“Follow him,” Mustafa said, making a decision. “Keep him in sight but don’t take him yet. He may be on his way to meet with the Hoffmans . . . Hamdan, do you copy?”
An oath accompanied by the blare of a car horn erupted from the radio.
“Hamdan?”
“Ah, we’re stuck behind some idiot who won’t move . . . Costello was able to squeeze around. He’s turning south onto Union Boulevard.”
Sinbad already had the car in motion. Thirty seconds later they too were on the boulevard, the white motorcycle visible a block ahead of them.
“Everyone please pay attention,” Mustafa said into the radio. “Costello is southbound, approaching the July 14th Bridge. We want to see where he’s going, so I’d ask my friends in the Baghdad PD to please stay back with your sirens off. Anyone not driving a marked car, we could use your help with the pursuit. And can I get a helicopter overhead in case we lose him?”
Costello didn’t appear to be aware that he was being followed, but he was a naturally impatient driver willing to take chances, and Sinbad, whose car could not slip through the same gaps as the motorcycle, had to work hard to keep up with him. The bridge, where six lanes became four, proved a special challenge, but Sinbad managed to keep Costello in sight by means of several death-defying swerves into oncoming traffic.
They crossed the river, coming onto the narrow peninsula formed by the sharp bend the Tigris made as it flowed south out of midtown. Baghdad University’s main campus occupied the peninsula’s western tip, and Costello headed that way. “Abdullah,” Mustafa said into the radio, “can you get BU campus security on the phone and have them stand by?”
“Wait,” Samir said. “He’s pulling over.”
They were on a commercial strip near the eastern edge of the campus. In the middle of the block was an Ali Baba supermarket with a Forty Thieves coffee shop tucked in beside it. Costello parked his motorcycle in front of the coffee shop. Two blond men sitting at a table on the sidewalk stood up to greet him.
“Look at that, the whole gang.” Samir pounded Sinbad on the shoulder. “Dude, you bring good luck.” But Sinbad was less enthused. As Costello sat down with the Hoffman brothers, Sinbad pointed to a green knapsack under the table beside Peter Hoffman’s chair. “What do you suppose is in that backpack?”
Mustafa said: “We recovered all the stolen explosives.”
“All the stolen explosives from the army base,” Sinbad said. “But you can find explosives in a university engineering department, too. Or make them in a chemistry lab.”
“So what do you suggest we do? Call in SWAT and have them loan you a rifle?”
“I’ve got a rifle in the trunk. But if I use it we’ve got no one to interrogate.” He thought a moment, then reached forward to toggle a switch on the dashboard. A warning panel lit, reading AIR BAGS DISABLED.
“David?” Mustafa said.
“Unbuckle your seat belts and brace yourselves. Be ready to jump out as soon as the car stops moving.”
He drove forward before Mustafa could argue with him. When the car was almost at the coffee shop, Sinbad gave the steering wheel a hard jerk to the right and leaned on the horn. As the car swerved onto the sidewalk, Costello and Martin Hoffman jumped up and dove out of the way. But Peter Hoffman bent down and reached for the backpack. Sinbad hit the gas and plowed into the table moving faster than he’d intended; the car clipped the front corner of the coffee shop and slewed around to a stop.
Mustafa, despite bracing for impact, was thrown forward into the dashboard. By the time he stumbled from the car, Costello had hopped back onto his motorcycle and Martin Hoffman was fleeing on foot. Peter Hoffman had disappeared—or so Mustafa thought, until he looked down and saw a hand sticking out from under Sinbad’s car.
Costello kicked the cycle into life. Samir grabbed his wrist and tried to haul him off the bike, but Costello swung his helmet with his other hand, catching Samir in the face. Samir tumbled backwards and Costello twisted the throttle and raced away in the direction of the campus.
“Go after Hoffman!” Sinbad shouted. “I’ll get the American!” He reversed into the street and roared off after the motorcycle.
Martin Hoffman had run to a car parked across the street at the east end of the block. He stood beside it, slapping his pockets for keys, then looked back helplessly towards the coffee shop. He saw Mustafa coming for him and ran into the Ghost Music superstore on the corner.
Mustafa entered a moment later with his gun drawn. A few dark-haired students circulated among the racks of magazines and comics at the front of the store, but there was no sign of Hoffman. Searching for the German, Mustafa’s gaze was drawn to a display of bright yellow books offering easy education in divers subjects: Algebra for the Ignorant; Desktop Publishing for the Ignorant; Yazidi Culture for the Ignorant; and in a special pile, the post-November 9th bestseller, now heavily discounted, Christianity for the Ignorant.
Samir came into the store, followed closely by Amal, Hamdan, and several other agents. They spread out into a line and began a systematic sweep. In the video-game aisles, an exchange student stood up suddenly from behind a shelf of cheat manuals; he looked nothing like Hoffman save that he had blue eyes and pale skin, but it was only the grace of God that kept him from becoming a news story.
Mustafa found himself in an open aisle between two entertainment mediums and two warring sociopolitical viewpoints. To his left, in the DVD section, a bank of flat-screens showed the governor of Lebanon, in his previous career as an action-movie superstar, maneuvering a jump jet between the skyscrapers of Beirut and using the plane’s nose-cannon to annihilate an army of terrorists, all of whom looked like relatives of the man Mustafa was chasing. To his right, in pop music, a wall of speakers and subwoofers blasted out the punk band Green Desert’s anti-war, anti-Saud anthem, “Arabian Idiot.”
And straight ahead, taking no political stances but offering both DVDs and CD soundtracks for sale: a cardboard cutout of the Bollywood Aladdin. Mustafa looked away, then looked back again. A fringe of blond hair was visible above the curve of Aladdin’s turban. Mustafa turned and made eye contact with Samir, who nodded; he’d seen it too.
A woman in an abaya and veil came out of the DVD section, dragging a small boy behind her. Martin Hoffman darted from his hiding place. He knocked the boy aside and grabbed the woman to use as a shield, raising a knife to her throat. The woman struggled. Her veil tore loose, and Mustafa blinked in surprise. “Fadwa?” he said.
Shrieking, the little boy launched himself at the man who’d grabbed his mother. He sank his teeth into Hoffman’s leg. Hoffman’s grip on the woman loosened, and for an instant, Mustafa had a clear shot. His gun snapped up, seemingly of its own accord; this time it was loaded. Hoffman cocked his head to the side and opened his mouth as if he’d heard something shocking. He dropped his knife and fell backwards into the Aladdin display.
As the woman scooped up her son and fled for safety, more gunfire erupted. Mustafa thought at first that one of the other agents had opened up with an assault rifle. But it was movie gunfire—the Governator, slaughtering Christians in Beirut. Green Desert retorted with a lyric about Arab imperialism. Martin Hoffman didn’t react, just bled silently onto the pile of mixed media that had become his final resting place.
“You had to do it, man.”
Mustafa and Samir were on the sidewalk in front of the store. Inside, a team of paramedics, having made a pointless attempt to revive Hoffman, now stood milling around the body with the cops and federal agents. Mustafa had stepped away once the wisecracks started. Samir mistook his attitude for regret: “You had to do it. He’d have cut that woman’s throat.”
“I know, Samir,” Mustafa said.
The woman sat in the back of an ambulance, hugging her son to her breast. Her veil was still askew. Mustafa studied her face and wondered what had come over him. She wasn’t Fadwa; she didn’t even look like her.