Code White (15 page)

The condescension in his voice infuriated her all the more. “I am a doctor. I am employed by this hospital. That’s who I am. If you wish to accuse me of something, do so. But I resent being subjected to offensive and demeaning insinuations that, simply because I have a Muslim name and background, I am something less than loyal. There are at least a hundred Muslims employed in this medical center. Most of them are residents or staff physicians. Are you planning to call every one of us down here to undergo this absurd questioning? Do you seriously think that I may have planted a bomb in this hospital?”

“I don’t rule anything out,” said Lee.

“Then you are a fool!” Ali blurted. She knew instantly that she had gone too far. It was dangerous to get carried away in front of these men. Fear and anger were traps, and at all costs, she had to keep control over herself. But she felt like she was losing the battle. Old humiliations of the past had gotten a grip on her. She tried to adopt a more moderate, reasonable tone, but she could not disguise the tense vibrato in her voice. “I told you, I am a doctor. I have dedicated all the powers I have to the preservation of human life. I have taken an oath to help the sick and dying. ‘First, do no harm’ is what I have sworn. Could such a person become a murderer? Could I possibly be so lacking in mercy, or integrity, or judgment as to want
to kill my own patients
? And what of myself? Would I place a bomb, or countenance anyone placing a bomb, in the place where I myself live sixteen hours of every day? That would be suicide, would it not? What reason could I have for doing this? I would have to be insane. I ask you, do I seem to you to be insane?”

“No, quite sane, to be sure,” said Lee with an unflappable coolness that seemed calculated to goad her. “But insanity permeates the world we now live in. In a sane world, I grant you, doctors would not kill. But look at what we have. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the architect of 9/11, is a doctor and a skilled surgeon. It was two doctors, Khalid Ahmed and Bilal Abdulla, who rammed a Jeep packed with propane gas into the Glasgow airport in an attempted suicide bombing. The fact that you are a doctor does not count for much anymore. Nor does the fact that you are a young woman of great intelligence and promise. Such women blow themselves up every day in the Middle East.”

Ali stood up. Her hands and knees were shaking. She felt nausea welling up inside her, the way it always did when pure visceral passion was on the verge of taking over. Fear, rage, pain, and humiliation—all were seething beneath the surface, and she had only meager reserves of strength to keep them at bay. The danger in that made her even more fearful. If she did not escape quickly from these men and their questions, her very struggle for control could bring on a violent sickness. It had happened before — before just such a tribunal as this. “I have nothing more to say to you,” she announced, mustering one last challenge. “If you have a specific accusation to make, make it. Arrest me, waterboard me—whatever you dare. Otherwise, leave me to my work.”

Lee glared at her. His face appeared strained, and Ali sensed, a little too late, that he was a man who did not like to be challenged. But before he could respond, Harry Lewton reached out and touched him on the shoulder.

“Do you mind if I try a different tack?” Harry said in a soothing tone, as though he, too, sensed Lee’s perturbation. “I think this line of questioning is getting counterproductive.”

Lee eyed him distrustfully. “Be my guest,” he said with taut, pale lips.

There was a creak of leather as Harry got up from his swivel chair and walked around the desk, sidling past Lee and Scopes as he did so. Drawing up one of the cheap metal-and-fiberglass chairs, he sat down facing Ali, not more than two or three feet from her.

“Please,” he said, nodding toward Ali’s chair. That was all he said, but his face and tone of voice were gentle. After a brief hesitation, Ali sat back down. Their knees were so close that it made her uncomfortable, so she shifted her body away from him, settling nearly sideways. Gentle or not, there was something physically overpowering about him that she wasn’t used to in a man.

Harry leaned forward and spoke softly, almost intimately. “Dr. O’Day, I get the feeling that this is like déjà vu for you. Have you ever been interrogated in a setting like this?”

“Yes.” She was surprised by his question.

“May I ask when that was?”

“The Citizenship Review Board.”

“And that had an unfavorable outcome, yes?”

She nodded.
Does he know this, or is he guessing?

“I’m sorry. Dr. O’Day, let me make it perfectly clear that you yourself are not under suspicion. Nor is this a Muslim roundup. We have asked you to come down here because of specific information that we have. It has nothing to do with your religion. The information has to do with you.”

“Me?” She gave him a startled look. She had of course suspected this, but his frankness in saying it took her aback.

“Yes, you. More particularly, your relationship with your brother Rahman.”

That name again.
The slight relaxation she had begun to feel turned to anxiety once more. “Is my brother under suspicion?”

“Yes.”

“Because of a bomb?”

“A bomb threat.”

Ali shook her head vigorously. “
Here?
I don’t believe it. It would be without reason.”

“We think he may have very definite reasons for it.”

Rahman! Oh, damn you, Rahman!
Ali felt the stirring of old rancor inside her. “I cannot believe that my brother would plant a bomb in a hospital,” she declared. “He may be many things, but he is a devout Muslim, and such a thing is expressly forbidden by his beliefs. A hospital has a protected status, as a place of beneficence that is dear to God. But even if he were so deranged so as to do this, why, of all hospitals, would he choose this one? In destroying it, he would kill me. My presence here ensures that this would be the one hospital he would
not
harm.”

Lee shook a pen at her. “But you and your brother have had disagreements. He disapproves of your life, as you say. Perhaps it is his intention to punish you.”

Ali bristled at hearing Lee’s reedy voice again. “That’s not even worthy of a reply.”

Harry held up his hand like a traffic cop, cutting short the exchange. “Let me confide in you,” he said to Ali. Then, looking back at Lee and Avery, he raised his voice a notch. “Do you object to my telling her what we know? I think it would save time if we just came to the point.”

Avery shrugged. “If she is involved, she already knows anything we can tell her.”

Lee twirled his pen irritably. “Go ahead.”

Harry leaned toward Ali again, so far forward that his forearm rested on his knee. “At this moment,” he said, “this medical center is on high alert. There has been a very serious bomb threat. Explosive material has been recovered, which has been traced to known associates of your brother. The evidence is compelling.”

“What evidence?”

“Let me show you.” Harry leaned toward the desk and picked up two sheets of paper from it, crossing his gaze with Lee as he did so to preempt any objection. “These are printouts of two messages we have received from the bomber,” he said, handing the pages to Ali.

Ali read, and as she did so, her free hand rose involuntarily to cover her mouth. Until this moment, she had never thought of the bomb threat as something
real
. At Fletcher Memorial, drills and emergency codes were daily events, and staff rarely allowed them to disrupt clinical routine. But now, as she held these pages in her fingers, it was as though she were touching the bomb itself. A glimpse of its destructive power flashed through her mind. She saw the great steel-and-glass towers of the hospital reduced to ruins, stained with the blood of the dead and dying. She heard the cry of the innocent—a whirlwind rising up from a pyre of flames and smoke. She saw Jamie Winslow lying twisted in the rubble, his beautiful platinum hair charred black as soot.

As if they were hot coals, she flung the pages back at Harry. “A Muslim did not write this,” she said abruptly.

“Why do you say that?”

“Written as it is, it is blasphemy. A Muslim would not praise both God and the Prophet in the same breath. Only God is worthy of praise. The correct formula would be ‘Praise be to God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, and may the peace and blessings of God be upon His Prophet.’ Then you have the use of the word ‘martyr.’ A martyr is one who has died for the faith. No Muslim would refer to living persons as martyrs. This message is clearly a fraud, written by someone who is not and never has been a Muslim, and who wishes to deceive you as to his true identity and motives.”

Lee tapped his lips pensively, with his fingertips pressed together. “I have considered that.”

Ali glared at him.
No you haven’t, you smug little know-it-all. You don’t understand our culture at all.
But her answer was directed not to Lee, but to Harry. “If such a thing as the Al-Quds Martyrs’ Brigade exists, it did not issue this message.”

Harry gave her a searching look. “I don’t know whether you’re right or not. But what is certain is that your brother is a person of material interest in this case. If he’s not involved, then I would be happy to see him clear himself. For all I know, he may have an ironclad alibi. But we do need to locate him and talk to him. This is a matter of great urgency. The lives of scores or even hundreds of people in this hospital may be at stake.”

Ali still didn’t know what to make of Harry. He had dragged her before this tribunal and had lied to her to get her here. And yet he didn’t seem to be like Lee and the others. He spoke to her directly, knowingly. He seemed to care about the lives of the people who were threatened by this hideous bomb. And he treated her as though he knew that she cared about them, too.

“I don’t know where he is,” she said, regretfully, not defiantly as before. “I told you, I haven’t had contact with him for several years.”

“Can you think of anyone who might know?”

“No.”

“Is there anything else that you might be able to tell us? Anything that might shed some light on the situation?”

“No.”

Harry leaned forward even further and took her hand. It was the first time he had touched her, and it made her bristle. Yet at the same time, she felt a blush come over her. She was in desperate need of a lifeline, and his strong but gently pliant hand seemed charged with a self-possession that she lacked. “Look at me,” he said. “I want you to understand that I am not political, either. I don’t know the Brotherhood from the Ku Klux Klan. The one and only thing I care about is this medical center. The hospital—that’s my Jamie Winslow. And I will do whatever I have to do to keep it out of harm.”

“If I could help you, I would. But I don’t know anything.”

“May I give you my honest opinion?”

She nodded warily. “Please do.”

“I think that you do know something. I saw it in your eyes when you read those papers. Something—I don’t know how to describe it … a look of recognition, perhaps. Maybe even fear. I’m pretty good at reading people, and I’d be willing to bet my life on it. You know something. Maybe something you really do want to tell us, but don’t know how.”

Ali jerked her hand away from his.
What is this? Another trap?
“Are you going to arrest me?”

“That’s not my call. But whenever you do want to talk about it, I’m ready to listen.”

Ali stared at him, trying to divine his intentions. Yes, there
was
something familiar about the e-mails—if only she could put her finger on what it was! It was like hearing a snatch of music and not being able to name the composer, although she had heard the piece a hundred times before. Harry had picked up on her suspicions, but how? Had she done something to betray herself? What else was he seeing this very moment? She was afraid to say anything, even to attempt a denial. Whatever she did or said would only make things worse. Of course, keeping silent looked bad, too. But silence was all she was capable of. Silence, and a vacuous stare.

It was Lee who broke the impasse by clapping his hands together. “Enough of this,” he said with an exasperated sigh. “Dr. O’Day, do you wish to modify anything you have said to us?”

“No.”

He waved toward the door. “In that case, you’re free to go.”

Hesitantly, as if suspecting a trick, Ali stood up. She glanced at Lee for a moment, then at Harry. There was expectation in his eyes, but he made no move to get up or to speak. Still feeling the heat of scrutiny, and not wanting to appear overly eager, Ali ceremoniously adjusted her white coat and proceeded toward the door. But then, reaching for the handle, she paused and looked at the fingers of her extended hand. They were trembling, ever so finely—something rare for her, who prided herself on her surgeon’s steadiness. She was certain that no one else could see it. And yet, a disturbing intimation came to her. She shot a glance at Harry.
Was it my hand that gave me away? He touched me; could he feel this tremor?

Their eyes barely grazed before Ali turned away.
Yes, he knows. He knows even more than he will say.
She felt a rush of anger. This prizefighter with the sage’s eyes had forced his way into her innermost thoughts, and she had not even offered a token resistance. It infuriated her how naturally it all had come about, how while she had struggled through the interrogation he had sat watching her with perfect calmness, as though he could have stepped in at any time and made an instant connection if he wanted to, and how when he wanted to, at last, he scarcely made any effort to do it. He simply took hold of her with that burly, tan hand of his, and the connection was made. She hated men like that, men of sheer physical power. Men who acted like they could command a woman. And this man, Harry, was the worst of the type. He was the worst because of those eyes of his—eyes that persuaded you that somehow, deep inside, he might really care.

So abruptly did she flee his lingering stare, that the door whooshed behind her as she pulled it shut.