The Mirage: A Novel (43 page)

In fact it was worse than they knew. This second forger, having determined the crusaders had no Arabic, decided to play a prank on them. The Roman-letter portion of Joe Simeon’s ID card gave his cover name as Thaddeus Schulman. But the accompanying Arabic text said he was Princess Jezebel and listed his occupation as “pole dancer.” The cell leader’s card identified him as a professional camel anus.

The crusaders continued on to Gaziantep, where they hired a guide to sneak them into the UAS. The guide got a look at their papers and realized they’d been taken for fools, but as they’d already managed to offend him too, he said nothing. He did what they paid him to do, smuggled them into Syria and delivered them to a workers’ hostel in Aleppo. The manager of the hostel was highly amused by something but wouldn’t share the joke.

ICE showed up in the middle of the night. Thirsty and unable to sleep, Joe Simeon had gone in search of a soda machine and wasn’t in the room when the immigration agents kicked the door in. He heard shouting and then gunshots, and ran off into the darkness clutching a bottle of orange Fanta.

He thought about going home, but he was almost out of money, so even if he’d made it back over the border he’d have been stranded in Turkey. He decided to continue on alone to Baghdad, where additional conspirators were supposedly waiting, though he didn’t know who they were or how to contact them. Praying to God for guidance, he went out to the highway and hitched a ride.

In Baghdad he found a cheap motel out by the airport. He was still using the Princess Jezebel ID, but the motel clerk, who’d lost a brother on 11/9, didn’t laugh or crack a smile. He gave the crusader a room key and called the Homeland Security tip line.

An hour and a half later Joe Simeon woke to find a large Arab standing over his bed. “Get up,” the man said. “The authorities are on their way to arrest you.”

“Who are you?”

“You may call me Siraj al Din. I am a friend.” He neglected to mention that he was a member of Al Qaeda and that he’d been sent here by Idris Abd al Qahhar.

Siraj al Din took Joe Simeon to the Zawra Park Hotel and got him another room. He told him to keep the
DO NOT DISTURB
sign on and the shades drawn. “Don’t go out. Don’t make any calls, not even to room service. I’ll be back later with food and fresh clothing.”

Joe Simeon crawled into the bed—much more comfortable than the one at the motel—and fell into a dead sleep. When he next opened his eyes, Siraj al Din was pushing a cart loaded with covered dishes into the room. “What time is it?”

“About eight o’clock in the evening. Come, eat something.”

After the meal, he took the bag of clothes Siraj al Din had brought for him and went to shower. When he came back out the cart was gone, and a cardboard shirt box and a street map were lying on the bed. “What’s that?” he said, nodding at the shirt box.

“First I must ask you, are you prepared to do what you came here to do?”

Joe Simeon had just been contemplating this very question. The answer seemed simple enough. By all rights he should be dead or in custody by now. That he wasn’t was all the proof he needed that God wanted him to proceed. He would do what he was told, and then he would go to heaven. “I’m ready.”

“Good,” Siraj al Din said, picking up the map. “Your target is the Ground Zero Mosque. The city is close to breaking ground on the project, and tomorrow afternoon there will be a rally at the site. A large crowd is expected, and many politicians. Also lots of security—but I’ll show you a path to bypass the outer ring of barricades and police. After that it’s up to you.”

“No,” Joe Simeon said. “After that it’s up to God.”

Mustafa spent the night in Karkh General Hospital, sleeping at his father’s bedside.

That morning, Abu Mustafa had gone out for a walk and not come home. Mustafa had divided his day between napping and abortive attempts to compose an official report of his meeting with David Koresh. By late afternoon, when his father had still not returned, he began to grow concerned. He was just about to get Uncle Tamir and the cousins and organize a search when he received a phone call from the Bunia Mosque.

It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten such a call. His father often gravitated to places of worship when he got lost—Baghdad’s holy sites, he said, being among the few things about the city that hadn’t changed. But Al Bunia was across the river in Karkh, a long way for an old man on foot. “Is he all right?”

“I’m afraid not,” the caller said. “He was dehydrated and having heart palpitations. We had to call an ambulance.”

Mustafa and his aunt and uncle drove to the hospital. By the time they arrived, Abu Mustafa had responded to IV fluids and was sitting up, looking embarrassed. “I got on a bus,” he confessed.

Mustafa understood immediately. Abu Mustafa treated much of Baghdad’s mass transit system, especially the subway, as if it didn’t exist; he acknowledged buses but rarely used them, since the routes almost never went where he thought they should. Today, though, having wandered a bit too far along Abu Nuwas Street, he’d tried to ride back, only to discover that the coach he boarded was an express that made no further stops before crossing the Tigris. He’d stayed on the bus for a while, hoping it would eventually turn around, but the increasing strangeness of downtown had overwhelmed him, until he spotted Al Bunia in the distance and decided to make for it.

“I don’t understand,” Aunt Rana said. “Why didn’t you just hail a taxi?”

“Because I was confused!”

The doctor wanted to keep Abu Mustafa in the hospital overnight. Abu Mustafa wasn’t happy about it but was too tired to argue, so Mustafa arranged to have an extra bed wheeled into the room. By the time that was taken care of, Abu Mustafa was already drifting off, but Mustafa stayed awake late into the night, thinking.

Farouk had phoned him at home earlier to give him a heads-up. “Idris is quite upset about Rumsfeld’s suicide. He’s blaming you for the security lapse that allowed it to happen, and he’s asked that you be suspended pending a full investigation.”

Mustafa was upset about the suicide as well, albeit for very different reasons. Still, he couldn’t help observing: “Idris is only sorry that he didn’t get to torture and kill the man himself. Even if it is my fault, I don’t know that I can bring myself to regret denying him that.”

“Regret it or don’t, that’s your business,” Farouk said. “But I hope whatever you learned in America is good enough to compensate for this failure. My influence with the president only goes so far, and Idris and Senator Bin Laden are out for blood.”

“Don’t worry,” Mustafa said. “I think the president will find my report most illuminating.”

One thing he had yet to decide was what to do with the artifacts David Koresh had given him—particularly the second Mukhabarat file. Mustafa’s first impulse was to destroy it and forget he’d ever seen it. But when he recalled how Samir had been acting lately, he was forced to consider that perhaps God had sent him the file for a reason.

He thought about Idris, turning up at Al Kharj with a presidential order already in hand. There were any number of ways Idris could have learned that they were bringing back a prisoner, but what if he’d been alerted by a member of Mustafa’s own team? And what if that same team member had also given Idris advance notice of their expedition to Sadr City? And then there was the matter of the ambush on the Jefferson Davis Pike. According to Amal, Rumsfeld had claimed that his militia learned about the Marine convoy from an informant inside the Green Zone. Fine. But who told the informant, and who told the person who’d told him?

Are you ill, Samir?

At some point Mustafa slept. He woke to the dawn muezzin’s call and found a prayer room on the hospital’s ground floor. This morning he said extra prayers: for his father; for Colonel Yunus; for Amal and her son; and for Donald Rumsfeld, who though an enemy had still deserved the protection due any prisoner of war. Mustafa considered praying for Samir as well, but was too unsettled by his suspicions, so instead he ended by asking God to grant him wisdom.

When he went back upstairs, his father was awake, sitting up in bed and looking out the window. Mustafa paused in the doorway, distressed by his father’s frailty, which the dawn light seemed to accentuate.

His father saw him standing there and gave a little grunt of annoyance. “I’m not dead yet,” he said.

“I am glad,” said Mustafa. He sat on the edge of the bed. “I could use some advice.” His father laughed, and Mustafa said, “What?”

“Nothing,” said Abu Mustafa. “I’m happy to help, but I think the last time you
followed
my advice was when you were eight years old.” Another laugh. “Never mind, go on. What’s the problem?”

Mustafa just said it: “I think Samir is a homosexual.”

His father looked at him quizzically, then waited to hear if there was more. Finally Abu Mustafa said: “Well, that’s not so big a surprise. Really, if you think about it, it explains a few things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you remember when Samir got divorced?” Abu Mustafa said. “I was struck at the time by how eagerly he confessed his infidelities. In his shoes I think I’d have been more ashamed, and more discreet—unless I were trying to prevent speculation about some other problem with my marriage.”

Mustafa blinked, feeling stupid. “You think Najat knows?”

“The mother of his children? Is that even a question?” Abu Mustafa chuckled. “But what troubles you about this, Mustafa? Are you worried he wants to do something improper with you?”

“What? No! . . . It’s a sin, that’s all.”

Abu Mustafa shrugged. “Fornication with women is a sin too, last I checked,” he said. “But you didn’t get such a look on your face when you thought Samir was guilty of that. Is God’s law really the issue here, or are you just being squeamish?”

Mustafa couldn’t believe his reaction. “You’re not shocked by this?”

“As a young man I might have been. But after forty years teaching university, it takes more than a little sodomy to shock me.”

“Well, there is more. I think Samir is being blackmailed.”

“That’s not all that shocking, either. But it is serious.”

“And now I’m trying to decide what to do.”

“Surely that’s not difficult,” Abu Mustafa said. “Samir is still your friend, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know, father. I think he may have betrayed me in America.”

“Are you still his friend?”

“I don’t know that, either.”

“Because he betrayed you, or because he’s a different kind of sinner than you thought he was?”

“Both,” Mustafa said. “Tell me what I should do.”

“Let me ask a different question first. Of all the sins a man can commit, which do you think is the worst?”

“Murder,” said Mustafa.

“I would say murder also. And if Samir were a convicted murderer, would you visit him in prison?”

Mustafa thought about it. “Yes. I believe so.”

“Well then,” said Abu Mustafa. “For one such as Samir, I imagine every day is like living in prison—all the more so if his secret shame has been discovered and is being used against him by his enemies. So if you ask what to do, I’d say go to him. Be his friend. And if his sin frightens you, remember your own conduct in this life has been far from perfect.”

“All right,” Mustafa said nodding. Reaching out, he took his father’s hand. “Will you be all right alone here for a while?”

“Yes,” Abu Mustafa said. “For a little while.”

The alarm clock woke Joe Simeon at 9 a.m. A shaft of sunlight was coming through a gap in the window shades, and he marveled at it as if it were the divine light of heaven piercing the firmament. As the alarm continued to sound, he thought: Today I’ll be in God’s house.

He hadn’t taken communion since leaving Heidelberg. He knew there were Christian churches in Baghdad but didn’t know what kind they were or what sacraments they offered, and anyway he wasn’t supposed to leave the hotel before it was time for his mission. So he made do in the room. He took a hunk of leftover bread from last night’s meal and found a bottle of red fruit drink in the mini-fridge. He recited the words of the Last Supper as best he could recall them. Christ’s body was stale, His blood more pomegranate than grape and not at all fermented, but still Joe Simeon felt refreshed, his sins washed away.

Just to be sure, he ran a bath, pouring in a handful of floral-smelling salts. He lay in the tub, pictured Jesus in the river Jordan, and holding his nose and mouth submerged himself completely.

He got out and dried himself off and opened up the shirt box. The suicide vest was heavy, in form very much like a flak jacket, but padded with plastic explosive rather than Kevlar. Strings of nails had been pressed into the squares of plastique to serve as shrapnel. The nails seemed like a crude touch, but the detonator and wire work were first-rate, and great care had been taken to minimize the vest’s profile.

He slipped it on. There was a long-sleeved cotton shirt in the box as well, which he buttoned over the suicide vest, and a second, outer vest of dark cloth that he pulled on over that. He examined himself in a mirror, turning sideways to check: Does this make me look fat?

It didn’t. He’d seen one other explosive vest, worn by a crusader in Bonn to blow up a busload of Israelis, and that one had been a lot bulkier, hard to conceal even under a winter parka. This one he thought might evade the scrutiny of even a trained observer, and he should be able to move in a civilian crowd without drawing suspicion. The hardest part would be not sweating to death in the midday heat.

It was ten o’clock. He still had a couple of hours to wait, so he undressed again, laying the vest carefully back in its box, and sat on the bed in his underwear. He was keyed up and giddy, feeling as though his soul had already begun the process of leaving his body. He picked up the TV remote and channel-surfed manically, unable to focus.

The image of a cross caught his attention briefly. It was a broadcast of a Coptic church service, an Egyptian priest reading from the Gospels: “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners . . .”