Jihadi (6 page)
Authors: Yusuf Toropov
She was always forgiving Thelonius.
Given the element of surprise, I can kill a man with my right thumb. Where the hell is Clive with my dinner?
The little man seemed to believe Fatima incapable of error. He pronounced her first day excellent, mentioning the excellence of her
first day at several points during his five-thirty wrap-up meeting with all his subordinates.
At this meeting, people were supposed to review what they had accomplished over the course of the day. Fatima’s work had involved listening to recordings of conversations that American military and intelligence officials believed to be private, but weren’t. She took typed notes summarizing these conversations, then forwarded the notes to Murad Murad for review. As instructed, she was careful to transcribe with total accuracy any details identifying individuals operating within the American network of informants.
I dedicate this note to those – there are some – who doubt my objectivity in analyzing the more sensational aspects of this case. For their benefit, and for our nation’s, I here openly acknowledge that not every line penned in Liddell’s cell is demonstrably lethal to the security interests of this country. I know for a fact, for instance, that this alarming passage of
Jihadi
has already led to a top-to-bottom review of security protocols within the Islamic Republic and elsewhere. We may thus credit Thelonius, at least in part, with the (wholly unintentional) identification of hundreds of listening devices in dozens of outposts, with a complete overhaul of our security procedures there, and with the formal, confirmed, post-mortem identification of at least one mole under the simultaneous employ of the BII, ourselves, and Al Qaeda. That this identification took place after the mole’s destruction of both himself and much of our embassy is of course regrettable, and I will let the chorus of my detractors complete the lyrics of the rest of that forgettable little 45, which they are sure to do anyway. I have another album I would much rather listen to. It gleams in the player like the holy thing it is.
That was not what Murad Murad wanted to discuss, though.
Murad Murad complimented Fatima’s typing skills. He noted that her speed and accuracy were the result of her good posture while seated, which he felt was almost as remarkable as her posture while standing. Fatima was the only female in the department, which employed a total of eighteen people. She didn’t see what her posture had to do with anything, but she kept that to herself. She sighed in relief, too audibly perhaps, when six o’clock came.
It was an accomplishment to exit that huge grey monstrosity of a building.
As she was walking home – she, her mother, and her sister lived a quarter of an hour’s brisk walk away – Fatima heard a woman’s unfamiliar voice. It said, from right behind her and in the native tongue, ‘Follow me, please. We are expected.’
She didn’t turn to see who it was. That would show weakness. Weakness acknowledged the importance of all interruptions. Let whoever was speaking say whatever needed to be said again.
That dreary Brazilian Polonius-by-the-Pool: interruption personified. Cigar. Alone. Singing. If one can call it that. Will no other guest complain? His penchant for archaic sub-disco irritates you. I can tell by your sudden kicking. My internet is out yet again. Damn Clive. Damn this place.
Perhaps it would be better (Thelonius suggested to Becky after they had made love in the little cottage) if they spent some time apart.
That (Becky pointed out) could create more problems than it solved.
A week later, they were married. Thelonius was never quite sure how it happened. The guilty dead guy he became reconstructs one possible scenario below.
Becky was all about solving problems. She fell in love with him knowing love was a potentially serious career mistake, knowing that, having recruited him and concealed his problems, she was, technically at least, putting herself at risk of a five-to-ten-year term in a federal penitentiary. But all that penitentiary business was only if anything ever went wrong, so really, what was quite important was that nothing go wrong, and perhaps they were stuck with each other already. Perhaps marriage really was the best option, in terms of both love and damage control, so they agreed nothing would go wrong. Remarkably, nothing did, for the longest time.
In 2005, though, in Salem, at Thelonius’s dining-room table, Sergeant USA said:
Kid. She’s not a woman. She’s an android. Cut her head off. You’ll see
.
And the trouble was, he really felt like listening to that voice.
‘Keep looking at my feet, T, and keep breathing from your diaphragm.’
He did. Puddles of milk near her feet breathed, too.
‘Tell me who I am, T.’
She stood, slid off the peach-and-black bathrobe and let it fall to the hardwood floor.
The feet disappeared. Two gentle steps and they returned, with the graceful long Toes. He always capitalized them in correspondence
to her. He shut his eyes now. She was standing nude for him, her first-line prescription for calm during periods of black rage. It had worked many times. But he could not bring himself to look at her, not with that cat crated somewhere, writhing in its own filth.
‘Who am I?’ she demanded again, in the familiar, insistent tone, concerned for him and for the world. ‘Am I a machine or am I a woman?’
Machine, kid.
Machine, kid
.
I am not yet convinced that T actually had this specific, pseudopropagandistic hallucination. It seems unthinkable that he could have concealed such aberrations from me. That portable silver boom box emits its squalid poolside dance music. It squawks and bleats far too loud for safety. It affects you. It
affects
you. Unendurable. Gloves on.
He was afraid to look away from the white puddle.
‘I don’t want to answer that question,’ Thelonius hissed, his eyes tight, his words black with sarcasm. ‘Put that robe back on. Hurry.’
‘Okay, T.’
She did.
Sergeant USA, unseen, said
Machine. Machine. Machine
.
Have to get out now.
‘Okay. Robe on, T. Keep breathing.’
He opened his eyes, looked for hers, found them.
Machine. Take it out of operation
.
Get Child back. Don’t lose the thread again.
He stood, stepped forward, came to terms with the angry wave that overtook his left knee (the room faded a bit with it), limped toward the kitchen door despite that long ache, grabbed the keys. Grey skies, but at least the cold rain had cleared. The leg got better if you moved it.
Just Get Started.
‘I repeat: The imam wishes to speak with both of us. He wishes to discuss what we saw at the embassy. He is waiting for us at his home.’
Fatima refused to stop walking, refused to turn toward the source of the words, spoken far louder than necessary. The familiar figure caught her up, stepped in front of her.
‘Now.’
It was, as she had already concluded, the heavyset woman. She had a harsh voice, piercing: a voice perfect, Fatima thought, for calling out orders at a busy restaurant, or shouting the names of errant schoolchildren in a playground. The voice of someone who needs to be recognized as the most important participant in any conversation she chooses to enter. A voice one wishes immediately, upon first hearing, that one had not heard.
Thelonius gunned the minivan to life, hit the accelerator with his good leg, ground the gravel of his driveway, spun his way onto Essex, and watched as the first of twenty-one intersections between his mailbox and the Salem Abandoned Animals Facility got out of his way. The faster the car went, the more stable time became and the further away the insistent voice of Sergeant USA.
There were two problems.
The first problem was Becky’s clinical inability to shut up about the whole baby thing. He had made clear from the get-go that this point would be a deal breaker in the relationship, but she had conveniently forgotten that discussion.
Poolside noise problem solved. Gloves off now.
Pulled the curtains. You are safe and undisturbed. A fitting moment to address the ‘whole baby thing’. An eventual reversal of Thelonius’s vasectomy was implied in our marriage vows, which I shall not embarrass my readers by reproducing here. His lack of personal initiative on this subject demands close examination, as it illuminates many of the deeper strategic issues of the case. By the time he converted to Islam, Liddell had forgotten – though I swear he knew, he knew, he
knew when we married! – that American citizenship carries with it both rights and responsibilities. I submit here that defaulting on the responsibilities of citizenship revokes the rights of citizenship. Despite the claims of the religionists, history has identified a citizen’s chief responsibility to this country. It is the great personal obligation of the pioneers, the astronauts, the entrepreneurs, the spies who built America: self-reliance in all circumstances. Self-reliance (that which Islam rejects, that in which track one instructs us so eloquently) trumps destiny.
Absolutely famished. Civilian casualties and occasional cases of mistaken identity regrettable, inevitable, always part of warfare, etc. Never eliminate, only minimize. Like fighting traffic accidents. Those saved never aware. Come back and fill this in.
Becky forgot most discussions in which she disagreed with Thelonius and didn’t get her way. The more intense the conversation, the more likely she was to forget he had won the argument. Well, that stopped now.
So: This was something she felt strongly about. Fine. So: There were biological components to this. Fine. The cat could have served as a kind of constructive distraction for her. A perfectly legitimate channel for those parental feelings. They both had them. So why not express them? Pet the damn cat. And by the way, he had absolutely no doubt that Becky did have maternal feelings for Child. She fought them, was all. Why? Because she could not stand losing an argument. Guess what? This one she was losing. Whether she knew it or not. No baby.
He had never promised this. Ever. But she pretended he had. Witness the minivan he was driving at this very moment. Becky had planned all the discussion points ahead of time, come into battle armed with fifteen different printouts from fifteen different consumer sites. Air bags, via
Consumer Reports
. Fuel economy, via
Auto World
. Retention of value, via some incomprehensible actuarial thing she had tracked down, printed out, and highlighted with two green, perfectly executed horizontal stripes. And an annotation, in her loose, unruly scrawl near ‘toddler seat restraint’:
Relevant to whatever we eventually do decide to pursue with our family.
What was that supposed to mean? What the hell did they even need a minivan for? Whatever there was to ‘pursue with our family’, here they were, already pursuing it. They had groceries delivered to the
house. She avoided any and all Ryan Firestone gatherings. Guess what? There were two people in this family. Two. The Siena seated eight.
What was this green monstrosity he was driving if not a daily message from her to him: ‘I want a baby in a car seat to buckle into this vehicle’?
Guess what. No.
If anyone knew about him, she did. So she
knew
this. Going
in
. If he felt in his gut that he was not suited to win at something, then it just didn’t make any sense for him to commit to it. How many dozens of times had he told her: Not A Dad, Okay? The subject was closed.
Thelonius punched it, and made the light.
Leave aside his short fuse and his tiny attention span and his impatience with people not knowing how he operated. Leave all that aside. Assume him to be a perfectly well-intentioned father, with something resembling the toolbox necessary to do that job. There was still the Plum to be considered. The kid had a thirteen percent chance of inheriting The Condition. But she couldn’t be told that. On Dad’s orders.
Clive brought two turkey subs, unsliced. He had to drive across town. Pizza joint had closed early. I made him fetch a knife (grey-handled, serrated, comfortable in my hand) and used it to divide mine in a civilized manner. Ordered him to eat his out of my presence. Sad Clive. Once he was gone, I wolfed mine down. Inserting the
White Album
CD, a necessary distraction and our guide. Cue it to track one. Just in case. Feel a migraine coming. I may lose that sandwich.
Thelonius felt a tightness in his chest.
Well. Nothing to be done about that.
If she was unhappy, it was her own damn fault.
A veiled reference to his infidelity during that damnable trip. Good gravy. Barely made it to the commode in time. Can’t seem to keep food down now. My head a basketball left too long in the rain. Just a terrific peeling and throbbing. Time to bring out the heavy artillery. I shall press play and put track one on repeat.
Right-turn here. Some sound. Sorry, civilians.
Thelonius drummed the dashboard with the fingers of his right hand and merged onto West Essex, occupying a lane and a half for a few exhilarating seconds.
Of
course
he was capable of compromise. Of course he was. Hadn’t he agreed to stay here, where she had this creepy goddamn we-mustn’t-abandon-Tara thing going via Dead Mother, instead of moving to Langley, as he’d wanted to? Of
course
he could compromise. What about
her
? Could
she
compromise? Not in regard to the whole baby thing, apparently. Guess what? That changed today.
Right
now.
The second problem, of course, was Dick Unferth.
Thelonius hit the gas.
A stop sign hurtled past. Thelonius heard the ascending howl of an auto horn from what felt like three o’clock, but couldn’t have been, could it? Just in case, his right foot stomped the brake, and his left hand eased the steering wheel sufficiently leftwards to ensure complete safety. A red Fiat swerved around the front end of the Siena with several happy inches to spare.
That idiot could have seen Thelonius coming earlier.
He stomped the Siena to a full halt. Little screech. The Fiat, still righting itself, regained the centre of its lane and sped off. There was a long and troubled descending note as the red blur proceeded westward.
He was within a block of the Abandoned Animals Facility. Actually a good thing he had run the stop sign. Might have driven right by without this emergency stop.
Dick
Unferth
. Of all people.
He saw, in his mind’s eye, a little girl’s hand in a spreading pool of blood.
Stress breath CONSCIOUS.
No driveway, this is it.
My husband’s all-too-brief homecoming is referenced here, as is, in hindsight, the familiar gravel strip from which he abandoned our beloved Salem foursquare.
Which brings us to Paul McCartney.
This masterpiece of masterpieces, track one of the
White Album
, this airborne allegory of espionage and self-sufficiency, this last great up-tempo offering from the world’s last great band, celebrates McCartney’s own great escape. It also celebrates an archetypal homecoming of deep relevance to our purposes.
In 1968, as the world burned around them, they came home to London, abandoning their misguided odyssey to the foothills of the Himalayas: Messrs. McCartney, Lennon, Harrison and Starr. If they’d started their journey in search of redemption (and the evidence suggests that they had) then they concluded it by proclaiming, with this song, their insistence that redemption was not to be found at the feet of a guru, but rather in their own craft as rock-and-rollers. Again: self-reliance as homecoming.
Let us address, then, the most obvious issue first. Their seemingly pointless sojourn to the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi – in reality, a trip demanded by the
White Album
itself, as most of the album’s thirty songs were composed there – foretells a similarly bankrupt, similarly pointless pilgrimage of a certain late spouse of mine! Unlike them, however, he never truly returned.
As the members of the band laid down take after take of this exquisite, multilayered, satirical, and, yes, psychically prescient composition, they were indeed home at last: back in the UK, back in the studio, back where they belonged. Most importantly (and this is the foundation stone of the song’s central conceptual joke): they were back in the West, title or no title, rocking out. My husband, Thelonius Liddell – hereafter simply T, as he is no longer my husband or anyone else’s – rejected such a return to Western values the moment he spun out of our driveway.
He could so easily have embraced fatherhood. For his mistress and his twisted sleeper-cell followers, however, that was not an option. There was another, more seductive, more deadly path to pursue. This was Islam, the barren course he chose to follow as an explicit insult to me, to his Nation, and to all of Western civilization. In 1968, that tragic journey of T’s was prophesied in this song’s refrain. He had no idea how damned lucky he was.
Of course, I do not mean to suggest here that T consciously invoked the Fabs in this manuscript. Nor do I maintain that he chose to echo the themes of self-reliance and return that propel the fierce, incomparable rhythms of track one. I only note that this song, like the twenty-nine cunningly sequenced compositions that follow it, happens to illuminate, to anticipate with extraordinary depth and clarity, key aspects of Liddell’s blind wanderings into Islam … as well as certain critical insights on the West’s looming, inevitable confrontation with the Forces of Darkness.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my father, whom T murdered, raised me to believe that there is no such thing as coincidence. My father, whom T murdered, was correct in that! If he were with us today, my father might well join me in acknowledging that the
White Album
itself is the key, not only to understanding this man, treacherous as memory, but also to securing control of the global conversation that is the great struggle of our era. Control of the conversation is a necessary prerequisite of victory.
The
White Album
is warning us and guiding us. It has been warning us and guiding us for decades.
It begins with a set of lyrics that left even the Reds speechless, which was, of course, the point. Who is to say what role this magnificent, icon-busting composition played in bringing down the Wall?
Listen, my sceptical and distracted colleagues, listen to this anthem of self-reliance. Listen. Listen to it as you have never listened to it, listen with an open mind. Hear that awakening tangle of tough guitars, watch that plane passing overhead. Feel the joyous fury of its inextinguishable engine, its nameless passenger’s energizing series of commands. Follow the homeward path of that great aircraft, Freedom, a path set out for us by our Founding Fathers, a path that Paul McCartney knew, at some mysterious, semi-conscious level, T would choose to reject. Listen.
Also please skip to the end of this chapter. I did.
Still on repeat. Head much better.