Chapter 14
The Number One was practically deserted: only a brace of out-of-sync commuters; a scattering of women returning home from shopping; a herd of teenagers dressed in baggy jeans and puffy goose down jackets, laughing and speaking too loud. Decker leaned back in his seat. He could see his face reflected in the window across the subway car. He looked spent. Despite the familiar blazer and red tie, the navy blue overcoat, he looked like a stranger to himself. And then the glass burst into light as the train entered the One Hundred and Sixteenth Street Station, and his face was gone.
Decker picked up his gym bag and got out. As he climbed the stairs, he felt the weight of that piece of paper in his pocket. For some reason, he hadn’t told Warhaftig or Kazinski about what he’d found in Salim Moussa’s locker, and this troubled him. Kazinski may have acted like an asshole that morning, but no matter what they thought about each other, they were still on the same side. Decker turned and climbed another flight of stairs. He hadn’t told anyone and he couldn’t for the life of him say why. Perhaps because he didn’t know yet if the wallpapers meant anything or not. Perhaps because he simply didn’t want to raise another flag, just to have Johnson pull it down again as something silly and irrelevant, or poisoned fruit. Better to be sure first, Decker thought, but he knew that he was lying to himself. He didn’t care what Johnson thought. Not really. He sighed. Truth was, he didn’t play well with other people, and never had. He coveted this lead. It was a puzzle that led directly through the mind of El Aqrab. It was his, and he was going to solve it.
“Excuse me?” Decker said. “Professor Hassan? You are Dr. Jusef Hassan, right?” Decker hesitated in the open doorway. Hassan was just finishing up his office hours and a few students still milled about in the hall.
Professor Hassan looked up. He was reviewing what appeared to be a paper with some hirsute undergraduate. “May I help you?”
Decker stepped into the room, approached the desk, and plucked out his ID. “My name is Decker,” he said. “Agent John Decker. I’m with the FBI.”
Hassan examined the badge for several seconds. He was wearing a black four-button cashmere suit, with thin lapels, a startlingly white dress shirt, well starched around his cocoa neck, and a silk blue necktie sprinkled with scallop shells and seahorses. Decker guessed he was in his mid-fifties. His black hair was still thick and full, and slightly oiled. His dreamy brown eyes twinkled in the harsh fluorescent light through a pair of almost invisible wire-rimmed glasses. “Am I supposed to be impressed?” he said.
“Not particularly.”
“Good. Because I’m not.”
“I wonder if I could have a moment of your time?” Decker continued.
Hassan looked over his glasses. “To read me my rights? Or has Attorney General Oakfield forced Miranda into early retirement too?” Then he turned toward the hirsute student and said, “Let’s pick this up tomorrow, Robert, after class. Okay?”
The student had climbed to his feet as soon as he saw Decker’s badge. “No problem,” he said, and vanished through the door.
“You’re the fellow who’s been hounding me,” Hassan said. “On the phone.”
Decker nodded.
“And why, exactly, should I help the FBI?”
Decker considered the question for a moment. Jusef Hassan was the progeny of an ancient line of Egyptian merchant bankers, who — despite a brief flirtation with Islamic Socialism in the ’70s — had discovered that abandoning their appreciation for fine clothes, Western classical music and Continental food was, in the end, too great a price to pay for their political ideals. Hassan had come to the United States for four years of university… and ended up staying for the next thirty-five. He had married and become a U.S. citizen. In his unconstructed four-button cashmere jacket, it was clear that he wasn’t one to emulate his academic peers — not these faux cosmopolitans in their ill-fitting Euro knock-offs. Dr. Jusef Hassan wasn’t poor, so why did he have to dress that way? It would be hypocritical. Decker smiled to himself. “Because you’re an American,” he said.
“Tell that to your fellow agents, as they harass and arrest my people, as they lock them up without legal representation, as they hold them indefinitely without charge.”
“Your people?” Decker smiled. “You were in New York when the towers fell, weren’t you?” He pulled the sketch he’d found in Moussa’s locker from his pocket and laid it gently on the professor’s desk.
Hassan glanced at it momentarily and said, “Is that meant to make me feel all patriotic, all mushy and sentimental inside?”
Decker reached into his gym bag on the floor. He removed his notebook and plopped it on the desk. “But you are a naturalized citizen, are you not?” He opened the notebook casually, revealing the sketch he had made of the PC wallpaper.
“I was during Vietnam and Watergate as well,” Hassan said. “And when you lied to us about WMDs in Iraq.” He looked down at the notebook on his desk. Decker noticed his eyes grow wide. “There is a higher calling associated with being an American than just towing the party line, Agent Decker. Wasn’t that the lesson of McCarthy? It may be considered old-fashioned, even sentimental these days, but I still believe in personal rights and freedoms.” He craned his neck to get a better look at the drawing from the jukebox dealer. “So did the Founding Fathers. I wonder how they’d fare today in our political environment. Patriot’s Act indeed! I’m sure they would have had their phones tapped by the current administration, and… where did you get these drawings?” he inquired.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you that.”
Hassan scowled. “I’m a busy man, Agent Decker. In fact, I’m late for a meeting as it is.” He stood, brushed the wrinkles from his suit, and started toward the door. A few students still lingered in the hallway.
Decker turned his notebook so that it faced Hassan. “I’m curious. What did you feel exactly when the towers fell?” he asked. The professor stopped in his tracks. “Did you know anyone who died there? Did you lose a friend, a loved one?” Decker pointed at the sketches before him. “My partner died helping me get these illustrations. I came here to ask you for your help in interpreting them. All of the official channels, our so-called Islamic experts and intelligence resources, have drawn a blank. Professor Hassan, like it or not, you’re my only hope. I believe there may be other lives at stake here.”
Hassan leaned forward, resting his fists on the surface of the desk. “Shall I tell you what Nine Eleven reminds me of, Agent Decker? I have a son. His name is Malik. He was on his way to school one day, not long after… the tragedy. Anyway, he was riding the subway and the train stopped and this gang of teenagers got on — white kids — and they saw him standing in the back. They began to make fun of him, to call him names. They said he looked like an Arab; that he was probably from Afghanistan, a member of the Taliban; that he and his kind were responsible for what had happened to the World Trade Towers; that he had no business being in America. The boys began to egg each other on. ‘If you hate America so much,’ one of them said as he approached Malik, ‘why don’t you just leave?’ He said this to my son, who was born in St. Vincent’s Hospital in the Village, mind you. And someone else said, ‘He deserves to suffer, just like those people in the towers suffered.’ That’s exactly what he said. And then a third one added, and this is the best of all, ‘This is what it feels like, towel head, when you know you’re about to die, and there ain’t nothin’ you can do about it, except watch.’” Hassan shook his head. “He was only twelve,” he added. “Twelve! They kicked him over and over again, until he lost consciousness. He would have probably died there too if a stranger hadn’t come along and scared the boys away. So why, exactly, should I help you?”