The Light of Our Yesterdays

by Ken Hansen

  “The case finally caught up with him. Anyway, we are still on track.”

  “All right. I have nothing to do here. Can I help you with the chemist and his family?”

  “No longer your concern,” Pardus said.

  “I could help on the interrogations.”

  “You would not want that, Abdul.”

  Anwari closed his eyes and breathed deeply. “There must be something—”

  “Leave it be. I will take it from here. I have other plans for you. You might even get to take a tour of the Washington sights, but we shall see. Have you been questioned by the Carabinieri?”

  “Why?” Anwari asked.

  “You were at the hotel. They probably have some footage of you.”

  “I was a guest, remember? They would not have seen much of me. My face was covered during the op. No worries, as you say.”

  “All right. I shall be in touch. Until then, enjoy Italy. You are a tourist, remember?”

  “Sure.” Anwari closed the cheap flip phone. He had picked up the thing with pre-paid minutes and attached his scrambler chip from Pardus. He was using a phone per week at this pace, but better safe than sorry. He walked back into the chemical warehouse and heard two of the guys cheering from the office. He walked into the office and saw the Al Jazeera network covering a bombing at a London train station: 25 people killed, including 10 women and 7 children. Funny how you always had to do the math to see how many adult men were killed. Another 45 had been injured.

  The fat terrorist laughed. “When will the infidels learn? They will never hide from the hands of Allah. We are everywhere.”

  Anwari bristled. Idiot. Christians are not even infidels. They are People of the Book.

  After a minute of watching the carnage on the television screen, Anwari walked out of the room and back outside to get some air. He pulled out the picture of his brother and the only family he could remember. He kept asking himself the questions that increasingly haunted his daily reflections. Is this life really for me? Is this even a life? Brother, is this what you really want from me? You asked for vengeance, but to kill innocents? Anwari recalled the scene of the two young daughters of the Israeli chemist being dragged away screaming, and his eyes became glassy as he fought back the tears.

  He closed his eyes and the image of Karim reappeared for what seemed the millionth time:

  His brother was lying in his hospital bed, his legs gone and his head wrapped with bandages, only one eye visible. The other eye had been left among the bloody pool of detached legs, arms and other body parts of his friends and family in the rubble of the house in Jalalabad. Karim was screaming at him in Persian, “You must avenge this, Abdul, or in the eyes of Allah, you are as guilty as those who maimed me and killed my wife and children!” Anwari had shuddered and thought, though he could never say it aloud, that he was already just as guilty, except for the spook and those bastards who protected him…

  He had never managed to ask his brother to forgive him, but then his brother never really knew what he had done. Anwari looked up at the stars. Allah, I beg of you, show me the way.

  Chapter 28

  Huxley yawned and grabbed his cup of coffee, but it was empty. Shit. After only an hour or two of shut-eye on the transport back from Rome last night, the sleep demons were beginning to haunt him. But he had to figure out the key to this damn contacts list. Something was trying to wriggle out of the mess, but nobody had figured it out yet—not even the CIA analysts.

  As Huxley had expected, Ken Mayer had cornered him a few hours ago. Then Huxley’s prediction had fallen apart. Mayer was letting him run with the case, or so he had said. CIA could not afford to blow the relationships Huxley had developed with D’Amare and Captain Yadin. They would work up an analysis, work on a few “extra” angles Mayer was not at liberty to disclose, and Mayer would run the show. Huxley would still be the front man on his part of the investigation.

  It was better than Huxley had expected—too much better. Could Mayer be the mole? He had inexplicably given Huxley free reign. Maybe Mayer just viewed this as a dead-end case and wanted Huxley to be left alone as the eventual loser. The guy had never liked him, but that was taking professional dislike a bit too far. This thing involved nuclear weapons, and Mayer and his CIA chieftains knew it too, or they would not have called him back from Rome at a moment’s notice. Nobody would use a case like this to get a little personal revenge, not even Ken Mayer. Had Mayer suddenly become subtle? He’d just need to keep filing those partial “complete reports” with enough intel to keep Mayer off him long enough to solve this thing.

  Solve this thing. Normally that seemed the inevitable conclusion to him, but so far the case had eluded him, at least today while his brain still muddled through its lack of sleep. The Shakespeare thing befuddled him. What kind of terrorist puts a Shakespearean quote into a clue? He stared at the printout he had made earlier today—the text from Act I, Scene II of Measure for Measure, with the quote from the contacts list underlined:

  Lucio: If the Duke with the other dukes come not to composition with the King of Hungary, why then all the dukes fall upon the King.

  1. Gent.: Heaven grant us its peace, but not the King of Hungary’s!

  2. Gent.: Amen.

  Lucio: Thou conclud’st like the sanctimonious pirate, that went to sea with the Ten Commandements, but scrap’d one out of the table.

  2. Gent.: “Thou shalt not steal”?

  Lucio: Ay, that he raz’d.

  1 Gent.: Why, ‘twas a commandment to command the captain and all the rest from their functions; they put forth to steal. There’s not a soldier of us all, that in the thanksgiving before meat, do relish the petition well that prays for peace.

  2 Gent.: I never heard any soldier dislike it.

  Lucio: I believe thee; for I think thou never wast where grace was said.

  2 Gent.: No? a dozen times at least.

  1 Gent.: What? in metre?

  Lucio: In any proportion, or in any language.

  1 Gent.: I think, or in any religion.

  Lucio: Ay, why not? Grace is grace, despite of all the controversy; as for example, thou thyself art a wicked villain, despite of all grace.

  1 Gent.: Well; there went but a pair of shears between us.

  The passage seemed to be nothing more than a typical comic Shakespearean scene: a few scoundrel friends comparing the poverty of their virtue and wealth of their hypocrisy. They seemingly prayed for peace but not when it did not suit them—just as a pirate was willing to exclude that particular commandment from God that did not quite suit his trade. It was a nice introduction to this unusual Shakespearean comedy—the last the bard ever wrote. The point of the play seemed to be to question people who judged others but expected not to be judged themselves. But it was more than that.

  Many thought the play had a problematic ending. In trying to remain true to the comedic form of the day, the play went for what has now become the usual happy Hollywood ending, but it seemed to fail miserably. Did the great Shakespeare fail? Perhaps; however, some experts saw his failure instead as a brilliant criticism of the classic comedic form. He had forced his main character, the Duke, to orchestrate events quite artificially to arrive at a conclusion that proved completely implausible and unsatisfying, yet still arguably “happy” by the standards of the day. By doing so, Shakespeare seemed to be saying, “See how stupid this is? I am moving on to something less hollow and more real.” And so he did. He went on to write the greatest tragedies ever written, where everyone could die as they should, even if a bit too dramatically.

  Huxley was dying himself here. Despite studying the whole play and this individual scene, no recognizable clue emerged. He tried putting words in the scene with words in the contacts list, but nothing worked. He looked at the characters names and tried to divine some relation to today’s world, but nothing clicked. When he thought about the references to the Ten Commandments and the grace being said in “any religion,” he figured he was getting some
where, but nowhere arrived way too quickly. The other clues had all involved prominent religious places or events, so why not this one? And yes, this play touched on religion, but he could not grasp any answer that seemed to satisfy. Exhausted, he laid his head down on his desk for a moment. Maybe a ten-minute micro-nap would bring his senses back…

  …He was dressed strangely, in multi-colored robes, as were all of those around him. They were in a huge conference hall filled with people hawking their wares as he tried to avoid them. Then he saw a man in white robes move toward him, introduce himself and shake his hand. When the man touched him, a blinding light filled his vision. For a brief moment, he had seen himself again in normal attire, back in Ramat David, thinking about his mother, his forsaken mother. Then the image disappeared and he saw the man in the white robes again, bowing toward him and smiling…

  The phone rang Huxley awake. It was Ms. Blankenship, the receptionist. “Mr. Huxley, you received a call from the office of Ambassador Kadir al-Razin al-Asr. They said the ambassador had heard you were back in town and tomorrow morning would be an excellent time for the ambassador to, and I was asked to quote this directly, ‘watch you flail harmlessly at squash balls.’ Is this a joke, Mr. Huxley?”

  He shook his head. It had been a month since they had played, a long time in the ongoing saga of Huxley getting schooled by the Kad-man in a sport Huxley didn’t particularly enjoy. He had kept showing up anyway because it was the only chance he usually had to get breakfast with the busy diplomat who had once been his Harvard roommate. “Thanks. Can you call the embassy and let them know I’m up for another beating?”

  A few minutes later, while he was still studying the passage from Measure for Measure, the phone rang again and he saw reception was on the line. “Yes, Ms. Blankenship, did that little bastard need to talk to me directly?”

  “Uh, no, I don’t think so, sir,” she said. “Are you referring to the ambassador? His office said you two were ‘on’ at the usual time. But, no, you are quite popular today, Mr. Huxley. You have a call from yet another foreigner. Would you like to speak to a Sonatina D’Amare? She is calling from Italy and claims you know her, though I hardly understand how, given she sounds like a perfectly charming young lady.”

  Huxley improved his tone dramatically, “Sorry for my language, Ms. Blankenship. Sometimes I forget myself when it comes to my old friend, the ambassador. Yes, please, put her through.” He waited for the click. “Hello, Ms. D’Amare, uh, I’m sorry, Sonatina, it is good to hear from you.”

  “Maybe you were right the first time, Mr. Huxley. Perhaps we should go back to our surnames after you left me so abruptly last evening?”

  Huxley feigned a deep sigh. Thank goodness her tone had been light and playful. With a bit of melodrama, he said, “Sonatina, I apologize. I allowed events to overtake me, and, of course, your insights overwhelmed me.”

  “My insights? Into what?”

  Huxley replied, “That’s a state secret, I’m afraid. You’d have to torture it out of me.”

  “I’m certain I could find a better way,” Sonatina said.

  “Yeah, well, I guess when I’m in Rome again, I’ll have to be careful. By the way, I’ll be there next week. Can you set up a meeting with the Colonel of the Swiss Guard for me?”

  “Of course. But your assistant could do that herself.”

  “Ah, but then I would not have a good reason to see you again, would I? You are my principal Vatican contact, so let’s keep it that way. Maybe I can even scrape up a few coins for another dinner?”

  “Are you trying to fatten me up for the kill?”

  Huxley’s brow furrowed as his eyes narrowed. A strange double meaning? “No, I…I just wanted to make up for my haste last evening. If at first you don’t succeed…”

  “Succeed at what?”

  He stroked his chin. Now I can’t read her tone again. “Well…I hope I do not search for victory in the Pyrrhic sense.” When she laughed, it gave him a chance to change the subject. “Seriously, given your tremendous insights thus far, might I impose upon your clever brain once again?”

  “When you are so complimentary, how can I refuse?”

  “Grazie. I assume you recall our little conversation about Shakespeare?”

  “I do, but I do not recall helping you much,” Sonatina said.

  “Ah, but you have. I’ve been struggling with this thing most of the day without much luck. The play seems to fit, the reference to Shakespeare’s mother seems to fit, but I need to find something more concrete.”

  “Well, I can hardly believe you’ll find something concrete in a Shakespearean play.”

  “Why not?” Huxley asked.

  “Well, it is not quite math, is it? It may consist of abstract concepts, but like any great art, the concepts are wrapped in multiple levels of meaning. And, of course, Shakespeare bound all of his meaning in poetry, which makes it much harder, even for those who speak English as their first language. Though I do believe he managed to demonstrate his mastery despite the constraints of his genre.”

  “Constraints? You mean the comedic form?”

  “No, not the form of the play,” she said, “the constraints on the language. So many English authors of the period wrote plays at that time in that silly iambic pentameter rhythm. The Lord knows it is a miracle anybody ever understands what the characters are saying.”

  That familiar tingle radiated down Huxley’s spine and out his leg and arms. Somehow, he knew she had again shown him the way. Rhythm. What a dope he had been. Shakespeare was all about rhythm. He was a poet with very little rhyme, but a master of iambic pentameter. Only today’s accomplished actors could pull off Shakespearean dialogue without the rhythm sounding artificial to a modern audience’s ears. The great ones made the dialogue sing. He looked at the printout in confirmation:

  “2 Gent.: No? a dozen times at least.

  “1 Gent.: What? in metre?”

  The clue wasn’t about the nature of the play or the comedic form or even religion after all. It was the simplest of all codes in a child’s codebook. One entry has the code, the next the translation. The words “in metre” provided the translation and the answer. By itself, “in metre” was useless. But he had an enormous set of meaningless English contacts from Najwa’s phone to parse. The remainder of the contacts list must be coded in the same metre Shakespeare always used—iambic pentameter. That rhythmic system employed 10 syllables per line and placed a stress on every second syllable (iambic) for a total of five pairs of syllables (thus, pentameter).

  Huxley was stirred from his deep thought by her melodic voice, “Sei qui, Christian?”

  “Sonatina, sei un genio.”

  “I a genius? Again? What did I say this time?”

  “It is uncanny, but you always seem to say exactly what I need to hear. Thank you again for your help. I have to go now. See you in a few days. Ciao.” He hung up the phone, feeling renewed energy surging through his brain. He opened the contacts list and began scribbling out possibilities on a pad of paper. The effort would take him late into the night, but when he finally set down his pencil and smiled, he hoped it would not prove to be yet another Pyrrhic victory.

  Chapter 29

  “Six-two,” Huxley heard the Kad-man announce, and it registered somewhere in the back of his mind.

  Since his muscle memory was well-developed, some part of his brain would tell his eyes to follow the ball travelling from Kadir’s racquet to the front wall, this time arcing high off the wall toward the opposite back corner, and that memory would move his body roughly into a position for a chance at a shot, all without much interference from his cerebral cortex, which right now could not help but focus nearly all of its energies on the little enigma he had uncovered last evening.

  From a seemingly meaningless set of English-language contacts in an Islamic terrorist’s cell phone, using a code derived from a play by the greatest master of English drama, he had discovered a new poem.

  “Seven-two,” he he
ard Kad announce.

  The poem was itself in iambic pentameter, which made the clue even more, well, poetic. Writing poetry was never his strength, but he knew when even the mere turn of a phrase in common prose felt poetic to him. This enigma was like that, but its greatest poetry derived not from the turn of a new phrase but from the turn of a new clue.

  “Eight-two.”

  When Huxley had found the pattern leading to the poem, he had been pretty proud of himself. Iambic pentameter: the numbers two and five. It seemed like a simple algorithm. But he had to apply about fifty different permutations to the contacts list before settling on the right one. It wasn’t just the pattern, it was the starting point and direction. Did it start at the beginning of the alphabet and work backward, or the opposite? Well, neither actually. Then he had tried thinking like a story and the puzzle had fallen into place. His entry and that of his pseudo mother, Maryam Huxley, had pretty much been used up. So he just continued with the “story” and moved to the next entry posted in English. When he had looked at the second “word” (he treated a number as a word) in the fifth fill-in space in that entry, the address for Donald Jacobs, it gave him the word “Just.” He had continued “reading” by skipping to the fifth fill-in space after that (using English entries only). This one had been located in the “Company” section of the contact for “Chaiang Fenge Jiang.” The company name was “Chaiang’s take out.” By choosing the second word, he had written “take.” So now he had: “Just take.” It had sounded promising. He had kept working at it and had to add his own punctuation occasionally, but the thing had begun to make sense.

  “Nine-two,” he thought he heard Kad bellow.

  By the time he had finished decoding the contacts list last evening, he had written a nine-line poem in iambic pentameter, finishing with double couplets: