Decker nodded, trying not to feel the car begin to slide, to spin, to feel the hit, the grim concussion as the other vehicle plowed into them again. And there had been nothing he could do. Nothing! He closed his eyes. “So that it doesn’t happen again,” he said in Arabic. “To Malik, or someone else’s son.”
“What?” Hassan took a step back. He cocked his head “What did you say?”
“I came to learn,” continued Decker. His Arabic was fluent, with the trilling accent of north Egypt. He could have been born in Al Iskandariyah. “I need your help, Professor. Like your son did on that subway train, when that stranger came to his assistance.”
Professor Hassan looked at Decker for several seconds. He took in the pale face, the thick black hair, the pale gray eyes that stared back with imponderable sadness. “I’m sure I’m not on your approved list of Islamic experts, Agent Decker.”
Decker shrugged.
“That doesn’t worry you?”
Decker shook his head. “‘There will come to you a guidance from Me, then whoever follows My guidance, no fear shall come upon them.’”
“‘Nor shall they grieve.’” Hassan smiled a little smile. He glanced down at the illustrations on the table. Then he closed the notebook and pushed it back across the desk. “I’m sorry, Agent Decker. But I cannot help you.”
Decker held him by the elbow. “You mean you will not.”
Hassan smiled, pulling himself free. “As you wish,” he said.
Decker took out his wallet and handed the professor his card. “Please,” he said. “Take it. In case you change your mind.”
“I won’t,” Hassan replied, but he took the card anyway. “Well, unless you plan to arrest me, I do have other things to do.”
“I’ll walk out with you,” said Decker.
“No!” snapped Hassan. “Don’t bother.”
Decker stepped back. He knew exactly what the professor meant. It didn’t pay for a man of Hassan’s reputation to be seen hobnobbing with the FBI. It would appear, well… unseemly to most of his constituencies. And it would certainly undermine the access he enjoyed to both the powerful throughout the Middle East, and to those who lay upon the outer fringes of the carpet of Islam — the radicals, the Fundamentalists, the pure of faith. Decker reached his hand out, adding. “Thank you, Professor.”
“What for?” He looked down at Decker’s hand, but he did not shake it. “You think I don’t understand the threat implicit in your visit?”
“Excuse me?” Decker noticed a small crowd of students gathering by the door.
“I’m an American citizen,” Hassan declared, puffing himself up. “Your veiled threats of deportation hold no currency with me. Bully me all you wish, but I will not compromise my principles. I will not turn away, or hide within the shell of my indifference.”
Decker smiled. Then he spun about, he scowled and headed out the door, pushing his way through the students in the hall.
Hassan kept up his bold soliloquy. “Threaten me all you want, Agent Decker, but I know my rights. They haven’t all been hijacked by the so-called ‘Department of Justice.’ I know tyranny when I smell it.”
The door closed with a bang. Decker started back down College Walk. He had just passed Low Plaza when his phone began to vibrate on his hip. He flipped it open. It was a text message. The note read: Reading Room 26, Avery Library. It was not signed but Decker knew the author. He stopped and asked a pretty young female student for directions. Avery was just up those steps by Low Library — third building on the right after St. Paul’s.
Reading Room 26 was empty. Even with the light turned off, Decker could tell. The air was absolutely still. But what had he expected? Then he noticed a leather-bound book on the table. He turned on the light. It was a copy of the Qur’an. He approached the table. The Muslim holy text was opened to Al-Takwir, Sura 81. He only had to glance at it to recognize the words: When the sun is veiled, and the stars are dimmed, and the mountains are made to move, and ten-months pregnant she-camels are discarded as a means of transportation and the wild ones are gathered together, and the rivers are diverted, and people are brought together, and when the female infant buried alive is questioned about: For what crime was she killed? And when books are spread abroad, and when heaven is laid bare, and when hell is stoked up, and when the Garden is brought nigh, then everyone will know that which He has wrought.
Decker read the passage several times. He read the words, but while he now knew the source of the quotation, he still didn’t understand its meaning. Behind each door, three more always appeared, and then nine after that.
He headed out of Avery Hall, down the steps, and back toward Broadway and the subway station. It was growing colder by the minute. A girl with a knapsack on her back approached him from the river. Probably a coed, he thought. She looked a little like Maureen, the Irish girl he’d dated in Chicago. The same wavy, reddish-brown hair. The same nose and sky blue eyes. But this girl’s mouth was fuller. And she was younger too. She was wearing a long black coat with buttons that looked like they were made of bone or ivory. Decker sighed as she passed by. He watched her walk away. Then he turned and started down the steps into the subway station.
When he got back to the Village, it was almost five o’clock. Decker stopped off at a bar on Greenwich Avenue, not far from his apartment, and ordered a glass of cabernet. He drank it far too fast, trying to push the cold away, but it only made him more depressed. The case was going nowhere. Even with their APBs, they hadn’t been able to locate the suspects from the apartment in Queens. Decker missed Chicago. New York seemed so much bigger, so much less manageable. He should work out, he told himself, relieve the stress, but he didn’t feel like it.
Decker left the bar and suddenly resolved to go to a place about which Tony had once told him. He knew that he shouldn’t, but he found himself going anyway. As he walked, he thought again about Maureen O’Donnell. She had wanted him to settle down, to give up the Bureau, and a part of him had really tried. He had loved her, in his own way. But, in the end, he simply couldn’t do it. Somewhere along the road the job had become his life. He thought about Maureen’s white skin, her lips, her tender heavy breasts, the soft curve of her thighs where they had come together at the top, that triangle of light he’d always spotted as she walked away from him toward the bathroom to wash up after they’d finished making love.
Decker stopped in front of a building on Twenty-third Street. He buzzed and someone let him in. It was baking inside the lobby and he could feel himself begin to sweat as he climbed the stairs. There was a door at the top of the stairs with a small peephole. He knocked. The peephole opened and he said, “Anthony Bartolo sent me.” The door opened.
It was a cathouse. Young, barely dressed girls of all shapes and sizes and ethnicities were standing around by the front desk. He paid his entrance fee and ordered another glass of wine from a young Asian girl with small breasts and a heart-shaped ass. The girls kept coming up to him and, eventually, he picked one — a brunette with long straight hair. She was pale-skinned and soft and round. A little short, he thought, but decent-looking, with a pretty mouth covered in pink lipstick, and doe-like brown eyes.
She led him down the hall into a private room. It featured a simple cot with a pale blue sheet. There was only one pillow. She closed the door, told Decker to take off his clothes, and slipped into the bathroom. He could hear the water running behind the hollow wall. When she finally came out, she took her bra and panties off. She had large breasts for her frame, and two tiny dimples just above her ass. Her skin was startlingly white in the dim light. She helped him with his clothes.