59
IN THE CNN NEWSROOM, Damian Smith runs methodically through today’s top stories, none of them happy. In TV news, everyone else’s tragedy is meat and potatoes. On the big screen behind him is a long shot of a red rescue helicopter hovering alongside a snow-covered mountain. “Meanwhile,” Damian reads, “The search for those missing climbers has been called off as fog continues to close in on Mt. McKinley. Efforts are expected to resume as weather permits.” He adjusts his earphone, leaning forward slightly in the atavistic gesture all networks train their anchors to stifle. The effort is futile. When humans don’t hear well, we lean in. “In breaking news, warships of the Egyptian Navy are reportedly moving to intercept that Christian aid flotilla en route to Tel Aviv. Andrew Lagonis is live at the Pentagon. Andy?”
Lagonis, a sixty-five-year-old leftover from the glory days of network news, is doing a hasty stand-up in a Pentagon corridor while behind him uniformed officers cross hurriedly back and forth. Lagonis is breathless with the scoop.
“Damian, that’s right. I’ve just gotten word an Egyptian naval taskforce is indeed moving to head off those six aid ships, many of whose passengers and crew are American. Sources here say US initiatives to convince the Egyptians to turn back have been unsuccessful. So far we don’t know if Egypt aims to intercept the ships or, in the worst case, fire upon them. One thing is certain: the aid flotilla is on a collision course with the biggest guns in the Egyptian Navy.”
60
IN THE MASSAGE CABIN of Air Force One, a navy corpsman works on the president’s back while the leader of the free world, prone on the padded table, becomes increasingly more tense.
“Well, what the fuck does the damn press expect us to do? Go to war with the entire Middle East?”
Flo Spier, out of the burqa and into a red jogging outfit, stands to the side with Felix George, who wears a three-piece suit and his usual look of disdain. “They are American citizens, sir.”
“They’re damn fool American citizens mixing themselves up where they got no beeswax.”
“Mr. President, the simple takeaway is American citizens on a humanitarian mission are about to be attacked. It’s not going to play well on TV. They’re flying the American flag.”
“Illegally on non-US vessels,” St. George says.
“I’m talking optics, Mr. President,” Spier counters.
The president is having none of it. “And I’m talking pissed off. You mean to tell me the US of A is got to send in the Marines every time some lunatic bible-thumper inserts his dick in a foreign war? Isn’t there some law, Felix?”
“Neutrality Act of 1935, Mr. President.”
“Remind me again how that goes.”
“In essence, American citizens on warring ships travel at their own risk.”
“Sir, these are not warring ships.”
“Neutrality Act of 1937,” St. George says. “US ships are forbidden from transporting passengers or articles to belligerents in a foreign war.”
“You just said these are not US ships,” Spier tells him—and the president.
Felix St. George loves to play poker when he has all the cards. “Good one! That specific loophole was closed by the Neutrality Act of 1939. American citizens and ships are barred from entering a war-zone.”
The president grunts as the corpsman leans hard on a nerve. “Flo, I think that’s pretty clear.”
“Mr. President, the American people—”
“Flo, the American people don’t want to keep on spending ten bucks a gallon for regular,” the president says. “Case closed.”
61
IN NUMBER FOUR HANGAR at US Marine Aviation Forward Attack Squadron Wildcat, the installation’s top non-commissioned officer, a sergeant major who in civilian life may have a proper name but here is known only as Sergeant Major, laconically supervises the base’s cook, known only as Cooky, and five fascinated messmen. A Marine hoses fuel into a fifty-gallon drum heating perilously over a propane stove.
“Enough juice,” Sergeant Major announces. “Now johnwayne them cans. All of them.” He refers to the flat, hinged can openers used by the military since World War II—until the nineteen eighties the P-38, since then the larger P-51—though no one is certain why the actor, who never saw combat other than on celluloid, was so honored. By extension, to johnwayne something is to open it.
“Sergeant Major,” the cook cautions, “we ain’t gonna have no tomato sauce or ketchup for two months. When the colonel gets back, she ain’t gonna like it.”
“Boo fuckin’ hoo. Until she comes back, the responsibility’s mine.”
Having filed notice of this potential problem, for which Cooky will have to pay when base personnel find themselves facing weeks of ketchup-less French fries, to say nothing of unadorned cheeseburgers, Cooky affirms his commitment to the command structure. “Aye, Sergeant Major!” Nobody, including the pilots who outrank him, fucks with Sergeant Major. Cooky shouts to the messmen, “Sergeant Major has spoken!”
After they pour gallon cans of tomato puree and ketchup into the oil drum, the master gunnery sergeant demonstrates the kind of expertise that only a grizzled twenty-year veteran Marine can boast. “Now secret ingredient numero uno.”
The messmen dump in powdered milk and stir. The concoction turns an admirable Pepto-Bismol pink.
Sergeant Major’s craggy face develops the rictus that passes, among Marine non-commissioned officers, for a smile. “Secret ingredient numero dos. Three volunteers. You, you, and you. One step forward, unholster them guns the good Lord give you, and fire at will.”
“In the soup?” Cooky asks. He is not questioning Sergeant Major’s authority, only his recipe. Even for Marine Aviation, this may be over the top.
Sergeant Major allows the rictus again to flash over his face. “Cooky, don’t call it soup. It’s paint, is all.”
The three volunteers piss into the drum.
62
WITH ONE EYE ON the gas gauge and one eye on the road, Alex turns back in the direction from which he came, in doing so nearly hitting the same two Bedouin he passed only moments before. After he just about grazes them, he sees in his rearview mirror that they have stopped to bow. He thinks: if I really were an Egyptian officer, I would check them out.
At the turnoff he parks in front of a neat whitewashed stucco church, marked modestly with a cross over the door but boasting no steeple. Since the eighth century, when Islam swept across the Middle East, Christian Arabs have been careful to moderate public displays of their faith. Even under Israeli rule, when Christians no longer feared government persecution, it remained wise not to affront their Muslim neighbors. But however modest Arab churches appear from without, inside they are decorated like jewelry bazaars.
Alex steps into the smaller building to the right of the church.
It is a barber shop. Immediately, two customers waiting their turn beneath the cross that dominates the room quietly leave. An Egyptian officer is not to be made to wait. The territory once known as Israel, where every bastard felt himself a king, has returned to being part of the Middle East, where every king, no matter how small, lords over his bastards without limitation.
The barber is forty, bald, fat, and in need of a shave, practically the official uniform of the Middle East chapter of the barbers’ guild. He nods to Alex as he holds a mirror to the gleaming, freshly shaved head of the customer in the single chair, who takes one look at Alex’s uniform and gathers his things.
“Abu-Yunis welcomes you, excellency,” the barber says in Arabic. “As it happens, you are next. Shave?”