Her friend in Istanbul, Hari Assoun, lived in a third-floor flat in a crowded block that reminded Arlene of neighborhoods in Naples, or Brooklyn. Laundry hung above the street in lines strung between the buildings, kids played soccer between parked cars, and tables spilled out into the street from cafes on every corner.
Hari, a tall man with thinning hair, a slight stoop, and a remembered strength in his large and now very spare frame, had been happy to see her, and not only because there might be a fee in it from her. Arlene had the knack of turning informants into friends. Sometimes it could be a hindrance, sometimes a danger, but sometimes, as with Hari, it could be a gift. He bustled around a kitchen the size of a postage stamp to brew her some of the Turkish coffee he knew she loved, and putting out a plate of nougat, which she loathed but which she ate without complaint and lied about the taste afterward.
They discussed her family ("Arlene, my dear, you got to get married. Who cares for you elsewise in your old age?"), his family ("My wife, she is with someone else now, but she will be back, I know this thing in my heart"), and world affairs ("Is this president of yours mad, Arlene? Is he blind and deaf? What is America thinking with this invasion, this war? We Turks know all about war, Arlene, we have Iraqi Kurds sitting across our border from Turkish Kurds, waiting to join hands and make their own country, and then what? Chaos! Anarchy! Apocalypse!").
After two cups of coffee, when Arlene could hear the blood sizzling nicely in her veins from the caffeine, she got to the point. Hari at first was obdurate. "No, Arlene, much as I want to help you always, this man I will not discuss." She coaxed and pleaded, and did not make the mistake of offering more money. Hari was for hire, not for purchase.
After some grumbling followed by dire warnings ("This is dangerous, my very dear Arlene. You could get hurt. I could get hurt. Your future husband could get hurt!") Hari allowed as how, yes, he did still come in the way of the odd bit of information, and yes, perhaps, on very rare occasions there might be a whisper of Isa.
"And what is the whisper, my very dear Hari?" Arlene said, giving him a soulful glance.
He made a face. "They are looking for him."
"Everyone's looking for Isa, Hari," she said patiently. "Who in particular this time?"
Hari met her eyes and said very soberly, "Al Qaeda is looking for him, Arlene, and, my very dear friend, you do not want to be caught in the crossfire when they find him."
She said now to Hugh, "You remember Hari Assoun?"
"The old Republican Guard guy, who split Iraq when Saddam invaded Kuwait? Sure. He ran a dead drop for al Qaeda in Istanbul, didn't he?"
"He was never a true believer, he just needed the cash. I offered him more and he came over."
"Okay. And?"
"He tells me that the al Qaeda organization is very quietly putting the word out for Isa to phone home."
The skin crawled on his scalp and Hugh could actually feel the hair on his head standing straight up. "Hari says that Isa is operating independently of al Qaeda?"
"It is certainly one possible inference," Arlene said very carefully indeed. "Before you ask, it's more than a rumor. I confirmed it with friends in Baghdad and in Peshawar. Isa's on his own."
"Son of a bitch," Hugh said.
"SON OF A BITCH," PATRICK CHISUM SAID WHEN HUGH CALLED HIM TO bring him up to date. "We got ourselves a rogue terrorist?"
"I've done some asking around of my own since I talked to Arlene. It's not common knowledge, not yet, but one of my own sources says that the al Qaeda network has put out what amounts to an APB on Isa. The word went out almost a year ago-" "A year ago! Jesus Christ!" "They're keeping it very quiet."
"They sure as hell are! Hugh, what the hell is going on?" "They don't trust him. Bin Laden hated Zarqawi, and Isa was Zarqawi's right-hand man. Bin Laden himself wants to see Isa, as in yesterday. At first it was very much within their own network, but when he didn't surface they started to panic and asked everyone, whether they were good at keeping their mouths shut or not. Finally the word trickled down to our source. It is becoming more generally known, though. If Arlene tracked it down, there are undoubtedly four or five reporters on the same story hot on her trail."
"Jesus Christ, Hugh," Patrick said again. "I can't even begin to imagine what this might mean. A rogue terrorist? What is that, isn't that like an oxymoron or something?"
"I think it's redundant," Hugh said.
Patrick didn't hear him. "What, al Qaeda isn't radical enough, isn't murderous enough for Isa, blowing up the towers, the Pentagon, and the Capitol with flying bombs wasn't enough? He has to form his own organization so he can think up something even better?"
"Or worse," Hugh said.
"Definitely worse," Patrick said. "All right, thanks for the heads-up. I'm going to talk to some of our people now. Let me know if you find anything in the suitcase, okay?"
"Okay. It doesn't look promising, though, I'm sorry to say."
"Jesus Christ, Hugh," Patrick said. "It's bad enough dealing with bin Laden's bunch, but at least we've got a dim idea of what to expect. This guy-"
He couldn't finish the sentence, and hung up.
PART II
Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us
only the choice of brave resistance, or the
most abject submission. We have, therefore,
to resolve to conquer or die.
– GEORGE WASHINGTON, TO THE CONTINENTAL ARMY
ON AUGUST 27, 1776
14
HOUSTON, JUNE 2008
Lately, Kenai woke up, went straight to her computer, and logged on to the National Weather Service, set for local conditions at Cape Canaveral. It only forecast ten days out but she couldn't help obsessing. Weather delays were the bane of shuttle launches, and July was a month into hurricane season. There was nothing either she or Mission Control could do about the weather, of course, but checking the forecast gave her the illusion of control. Knowing is always better than not knowing.
She'd formed the habit of going in to work early, because the Arabian Knight (when the secretaries over at admin found out he was royalty he'd had a new nickname before lunch, although the astronauts had several, much less complimentary ones) had taken to appearing promptly at eight a.m. each morning, ready to tolerate, if not with good humor then at least with equanimity, whatever indignities his infidel babysitter would inflict on him that day. She had begun to feel a faint hope that he might not, after all, kill them all on orbit.
That morning he came to her with a request that, on the face of it, seemed innocuous. He would be doing daily television broadcasts from the shuttle, which would be launching on the day of the full moon. They'd be on orbit for eight days, which meant the moon would be visible toward the end of the mission. He wanted to observe the new moon during one of the broadcasts, which would naturally enough go out over
the family network and appear on virtually every television screen in the Islamic world from Morocco to Indonesia.
She took this first to Rick and then to Joel. Neither had a problem with it. "Anything that keeps him out of our hair," Rick said. So the request had been approved, and no one thought much more about it until two days later when they were going over the on-orbit schedule, revised now to accommodate the Arabian Knight's broadcasts, and Laurel said, "Wait a minute, isn't the moon a big deal in the Islamic religion?"
No one on the Carnivore Crew knew. Joel was summoned, and he scurried away in search of the nearest imam, who when found allowed as how, yes, the moon was a big deal in the Islamic religion. Joel came scurrying back and Rick Robertson sat his royal pain in the ass down and went over the script for his lunar broadcasts word by word.