Cold Snap (37 page)

"'Moccioso'. Do you have a runny nose?"

"These days...all the time. So? You have some
third-grade geek who can get into the laptop without his mommy
minding he might get his head blown off for what he finds?"

"I have someone," Ari said. "Not third grade.
And does he mind? I don't care if he does."

Lawson made a sound far removed from complete
satisfaction.

"Wish I could scare you the way I do the kids
on the street," he told Ari.

Ari closed the laptop, picked it up, and
left. He was feeling too impatient to make another run to the
library. Besides, Lynn's mild indiscretion in the library parking
lot made him wary. Though his stock of disposable cell phones was
depleting fast, he used one now to call Abu Jasim.

"And pick up your idiot nephew on the
way."

"I think he's in the middle of classes right
now. He's a college kid, remember?"

"I'll send a note to his teacher," Ari said
threateningly.

"Just leave it to me," said Abu Jasim. He
sounded pleased to be getting away from Canada and the men who
might or might not be hunting for him.

After he rang off, Ari broke the phone in
two.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Ari heard about the death of Paul Trinity on
the car radio. He did not know the man, had never heard of him. It
drew his attention because he died in Richmond, was an Iraqi
immigrant—and was blown up in spectacular fashion.

Two others had been killed and thirteen
injured in the office complex next to the Downtown Expressway. The
reporter made a great deal over the fact that Trinity was a
Christian whose brother (also a Christian) had been shot dead for
refusing to pay the jizya, a traditional tax imposed in some Muslim
countries on non-Muslims. Trinity had worked as an assistant to the
Director at the Department of Financial Control in Kirkuk. The
Church World Service sponsored his immigration to the United
States, where his accounting expertise was put to good use at a
church-sponsored orphanage. Authorities believed the explosion was
not the result of a gas leak or some other accident. An unnamed
source claimed it was a bomb, although he or she did not know if
Trinity or the orphanage itself was the intended target.

The reporter did not mention (Ari thought
with grim cheer, as he did with all horrors religious) that under
Saddam Christians had been relatively secure—meaning that they were
no more unsafe than anyone else.

Ari glanced at his watch. Abu Jasim had
reached Chicago the day before. Unless there was undue delay in
dragging Ahmad out of whatever hole he was hiding in (a real
possibility), Abu Jasim should finish his 12-hour trip in a few
hours.

Ari had intended to visit Elmore Lawson to
apprise him of his plans, but the news of the bombing caused him to
change course.

Patterson Avenue was blocked off beyond the
Expressway. Ari parked and walked as far as he could before he was
stopped by the police cordon. He could not see the orphanage,
hidden behind a block-long line of row-houses. There was possibly a
faint trace of burning in the air, but that might have been exhaust
from the host of fire trucks and oversized police investigation
vans choking the road.

"Were there any children injured?" Ari asked
a bystander.

"No kids there. It's an administrative
center."

"It is well, then."

"If you can call anyone getting blown to
smithereens 'well'."

'Smithereens'. Ari dwelled on the word as he
pressed further down the sidewalk. Really, English was such a
wonderful, descriptive language, full of onomatopoeic
virtuosity.

Seeing a pair of familiar faces, Ari
sauntered over.

"What brings you out here?" Officer Mangioni
asked cheerfully on seeing him.

His partner, Officer Jackson, merely
grunted.

"Don't mind him. I was just telling him what
a swell meal I had at your place the other night."

"And on and on," Jackson groused, then slid a
cagey look Ari's way. "Interesting guests, too, from what I hear.
With interesting results."

"You enjoy escargot à la francaise, Officer
Jackson?"

"Fucking snails?"

"It is just as well that you did not
attend."

"Treat Jackson gingerly, Ari," Mangioni
advised. "I had to pull him off a perp who insulted him."

"Alas, police are always being accused of
being unnecessarily brutal."

"Not quite. This guy called him a 'Barney
Fife'."

"I believe I've heard that name," Ari
mused.

"He was a cop on the Andy Griffith Show. Kind
of clueless, if you get my drift."

"This Barney was violent?" Ari turned to
Jackson. "He accused you of this while you were...addressing his
issues?"

"Naw, Barney Fife was a lamb. That's why
Jackson jumped on him. Calling a cop that is sort of a put-down,
y'see."

"The ultimate," Jackson commented
balefully.

"So he was somewhat like Frank
Drebin...?"

"Kinda-sorta."

Ari nodded up the block. "A true
catastrophe."

"You ate fucking snails?" said Jackson,
shooting his partner a wary glance.

"They weren't fucking at the time," said
Mangioni, who then turned to Ari. "Yeah, it's a real mess."

"I understand one of the victims was an
Iraqi?"

"They announce that on the news, already?"
Jackson said sharply. "Shit, don't we have any quality control in
the PR department?"

"Is that like a censorship bureau?" Ari
asked, then continued: "I understand he was a Christian
refugee."

"They announce that, too?"

"And that it was a bomb, not a gas leak."

"Shit, somebody needs to come down on them,
hard."

"The killer?" Ari asked.

"No, Public Affairs."

"Jackson thinks if no one knows, there was
never any crime," Mangioni observed.

"Well?" said Jackson, shorthanding the
obvious.

"When the reporter gave the nationality of
one of the victims, I thought I would come to observe," said
Ari.

"Out of respect?"

"My ancestors came out of the Middle East to
settle in Sicily." Ari paused. "I suppose that's apparent."

"A little," said Jackson.

"You must admit the Arab community has been
hard-pressed lately. First the beheading of Mustafa Zewail, then
the bombing in Chesterfield...are you aware of any similarities
between these bombings?"

"Give us a break," Jackson complained. "We
just got here."

"And we're not with the bomb squad," Mangioni
reasoned.

"I understand," Ari nodded, acknowledging his
foolishness with a grimace. "But it's my understanding that in
Chesterfield, the bomb was delivered in a package—"

"Not by U.S. Mail," Mangioni said. In
response to a scowl from Jackson, he shrugged. "What can it hurt?
Ari's the man with connections. He'll find out soon enough.
Besides, we owe him ten times over, after that Carrington
business."

Jackson offered a reluctant shrug.

"That guy killed in Chesterfield worked for a
real estate manager specializing in flex property: Stanley and
Starr. They have offices all over Greater Richmond, with their own
interoffice mail set-up. Somewhere between the offices someone
slipped the package into the courier's truck." Mangioni looked
around to make certain there were no precinct commanders within
earshot. "But there's something weird about it."

"And what might that be?" Ari politely
inquired.

"The package was delivered over a month
before the explosion. The bomb was hidden in a bowling trophy!
That's pretty sick. It was some sort of promotional gimmick. The
box it came in was opened the day it arrived, and it sat there all
that time before going off."

"That's interesting," Ari agreed. "It would
have to be a fairly stable explosive, not that I know anything
about such things..."

"PETN," said Mangioni. "The favorite of shoe
bombers, among others. But get this: they traced where it came
from. It was old...they can tell, somehow. And they found out
someone had dug it up from the Plum Tree Island Natural Wildlife
Refuge near Hampton Roads."

"Is that a bird sanctuary?" Ari inquired.

"Yeah, plus other swamp things you wouldn't
want to meet on the street. The Navy used it as a bombing range way
back. It's been closed to target practice for years, but there are
tons of unexploded bombs all over the place. Most of it is off
limits, now, which means these bombers went out there in the middle
of the night to dig up old shells and extract the explosive. That
takes some kind of balls."

"Balls are an American specialty," Ari
observed.

The officers stared at him for a moment
before Jackson cleared his throat and asserted, "You got that
right."

"Do you know anything about the victim? I
believe his name was Abdul-Wali—which, incidentally, is very
curious. That was also the name of an Afghan beaten to death by
your CIA."

"Those spooks are always up to no good,"
Mangioni said with a shake of his head. "Jackson here applied, but
they turned him down as being mentally unstable."

"I did not!" said Jackson as he turned to
watch an ambulance pass.

"I saw a guy from Chesterfield PD go in,"
Mangioni said, cocking a thumb in the direction of the orphanage
administration center. "Maybe they think there's a connection. But
I don't know anything about Abdul. I'm sure the FBI knows more." He
gave Ari a wink, on the assumption that they were among his
'connections'. "By the way, you're not still trying to play
detective with that missing person, are you?"

"What?" Jackson whirled to face them.

"Didn't I tell you? Ari's trying to track
down a missing husband for one of his neighbors. Judging from what
happened at his party, he might be in over his head."

"Alas," said Ari with a helpless shrug.

"Was a report filed? Has anyone contacted
NCIC?"

"That's the National Crime Information
Center," Mangioni explained. "You can set up a Missing Person file
there."

Ari flipped up his coat collar. "It must be
difficult for the two of you in this cold."

"Well, I can't whistle Dixie," Jackson
snapped.

Ari bid the two men adieu, determined to look
up 'Dixie' in a warmer environment. As he drove back across the
river, he plied himself with questions. Had Paul Trinity and
Abdul-Wali any inkling of what lay in store for them? If so, was
the implied threat Elmore had received, the desecrated G.I. Joe,
part of that same pattern? And was Ben Torson being followed so
that he could be set up for the same treatment? But what connection
could he have with Elmore and Abdul-Wali and Paul Trinity? Or
Sung-Soo Rhee? Thinking back on the video he had seen of the murder
in Nineveh Province, he grew increasingly doubtful. The killers had
been apologetic, almost abject. No mujahideen Ari was familiar with
ever slapped his forehead and exclaimed "Oops, my bad." But it had
not been a mistake. They had killed a man at the right time in the
right place, to the extent that they had even known when his truck
would be on that road near Mosul. How had they known?

And why had that particular video been put on
Ari's flash drive? The victim was known, and it would be no stretch
for military intelligence to identify men who had voluntarily
unmasked themselves. Ari had been indirectly contacted before by
someone in the CENTCOM network. Was this the same man or woman?
Whether a friend or tormentor, he had no clue. The video from Iraq
could be a warning, or a threat.

Or nothing at all. Just three men happily
torching a fourth. Neither the three men nor the victim should have
been in Iraq. The killers had arrived in America as children. Ari
dismissed Abu Jasim's harsh assessment of their parents, fugitives
from Saddam's Iraq—of which Abu Jasim himself was one of the most
prominent. Abu Jasim found Christians, Jews and Shia loathsome at
worst and misguided at best. And his opinion of Ari himself was
pretty low, seeing as he was about as godless as they came. A
perfect match for his new home.

Sayid Mohammed Al-Rafa'ee, Hasan Al-Jamil,
Abu ibn Al-Quassim. They had all been about ten years of age when
their families fled Iraq, having been foolish enough to follow
President Bush's advice to rise up against Saddam. Many others had
gone to Saudi Arabia, but nearly 50,000 came to the States. All
three families had kept a low profile. Texas, Michigan, Washington
State. The SSO was tasked with keeping track of dissident émigrés,
and its agents in America had filed reports on a more or less
regular basis. The general assessment was that the former dissident
journalists had gone from being bland Iraqi citizens to bland
naturalized Americans. Abu Jasim's assertion notwithstanding, Ari
could not recall anything in their files about them being
terrorists—from the Iraqi perspective. But things could change, had
changed. The boys were in their mid-twenties. For each, Ari's
retentive mind held a blank in excess of ten years.

The man they had killed in Nineveh Province
had a different background. Abu ibn Abd Al-Samad had been a
small-time film producer and part-time spy for the Fedayeen Saddam.
If he overheard someone say, for example, that "Saddam is the son
of a dog", he would report the offense to his superior and then
race home for his movie camera. When the Fedayeen arrived,
anonymous in their world-famous black uniforms that covered
everything but their eyes, Samad would film the torture. This could
range from having one's tongue cut out to having lighted dynamite
sticks jammed in one's pockets, depending on the severity of the
unpatriotic aspersion and the mood of the Fedayeen. This was all
performed in the middle of the street, with pedestrians looking on
in silent horror. Afterwards, Samad would burn the scene on a disc,
make copies and sell them from his little shop in the souk.
Independent filmmakers like himself made a killing with atrocity
DVDs, purchased by the very same people who had witnessed the
event, or many similar to it.