21
Washington
A
full minute passed while Aliyah waited for Abbas to speak again. She was still crouched on the floor, knees cramping while she watched his face for any sign of what would come next.
It gave her time to consider every possible consequence, and she was surprised to realize they still had so much to lose. The aftermath of Shereen’s death had convinced her that nothing else could ever be so painful or costly, but now she wondered. They still had their son, their home, and their many years together. All were now at risk, awaiting the verdict from her silent husband as he gazed down with eerie calm.
Perhaps a logical explanation was still possible, some strange but reassuring set of circumstances that would add up to something other than a crazy plan to blow up a church. Or maybe it was nothing but an intellectual exercise, an odd form of therapy in which the planning had become an end in itself.
If so, then why sign a lease? Abbas had never been the type to squander money on a mere abstraction.
At last he spoke, in a steady voice that neither scolded nor accused. The coolness made his pronouncement all the more shocking.
“You cannot stop me, Aliyah. You can tell whoever you like—that is out of my hands. Even the police, if you wish. Then someone will come take me away, and nothing will ever happen. But I won’t stop voluntarily. Not for you, not for anyone. Because I am doing this for Shereen.”
She nodded slowly while wondering what to say. Her response was crucial. Push him away now and he would redouble his efforts at secrecy. Then her only alternative would be to turn him in, as he had suggested. With that in mind, she seized upon a sudden inspiration. She spoke slowly, and tried mightily to match his even tone.
“What makes you think I want to stop you? Don’t you think I want the same thing?”
“No. That’s not possible. It’s not your way. Even if it was, you can’t help me. It would complicate everything.”
“What choice do you have? I have to help you now.”
The pain in her knees had grown sharp enough to bring tears to her eyes. She wanted to cry out, but didn’t dare, not while they were out on this ledge where the slightest push might send him to oblivion.
Abbas sighed, in either impatience or exasperation. That was when she knew she had a chance. It was her only alternative—enlist in his mad scheme in hopes of somehow diverting it before it came to fruition or led to his arrest.
Their
arrest, she reminded herself. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
“You are certain?” he asked, a note of skepticism in his voice.
She again sensed a need for just the right words. Sound too assured and he wouldn’t believe her. Abbas had always mistrusted instant conversions, and Aliyah was the deliberate sort who reached decisions by degrees, after careful consideration. Yet wavering might also be fatal.
“No,” she said. “I’m not certain. Although I’m getting there. I think I’ve been getting there all along, from the time I started to figure out what you were up to. Maybe that’s why I haven’t said anything ’til now. I can promise you one thing. I won’t try to stop you, even if I’m not sure how much I want to help. But I can only keep that promise if you share your thoughts along the way. About everything. So you must tell me about all of this.” She held up the awful book, still open to the chapter on bomb making. “And you can start with why you’ve leased that building across the street from the senator’s church.”
He seemed taken aback that she had pieced together so many details, but he didn’t ask how.
“Fair enough.”
He held out a hand to help her up. She suppressed a cry of relief as she stood. Most of the feeling in her legs was gone, and it was all she could do to walk.
“Make some coffee,” he said, “and we’ll talk. I’ll tell you what I can. But first, tell me one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Why? Why would you want to help? And don’t say it is because of your grief, or your talks with Annie Felton. You see her to reduce your anger, not to build it up. This will take you in the exact opposite direction. Why, then? Why choose my way?”
She sensed this was the last and most important hurdle. It was like landing in the middle of an ancient myth to face a bridge-keeper’s riddle. A lie wouldn’t work. He knew her too well. Unless the lie concerned the one part of her life he had studiously avoided, to the point of ridicule. Her religion. He would probably believe that almost anything could have transpired during her journey of faith.
“It is not out of anger,” she said slowly, carefully. “It is out of a sense of rightness, of justice. Holy justice. The kind they talk about at the mosque.”
Then she quoted a sura from the Quran that she well remembered, not because she had taken it to heart but because she had found it so disturbing. It was like one of those fiery biblical verses the televangelists spouted on late-night cable.
“‘Believers, retaliation is decreed for you in bloodshed.’ Those are the words of the Holy Prophet. Annie’s words teach me control, but at the mosque I learn about God’s power, and how to marshal it and direct it from within.”
Abbas nodded slowly, as if taking stock of this new side of his wife’s personality. Maybe it frightened him a little.
“Well, this is no jihad for me, I can tell you that,” he said at last. “It’s strictly personal. To send them all a message.”
“Addition by subtraction?” she said, unable to keep a hint of derision from seeping into Skip Ellington’s words. “I thought you said it wasn’t a doctor’s job to play God.”
“I’m still keeping all my oaths. I would never betray my role as a healer. This is a job I’m doing as a man, as a father. And, yes, you may call it addition by subtraction if you like. Because I will be doing the world a favor. Righting a wrong, if only by letting them know what they’re up against. I will become their worst nightmare, an enemy who is educated, secular, and thoroughly assimilated. One of them. They won’t know what to make of
anyone.
So I refuse to make this a godly cause for your benefit, and I will not allow you to make it one. But as long as you can help, and know how to keep a secret, well…maybe.”
He threw his hands in the air, apparently resigned to her participation, or at least to her knowledge.
Aliyah had to admit there was a terrible brilliance to what he had said. He
would
be their worst nightmare, and for precisely the reasons he outlined. But he was wrong if he thought that would change their behavior for the better. Rather than awakening to reason, they would resort to further insanity and suspicion and would lash out even more. She considered arguing the point, but decided it was too risky. Delusions such as his could never be overcome by mere words. She wondered anew about whatever drug he was taking. In his current state of mind, this plan must seem like the most logical thing in the world. So she nodded, sealing their pact, and then went to the kitchen to make coffee.
By the time she reached the sink her legs were wobbly and she wanted to be sick. The moment’s grotesque unreality had unstrung her—the idea that this man she lived with, slept with, and had loved for ages could somehow reconcile a lifetime of saving others with such a hideous plan for murder, and then discuss it with such rational directness. She collected herself for a moment as the water ran into the pot, fighting back tears of fear and disappointment. He was ill, she told herself, ill and in need of her help. And she could provide that only by making the journey with him. Then, at some key moment, she would gently take the wheel and steer him out of harm’s way.
“When did you first get the idea?” she called out, laboring to keep her voice from trembling.
“A few weeks ago.”
He took a seat at the kitchen table, as if this were just another evening at home together and they were discussing the day’s news.
“It was that story on NPR.”
“The bombing in Kandahar? The one you thought was such genius?”
“I thought you weren’t listening. I was hoping you weren’t.”
“I wasn’t. But it all came back to me tonight, once I started putting the pieces together.”
Then she asked the question that scared her most.
“How far along are you?”
“Not far enough.”
He creased his brow in worry. Her spirits lifted. There was hope, and with each passing day perhaps there would be more.
“Then you
do
need my help.”
“You may be right. Sit down. I’ll tell you where I am, and what I need.”
She did as he asked, and listened incredulously as he spelled out his plan down to the smallest details. All along she tried to discern points of weakness and vulnerability that she might exploit later. And she was heartened to discover that she had at least one important ally. Time.
“What scares me most,” Abbas said, “is that the senator could die any day. One infection, one further complication—just about anything—would be enough to make it a matter of hours, maybe a day or two at the most. That’s the point he has reached. So of course I’ve been doing all I can to make sure that doesn’t happen. The family can hardly believe I’m spending so much time on him. They think it’s compassion, of course. Or maybe they think the hospital is trying to curry favor. It’s always politics with them.
“His wife is the only one who isn’t a cynic. She’s convinced that somehow the old fool must have won me over, which only shows how blind she is to everything else. So I let her believe it.”
Aliyah wondered how he managed to face them day after day while knowing that they would be among his victims. But she supposed that in his twisted new way of seeing the world, his zealous care was yet another affirmation that he was still upholding his professional ethics. Kill as an avenging bomber, but never as a caring doctor.
“My other problem is expertise,” he said, “and, frankly, manpower. Getting a tunnel dug properly, underneath the alley to just below the church, then getting the right explosives. The book’s a little outdated. It’s too hard doing it with fertilizer anymore. Too many controls now on bulk buying. And I think this is where you might be able to help.”
“With explosives?”
He shook his head.
“Expertise. Or finding it. Meeting with someone who can help us. I already have a local contact. But he has referred me to someone abroad.”
“Where?”
“Jordan. In Amman. They’ve passed word they’re willing to help.”
“You’re not corresponding by e-mail, I hope. Or by phone?”
“Goodness, no. No one with any brains would try that anymore. Personal contacts. Relayed messages. But they want me to make the next move. I am supposed to demonstrate my commitment, as they put it.”
“With money?”
“That, too. But also a visit. To show that I mean business. So I’ve decided to go there, if only for a day or two. That’s where they’re supposed to teach me what I need to know.”
“In Jordan?”
He nodded. She was astounded.
“Were you going to tell me?”
“Of course. But I was going to say it was for a medical reason. Some special patient who requested my assistance. A prominent Arab. I had already come up with a cover story for both you and the hospital. But that’s not my real worry. I’m wondering if I will even be allowed to go. I doubt it will be so easy for me to travel overseas anymore. Not after what happened in New York.”
During the Circle Line fiasco, he meant. The stupid misunderstanding that led to their arrest, and then to Abbas’s being locked up while clueless authorities debated whether his past donations to Palestinian aid organizations made him a threat to national security.
A few angry letters from his hospital colleagues, plus the discreet pressure applied by a few former patients, had finally freed him, and no charges were filed. But now his name was out there, perhaps still on some watch list. Any trip abroad might bring on renewed scrutiny when he could least afford it, especially if he traveled to a destination such as Jordan.
Aliyah saw her opportunity and seized it.
“Let me go, then. I’m not on anyone’s list.”
If he assented, then she knew she could stop him, as long as the senator cooperated by not living too long. Once in Jordan, she would do whatever it took to engineer the necessary obstructions. Missed appointments. Delayed flights. Unkept promises. Contacts who failed to show. The possibilities abounded. And while she was at it, she might even learn the best ways to thwart him—which wires to snip, which contacts to loosen to ensure that a bomb couldn’t possibly explode. It would probably be far tougher than she envisioned, but anything would be better than just letting events run their course, and this way she could take an active hand in stopping him. It was the best she had felt all morning.
But Abbas frowned. Then he shook his head.
“I can’t risk it,” he said. “I don’t think you realize how dangerous this might be.”
Aliyah reached across the table and took his hands in hers. Then she looked him in the eye.
“Don’t think of it as
my
risk. Think of it as
ours.
Haven’t we always handled our family’s biggest challenges together, you and me? Until Shereen died, anyway. Maybe it’s time we got that back. It was always our way before, and it should be again. Now more than ever. Let me do this for you.”
“Maybe you’re right. And they’ll be impressed by your faith. That was the one part I was dreading, having to fake that. Although from what I gather, the contact is more the pragmatic type.”
“What’s his name?”
Abbas retreated to his study for a moment, and she heard him rummaging through his papers. He returned with a single sheet, which he handed to her across the table. She didn’t recognize the handwriting, and the information was scant—only a first name and a phone number, and the name of what sounded to her like a charity, and a respectable one at that.
“This is who we’re supposed to see?”
“Yes.”
“And he wouldn’t object to meeting with a woman?”
“I’ll check. But I don’t think so. Like I said, he is supposedly pious, but also very pragmatic. Whatever gets the job done. He only wants to be assured of my commitment. Maybe sending my wife is all he will need. Then you can find out the information we need and return as soon as possible.”