Samir opened his eyes again as the doorman finished his third and final circuit. The doorman held up the last photo from his stack, a blow-up of Samir’s wallet snapshot: Malik and Jibril, smiling, happy, maybe a little sad too that their father no longer lived with them—but innocent, thank God, as to the reason why.
“Everyone,” Idris said.
THE LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA
A USER-EDITED REFERENCE SOURCE
Republic
A republic is a government whose chief of state is not a monarch, and which is to some degree answerable to its citizens. The term was coined by the Christian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli from the Latin phrase res publica, “a matter for the people . . .”
Like “democracy” and “freedom,” the word “republic” is sometimes used by tyrants to create the suggestion of limited government without its substance. Thus the phrase “people’s republic,” which at first glance appears redundant, but is in fact an example of reinforcing a lie through repetition.
The Israelis were bombing Vienna.
Over the weekend, Roman Catholic guerrillas had attacked an IDF patrol along the border west of Salzburg, capturing two soldiers and carrying them back into Austria. The hills around Salzburg were riddled with tunnels and fortifications, and so many hidden rocket launch sites that the region had been nicknamed Peenemünde South; Israeli troops attempting to rescue the kidnapped soldiers came under heavy fire, and as they pressed the attack the Von Brauns up in the hills began lobbing terror bombs at Jewish settlements in Bavaria.
The Israeli Air Force blasted Salzburg and its environs for two days without letup, but the rocket attacks continued. On the third day the prime minister in Berlin decided to adopt a new strategy, holding the Viennese parliament and the Austrian people collectively responsible for the guerrillas’ misbehavior. Israeli bombers began hitting infrastructure targets all over the country: highway bridges and tunnels, railroad yards, river ports, as well as any vehicle that looked like it might be transporting rocket parts. Now the capital had made the target list. Vienna’s airport was a cratered ruin, and the bridges over the Danube were all heavily damaged or destroyed, cutting the city in half.
“Samir,” Mustafa said. “Are you all right?”
“What?”
They were in the black van, driving west on the BIA Expressway at dawn. For the entire ride Samir had been staring out the window with a scowl on his face.
“What’s eating you?” Mustafa said. “You’ve been like this for days.”
“It’s nothing,” Samir said, forcing a smile. He nodded at the radio. “I’m just bummed I won’t be able to go skiing in the Alps this winter.”
“Samir . . .”
“Also, I heard the Israelis blew up that hotel where they make the chocolate cakes with the apricot filling. I always wanted to try one of those.”
“Seriously, Samir. Is it something to do with Najat? Or your boys?”
“Najat hates me, which as we know is perfectly normal. And the only problem with Malik and Jibril is that I haven’t seen them in months.”
“So what is it, then? Are you still worried about Idris coming after us?”
Samir sighed. “And what if I was, Mustafa? What would you do about it, threaten to beat him up for me?”
“Samir—”
“Please, just drop it. I’m OK, really.”
Baghdad International Airport was just ahead. Mustafa took the exit lane marked FREIGHT TERMINAL and followed the signs to the Arabian Parcel Service hub.
The man at the customer service counter was reading a Syriac New Testament. He greeted Mustafa and Samir warmly but turned hostile when he saw their Homeland Security IDs. “Is this about a missed delivery?”
“No sir,” Mustafa said. “We’re here to intercept a package containing evidence that pertains to an investigation. I spoke about this on the phone to a supervisor named Abd al Shakur. He—”
“Abd al Shakur is not here. Do you have a legal warrant for this package?”
Samir, happy to have a focus for his own ill humor, leaned forward across the counter. “Why, are you a lawyer?”
“My daughter is a lawyer,” the man said. “She works for the ACLU. Should I call her?”
“No need for that,” Mustafa said, placing a hand on Samir’s shoulder. “We’re not looking to persecute any Christians, brother.”
“Ah, so it’s a Muslim’s civil rights you want to violate. And I’m supposed to smile and say OK then? What kind of Christian do you think I am?”
“I’ll tell you what kind of Christian you are,” Samir volunteered.
“Please, brother,” said Mustafa. “Your respect for the Constitution is admirable, but this is a case where even a good Christian should want to help us.”
“Even if I believed you, there’s nothing I can do,” the man replied. “If Abd al Shakur had set aside a package for you, it would be behind this counter, but as you can see there’s nothing here. That means it’s on a truck, and most of the trucks have already left.”
“Well then, you’ll just have to call them back, won’t you?” said Samir.
“That I cannot do, even if I wished to. The trucks have no radios.”
“I thought they were all linked by computer,” Mustafa said.
“They are, but it’s a one-way link. When a delivery is made, or attempted, the system sends a notification so that paying customers—not government thugs—can check the status of their shipments. But there’s no way for me to send an outgoing message.”
“And in an emergency? What do you do if there’s a bomb on the truck?”
“Trust to the mercy of Almighty God, whom all good men believe in.”
Mustafa found himself liking this guy despite his uncooperative attitude. “In the spirit of God’s mercy, then,” he said, “can you at least tell us for certain whether the truck has left yet?”
The man looked at him sourly, but because Mustafa had been polite he relented. “I suppose I could do that . . . Do you know where the package is going?”
“Adhamiyah,” Mustafa told him. “The Republic of Saddam.”
Amal meanwhile was in the reception area of her mother’s Baghdad office. The senator had flown in from Riyadh the night before to attend a fund-raiser and was due back in the capital this afternoon for an important vote. She’d squeezed fifteen minutes out of her morning schedule for her daughter, but as usual, she was running late.
The wall across from where Amal sat waiting was hung with the obligatory Unity portrait of Gamal Abdel Nasser. This iconic image was what Aunt Nida had always privately referred to as the pre-assassination photo. If only Nasser had had the good grace to be martyred in the early ’60s, Nida said, the Party would have been spared the embarrassment of his second presidential term: the scandals, the abuses of power, the long, drawn-out impeachment process that had revitalized the Party of God and set the progressive agenda back decades. Still, embarrassment or no, Nasser was the Party patriarch, and respect had to be paid.
To the right of Nasser’s beaming mug, almost as large, was a copy of The Moment. Other scenes from her mother’s life and career were displayed around the room, Amal herself appearing in some of them. She’d chosen her seat to avoid having to look at the most painful of these, a shot of her parents attending the ceremony where she’d been sworn in as an ABI agent.
It was not an event her father had expected to live to see. If Saddam Hussein had been a real king, he surely wouldn’t have. But Saddam was only a king of the underworld, and even the fiercest mobster couldn’t slaughter police captains with impunity. Which is not to say he forgave and forgot. Of the men who stood with Shamal as leaders of reform, four later died in suspicious accidents. Another six were ensnared—framed, they all said—in a corruption scandal of their own; of these, three committed suicide, one went into hiding in Europe, and the remaining two were murdered in prison.