Her hands were clasping an envelope with American stamps on it. She said, ‘It’s from Azannah. Her husband’s car dealership has had a wonderful spring. She wants to fly me and the girls to see her next month, and I—’
‘No.’
Mariah stopped, looked at him, and lowered her voice. ‘Henry, please, it’s been so long since I’ve seen my sister and my nephews and—’
He shook his head. ‘No. I will not allow it.’
‘But Henry, it’s—’
Another shake of his head. ‘The discussion is finished. You and the girls are not to travel to the United States. Ever. Understood?’
Her face colored and she nodded. ‘Understood.’
Mariah turned and went back up the stairs, her footsteps heavier this time, and Henry sighed as he resumed his work. No doubt there would be a week of cold meals and even colder words, but it had to be done. Others would have laughed off what Jack had told him, but not Henry. Not since that day in the prison shower when that tattooed tor-mentor of his had started bellowing like a bull, his hands clasped at his bleeding crotch. If Jack said something was going to happen, then Henry was going to believe it.
There. Finished. He shut down the computer and ejected the diskette, slipped it into a padded envelope. His work for now was done and he recalled that feeling he had experienced, that little shiver when Jack told him not to travel to the United States, that hated place, that cesspool of infidels…
The first time he noticed it, he had wondered: what was causing that shiver? And, of course, he had remembered that wonderful day, that September when he had watched with smiles and outright laughter those twin towers of Babylon burning and crumpling to the ground. The shiver was one of happiness, excitement, at seeing hammer blows struck against the unholy, and at the knowledge that somehow, with his work with Jack, he was helping to strike another hammer blow.
How wonderful.
Yet… Mariah’s sister and family. Could there not be a way of warning them?
Henry stood up, thinking. A puzzle, a quandary, that he would have to think and pray over for the rest of the day.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Brian Doyle was now fully awake, the little fog of exhaustion that had clouded his thinking having been dispersed with that one shocking word: anthrax. He recalled the mailings, right after 9/11, and how it had seemed as though a reeling country was coming in for another blow, with newspeople taking Cipro and postal workers wearing rubber gloves and face masks. After a while, the panic had ebbed away — what the hell else could you do? — but now the boogeyman was back.
He said, ‘Anthrax. All right. What else do you have?’
Adrianna said, ‘Observe the screen, please.’
Brian turned, saw the flickering image of the dead Brit fade out, replaced by a burst of static. Then something snapped into focus, and the rest of the group turned as well, looking at the image. It was a moving image, with numbers and letters streaming across the bottom of the screen. An overhead shot, showing a city scene. Narrow streets, a hell of a lot of traffic, carts, vendors and shops. There was a flickering motion as the camera seemed to focus on one particular vehicle: a white four-door, maybe a Toyota, with rust stains along the roof. The vehicle was moving slowly through the crowded street.
Adrianna said, ‘Aerial record, last month, from a Predator III drone.’
The doctor turned to Adrianna. ‘I thought the Predator drones only went up two generations. Not three.’
She smiled thinly. ‘Publicly, you’re right.’
Monty asked, ‘Where are we?’
‘Western part of Damascus, Syria. Keep on watching, please.’
Brian watched the video, unease creeping around in his gut. He wasn’t sure why but he remembered one of the last good times he had had with Marcy, before things had started crumbling between them. They had rented a cottage up in the Adirondacks, at some chilly lake whose name escaped him. Late one night, after a good meal and a bottle of wine, they had gone skinny-dipping in the cool waters of the lake, and in the moonless night they had made frantic love on the sands of their little beach. Marcy at first had been reluctant — ‘Suppose someone sees us?’ — but she had given in to his logical reply: ‘Who the hell’s gonna see us tonight?’.
And the answer now, of course, would be that anybody and everybody with the right gear and the necessary curiosity could see you if they wanted to. And he remembered an event, during his first month, working for the team.
At first Brian had done the usual investigative grunt work, which had been fine, considering what they were paying him and how the burden of worrying about court appearances and getting one’s story straight with whatever youngster assistant DA was assigned to your squad was no longer on his shoulders. The only thing was that he missed the reassurance of having backup. Back on the job, help was just a hurried radio call away: 10-13, officer needs assistance. But on this whacked assignment, he was on his own, which took a bit getting used to. He had flown alone out to Michigan, to interview some woman about her wayward nephew. The woman had emigrated from Yemen nearly twenty years earlier, and she had welcomed him into her living room with the quiet resignation of one who knew that her last name and ethnic background now meant that the giant searchlight of the government was glaring on her every move. Her house was sparsely furnished, with only one couch and two chairs and a tiny television set in the living room. She was worn and old, wearing a black dress and a headscarf. Brian felt like a fool, sitting in her room, asking a series of questions that he was sure had been tossed her way before, over and over again, from people as diverse as the INS and the Michigan State Police.
He went over the woman’s childhood, her coming of age, her marriage to a man who had worked for the American embassy in Aden and who had managed to emigrate to the United States. Her two sons and daughter, all grown, all married and with lots of grandchildren. Her husband’s unfortunate death five years ago. How difficult it was, making do in this community, even with a little money coming in every now and then from family members. How humiliated she had been, the first time she had received food from Meals on Wheels. So forth and so on, and the only time the conversation got heated was when she talked about her nephew — ‘that accursed young man’ — and she had said, with emphasis by pointing a gnarled finger at him, that she had not heard from the boy for years and years.
Then, tears in her eyes, she had lowered her head and apologized for raising her voice. ‘You’re just doing your job. That’s all. I understand.’
And as Brian made to leave, his interview over, she had pointed proudly to a photo of a young man in an Army uniform, posed stiffly in front of an American flag.
‘My son,’ she had said. ‘Halim. Serving as a translator in Iraq. With the Third Infantry Division.’
So Brian had gone out to his car, thinking the trip had been a bust — just low-level practice work for the team, he guessed — and as he was about to start up his rental car and head back to the budget motel that unfortunately was the closest lodging to this neighborhood, he had stopped. Car keys in hand.
Just stopped.
Something wasn’t right.
He paused, listened to his gut tell him something was up. It wasn’t something that was taught in the Academy or even in the few months on the street on the job. It was something you picked up along the way, absorbing it until it became part of who you were. And right now it was telling him that something wasn’t right.
Okay. Take a breath, take in the surroundings. A fairly desolate area outside Detroit, tiny one-family homes, butted up right against each other. Waist-high chain-link fences separated each tiny lot from its neighbor. The poorer homes had no garages of any kind, those doing a little better had open carports, and the real up-and-corners had proper garages.