She looked at her watch. The others would be there to pick her up any minute now; she had better get her things together. She threw the crust of the pizza into the garbage disposal, wiped off her hands, and hurried to her bedroom.
When Carolyn opened the door to her room, she saw Ronnie standing in the open doorway of her closet. Her purse was in his hands, and evidently she had surprised him in the act of opening it. Surprise, guilt and defiance showed on his face. Feeling as if she was existing in a quick-sand dream, she tried to open her mouth to shout.
There were two thoughts in her mind as the explosion ripped the room: She had been wrong about Ronnie, and perhaps it had not been so clever an idea after all, hiding the bomb in a woman’s purse.
Terrorist
by Edward D. Hoch
He tried to explain to them who he really was — but they wouldn’t listen!
He liked the country, always had.
He liked the colleges especially, with their ivied walls and peaceful classrooms, where he could enunciate the gutteral syllables of his mother tongue without dishonor. It was a good country, and he wanted only to see more of it.
He’d married a woman, married too young, perhaps. Married foolishly. She always wanted a better house, or more money, or some other demand he could not meet. He wanted only the peace of his classroom, and his students. Perhaps some day she’d drive him back across the sea, to that other land he’d all but forgotten though still it was home.
Once he’d decided to leave her, decided while he stood in the morning hallway of their walk-up apartment and watched the rising sun trace little patterns of brightness on the faded carpet. He remembered the breeze in the air that day, remembered how it tinkled the hanging glass chimes over the porch steps. He’d walked all the way to the campus that morning, nodding unseeingly at the neighbors who passed, breathing in the air and squinting at the sun and thinking about leaving the wife he no longer loved.
Between classes they often let him fool about in the chemistry lab, where he daydreamed of inventing an explosive so powerful it would rid the world of war. Surely Joseph Pulitzer would have understood that. And Nobel, who invented dynamite while still trying to tell the world it could live at peace. When he talked of such things to his wife, she merely laughed. Had the atomic bomb ended war? Not forever, surely.
And he thought about his wife, eyes scanning the stoppered bottles on the lab shelf.
Then the demonstrations came, shattered the peace of his quiet classroom, made him think of the old country once again. Police on the campus, swinging their clubs, lobbing their tear gas grenades. He was with his students whom he loved.
After that, some called him names. Same names he’d been called all his life. Some said, said in anger, send him back where he came from!
Where he came from.
And a letter came finally from the State Department, because he was not a citizen.
It was raining the day the letter arrived, a fierce August rain that made him think of boyhood summers far away.
His wife said she would see about it.
And winter came, and the protests on campus increased. And now there were some acts of terrorism around the country. A bomb, a fire, a kidnapping.
He bought a pistol.
And he began spending more time in the chemistry lab at the university.
In Washington there was another bombing, this time at a public building.
One evening his wife announced that she’d obtained an appointment to speak to someone about his status in this country. He told her he was pleased, and helped her pack a bag for the overnight journey.
When she was gone and he was alone in the house, he got out the bomb he’d made from the chemicals.
That night he boarded the late train for Washington.
The city was grim in a February frost. People hurried about, breathing steam, waiting for the President’s next budget message. No one paid him a heed, because he looked so harmless after all.
Senate Office Building,
No guards, no searches.
When will they learn?
He found the door he sought and checked his watch. Yes. Yes, now. He opened the door and saw the secretary half turn in his direction, saw the woman visitor waiting to be admitted, saw the closed door to the Senator’s inner office.
Then he threw the bomb and slammed the door shut.
Running.
People running.
The blast and smoke. Confusion. Someone tugging at his arm until he brushed them aside.
Then free, into the street. Perfect.
The river was smooth that day, flowing smoothly, barely a ripple, reminding him of the rivers back home. He walked for a long time.
Terrorist.
Terrorist bomb kills two in Senator’s office.
Secretary and woman constituant killed by blast.
Terrorist hunted.
Terrorist.
He took the evening train home.
In the morning they came to his house. They were very polite, but they asked so many questions. They asked him about the chemistry lab at the university, and about where he’d been the previous day. They asked him about his wife.
His wife was not home, he told them.
She’d gone to Washington to plead his case before their Senator. She’d been killed by a terrorist’s bomb.
How did you know that, they asked him.
The papers. It was in the papers. And on the television.
Not her name, they told him. Pending notification of next of kin.
And he was next of kin.
It was a terrorist, he kept insisting.
But they arrested him and took him away.