’s pistol point-blank at his face. But he wasn’t going for a weapon. Instead, he drew out a neatly folded white handkerchief and began gingerly wiping the corners of his eyes.
“Now then,” said McKean. “The tables have turned one last time. You won’t be killing anyone today, or ever, Sheik.”
“You have my gun!” the Sheik pleaded in a voice trembling with emotion. “Kill me! Give me martyrdom! Do not condemn me to rot in an American prison!”
“Sorry,” McKean replied. “But I like the idea of you languishing in a cold cell. You’ll grow old, realizing that every day is another day Allah has seen fit to leave you sitting there. Until the day comes when you die, and learn the true nature of Hell. Janet, would you mind making that phone call now?”
“Yes, Master,” she said with a chuckle.
Chapter 24
Janet quickly had 911 directing the police to ImCo. A moan from Fuad announced that he was coming to. As he sat up, and then groggily got to his feet, I covered him with his own gun.
The Sheik sighed in bitter resignation. “The checkmate is yours, Peyton McKean. But jihad will not end here. It will never be over. Another plague, may it please Allah, shall come to these shores. And on that day, I pray you will not be here to foil Allah’s will.”
“Allah’s will!” McKean exclaimed with a laugh. “I think Allah is on our side, not yours.”
“Do not blaspheme,” Abdul-Ghazi muttered.
“I’m quite serious,” McKean replied.
I glanced at McKean, and saw a light of righteousness in his eyes. The Sheik saw it too. He bowed his head in defeat.
Footsteps drummed in the hallway as the policeman assigned to building security belatedly arrived. Officer Jones, a young, handsome cop, came into the room with gun drawn. But he holstered it when he saw things were well in hand. He bound the Sheik’s and Fuad’s wrists behind their backs with a plastic ties. Minutes later, two officers responding to the 911 call led Fuad and the Sheik away for a ride to the police precinct. McKean and I retreated to his office to escape a crowd of coworkers and “competitors” from Dr. Curman’s lab who came to gawk at the broken glass and spilled electrophoresis liquid, and listen to Janet retelling the story of the Sheik’s capture. Officer Jones came with us, taking statements from each of us and jotting them on a note pad. McKean leaned over his desk and looked out the window to the street below.
“I think you’ll be adding one more to your list of captured suspects,” he said to Jones.
The officer and I went to the window and pushed aside some avocado leaves to glance at the street. A tall hefty Arab in a blue jeans and a brown shirt stood spread-legged with his hands on the hood of a black limousine. The arriving squad cars had boxed him in at the curb, where he had been waiting for the Sheik in a passenger-loading zone in front of the coffee shop. Two police officers stood with drawn service pistols while a third officer frisked the man and cuffed his hands behind his back.
“Tally up another missing vehicle,” I said.
McKean nodded. “The dark-tinted windows explain how they’ve been getting around without being spotted.”
One of the officers led the prisoner to a squad car. Before getting in, the man looked up at our window, as if he knew exactly where Peyton McKean was. He scowled venomously. But whether he saw us or not, I couldn’t tell.
“I remember his face.” I said. “The last time I saw him, he was spraying my car with buckshot.”
The officer put a hand on top of the man’s head and guided him into the back seat. When the door was shut, McKean said, “I have a feeling we’ve seen the last of the Sheik and his henchmen.”
Someone rapped a knuckle on McKean’s doorjamb, and we turned from the window. There, to my astonishment, stood Vince Nagumo.
“May I come in?” he asked.
“Certainly,” McKean said, but I was already in motion. I charged Nagumo, doubling a fist.
“Where’s Jameela!” I shouted.
Nagumo raised a hand to fend me off. “Easy, easy,” he said, and then with a smirk, “Hide the scissors.”
His casual reaction sent me ballistic. With a choked cry of rage I raised my fist, intending to smash those grinning teeth down his throat. But a hand grabbed my arm from behind and stopped it in mid swing. I wheeled like an animal at bay, but Officer Jones contorted my wrist into a painful submission hold. I stopped struggling and I glared at Nagumo.
He smiled and said, “Relax, buddy.” He waved Officer Jones off and I straightened up, still fuming.
“There’s no need to get excited, Fin. I can tell you exactly where she is.”
“Where?”
“At the Sheik’s ranch.”
“What? Why?”
“As I told you, she’s a material witness. And Arabians Unlimited is in U.S. custody. Basically, it’s FBI property now. But managing livestock isn’t our business. Her credentials as a horse trainer checked out, so I figured we needed someone with experience to oversee the place.”
I rubbed my sore wrist. A profound sense of relief flooded through me. “You mean she’s not under arrest?”
“Not any more. She’s free on her own recognizance. We don’t consider her a flight-risk, although we still need her as a witness.”
I sighed like I had been holding my breath for three days.
Nagumo grinned. “She’s one of the good guys, as far as we’re concerned.”
McKean watched my reaction with a good-natured smile. “Then all is right with the world,” he said.
Nagumo pointed toward the lab. “I’m sorry about all that,” he said. “I always had my doubts about Fuad.”
“How did he manage to fool you?” McKean asked.
Nagumo shook his head as if he were about to tell an embarrassing story for the thousandth time. “His credentials at FBI Central were clean. He’s a naturalized U.S. citizen. Immigrated as a child. We have a crying need for good Arabic speakers to infiltrate terrorist cells. That means someone who not only looks Arabic, but can speak an Arab dialect like a native - and someone whose loyalties can be trusted. It turns out Fuad only had two of the three requirements. Every now and then a bad guy slips in among the good ones. That’s how it is in this business. Screw-ups happen. Can’t be helped. But thanks to you folks, it ended well. Fuad and the Sheik will be logged in at my office, and then shipped to the Federal Interrogation Center in South Carolina for some intensive, er, confessions. They’ll spend quite a while there. Then they’ll move on to the criminal justice system.”
“Never to walk free again?” I asked.
“Absolutely.” Nagumo looked at McKean and me with genuine fondness. “You know, things didn’t turn out half bad. Thanks to the Sheik’s call to jihad, a whole bunch of baddies came out of the underground. We can now account for 89 American-based sympathizers and al
Qaeda operatives. Some are dead of smallpox, some were arrested, some were killed. We’ve got to thank the Sheik for that. Add it all up, and we took out more than half the al Qaeda suspects we knew of in America. Al Qaeda may not be gone forever, but we set back their American efforts by years, if not decades. We’re still following up and arresting the contacts of the dead and wounded men from the truck. The ones we haven’t caught yet are on the run, which exposes them to being captured. That’s pretty good for a few days’ work, wouldn’t you say? We ought to thank the Sheik for drawing them out. Oh, and by the way, we found an interesting fellow among the dead from the truck in Colorado. Went by several names. James Washington, Elijah Williams…Recognize this guy?” He handed me a photo of a corpse with a familiar African-American face.
“Mullah Shabab,” I said, looking at the natty brown suit, the freckled, deep tan skin, the pomaded hair with a blaze of white up the center.
“He was at the ranch,” said McKean, “leading the jihadis around.”
“I’ll need you to testify to that,” said Nagumo. “He was the leader of a radical American group called the Islamic Army - but you would think he was working for us. He had already rounded up a bunch of his homeboys in Detroit and Chicago and had them on a second truck heading west, presumably to the ranch. Forty-seven of them arrested at a rest stop in North Dakota without a shot fired.”
“Incredible,” I said.
“We’ve frozen the entire assets of the Islamic Army. Within a few weeks we’ll bring a lawsuit forward on behalf of the people of the United States, alleging complicity in terrorism. Shabab’s organization is estimated to be worth around $100 million. We hope to take it all as punitive damages.”
McKean tugged at his chin. “Just when things seemed darkest, a ray of sunshine.”
“The light of justice,” said Nagumo. Then he chuckled. “I’m sorry if I was a bit of a bungler at times. But sooner or later us good guys finally get things right.”
“And Dr. Taleed?” McKean asked. “What has become of him?”
“A slippery fish,” said Nagumo. “We thought he returned to Kharifa, but just yesterday he was spotted in Vancouver, BC. Got across the Canadian border somehow. But the Royal Canadian Mounties have an all-points-bulletin out for him. He won’t elude us for long. And even if he does, he’s a man without a country. The marines found his genetic engineering operation at a gold mine in the Kharifi desert last night. They’re demolishing it right down to twisted steel and concrete dust.”
“He might start another,” I said.
“Without the Sheik’s money?” said McKean. “Not likely.”
“Good point. Lab work is super expensive.”
“Money truly is the root of all evil in the world,” said McKean. “It was only Abdul-Ghazi’s money that made him able to carry out his plans. Without money, no labs, no Taleed, no virus. And no young men attracted to his cause like subdominant apes following a new leader. But you know, in some ways I can almost sympathize with the young jihadis.”
“What!” I exclaimed. “How could you?” Nagumo and Jones’ faces registered the same shock written on my and Janet’s faces.
“Consider the plight of the great majority of young people everywhere on the planet today,” said McKean. “Most are impoverished, some are middle-class, but essentially all are barred from the amenities of the rich. In an overcrowded world, there is negligible hope for personal advancement. And the rich seem intent these days, on solidifying their hold on power. Think of the frustration young people feel at seeing the children of the wealthy inheriting great wealth themselves, without the need to work for it. But no avenue to wealth, worked for or not, is open to most young people.”
“In a free society,” Janet countered, “everyone has a chance to succeed - through hard work.”
“A slim chance,” McKean rejoined. “And, meanwhile rich kids just get it handed to them on silver platters, like the Sheik did.”
“Life’s not fair,” I said.
“If it’s not, then you should not be surprised the jihadi apes are intent on down-with-up. I, for one, don’t really blame them for being angry.”
“But killing people,” said Nagumo. “Surely you don’t condone - “
“Of course not. My sympathy stops well short of murder. But on the other hand, I am convinced we will see no end to jihad until the iniquities of wealth distribution are eliminated. In essence, it is the very existence of rich, privileged classes that breeds rebellion and jihad. Even the Arab Spring protestors are calling for an end to privileged classes that rule over them economically as much as militarily. Eliminate the control of wealth by the few, and those who now want to overthrow society will join in happily, working hard for their share of prosperity.”
“Do you think that day will really come?” I asked.
“Answer: yes, indeed I do,” said McKean. “And while I have no sympathy whatsoever for the Sheik, I note that he himself is prone to the same apish down-with-up fixation.”
“How do you figure?”
“Consider his lot in life. He is fabulously wealthy, to be sure. But he is also destined to remain the son of a sultan, but never be a sultan himself. I read somewhere that he is 14th in line to the throne. That is, he has no chance of achieving it at all. Just like Osama bin Laden, he must have rankled at his inferior family standing, compared to the heirs in line ahead of him. So he felt the same subdominant-ape motivation that his jihadi supporters felt. But from his already high position, he felt a need to kill many, not just a few, in order to make himself grander than his siblings. It really was all about sibling rivalry with him - which is another rather apish concern.”
Nagumo and Officer Jones left us, wearing befuddled expressions McKean’s discourse had put on their faces. We returned to the lab and looked over the scene of our showdown. A forensics team was measuring bullet hole trajectories and taking photographs. The cell phone still lay on the bench. It rang, and McKean put it on speaker.
“Hi Cuz!” the caller said brightly.
“Mike!” McKean cried. “How are you?”
“I’m doin’ just fine. Home in my trailer with Mary and the kids.”
“Last time we saw you, you were being dragged off with a truckload of jihadis.”
“Y’know,” Mike said, “them jihadis was a buncha amateurs. The way they tied my hands, I had the knots loose about ten minutes after the truck rolled outta the ranch. Down in Colorado it got hot, so they opened the back door for some air. I expected that might draw some attention from the cops. So as soon as I saw that squad car tailing us, I made my move. I slipped my hands free and grabbed an AK47 that was just sittin” there. I emptied it - and whacked a bunch of “em. But some of ‘em came up with more guns, so I bailed out.’
“They said you hit the pavement at seventy plus.”
“Felt like a hundred’n seventy.”
“Are you really okay?”
“More or less. I got casts all over the place and a couple pockmarks on my forehead. I had a dose of the old smallpox vaccine back in my Special Forces training days, so the jihad virus didn’t hit me too hard.”
There was a pause.
“Hey, Peyton.”
“Yeah, Mike?”
“C’mon over sometime. Y’gotta see the new puppy Mary got me. A Border collie. We named him Larry, after Lawrence of Arabia. And bring Fin along. It’ll be harvest time soon. Maybe we’ll do a little more…fffffwwwttt.”
“Maybe so.” McKean smiled at me.
After goodbyes, we were shooed away by the forensics team. McKean was chipper as we walked back to his office. “Things all seem to be working out according to Allah’s will,” he said.
I laughed. “You have a way with words, Peyton McKean.”
He eyed me thoughtfully as we sat. “So what about you, Fin? What will you do next? Write a chronicle of all that’s happened?”
“That’s on my list. I’ve got to start writing before any of the details fade. But there’s one mor
e important thing I’ve got to do first.”
“A trip to Winthrop?”
“How did you guess?”
McKean smiled. “Thank Jameela for me, from the bottom of my heart.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Tell her I’m proud to know her. She understands all that is best in Islam. The Qur’an’s many words of kindness and caring are understood best by the female gender, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Absolutely,” said Janet, who had followed us across the hall.
“I have a sense,” McKean said, “that Muslim women are on the brink of a breakthrough. They have the power to make Islam blossom into a religion of open-heartedness and light.”
“A tall order,” Janet replied. “They’re so oppressed by their men.”
“But Jameela showed us how insuppressible the female spirit is,” said McKean. “Women like her are mankind’s greatest hope of salvation.”
“Right now,” I said. “I’m most concerned about just two people. How can things work out between Jameela and me? We come from such different worlds.”
Janet put a hand on my shoulder. “It will be fine if you love each other. Do you love her, Fin? Does she love you?”
“I - I don’t know,” I responded. “I guess I’ve been making some pretty big assumptions about her feelings for me.”
In the quiet that followed, McKean turned to some data sheets on his desk and began pouring over the rows of A, T, G, and C code letters. He took a highlighter from his pocket and made a yellow mark. His prodigious mind had moved on, without offering an answer to my question.
I got up and walked out the door, waving a silent farewell to Janet.
Chapter 25
The streets of Seattle were wet with drizzle, but the sky was clear and the air was clean. I fetched my car and drove to my office, knowing what I was going to do, although I couldn’t guess the outcome.
Walking from my parking space, I paused in Pioneer Square at the base of the totem pole and communed for a moment with the bronze bust of old Chief Seattle. I gazed into those sculpted sad eyes and care-lined face, and felt a connection across centuries. I touched the three pockmark scars on my jaw, feeling the texture of a common experience. I remembered a line from his speech. The dead are not entirely powerless. The Duwamish had shown us all the awesome power of a virus by the very fact of their deaths. Their near annihilation was a warning to us all.
