“On the subway, you said you are troubled. We are brothers. I came to help.”
“And that is all? No confession?”
“What do either of us have to confess?”
Zlatko shrank in the backseat.
“On the train, I was worried our Ameer has confusion about what is righteous and halal. What is haram and not permitted. How the Koran forbids killing innocents, women, and children, so the planes that hit the towers, the one crashed in that green field, they must be haram. The Pentagon plane, against soldiers, yes, halal, and civilians there who served the soldiers, unavoidable. Loose ends or contingency casualties. But instead of worrying about our Ameer, I should have paid attention to my own duties.”
Zlatko shook his head. “Last night I lost our money envelope.”
“Wait: You thought I stole it?”
“Ours is a wicked world. I saw the bodies of my wife, two daughters, son. Saw what my neighbors had done to us Muslims in our Bosnian town while I was out riding my bicycle thinking about the Olympics… Forgive me: I feared this kuffar world around us had swallowed your soul. But it is I who lost the money. Have endangered our mission.”
“You are not to blame for accidents.” Sami let his mercy sink in, then threw out a hook. “Have you told our Ameer?”
“Not yet.”
“How much money do you need?”
“All of my end should cost around $950. I’ve spent about $600. All the rest plus the extra from last night was in the lost envelope.”
“I have $147. If I hustle now, my taxi can make the rest.”
“You are a true brother! I will be waiting down the block in that grocery store parking lot at 2:05.”
As Zlatko left the cab, out of his sleeve popped a restaurant butcher knife.
That’s why he sat behind me.
He let Zlatko sweat until 2:19, then raced the taxi into the grocery store lot. Zlatko told him, “Radio Shack on Georgia Avenue.”
There Zlatko made Sami wait in the parked taxi. Sami kept a window open to hear the street. An instrumental “Jingle Bells” from a store competed with a man ringing a handheld bell by a red bucket.
Cari Jones defied her dark hair with blonde highlights, wore a black leather trench coat, marched past the taxi telling her cell phone, “Soon as I get there, Mom’ll say it’s great I have a career, but my baby clock…”
Zlatko put packages in the taxi’s backseat. Climbed in front with one Radio Shack sack, told Sami to drop him off on a corner different from any the Homeland Security/FBI/ outsourced street dogs had trailed him to before they broke off surveillance to avoid spooking the streetwise warrior.
Zlatko pulled two prepaid cell phones from the sack, fished out the manual, saying, “Yes, call-waiting, call-conferencing, call-blocking…”
He looked at Sami. “In Baghdad, we learned you don’t want to be holding the right cell phone when someone dials a wrong number.”
After he left Zlatko, Sami drove eleven blocks to find a pay phone. Twenty minutes later as he cruised up North Capitol Street, Sami drove past a waving ebony-skinned lawyer in an Italian suit to pick up a white man who looked like a rumpled bear.
“I wish your Ameer let you guys carry cell phones,” said Harry as he settled in the back of Sami’s taxi.
“No cell phones. Coded messages on Facebook from computers at libraries, Staples, and Internet cafés.”
“But Zlatko just bought two phones. ‘Course, it’s in the rule book that every black ops honcho, spy runner, and Ameer lies to his button boys.”
“Every case officer lies? Even you?”
“I play by my rules.” Harry winked. “We’ve got our geniuses reverse-engineering Zlatko’s latest buys from that Radio Shack.”
The rearview mirror showed Sami a tan sedan.
“It’s Ted,” said Harry. “Don’t shake him, okay? He’s learning. He’s got to. FBI, CIA, Uncle Sam’s top street shooters are turning in their papers, going private, getting outsource-contracted back to do the same job at twice their government paychecks.”
“Private armies fight for private profit. Government is about citizens carrying their public weight.”
“When did Sami start caring about how Uncle Sam works?”
“I’m almost straight, remember? After your geniuses report, you’ll have the who, when, and how. You can take down the cell. I can fly free.”
Sami fed the taxi into traffic up Constitution Avenue past Smithsonian museums.
A dead pigeon lay in their traffic lane. Sami saw a sunbaked soldier named John Heme standing on the corner, staring at the fallen bird as if it hid a bomb.
“Look at this town,” said Harry. “I remember when this was an AM radio burg where white folks were scared to come out after dark and Nixon had his finger on the Doomsday trigger. ‘Top dollar’ meant a civil service paycheck. Nobody was from D.C. People came here as cause-humpers. Now, crash or no crash, all the big money has a D.C. cash register.
“Some say we’re inevitable. Like Rome, only adjusted for the Internet and Mister Glock.40. I say if we create a Sophia Loren like Rome did, let the ‘D.C.’ of Washington stand for ‘ Destiny City.’”
“My jihad brothers say the same thing. So do Ted and his evangelical crusaders.”
“What do you say?”
“That real people are trapped in those big ideas.”
“Yeah, but what about Sophia Loren?”
The two men laughed.
“D.C. is your story, Sami. Destiny City. Born and bred for it. Spy life and street action are all you know. What makes you think you can quit?”
Harry’s cell phone rang. He took the call. Listened. Clicked off.
Told Sami, “Our geniuses got no idea what Zlatko is building. We’re flooding every Radio Shack kinda place with agents and Zlatko’s photos to see what he bought before, but it’s elbow-to-elbow Christmas rush in those stores.”
They rode past a block strung with colored bulbs.
“In this life,” said Harry, “you’re either doing something or something’s getting done to you. What’s your deal, Sami?”
Sami let Harry out of the cab, drove to a commercial strip where French and African patois jammed with Spanish. Cruising cars blasted gangsta rap idolized by white Kansas teenagers. Sami parked his cab in the lot of a four-story commercial building.
He checked his watch: 4:29. Ivan usually closed his doctor’s office at 5:00 and drove his gold SUV home. Sami scanned ethnic stores, discount furniture barns, a veterinary hospital with a green Dumpster. Told himself he couldn’t see flies circling the emerald steel. Wondered where Harry’d set up the surveillance posts. Wondered if they’d called in his presence, if a satellite snapped his picture.
“Understand our new spy biz,” Harry had told Sami. “Sure, satellite surveillance of Doc Ivan’s office and house is overkill, but it’s about buy-in.
“We got something real, but if it’s only a Homeland/CIA/ FBI-outsourced Argus show, with sixteen major spy shops dancing for the old U.S. of A., we might be weak on bureaucratic muscle. So I partnered my company with a contractor for the National Applications Office to satellite monitor your Ameer. Now NAO’ll line up to make sure we get what we want so they can share our credit.”
I’m a taxi driver, thought Sami. I take you where you want to go.
I’m a spy. I take you where you want to go.
At 4:47, a brown medical transport services van parked at the building. The driver in a white uniform got out to lower the electric motored stairs.
They shuffled out of the building. Some were black, some brown. A wispy blonde girl on crutches swung toward the van. They were all poor. The bottom line mattered as much as any for two women in black burkas that exposed only their eyes.