by Ken Hansen
Anwari took up his position on the park bench on the north side of the Arno. To any passersby, he was just another tourist soaking up views of the bridge over the river and snapping some pictures of the quaint surroundings with the large telephoto lens. That lens would allow him to see Huxley first knocking on the door and entering the flat and then his position in the home through the front window into the little dining room just a wall away from the cable box. He knew his timing would be critical. Timing always was, like that night in Jalalabad…
Shafaq and Rahmati had begun suppressing the machine guns. The enemy fire from the rooftops had almost ceased and Anwari was about to command the rest of his men to move when he heard another rocket fire. From the roof several meters away from the machine gun, an RPG headed straight for the truck Shafaq and Rahmati were using for cover. The truck seemed to splinter, sending shrapnel through their faces and chests. Anwari momentarily lost the demeanor of command, crying out, “No!”
He took a few deep breaths just as another hail of gunfire erupted nearby. Granger was yelling in his earpiece, “Anwari, you think its time to drop the JDAMs?” The captain wanted Anwari to decide, but he was clearly making his own views known.
Anwari considered the situation. They were taking effective fire from two directions and already had four casualties. He had to think like an officer, protect his men. Half-Moon Mole had assured them that all civilians were out of the area. It was the right call. “OK, Captain, ask them to drop one 150 meters south of Bravo-Golf-one-four-eight-eight. You have a grid for the enemy at our six?”
Granger finalized the nine line requests for both targets while Anwari did what he could to suppress the machine guns to their front. A few minutes later, Granger said to the pilot, “Roger, Anchor, this is Razor 6. You are cleared and hot on both targets. My initials are Charlie Golf.”
The pilot of the F-16 loitering over 20,000 feet up said, “Roger, Razor 6. You say I’m cleared hot into that neighborhood, right?”
“Roger, Anchor. I say again, you are clear and hot on both targets. Initials are Charlie Golf.”
“Roger, Charlie Golf,” replied the pilot. “Cleared hot on both targets. Tee Oh Tee in about 18 seconds…”
Anwari was brought back to the present by the image of Huxley appearing across the Arno through the long lens. He watched Huxley knock on the Tocelli’s door and waited for a few minutes to be certain, all the while rubbing his thumb over the trigger switch on the remote in his pocket.
Huxley sat in a chair with his back left to the front window. The Tocelli women sat on a couch to his right, a large crucifix hanging on the wall above them, guarding their souls from harm. “We have told everything we know to the Italian authorities, Mr. Huxley,” said Tocelli’s sister. “We have not seen Dante since he left for Israel. If there is anything we can do to help you find him…but nobody seems to know where he has gone.”
She seemed honest enough. At least she showed none of the telltale signs of deception that typically covered the faces of those not well-practiced in deceit. Her middle-aged mother looked at him blankly, saying nothing. These two seemed to be suffering real distress. Huxley had hoped that maybe they were secretly protecting Dante Tocelli, but that hope had faded. He tried another tack. “Grazie, Signorina Tocelli. You said you do not know where he is, and I believe you, but it is critical we find him before it may be too late…for him. Did he say anything to you in his calls from Israel that might suggest in any way where he might have gone?”
“I don’t believe so,” she said. “What do you mean—‘Too late for him?’”
“We believe he is in danger. Did he mention any place he might visit when he returned?”
She shook her head slowly.
“Did he mention a friend or a girl he might visit?”
She said, “He kept to himself and he never seemed to have many friends. I don’t know of any girlfriend.”
“When did you last speak with him on the phone?”
She looked up and then closed her eyes momentarily. “It was the night he told me he would be returning to Italy. We were overjoyed. But then he never came.”
“Did he say anything on that call that might have seemed strange or out of place?” Huxley asked.
“Not that I can recall. He just talked about how great the site at Tel Megiddo had been and how he was excited to return to Sapienza. No, wait. He did say something strange about how small the world was after all. I asked him what he meant, and he laughed and said something strange like, ‘Leopards may never change their spots, but a snake might when it molts.’ I asked him if he had seen a snake while he was in Israel, and he said, ‘An old snake from the old neighborhood,’ but he wouldn’t explain. Dante is that way, you know. He’ll say clever things in some new way and then he’ll laugh about it when nobody understands him. It didn’t mean much to me, so I let it go.”
“Interesting,” said Huxley. “Did you mention this to the Polizia?”
“No. Why would I? I didn’t think it mattered. Does it?”
“Possibly. Can you think of anyone from the neighborhood who he might think was a snake?”
“Goodness,” she replied. “Who knows? He wasn’t terribly fond of quite a few people, but he never really had any enemies that I can remember.”
Huxley turned to Dante Tocelli’s mother. “Are you aware of—”
He never finished the question. The pressure slammed into his head just as the sound overwhelmed his eardrums. He was thrown into the laps of the two women by the force of the blast as they were thrown to their sides. He could feel something dripping out of ears that now thundered their disapproval. A larger stream ran down the back of his neck. He looked up and saw the two women in fuzzy outlines moving at what seemed like a frame a second. With great pain and difficulty he turned his head back toward the cause of the trouble and saw a distorted image some thirty feet to his rear. It was a large hole to the outside where there ought to be a brick wall and windows. Long after this blur faded to darkness, a light flashed and a new scene seemed to appear, but then played repeatedly through his injured brain. He was staring helplessly at a television screen showing an explosion from a old ship and then bodies burning on a stage with chaos everywhere, except for a lone, soothing voice telling everyone to remain calm and another voice telling them the culprit had been caught and executed…
Anwari stared vacantly out the window of the train back to Rome, trying to come to terms with the hollowness in his chest. Fleeing Florence under one of his alternate identities, he had walked over to the dining car when his stomach had gone AWOL on him. He could not find a way to eat before he pushed the button, and now he could not eat after. He ordered some caffè and a small cantuccini just to fit in. The ground rushing by just outside the train set him into an almost hypnotic trance. When he closed his eyes, all he could see was the explosion.
The fireball had nearly covered the side of the building. When it died down and the smoke lifted, he expected to see the hole in the Tocelli’s wall. Instead, his mind replaced it with another image from his past…
A huge fireball had consumed several old buildings in Jalalabad and then continued to burn the remnants to the ground. All the automatic weapons from ahead and to their rear had gone silent.
The only sounds were of men screaming from beneath the burning wreckage. No, not just men. He heard women and children wailing and moaning and occasionally screaming in Pashtun and Dari. Anwari and the Americans cautiously moved forward seeking to care for as many as they could, but it was too late for most. Later it would be one of those unfortunate circumstances of war that would dominate the attention of Anwari’s countrymen, but be largely ignored in America. He felt awful, but he had a job to do and kept doing it. Then he heard a voice he had heard so many times before. This time the voice was begging for help—not for himself but for his wife and sons. There lay his brother Karim, his legs now only bloody stumps and his head covered with blood, gesturing in the direction of a pool of bl
ood and comingled body parts as he passed out from the pain.
Anwari had thought the explosion in Florence might cure him of this recurring image, but it had solved nothing. The pain remained, and his stomach told him a new pain had been added to the heap of his despair.
Chapter 33
When Huxley opened his eyes, he was surprised he felt no pain. When he saw the clear tube running to his arm from the clear bag above, he closed his eyes again. More sleep would feel good. He drifted off into a dream. Once again, he was the man in the colored robes soaking his sorrows in that ancient tavern, but this time he heard that preacher in white robes calling him from the television, calling for all who searched for the truth to follow their yearning. The gentle smile of the preacher called him again from above the glowing white robes…
…Huxley’s eyes opened briefly to a bright whiteness and glow. When he blinked and pulled back, he saw the white uniform of the nurse hovering over him and the bright hospital light shining down upon him. He closed his eyes again and fell asleep.
A few days later Huxley awoke again. This time his head was pounding, his ears rang with a high pitched distortion, but he fought through the urge to close his eyes, and sleep did not reclaim him. After a few minutes, he found the buttons to his bed and raised the back.
A nurse walked in smiling. “Buon pomeriggio, Mr. Huxley. Bentornato ai vivi. You know where you are?”
He shook his head.
“You are in Hospital Saint Maria Nuova in Florence. You know why you are here?”
Huxley mumbled in English, “An old friend wanted me to go out with a bang.” He asked for some water.
Eventually, the physician came and examined him. He had suffered a fairly serious concussion and had been in and out of sleep and largely incoherent for four days. The lacerations on the back of his head might hurt, but they would heal just fine. He would need to stay for at least another week to recover and then should rest for another week or two before taking on any significant stress. Huxley asked about the two women in the apartment, and the physician said that they had fared much better than he since he had blocked much of the explosion from their path. They were treated for lacerations and released a few hours later.
Eventually, he managed enough strength to call Kira. “Had a bit of a setback.”
“You call coming within a few yards of death a setback? Yes, we know all about it. The Carabinieri called the office. Then the thing hit the cable news stations: ‘American investigator the target of terrorist bombing in Italy.’ I’m surprised reporters are not at your bedside trying to get a sound bite from you. What the hell happened?”
“Not sure. Getting too close. Damn clue almost deciphered.” Huxley closed his eyes. The pain this time pulled from between his temples and then reverberated to the back and down his spine. He grunted. “Got to…got to get back in the game before it’s too late.”
“You OK, Mr. Huxley?”
He was breathing hard. “Sure…just…just…you need anything else?”
“Well, you’re supposed to call Ken Mayer at CIA as soon as you can speak. And the old man wants a full report as soon as you are able.”
“Shit, don’t need that. Thanks, I’ll…uh…I’ll try to handle it.” Huxley grunted again as the pain returned from the rear of his head back toward his temples. “Tell them I was…I was a bit incoherent.”
“Uh, the truth then?”
“What? Yeah. Can barely hold it together. I’ll call them in a couple of days if I can.”
“Don’t bother. I’ll give them a report and buy you a week or two. Just get better, OK?”
“Thanks. See if you can find that guy.”
“Guy?”
“Yeah, uh…you know…the guy from the hotel.”
“Udani—Dracoratio?”
“No, the other guy. The Afghan.”
“Anwari.”
“That’s it. Find him, but keep it quiet.”
“Boss, don’t you need to start sharing a bit here?”
Huxley exhaled long and hard. “Can’t let them screw this up.” He may have forgotten Anwari’s name for an instant, but he could not forget his place in his investigation. After he thought he had seen Anwari in Florence, he had nearly blown up. Anwari was his only live angle, and he wasn’t giving the Afghan hero up to anybody else. Not just yet.
Chapter 34
Two weeks later, Kira had not yet found Anwari. Not even suspecting such a search, Anwari waited with his crew without feeling the anxiety he had long expected for the upcoming operation. If the plan worked, no shots would be fired. The real job had been completed long ago through secret negotiations and timely payoffs. His crew was there as more of a transportation facilitator but stood by as well to ensure the mission’s success. Anwari looked out at the scraggly plain before the distant mountains and almost felt at home, but not quite. Sure, he was used to wearing an army uniform, but the slight color and insignia variation made him feel like a soldier of fortune in a strange land. Still, the AK-47 in his hands felt like an old friend. The other five men in the truck were all professionals he could have mistaken for his old crew, but he could never hold them in such high regard.
Though this mission seemed minor, the ultimate consequences of its success weighed heavily on Anwari. Pardus had given him assurances that the infernal things would only be used as leverage to bring the Americans to their knees in negotiations. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help running the key passages in the Qur’an about Qital over and over again in his mind:
Those who believe and do good deeds will be forgiven and have a generous reward, but those who strive to oppose Our messages and try in vain to defeat Us are destined for the Blaze.
Anwari nodded to himself. Yes, at worst we fulfill this message of the Qur’an, for these people certainly try in vain to defeat us.
Those who have been attacked are permitted to take up arms because they have been wronged—Allah has the power to help them—those who have been driven unjustly from their homes only for saying, ‘Our Lord is Allah.’ If Allah did not repel some people by means of others, many monasteries, churches, synagogues, and mosques, where Allah’s name is much invoked, would have been destroyed.
He crossed his arms and bit his cheeks. We have been driven from our houses. These people have continually found excuses to attack us everywhere we live. We are justified in taking up arms.
[W]herever you encounter the idolaters, kill them, seize them, besiege them, wait for them at every lookout post…
Kill them wherever you encounter them, and drive them out from where they drove you out, for persecution is more serious than killing.
Pardus had reminded him of these passages again and again as he recruited him to the cause. They were the guiding force of Qital, which many mistakenly called Jihad, though that was a much broader term referring simply to the struggle against evil for the sake of good. Qital meant precisely “armed struggle.” He had read the passages over and over and memorized them.
The words near those passages gave him pause. Words like “do not overstep the limits: God does not love those who overstep limits.” The context of these passages and had given him a different view before Pardus took him in. Pardus had explained his was the path of righteousness and revenge for the horrible deaths brought on his family by the onslaught of the Americans. This path would lead to Anwari’s personal salvation. Had Anwari merely closed his eyes to the Truth before Pardus, or was he closing his eyes now to justify his brother’s demand still echoing down his spine?
The Americans had let him down. Not Captain Granger. He had been a good friend, a constant, his oak, but then the Americans cut the oak down. The inquiry had found him negligent.
Anwari had been disgusted when Granger had told him the news. “You mean to tell me Half-Moon Mole walks without any consequences?” Anwari asked.
Granger replied, “No, worse. They promoted him, at least that’s what I heard through back channels.”
“But the bastard
deliberately lied to us! There was no sweep of the block the week before and I’ll bet he knew that. He made that up just to get us to complete the mission. He wanted those terrorists bad, and he didn’t care how he got them. I told the Colonel that. You told the Colonel that. Yet the asshole gets a promotion?”
“He’s got more pull,” Granger said. “You and I were the only ones in that briefing. He claimed some bullshit like he told us to watch out for the civilians instead of the other way around. It’s a U.S. captain’s and an Afghan lieutenant’s word against a long-time spook.”
Anwari shook his head, disgusted. “The OGA protects its own and they find us as scapegoats?”
“Not you, me,” Granger said. “I called in the JDAMs. My initials were on the order. My order, my mess. No way getting around it. They see you as just backing me up ‘cause we’re friends. This won’t hit your record. You blame them?”
“Damn right. You didn’t kill my brother. Half-Moon Mole did. Are you telling me your country is so screwed up they refuse to see the truth? They want a murderer to go free? I want that bastard prosecuted.”
“Won’t happen, Abdul. Give it up. I’m sorry about your brother, really, it is a friggin’ tragedy. But you know shit happens in war. Sometimes its easier for them to just chalk it up to that.”
“Have you seen my brother? He’s barely hanging on. Can you blame him that he wants revenge? Are you trying to make us all hate you?”
“Hey, come on,” Granger said.
“Sorry. Sorry, I don’t mean you. But you have to help me. We could go see the colonel together. Tomorrow, we could—”
